Differences in the KMW set

Is the packaging the same? (1R3U7C) Or has it always been like this, and I'm just not paying attention (too lazy to look up at this time, just felt like commenting on it, and this following: ) Two non booster vampires in each starter AND one nonbooster library card. THAT'S new. Gonna' be a bit pricey to collect this set, just like the other ones... and furthermore, what do we suppose the ebay prices on those starter only library cards will become (if they're any good of course, not like: Master Baali Trifle. Discipline. Put this card on a Baali you control. It becomes infernal, gains one level of Dai and a capacity. Wow how much such would that suck?) ~SV

"Screaming Vermillian" <vermil...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:1105467394....@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com... > Is the packaging the same? (1R3U7C) Or has it always been like this, > and I'm just not paying attention (too lazy to look up at this time, > just felt like commenting on it, and this following: ) 1R 3U 7C, yes. It has not always been like that. Some have been 1/4/6, for instance. It depends on the set. -- LSJ (vte...@white-wolf.com) V:TES Net.Rep for White Wolf, Inc. V:TES homepage: http://www.white-wolf.com/vtes/ Though effective, appear to be ineffective -- Sun Tzu

"Screaming Vermillian" <vermil...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:1105467394....@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com... > Two non booster vampires in each starter AND one nonbooster library > card. THAT'S new. Oh my Gohd! *THAT'S* SCARY! First of all, the non-booster vampires have been there as long as White Wolf has been making starter decks. Sabbat War had them. And I've been bitching about this as long White Wolf has been doing it. They're not that far from "super rares", because you have to buy a bunch of cards you generally won't need (after you've acquired one or two of them, that is whole starter decks full of cards). And long-time players have almost no need of the starters at all since they often already own the reprints. The secondary market won't touch 'em for the most part because it makes even less sense for them to break open starter decks than it makes for players to buy them straight out. This is a TERRIBLE practice and pretty much the only ongoing practice White Wolf engages in that really steams me up! At least in the past, it's been confined to vampires. You don't usually need many copies of a vampire, unless it's something like Huitzilopochtli, which lends itself to a 12-copy-of-one-vampire gadget deck. Thankfully, I haven't noticed any starter vampires qualify for that... so far. But now they're doing it with library cards. Meaning that if they should turn out to be arguably useful at all - depending on the design of the card - could essentially become a $20+ "super rare" card. I know that in the past, the record of extremely rare cards, promo-onlys, and such have been pretty quote-"good"-unquote in that the cards have fairly wall-papery or (perhaps more diplomatically put) extremely specialized cards. I would hope that turns out to be the plan, here. But this kind of stuff is playing with fire at best. Cripes. > Gonna' be a bit pricey to collect this set, just like the other ones... > and furthermore, what do we suppose the ebay prices on those starter > only library cards will become (if they're any good of course, Well, "if they're any good" IS the 64 million dollar question. Of course, if they're not good, then we buy wallpaper. The path between these two extremes is narrow and precarious, even when using design devices such as uniqueness and "play only once per game". But don't worry about those EBAY prices. History has shown such cards won't be available on EBAY at all. Fred

Fred, I agree that starter only is sometimes prohibitive, but there can be some positive alternatives. We have taken to purchasing the startes, taking what we will and making a communal pot for new players. When they want to invest, they do. As to breaking them open, I normally sell the two FDs from Ventrue and recoup the cost of the deck, as for Nosferatu, well it just sucks, David Wilson

"Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote in message news:8IVEd.51216$F25.27677@okepread07... > > But now they're doing it with library cards. Meaning that if they > should turn out to be arguably useful at all - depending on the design > of the card - could essentially become a $20+ "super rare" card. :-) I know you're steamed which may artificially inflate your stating of the matter, but how does the "super rare" ever end up costing you more than the retail cost of the entire starter deck? Unlike R1 vampires (seven times less abundant than other rares in FN), and other tough to get rares, these at least have an ultimate upper limit to what they should cost to acquire... You also have the mitigating factor of having them show up in tournament prize support packs... DZ AW

Screaming Vermillian wrote: > Is the packaging the same? (1R3U7C) Or has it always been like this, > and I'm just not paying attention (too lazy to look up at this time, > just felt like commenting on it, and this following: ) > > Two non booster vampires in each starter AND one nonbooster library > card. THAT'S new. There are some cards that I feel could be better off if they were confined to the starters only. For example, I would have liked if the Hunting Grounds were starter only. The only time they are welcome to see as an uncommon is when you're drafting, and that is an uncommon event in itself. Almost any Unique card could be acceptable as starter only. Cards with a "once per game" clause like Giant's Blood or Ancient Influence could also work. It would save space in the larger set for the "good" cards. Of course, if WW is intending to designate "power rares" which are useful in multiples, such as Shroud of Absence or Alastor, as starter only, their entire customer base will take a serious look at where they invest their gaming dollar. I prefer to think that WW will continue to do the right thing, but it's a very slippery slope. One mis-step could really affect their product. Jeff

"David Zopf" <david...@snet.net> wrote in message news:K4WEd.8106$Vj3....@newssvr17.news.prodigy.com... > > "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote in message news:8IVEd.51216$F25.27677@okepread07... >> >> But now they're doing it with library cards. Meaning that if they >> should turn out to be arguably useful at all - depending on the design >> of the card - could essentially become a $20+ "super rare" card. > > :-) I know you're steamed which may artificially inflate your stating > of the matter, but how does the "super rare" ever end up costing you > more than the retail cost of the entire starter deck? Well, the actual answer is, when the starter is no longer avaiable. Remember, if one card in one starter turns out to be extremely useful while the cards in the other starters are not, then we'd have the unequal run on starter decks - the same as the issue that comes up between the two 10th Anniversary Sets. I know we disagree about that but even if you were right about Set 1 being deliberately overproduced, I don't think there's any way in hell White Wolf could predict which new library card was the higher demand one. I suppose your basic point is well-taken, though. Speculation about an unnaturally useful card aside, normally the price shouldn't be more than the $10 (is that what is now?) you spend on a single starter. I guess it just totally offends my sense of wasting cardboard, should it ever comes to the point where people are buying whole starter decks and throwing out all the cards but one. Fred, hoping that the new library card in all four starters is the same one

"Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote in message news:aGWEd.51368$F25.43256@okepread07... > > "David Zopf" <david...@snet.net> wrote in message > news:K4WEd.8106$Vj3....@newssvr17.news.prodigy.com... >> >> "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote in message >> news:8IVEd.51216$F25.27677@okepread07... >>> >>> But now they're doing it with library cards. Meaning that if they >>> should turn out to be arguably useful at all - depending on the design >>> of the card - could essentially become a $20+ "super rare" card. >> >> :-) I know you're steamed which may artificially inflate your stating >> of the matter, but how does the "super rare" ever end up costing you >> more than the retail cost of the entire starter deck? > > Well, the actual answer is, when the starter is no longer avaiable. Which hasn't happened yet for any precon starter. SW is on its fourth reprinting, IIRC... > Remember, if one card in one starter turns out to be extremely useful > while > the cards in the other starters are not, then we'd have the unequal run > on starter decks - the same as the issue that comes up between the two > 10th Anniversary Sets. I know we disagree about that but even if you were > right about Set 1 being deliberately overproduced, I don't think there's > any > way in hell White Wolf could predict which new library card was the higher > demand one. > Good point. That I can see, easily. Look at how many !Ventrue decks sit on the shelf, simply due to its perceived unplayability out of the box... > I suppose your basic point is well-taken, though. Speculation about an > unnaturally useful card aside, normally the price shouldn't be more than > the $10 (is that what is now?) you spend on a single starter. I guess > it just totally offends my sense of wasting cardboard, should it ever > comes to the point where people are buying whole starter decks and > throwing > out all the cards but one. > I know you better than that, Fred.... ;-) None of that cardboard will ultimately be wasted. Also, reprintes of in-demand starter-only cards in the boosters of a later release is an option, too. WW doesn't seem to be interested in creating an artificial after-market for in demand cards. Since they cannot accurately predict what will be most popular, they can wait for "TCG-epidemiology" to do their research for them, and reprint in a later release (or drop in the prize packs) what is in high demand. 10th Anniversary should let everyone who is buying on eBay realize, anythign and everything can, may and will be reprinted. Buying VTES Singles futures is a losing prospect... davez atom weaver

De:LSJ (vte...@white-wolf.com) Assunto:Re: Differences in the KMW set Newsgroups:rec.games.trading-cards.jyhad Data:2005-01-11 10:32:40 PST "Screaming Vermillian" <vermil...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:1105467394....@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com... >> Is the packaging the same? (1R3U7C) Or has it always been like this, >> and I'm just not paying attention (too lazy to look up at this time, >> just felt like commenting on it, and this following: ) > >1R 3U 7C, yes. > >It has not always been like that. Some have been 1/4/6, for instance. >It depends on the set. Just for curiosity, do you remember what was the old Sabbat set rarity distribution? I remember it had 2 rares. .- Luis Duarte

> > Two non booster vampires in each starter AND one nonbooster library > > card. THAT'S new. > > Oh my Gohd! *THAT'S* SCARY! > > First of all, the non-booster vampires have been there as long as > White Wolf has been making starter decks. Sabbat War had them. And > I've been bitching about this as long White Wolf has been doing it. > They're not that far from "super rares", because you have to buy a > bunch of cards you generally won't need (after you've acquired one or > two of them, that is whole starter decks full of cards). And long-time > players have almost no need of the starters at all since they often > already own the reprints. The secondary market won't touch 'em for > the most part because it makes even less sense for them to break open > starter decks than it makes for players to buy them straight out. > > This is a TERRIBLE practice and pretty much the only ongoing practice > White Wolf engages in that really steams me up! > > At least in the past, it's been confined to vampires. You don't usually > need many copies of a vampire, unless it's something like Huitzilopochtli, > which lends itself to a 12-copy-of-one-vampire gadget deck. > Thankfully, I haven't noticed any starter vampires qualify for that... > so far. Huitzi just happened to be a rare card > > But now they're doing it with library cards. Meaning that if they > should turn out to be arguably useful at all - depending on the design > of the card - could essentially become a $20+ "super rare" card. I > know that in the past, the record of extremely rare cards, promo-onlys, > and such have been pretty quote-"good"-unquote in that the cards have > fairly wall-papery or (perhaps more diplomatically put) extremely > specialized cards. I would hope that turns out to be the plan, here. > But this kind of stuff is playing with fire at best. Cripes. "Wall-papery" ? Some maybe. Like Wind Dance, an excellent promo card. But the Eye of Hazimel, Erciyes Fragment and Antelios -The Red Star.... It makes me angry just to think about it. Not everybody have the opportonity to participate in leagues or pre-release events. The Final Nights rare vampires was a kick in the teeth as well. WW is just running a business i suppose. Probably they figure that after changing the backs and fronts of the cards small details like this isn't going to deter anyone from making the only decision they would really care about (i.e. not buying the damn thing). Frede

"Luis Duarte" <luis....@netcabo.pt> wrote in message news:e0b52d78.0501...@posting.google.com... > Just for curiosity, do you remember what was the old Sabbat set rarity > distribution? I remember it had 2 rares. The Sabbat had a 28 card pack: 2 Rares 5 Vampires 5 Uncommon 16 Common Fred

"David Zopf" <david...@snet.net> wrote in message news:LUXEd.13930$by5...@newssvr19.news.prodigy.com... > > "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote in message > news:aGWEd.51368$F25.43256@okepread07... >> I guess it just totally offends my sense of wasting cardboard, >> should it ever comes to the point where people are buying whole >> starter decks and throwing out all the cards but one. >> > I know you better than that, Fred.... ;-) None of that cardboard will > ultimately be wasted. Not true, though. Nobody, including me, can use more than a certain amount of reprints of stuff they already have. Of course, some of the cards will allow me to replace old format cards with new which looks better to the eye. But ultimately, waste is waste. > Also, reprintes of in-demand starter-only cards in the boosters of a > later release is an option, too. WW doesn't seem to be interested in > creating an artificial after-market for in demand cards. Since they > cannot accurately predict what will be most popular, they can wait for > "TCG-epidemiology" to do their research for them, and reprint in a later > release (or drop in the prize packs) what is in high demand. Sure. In the meantime though, you've got a bad situation. Reprinting is a long term, slow-turnaround solution to such things. There actually is no existing solution to that problem if the card isn't deemed to be unbalanced. Imagine something akin to Govern the Unaligned in that card slot. Ugh! (I do think they know better. But mistakes happen.) Fred

What I don't understand is why the money/cardboard wasted by buying a single starter is supposedly more than that wasted digging through boosters for a particular rare. Let's see...I pay $10, I get the card. Ok. Now let's say I'm looking for even an UNCOMMON card among boosters (Lucinde Alastor, as a hypothetical example). Can I guarantee that I will get her by buying $10 worth of boosters? How about $20? Those people out there who have "all the Lucindes they need" - how many CE boosters did they buy? And about the starters going out of print - didn't we just see SW come back? The whole point of White Wolf owning this game again was that they could continue to print things that the fans wanted. I'm not worried. Eric Simon Prince of Chicago

<vol...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:1105490526.1...@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com... > What I don't understand is why the money/cardboard wasted by buying a > single starter is supposedly more than that wasted digging through > boosters for a particular rare. Easy. All the boosters contain all new cards. I can use use all those cards. I don't have much use the other 87 cards in a starter deck. So it may cost me less to get X copies of a starter-only card vs. X copies of a rare card in the boosters - but that's only because you're ignoring the rest of the cards you get for the price. If you factor that in, you're doing much better with the booster rare. Fred

On 11 Jan 2005 15:07:12 -0800, luis....@netcabo.pt (Luis Duarte) wrote: >Just for curiosity, do you remember what was the old Sabbat set rarity >distribution? I remember it had 2 rares. Yes. http://www.thelasombra.com/booster_distribution.txt Carpe noctem. Lasombra http://www.TheLasombra.com/cardlists.htm

On 11 Jan 2005 10:16:34 -0800, "Screaming Vermillian" <vermil...@yahoo.com> wrote: >Is the packaging the same? (1R3U7C) Or has it always been like this, >and I'm just not paying attention The same as what? A list of all sets with their distribution is here: [ quoted text not captured ]

> "Wall-papery" ? > Some maybe. Like Wind Dance, an excellent promo card. But the What the hell? Erciyes Fragment is extremely potent!! Matthias Spirit Marinade and use your cards to bleed you Wow, David Wilson

[ quoted text not captured ] I wish that Storm Sewers and The Spawning Pool had been starter only in the Camarilla Edition. I have a god-awful lot of them for such cornercase cards. Carpe noctem. Lasombra http://www.TheLasombra.com

[ quoted text not captured ] Except that after a certain point, those commons you are getting in your booster are completely superfluous, just like the other 87 in a starter deck. Admittedly that number is higher than '87'... But if you've bought a couple of boxes of a booster set and decide you still want/need another copy of a rare, odds are that almost all of the commons in that booster set are ones you no longer need. Nobody really jumps up and down going 'I didn't get the Anarchs rare I wanted, but HOORAY I got my _twenty-first_ Car Bomb! So, yeah, initially, the boosters are a tremendous benefit, but eventually you're just rare-fishing, and that gets prohibitively expensive if you're hunting for one specific card. (Plus, lots of people covet multiple cards in the starter decks instead of a solitary rare - even if it's just more Blood Dolls.) That said, I'm still in agreement that I hope the starter-only library card(s) are not 'I'll take 20' but 'I'd like to own one or two and beyond that, enh'. > Fred -John Flournoy

"John Flournoy" <carn...@gmail.com> wrote in message news:1105511270.2...@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com... > > Frederick Scott wrote: >> <vol...@yahoo.com> wrote in message >> news:1105490526.1...@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com... >> > What I don't understand is why the money/cardboard wasted by buying >> > a single starter is supposedly more than that wasted digging through >> > boosters for a particular rare. >> >> Easy. All the boosters contain all new cards. I can use use all >> those cards. I don't have much use the other 87 cards in a starter >> deck. So it may cost me less to get X copies of a starter-only card vs. >> X copies of a rare card in the boosters - but that's only because >> you're ignoring the rest of the cards you get for the price. If you >> factor that in, you're doing much better with the booster rare. > > Except that after a certain point, those commons you are getting in > your booster are completely superfluous, ... > But if you've bought a couple of boxes of a booster set and decide you > still want/need another copy of a rare, odds are that almost all of the > commons in that booster set are ones you no longer need. Nobody really > jumps up and down going 'I didn't get the Anarchs rare I wanted, but > HOORAY I got my _twenty-first_ Car Bomb! > > So, yeah, initially, the boosters are a tremendous benefit, but > eventually you're just rare-fishing, and that gets prohibitively > expensive if you're hunting for one specific card. That may be. No one said boosters are the perfect tool either - at least for our purposes. Still, the number of boosters we buy are chock full of other cards we either need (including other rares) or at the very least can trade away because they have value to _somebody_. That point is emphasized by the fact that secondary market sellers can make a business out of buying them, sorting them, and selling them. It almost never happens with starter decks, even with two starter-only vampires. Starter decks have too much cardboard that too few people care about. Fred

On Tue, 11 Jan 2005 23:12:39 -0500, The Lasombra <TheLa...@hotmail.com> scrawled: >I wish that Storm Sewers and The Spawning Pool had been starter only >in the Camarilla Edition. I have a god-awful lot of them for such >cornercase cards. no offense intended, but from speaking to you last year i got the impression you had a god-awful lot of _every_ freaking card there is. :) salem domain:canberra http://www.geocities.com/salem_christ.geo/vtes.htm (replace "hotmail" with "yahoo" to email)

On Tue, 11 Jan 2005 23:12:39 -0500, The Lasombra <TheLa...@hotmail.com> scrawled: >I wish that Storm Sewers and The Spawning Pool had been starter only >in the Camarilla Edition. I have a god-awful lot of them for such >cornercase cards. erm, and the bit i meant to put at the end of my last post was, yes that would have been nice. especially the storm sewers. [ quoted text not captured ]

"Screaming Vermillian" <vermil...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:1105467394....@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com... > Two non booster vampires in each starter AND one nonbooster library > card. THAT'S new. Actually I don't see a problem here. As a long-time player I don't really need any of the reprints in a starter. So including a starter-only library card is nice. This way I get 3 useful cards out of each starter instead of just 2. By the way, I expect those 4 library cards to be unique. At least I hope it will be. After all, the new cards in the 10th anniversery set were unique as well. After the last few sets I think we can assume the following: White Wolf brings out sets that are fairly easy to collect. Just look at Black Hand and Gehenna: for almost all of the rares it is enough to own about 2 copies. That is because the cards are unique, or they are simply not so great (like crusades). Ok, you still need more copies if you have lots of dekcs at the same time. But in that case you need more of all the cards out there. Also, there are no "ultra rares" anymore like the R1 cards in Final Nights or Bloodlines. To be honest, sometimes I see this as a disadvantage as well. After having opened 1.5 or 2 boxes of boosters I have practically all the cards I ever need from the set. Right from the beginning. So it is not necessary to chase after some elusive cards. At least for me that was part of the fun of Bloodlines (still the best VTES set ever), not being able to build every possible deck right after the release. regards pallando -- pallando(at)gmx(dot)at

[ quoted text not captured ] Yes that was my point. Notice the "But".

Frederick Scott <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > "Screaming Vermillian" <vermil...@yahoo.com> wrote: >> Two non booster vampires in each starter AND one >> nonbooster library card. THAT'S new. [snip some scary discussion] > But now they're doing it with library cards. Meaning that if > they should turn out to be arguably useful at all - depending > on the design of the card - could essentially become a $20+ > "super rare" card. To paraphrase my friend Bakija: See, I just don't get that. Why in the hell would ANY starter-only card -- vampire or library -- be more than $9.99? I suppose if the starter becomes out-of-print the card might go up, as did Direct Intervention when the !Brujah starter wasn't available for more than six months. And now that the starter has been reprinted and is available, paying more than the retail cost of a starter for a starter-only card only means you're clinically insane. And yea, I'm talking to all you eBay dorks. (Note: Maybe living outside the USA and taking shipping costs into account could cause the starter to be valued at more than US$9.99, but I don't think *that fact* could cause someone to believe a single card within that starter to be worth *twice* the cost of the starter itself!) >> Gonna' be a bit pricey to collect this set, just like the other >> ones... and furthermore, what do we suppose the ebay prices >> on those starter only library cards will become (if they're any >> good of course, > > Well, "if they're any good" IS the 64 million dollar question. > Of course, if they're not good, then we buy wallpaper. What would force you to buy wallpaper? More clinical insanity? > Fred Kevin M., Prince of Henderson, NV (USA) "Know your enemy, and know yourself; in one-thousand battles you shall never be in peril." -- Sun Tzu, *The Art of War* "Contentment... Complacency... Catastrophe!" -- Joseph Chevalier

"Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote in message news:vg_Ed.51397$F25.41709@okepread07... > "David Zopf" <david...@snet.net> wrote in message > news:LUXEd.13930$by5...@newssvr19.news.prodigy.com... >> >> "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote in message >> news:aGWEd.51368$F25.43256@okepread07... >>> I guess it just totally offends my sense of wasting cardboard, >>> should it ever comes to the point where people are buying whole >>> starter decks and throwing out all the cards but one. >>> >> I know you better than that, Fred.... ;-) None of that cardboard will >> ultimately be wasted. > > Not true, though. Nobody, including me, can use more than a certain > amount of reprints of stuff they already have. You haven't seen Ben Peal's collection ;-) He still trades for copies of Blood Dolls, Drawing out the Beast, Aid from Bats, etc. 'Course, he's also never disassembled a deck he's made... *goggle* And, you can always donate to the local Newbie Commons Bin. >> Also, reprintes of in-demand starter-only cards in the boosters of a >> later release is an option, too. WW doesn't seem to be interested in >> creating an artificial after-market for in demand cards. Since they >> cannot accurately predict what will be most popular, they can wait for >> "TCG-epidemiology" to do their research for them, and reprint in a later >> release (or drop in the prize packs) what is in high demand. > > Sure. In the meantime though, you've got a bad situation. Assuming a card desired in high numbers, and for varying values of Bad, OK. > Reprinting > is a long term, slow-turnaround solution to such things. You do have yet to comment on the "included in tournament prize packs" bit, which has more than adequately mitigated pricing on, say, Meddlings. A full sheet of a single or two cards isn't a huge issue (except for cash layout on the printing plates), and should be turned around by a competent print house in a matter of a month or less... Into the prize packs and to the Populace in a couple of months. DaveZ Ato mWeaver

"FC" <f...@aub.dk> wrote in message news:41e45be5$0$17416$4d4e...@read-nat.news.dk.uu.net... > > "Wall-papery" ? > Some maybe. Like Wind Dance, an excellent promo card. But the > Eye of Hazimel, Erciyes Fragment and Antelios -The Red Star.... > > It makes me angry just to think about it. Not everybody have the > opportonity to participate in leagues or pre-release events. > *nods*. Is it _sooooo_ bad that those who do get a little more for their time and money spent? > The Final Nights rare vampires was a kick in the teeth as well. > That, I think, was an egregious error, but one of oversight, rather than of a malicious nature... > WW is just running a business i suppose. Probably they figure that after > changing the backs and fronts of the cards small details like this isn't > going to deter anyone from making the only decision they would really > care about (i.e. not buying the damn thing). > Put blame where blame is due. WW did not decide to change the card backs. That decision was made by Wizards of the Coast. DaveZ Atom Weaver

"David Zopf" <david...@snet.net> wrote in message news:2aaFd.14200$by5....@newssvr19.news.prodigy.com... > > "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote in message > news:vg_Ed.51397$F25.41709@okepread07... >> Reprinting is a long term, slow-turnaround solution to such things. > > You do have yet to comment on the "included in tournament prize packs" > bit, which has more than adequately mitigated pricing on, say, > Meddlings. I think those things would mitigate the situation, I agree. In fact, at one point, White Wolf _was_ placing starter-only vampires in tournament packs. I think any starter-only card should be in the tournament packs at a minimum and get passed out as door prizes just for entering a VEKN tournament. However, to make any appreciable dent in the problem they have to stick with it. The starter-only reprints seems to be gone from prizes packs at the moment. Fred

"Kevin M." <you...@imaspammer.org> wrote in message news:uN9Fd.15250$B95.12331@lakeread02... > Frederick Scott <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: >> "Screaming Vermillian" <vermil...@yahoo.com> wrote: >>> Gonna' be a bit pricey to collect this set, just like the other >>> ones... and furthermore, what do we suppose the ebay prices >>> on those starter only library cards will become (if they're any >>> good of course, >> >> Well, "if they're any good" IS the 64 million dollar question. >> Of course, if they're not good, then we buy wallpaper. > > What would force you to buy wallpaper? More clinical insanity? Er, starter decks _do_ have a reason to exist other than to get us to buy them for the three new cards, remember? The point being, if they're deliberately creating lousy cards because they're starter- only cards, then when you want a starter for their intended purposes, (e.g to play limited tournaments), you get three crap cards in the box. Maybe not the world's worst disaster. I'm just pointing how starter- only cards are pretty much a lose-lose proposition. Fred

"pallando" <inv...@invalid.invalid> wrote in message news:cs2q3f$m$1...@news.sap-ag.de... > "Screaming Vermillian" <vermil...@yahoo.com> wrote in message > news:1105467394....@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com... >> Two non booster vampires in each starter AND one nonbooster library >> card. THAT'S new. > > Actually I don't see a problem here. As a long-time player I don't really > need any of the reprints in a starter. So including a starter-only library > card is nice. This way I get 3 useful cards out of each starter instead of > just 2. Wouldn't it just be SO MUCH easier not to have to buy starters at all if you don't need the reprints? Fred

i agree. WW could surely predict that 10th anni set1 would sell more, (i bought 4xset1 and only 2 of set2, i would buy more set1s but i satisfied my need of specific cards by buying some singles), but cannot accurately predict which future cards will be demanded the most. Anyway, i believe that WW manages well not to give the impression that the strategy it follows is to force players to buy many uneeded cards in order to find the good ones. If it could only stop releasing cards that are starter specific and cannot be found in the boosters, then those people that claim that WW forces players to buy more and more uneeded cards would stop complaining. I am not complaining, because in any case i would buy a minimum of 2 starter boxes (of 4 starters) and 2 booster boxes of KMW. But there are people in my playgroup that feel misused by WW and think that WW's marketing strategy forces players to buy uneeded cards to find the good ones. Me, i am just happy that WW stopped the R1 bullshit and started releasing small sets with magnificent distribution, like the Gehenna set. So, guys and gals, keep up the good work and may my prayers have reached you and Call the Great Beast can be found in the Baali starters, as my 5 of them are too few for my wild-deckbuilding. George

"Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote in message news:31bFd.52187$F25.11197@okepread07... > > Wouldn't it just be SO MUCH easier not to have to buy starters at all > if you don't need the reprints? > > Fred That is true. But as long as I have to buy them I prefer to get 3 new cards instead of just one. And as I said above I expect this library card in the starter to be unique. It should also be clan specific. regards pallando -- pallando(at)gmx(dot)at

Surley the intended purpose of a starter deck is as a way to get a new player started with V:TES rather than just for tournaments! Piers [ quoted text not captured ]

Piers wrote: > Surley the intended purpose of a starter deck is as a way to get a new > player started with V:TES rather than just for tournaments! Or to give people a foothold in a new deck type, perhaps. I think the Baali starter is a better idea that everyone first thought. If WW kept the deck's focus tight, and you don't plan to play Baali--and they're definitely an acquired taste--you can skip the starter with no regrets. You won't need the starter-only Baali, and I'm guessing you won't need the starter-only Baali library card, be it a Baali hunting ground or whatever, and you won't need the Call the Great Beast, Path of Infernalism, Huitzipotchli, Herald and/or whatever other hard-to-get cards that are fixed in there. But for people that do want to play Baali, that deck could be a real magic bullet. I speculate the vamps will be the Group 2 Baali, plus Midget, plus 2 new group 3 new Baali, plus some existing obf/pre vamps currently not in starters.

"Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote in message news:cUaFd.52185$F25.3309@okepread07... > > "David Zopf" <david...@snet.net> wrote in message > news:2aaFd.14200$by5....@newssvr19.news.prodigy.com... >> >> "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote in message >> news:vg_Ed.51397$F25.41709@okepread07... >>> Reprinting is a long term, slow-turnaround solution to such things. >> >> You do have yet to comment on the "included in tournament prize packs" >> bit, which has more than adequately mitigated pricing on, say, >> Meddlings. > > I think those things would mitigate the situation, I agree. In fact, > at one point, White Wolf _was_ placing starter-only vampires in tournament > packs. I think any starter-only card should be in the tournament packs > at a minimum and get passed out as door prizes just for entering a VEKN > tournament. Its up to the tourney co-ordinator, but thats the most common use for them. > However, to make any appreciable dent in the problem they > have to stick with it. The starter-only reprints seems to be gone from > prizes packs at the moment. > Really? My most recently purchased Tourney pack (Nov. 2004) had the FN starter vamps in it, in good quantity... DaveZ Atom Weaver

"David Zopf" <david...@snet.net> wrote in message news:KUdFd.13776$_X7....@newssvr33.news.prodigy.com... > > "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote in message > news:cUaFd.52185$F25.3309@okepread07... >> However, to make any appreciable dent in the problem they >> have to stick with it. The starter-only reprints seems to be gone from >> prizes packs at the moment. > > Really? My most recently purchased Tourney pack (Nov. 2004) had the FN > starter vamps in it, in good quantity... I'm glad to hear that. The packs I purchased in October had none. Fred

"Emmit Svenson" <emmits...@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:1105553903.4...@c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com... > I speculate the vamps will be the Group 2 Baali, plus Midget, plus 2 > new group 3 new Baali, plus some existing obf/pre vamps currently not > in starters. Actually notice Maueen is Group 4. I expected that, somehow. Not augmentation to the Bloodlines expansion Baali but a whole new set, started from scratch. Probably Barbaro Lucchese is the only one you could use with either set. Fred

[ quoted text not captured ] I think turn-around is fair play too, though. I'd like to see Tourney Prize Pack only cards released in later sets. I managed to pick up some Legions, Ericyes (and the other), Eye of Haximel, Lamback Adv, and Xaviar (finally released). But they were all on the verge of prohibitive expense. There's also the others (Wind Dance, the two 'chase' Vampires, the latest Baali and Event), that I don't have, and as I'm unable to attend tourneys due to work make attaining them unlikely. I'm not saying they should be released at the same time. But put in a release 12-18 months after final issue (possibly with alternate art, for collector's sake*?) means that people anable to attend, or late to the game (we have two local players who only started last year) would have the opportunity to acquire them. * I don't give a rat's about 'collectors edition' type stuff, but I know some people do. If it's functionally the same, I don't care if it's a VTES, cam, BH, Ana, or whatever. Morgan Vening

I agree wwith you Too me starter only cards sounds as a scam. Reprinting sought afte cards makes starters aninteresting option Making starter only cards forces collectionners to buy starters. Though I admit CCG rely on an artificially created rarity for their business model, I think that trciks like starter only cards or R1 rares are a step too much in the "cutomers are pigeon" direction

On Wed, 12 Jan 2005 18:19:41 +1100, salem <salem_ch...@hotmail.com> wrote: >>I wish that Storm Sewers and The Spawning Pool had been starter only >>in the Camarilla Edition. I have a god-awful lot of them for such >>cornercase cards. >no offense intended, but from speaking to you last year i got the >impression you had a god-awful lot of _every_ freaking card there is. >:) Well, yes, there is that. Still, no reason to print a rare that specialised in both the appropriate starter and take up one of the rare slots. [ quoted text not captured ]

> Two non booster vampires in each starter AND one nonbooster library > card. THAT'S new. For vampires it isn't that bad. Usually you don't need more that 2-3 copies of the same vampire, unless you're making deck based on him. But fix - library card sounds pretty scary to me. It's worse than promo, unless it's in 3-4 copies, or unique card. Promo card is given to everyone on a tournament, and you can, trade it after the game. You won't get good fix though. sinaath

<e...@boursorama.com> wrote in message news:1105573993.5...@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com... >I agree wwith you > > Too me starter only cards sounds as a scam. > > Reprinting sought afte cards makes starters aninteresting option > > Making starter only cards forces collectionners to buy starters. > ..? Meaning 'collectionners" (I like that word :) wouldn't buy them anyways? Naah. Not true. Collectors want one of everything... :-) > Though I admit CCG rely on an artificially created rarity for their > business model, I think that trciks like starter only cards or R1 rares > are a step too much in the "cutomers are pigeon" direction > If its something that is desirable in large quantity in a constructed deck, I'll agree. If its a clan specific unique location, I'll applaud at not having to get 8-20 of them in my boosters... DaveZ Atom Weaver

Wouldn't it just be SO MUCH easier not to have to buy starters at all if you don't need the reprints? i completely agree. George

And as I said above I expect this library card in the starter to be unique. It should also be clan specific. it better be unique or otherwise, it will surely cause many nasty comments about WW forcing players to buy a lot of starters. Anyway, even if it is unique, there is still the matter of the 2 starter specific vampires... If any of the 2 is an awesome vampire and people need multiple copies of him, then... you get my sad point. George

"For vampires it isn't that bad. Usually you don't need more that 2-3 copies of the same vampire." Vampires are a problem, too. Depending on the vampire you need 1-5 copies of it, so in average you need 3 copies, thus you'll have to buy 3 of each starter and maybe up to 5 times a single starter. This is not good. Based on my experience of Gehenna distribution and nature of the cards (many good rares being unique, e.t.c.), my plans were to buy 2 booster boxes of KMW and 2 of each starter, at first and later maybe buy more, like if there are some really good starters, buy those a 3rd time. So, if there are some good starter specific cards, that i need multiple times, then i'll have to buy even more. In my case, this does not suck much, as i don't mind having a lot of cards, that are often contained in the starters. Cards like Blood dolls, minion taps, forced aw, wakes, e.t.c to be bale to have a lot of decks ready at the same time. But it is not good either, as WW should leave me free to decide what i will buy depending on what kind of cards i need most, e.g. a month ago i bought 2 CE boxes, as i could find a lot of the cards contained in this set usefull for my gaming needs. If WW forces me, in its way, to spend a lot of my resources on buying KMW starters, then i won't have enough left to buy some cards from FN, CE, or whatever else i believe will prove useful for my needs. Anyway, i believe we should wait and see what will the starters contain and then we can judge. I just wish that WW has not "followed" a policy of forcing us to buy a lot of lame cards just to obtain only a few good ones. George

geo...@for.auth.gr wrote: > Wouldn't it just be SO MUCH easier not to have to buy starters at all > if you don't need the reprints? Yes. It would be. But this is a collectible card game. And sometimes you have to collect. So you could buy the starters to get the starter only card. Or buy them as singles on the internet for probably not much money. Or possibly pick them up as promos (I have more "starter only" Sabbat War vampires than I know what to do with from picking them up at tournaments and convention tables). Or trade people for them. Really. It isn't that big of a deal. Peter D Bakija pd...@lightlink.com http://www.lightlink.com/pdb6 "How does this end?" "In fire." Emperor Turhan and Kosh

"Peter D Bakija" <pd...@lightlink.com> wrote in message news:BE0EA4CA.1C7F0%pd...@lightlink.com... > geo...@for.auth.gr wrote: (Actually I wrote it...) >> Wouldn't it just be SO MUCH easier not to have to buy starters at all >> if you don't need the reprints? > > Yes. It would be. > > But this is a collectible card game. And sometimes you have to collect. Of course. But the method used to distribute THESE particular cards makes it extremely hard to collect them by any means. > So you could buy the starters to get the starter only card. Right. So people who already have the reprints in the starter set must collect these cards by spending $10+ to get *3* cards they need! Wonderful! > Or buy them as singles on the internet for probably not much money. NO, Peter!!! These cards are *NOT* for sale on EBAY or elsewhere. Secondary market sellers can't make any money by buying starter packs at $10 a shot and selling 3 cards. > Or possibly pick them up as promos (I have more "starter only" Sabbat > War vampires than I know what to do with from picking them up at > tournaments and convention tables). "Convention tables"?!? I don't know what cards you're talking about. I recall getting copies of Marcus Vitel at Gencon a few years ago, but he was common as dirt. Every time WW issues starters, 6 or 8 more of these cards come out (now there'll be 12 counting the library cards). You can NOT fill in all of these vampires from dropping by a convention table, nor is it very easy to do so through tournaments - unless you attend a tournament every week. (Many people can't realistically attend a tournament every month.) > Or trade people for them. How are you going to do that?!? No one ELSE has them, either. Fred

Frederick Scott wrote: > Of course. But the method used to distribute THESE particular cards > makes it extremely hard to collect them by any means. Sure. But the same was the case with the starter only Sabbat War, Camarilla, and Anarchs vampires. And the various promos that you can only get by playing in the appropriate event--heck, I only just managed ot get ahold of an Ericyies Fragent last week. Sometimes cards are made hard to get. That is part of playing a CCG. > Right. So people who already have the reprints in the starter set > must collect these cards by spending $10+ to get *3* cards they need! > Wonderful! Yup. What--you can't use more Blood Dolls and Wakes? I was pretty psyched, 'cause last night, Sackett showed up with a handfull of FN starters he got half off at a closeout. So I paid 4 bucks for an Assamite starter, and was very pelased with the Legendary Vampire and extra Psyches I needed. There are lot of cards that are worth getting in starters. Even if they are reprints. > NO, Peter!!! These cards are *NOT* for sale on EBAY or elsewhere. > Secondary market sellers can't make any money by buying starter packs > at $10 a shot and selling 3 cards. Dude. I got all the strater only vampires I needed 'cause I didn't buy the appropriate starter deck (like Sundown and Eddie Gaines) by buying them as singles on the internet. I just bought a bunch of 10th aniversary only cards as, ya know, singles on the internet. People buy starters. And then sell the cards on the internet. They do it all the time. I'm not quite sure what internet you are looking at. People will buy starters, sell the hard to get cards for $5.00 each to people who want them, and keep the bulk for themselves. Of give them to friends. Or whatever. It happens all the time. > "Convention tables"?!? I don't know what cards you're talking about. > I recall getting copies of Marcus Vitel at Gencon a few years ago, > but he was common as dirt. Every time WW issues starters, 6 or 8 > more of these cards come out (now there'll be 12 counting the library > cards). You can NOT fill in all of these vampires from dropping by > a convention table, nor is it very easy to do so through tournaments - > unless you attend a tournament every week. (Many people can't > realistically attend a tournament every month.) Yes, Fred. "Convention tables". At Origins, like, the year after Sabbat War came out, you could pick up as many of the starter only vampires as you wanted just by asking (I have, like, 15 Amelias now, just 'cause I think she is cute). And whenever I go to a big tournament (which is, like, only once or twice a year), I always end up with lots and lots of starter only and promo cards. When you signed up for the NE Qualifier last year, Ben Peal handed you a choice of either a "Big Stack" or "Small Stack" of promo/starter only cards. The only real difference between the piles was how many extra Ankla Hoteps you ended up with. > How are you going to do that?!? No one ELSE has them, either. The people who buy starter decks do. And there are people who buy starter decks. There are people who buy whole boxes of starter decks, just 'cause they can. Sure. It'll take a bit of doing to get all the necessary cards if you don't want to buy all the starters. I'm sure most folks will deal. I was far more irritated when they mixed rare vampires into the boosters, 'cause I still don't have a lot of them. At least if they had been starter only, I could have gotten them easily. And with bonus Blood Dolls and Wakes to boot. [ quoted text not captured ]

"Peter D Bakija" <pd...@lightlink.com> wrote in message news:BE0ED7BD.1C802%pd...@lightlink.com... > Frederick Scott wrote: > >> Of course. But the method used to distribute THESE particular cards >> makes it extremely hard to collect them by any means. > > Sure. But the same was the case with the starter only Sabbat War, > Camarilla, and Anarchs vampires. And I've been screaming about it since Sabbat War. And I think EVERYONE should be bitching about it, especially estiablished players who don't need the other cards in the starters. I think the reason more people don't is that they don't quite understand how bad the problem is that these starter-only cards create. Rarity in booster packs is easy to understand. You can give exact numbers like 1 in 36 and 1 in 11, etc. People don't think much about the importance of the other cards that come with (or are likely to come with, in the case of randomized boosters) the rare card. But such cards are very important, too. They dictate how likely it is people (including other people you might trade with or buy from) will buy the package in the first place, making the rare card available for ownership by somebody. > And the various promos that you can only get by playing in the > appropriate event--heck, I only just managed ot get ahold of > an Ericyies Fragent last week. Sometimes cards are made hard to get. > That is part of playing a CCG. These cards are actually harder to get than those cards. You may have to attend an event, but that's value. But like the other cards in the pack, playing in an event is another value you get along with card. In fact, the primary reason for most of us is to play in the tournament. You get a free promo card with it - that's certainly an EASIER deal to make than to spend $10 for two or three cards. Also, there's far more of them. >> Right. So people who already have the reprints in the starter set >> must collect these cards by spending $10+ to get *3* cards they need! >> Wonderful! > > Yup. What--you can't use more Blood Dolls and Wakes? Nope. Besides, you don't get many Blood Dolls and Wakes in starter anyway. It's a question of numbers, boring but revealing. The vast majority of those cards will never be used. Any sooner or later, Peter, you'll have enough Blood Dolls and Wakes that you won't be able to use any more either. Everybody hits that point. Then what? >> NO, Peter!!! These cards are *NOT* for sale on EBAY or elsewhere. >> Secondary market sellers can't make any money by buying starter packs >> at $10 a shot and selling 3 cards. > > Dude. I got all the strater only vampires I needed 'cause I didn't buy > the appropriate starter deck (like Sundown and Eddie Gaines) by buying > them as singles on the internet. I don't know what you're talking about. I have constant searches for the starter only cards in Final Nights on EBAY and they NEVER come up, ever! Only the ones that were magazine promos - from dealers who pulled them out of magazines. Nobody that I've ever seen breaks down starters and sells them as singles. > I just bought a bunch of 10th aniversary only cards as, ya know, singles > on the internet. WHERE?!? Again, I have constant searches on EBAY for a couple of the new 10th Anniversary cards. One guy did one sale. Where are these secret dealers? > People buy starters. And then sell the cards on the internet. They do > it all the time. Nope. Never. Point me to them. Millions of booster cards get sold, no starter-only cards. > I'm not quite sure what internet you are looking at. And I can't imagine what world you're in. I'll grant you, I haven't even bothered to search for vampires like Eddie Gaines and Sundown because of the dismal failures I've had searching for prior starter-only vampires. But I'm pretty sure you're vastly overstating their availability, at a minium. Even if you have managed to find one or two sellers who actually do that. (And yes, post links by all means. I'd be elated to find out what the hell you could be talking about.) > Yes, Fred. "Convention tables". At Origins, like, the year after Sabbat > War came out, you could pick up as many of the starter only vampires as > you wanted just by asking (I have, like, 15 Amelias now, just 'cause I > think she is cute). OK, specifically, I'm pretty sure you're talking about only conventions where White Wolf has a booth. None one else is going to do that. I guess that's fine and dandy if you live near a large convention that White Wolf attends. Unfortunately, the best thing we have around here is Gencon: LA and I'm not sure they goes there. Even so, Gencon: LA is held at a horrible time of year so it's not within my power to drop by. And for many, this is not an answer. >> How are you going to do that?!? No one ELSE has them, either. > > The people who buy starter decks do. Beginners who need the reprints, perhaps. But why should they trade them? They need them, too. In any case, this is not enough of a supply to create any reasonable amount of trade stock floating around. Numbers, Peter. Numbers. > At least if they had been starter only, I could > have gotten them easily. I can't explain your irritation, at least in comparison to the starter only stuff. You CAN find rare vampires on the internet. In spite of what you say, starter-only vampires are as rare as hen's teeth. Fred

"Peter D Bakija" <pd...@lightlink.com> wrote in message news:BE0ED7BD.1C802%pd...@lightlink.com... > Dude. I got all the strater only vampires I needed 'cause I didn't buy > the appropriate starter deck (like Sundown and Eddie Gaines) by buying > them as singles on the internet. Dude. Just to check your facts, I just did a search for every starter- only vampire in Anarchs and Black Hand on EBAY. I hadn't been bothering but, you know, sometimes when you're not watching the situation changes and you wind up looking foolish. So out of all of EBAY, I got one hit: it turns out Beckett, who was a starter-only vampire in Anarchs, can be had in the advanced version which was available in boosters in the Gehenna expansion. (How ironic! The advanced version is far more available than the base version!) So, really, not a single starter-only vampire on all of EBAY at the moment. Not one. PLEASE! Tell me where you find these! Fre

Frederick Scott wrote: > And I've been screaming about it since Sabbat War. And I think EVERYONE > should be bitching about it, especially estiablished players who don't > need the other cards in the starters. I think the reason more people > don't is that they don't quite understand how bad the problem is that > these starter-only cards create. I'm one of them. I like this game. I buy cards. I have never been offended by a couple of hard to get cards in the set. If they are in starters, I know exactly where to get them, and exactly how much they will cost--I was very excited to find a retail Ventrue starter the last time I was in NYC, and was happy to pay the $10.00 to get the 2 Freak Drives and the PTO, and all the bonus other good stuff I could use like Deflections and Majesties. And I'm not someone who buys boxes and boxes of cards--for the upcoming set, I'm gonna play a pre-release (a starter and a few boosters), buy half a booster box, and maybe pick up some singles on the internet. So I'm not coming from the position of someone who buys boxes of starters and boosters myself. But the occasional starter only card strikes me as a perfectly reasonable (if slightly frustrating) marketing decision. And again, much less of a pain than, like, rare vampires. > Rarity in booster packs is easy to understand. You can give exact > numbers like 1 in 36 and 1 in 11, etc. People don't think much about the > importance of the other cards that come with (or are likely to come with, > in the case of randomized boosters) the rare card. But such cards are > very important, too. They dictate how likely it is people (including > other people you might trade with or buy from) will buy the package in > the first place, making the rare card available for ownership by somebody. Rarity in starters is easy to understand too--you buy a starter and get he cards you want. $10.00 for 3 starter only cards, 2 or 3 previously rare cards, a handfull of useful utilitarian cards, and then a bunch of stuff that you may or may not actually need strikes me as perfectly reasonable. Especially when you consider that, like, it costs about $5.00 to get any particular rare that you don't luck into in a booster pack that you want. > These cards are actually harder to get than those cards. No they aren't. To get, say, an Eryicies Fragment, you need to have access to someone running a prophecies league. To get a starter only card, you need to have access to a starter. > You get a free promo card with it - that's certainly an EASIER deal to > make than to spend $10 for two or three cards. You may like to look at it as spending $10 on two or three cards, but you aren't. You are getting a bunch of cards. And then 2 or 3 others that you have no other way to get. And even if you do look at it as spending $10 on 2 or 3 cards, that is about how much you'd spend on the same number of rare singles on the internet. > Nope. Besides, you don't get many Blood Dolls and Wakes in starter > anyway. It's a question of numbers, boring but revealing. The vast > majority of those cards will never be used. Any sooner or later, Peter, > you'll have enough Blood Dolls and Wakes that you won't be able to use > any more either. Everybody hits that point. Then what? I've been playing this game for a long time. I haven't hit that point yet. And when I do? It's gonna kill me to pay $10.00 for a starter to get 2 or 3 cards that I can't get anywhere else, a few other cards that I could use more of, and then a bunch of other cards I can trade off in bulk to newer players for a few selected uncomons or a rare that they aren't using and I need? > I don't know what you're talking about. I have constant searches for > the starter only cards in Final Nights on EBAY and they NEVER come up, > ever! Only the ones that were magazine promos - from dealers who pulled > them out of magazines. Nobody that I've ever seen breaks down starters > and sells them as singles. I guess I'm just luckier than you? I got pretty much every starter only vampire from he Anarchs set ('cause I didn't feel like buying the starters) from The Lasombra for like a buck each (I think I got two each of a few of them) after the set came out. And then I got a couple more on e-bay, also for, like, a buck. I don't know what to tell you. > WHERE?!? Again, I have constant searches on EBAY for a couple of the new > 10th Anniversary cards. One guy did one sale. Where are these secret > dealers? Umm, Jeff? Who posted that he had them? On this here newsgroup? In a thread that went on for days, due to him wondering if people would be mad at him for breaking the rules of the newsgroup? It isn't like I'm Sherlock Holmes here or anything. > Nope. Never. Point me to them. Millions of booster cards get sold, > no starter-only cards. I've got a bunch. In my posession. That I got from online dealers and e-bay. Withough buying starters. For reasonable prices ('cause I'm unwilling to pay outrageous prices for singles). What--you think I making this up? > And I can't imagine what world you're in. I'll grant you, I haven't > even bothered to search for vampires like Eddie Gaines and Sundown > because of the dismal failures I've had searching for prior starter-only > vampires. But I'm pretty sure you're vastly overstating their availability, > at a minium. Even if you have managed to find one or two sellers who > actually do that. (And yes, post links by all means. I'd be elated > to find out what the hell you could be talking about.) Umm, e-bay and The Lasombra. These hardly strike me as obscure venues. > OK, specifically, I'm pretty sure you're talking about only conventions > where White Wolf has a booth. None one else is going to do that. White Wolf has booths at a few conventions every year. A lot of people go to them. You questioned my statement of "convention tables". I explained them. Now you are disqualifying my explination by arbitrarily restricting what I'm allowed to talk about? Ok man. Go nuts. > I guess that's fine and dandy if you live near a large convention > that White Wolf attends. Unfortunately, the best thing we have > around here is Gencon: LA and I'm not sure they goes there. Even > so, Gencon: LA is held at a horrible time of year so it's not within > my power to drop by. And for many, this is not an answer. No one said you had to have an answer. Another good possibility, assuming you lack the ability to find obscure sales outlets, like, say, Jeff who posts sales posts on this newsgroup, is to live without the new cards if you can't be inspired to drop $10.00 on a starter (like $6.00 a starter if you buy a box from, like, Potomac. Or Jeff. Or e-bay. Again.) But assuming you need an answer, big cons provide one. > Beginners who need the reprints, perhaps. But why should they trade > them? They need them, too. In any case, this is not enough of a > supply to create any reasonable amount of trade stock floating around. > Numbers, Peter. Numbers. Not everyone needs to have every card in the world. I'd guess that there are more people who don't collect complete sets than there are people who do. I picked up one each of the 10th anniversary sets. And I'm perfectly willing to trade off many of the cards in that set. Even the new ones. 'Cause I don't need every card in the set sitting in a vault. 'Cause it is a CCG, and people like to trade. > I can't explain your irritation, at least in comparison to the starter > only stuff. You CAN find rare vampires on the internet. In spite of > what you say, starter-only vampires are as rare as hen's teeth. Which is why I have, like, two dozen Parmenedies? And 4 Sundowns? Without ever buying the appropriate starter deck? My irritation with, say, rare vampires is that they are difficult to get and a total crap shoot if you try to do so by opening boosters. And buying them on e-bay, at least right after they came out, was expensive. And I don't buy boxes of boosters. Starter only cards, however, are easy to get--you drop $10.00 on a starter, and boom, you got the cards you want. And a bunch of other stuff, too. [ quoted text not captured ]

Frederick Scott wrote: > Dude. Just to check your facts, I just did a search for every starter- > only vampire in Anarchs and Black Hand on EBAY. I hadn't been bothering > but, you know, sometimes when you're not watching the situation changes > and you wind up looking foolish. > > So out of all of EBAY, I got one hit: it turns out Beckett, who was > a starter-only vampire in Anarchs, can be had in the advanced version > which was available in boosters in the Gehenna expansion. (How ironic! > The advanced version is far more available than the base version!) Right after a set comes out, they are for sale. And Jeff has historically opened up a few boxes of starters just to sell off the component parts right after the set comes out. It'll be difficult to find, like, Anarchs starteronly vampires *now*, a year or so after the set came out, sure. But for a few weeks after KMW set comes out, it is very likely that they'll be available for auction or a singles from dealers. 'Cause historically they have been. > PLEASE! Tell me where you find these! I got them off e-bay and from Jeff. And a lot of them from going to cons and having them handed to me (again, at the NE Qualifier last year, I got a pile of starter only vampires just for showing up). [ quoted text not captured ]

"Peter D Bakija" <pd...@lightlink.com> wrote in message news:BE0EF659.1C80F%pd...@lightlink.com... > Frederick Scott wrote: > >> Dude. Just to check your facts, I just did a search for every starter- >> only vampire in Anarchs and Black Hand on EBAY. I hadn't been bothering >> but, you know, sometimes when you're not watching the situation changes >> and you wind up looking foolish. >> >> So out of all of EBAY, I got one hit: it turns out Beckett, who was >> a starter-only vampire in Anarchs, can be had in the advanced version >> which was available in boosters in the Gehenna expansion. (How ironic! >> The advanced version is far more available than the base version!) > > Right after a set comes out, they are for sale. In other words, you're wrong. A couple may come up for sale but they get snapped up quickly and never come up again. By contrast, booster cards, including rares and even those R1s people (including myself) complained about from Bloodlines, come up for sale every week. By the way, promo-only cards are MUCH easier to get than starter-only vampires. Some, like the Storyline promos (one of which you mentioned having trouble finding) only get sold in much number just after they come out, similar to the starters. Difference is, at least over that time period, LOTS of them come out. If you strike while the anvil is hot, you can pick up far more of them than you need. Starter-only vampires are four-leaf-clovers by contrast. You have to look hard to find any at all. On the other hand, many of the promos that aren't attached to a Storyline events are actually quite easy to find. There's no comparison to the problem of finding starter-only cards in their case. > I got them off e-bay and from Jeff. And right now, while Jeff is selling other vampires for $0.25 each, having quanities in the dozens of all the booster-based vampires, he's selling exactly ZERO starter-only vampires from Anarchs and Black Hand. (I do notice he's got some Final Nights starter-only's, though not Khalil Ravanna, the one I've been looking for.) Come on, Peter. The fact that Jeff Thompson did in fact open a few starters and sold the starter-only vampire for a few minutes after he got them in stock and before people managed to swamped him doesn't prove anything. It's certainly no basis to run your mouth on and on about how these things can be obtained on the net when, for all practical purposes, they can't be unless one is in the exact right place at the right time. I think one of the problems is that White Wolf's committment to mitigate the starter-only problem has only been seen in handouts of Sabbat War and Final Nights vampires. That's probably why Jeff has copies of them and why you were able to grab them at their convention table. They're also in the tournament prize packs. I don't think they've done anything about any starter-only vampires after Final Nights. At least I haven't seen any evidence of it. It may be that if they would start, it would make a huge difference. But that's another complaint about them I have: if it takes them years to fix the problem, it's not much good in the meantime. Fred

"Peter D Bakija" <pd...@lightlink.com> wrote in message news:BE0EF57E.1C80E%pd...@lightlink.com... > Frederick Scott wrote: (concerning starter-only vampires) >> These cards are actually harder to get than those cards. > > No they aren't. Yes, they are. > To get, say, an Eryicies Fragment, you need to have > access to someone running a prophecies league. And it's more or less free (or a nominal cost to join) AND you get to play in the league. The point I keep making OVER AND OVER is that what you get WITH the card counts, too. With a starter box, you just get a bunch of reprints you already own AND you pay $10. Again, the proof is in the pudding. Had you just looked for Eryicies Fragment last June, you'd have come upon a bunch of them. FAR MORE than, say, Terrell Hardings. The reason: lots of people attended Storylines and got copies of them. Enough decided they didn't need their copies and dumped them. Didn't happen with Terrell. Few people even have copies of him and those that do either need him or likely find eager traders for him. > You may like to look at it as spending $10 on two or three cards, but you > aren't. You are getting a bunch of cards. BZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzttt! We are going to keep going around and around with this until you get the point. I don't NEED those cards. Most longer-time players don't. So, unlike boosters where I *do* need the other cards, for me and for many others it's spending $10 on two or three cards. >> I don't know what you're talking about. I have constant searches for >> the starter only cards in Final Nights on EBAY and they NEVER come up, >> ever! Only the ones that were magazine promos - from dealers who pulled >> them out of magazines. Nobody that I've ever seen breaks down starters >> and sells them as singles. > > I guess I'm just luckier than you? No. You're talking about a non-existant internet. See my other post about searching EBAY for them. Basically, although it's possible an odd one or two has appeared once in a blue moon, for the most part all of your assertions about this are baseless. I don't care what you claim, THEY'RE NOT THERE. >> OK, specifically, I'm pretty sure you're talking about only conventions >> where White Wolf has a booth. None one else is going to do that. > > White Wolf has booths at a few conventions every year. A lot of people > go to them. You questioned my statement of "convention tables". I > explained them. Now you are disqualifying my explination by arbitrarily > restricting what I'm allowed to talk about? Damn right! You're running your mouth about how common these things are, as if they're found on all sorts of "convention tables" all over the world. Then when you get questioned about it, it turns out that you're talking about a very specific situation, which - though granted I'm sure a lot of people can take advantage of - far MORE people can not so it's not much good to them. If you don't like it, don't act like this is supposed to be an answer. > No one said you had to have an answer. The point being, the entire population of players needs an answer to it. If it doesn't work for me but works for most people, that would be fine. But then, I'd undoubtably find them on EBAY sold as singles from time to time. And that would work for me, too. Fred

On Sat, 15 Jan 2005 16:03:37 -0700, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> scrawled: [starter only vamps] >> No one said you had to have an answer. > >The point being, the entire population of players needs an answer to >it. If it doesn't work for me but works for most people, that would >be fine. But then, I'd undoubtably find them on EBAY sold as singles >from time to time. And that would work for me, too. I know that me and most of the players in my area don't bother selling such starter only (and subsequently tournament promo) vampires on ebay because we have so damn many of them we figured they were essentially worthless. if you want to do a trade, Fred, drop me an email. i'm always after more non-jyhad Deflections, WwEFs and Governs. :) salem domain:canberra http://www.geocities.com/salem_christ.geo/vtes.htm (replace "hotmail" with "yahoo" to email)

On Sat, 15 Jan 2005 13:03:00 -0700, "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: >WHERE?!? Again, I have constant searches on EBAY for a couple of the new >10th Anniversary cards. One guy did one sale. Where are these secret >dealers? http://www.TheLasombra.com/sales.htm I have routinely opened starters and sold their entire contents. I am currently re-updating my inventory, they should be listed again on Sunday evening. Carpe noctem. Lasombra http://www.TheLasombra.com Your best online source for information about V:TES. Now also featuring individual card sales and sales of booster and starter box displays.

"salem" <salem_ch...@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:0saju0d29ush932cm...@4ax.com... > On Sat, 15 Jan 2005 16:03:37 -0700, "Frederick Scott" > <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> scrawled: > [starter only vamps] >>The point being, the entire population of players needs an answer to >>it. If it doesn't work for me but works for most people, that would >>be fine. But then, I'd undoubtably find them on EBAY sold as singles >>from time to time. And that would work for me, too. > > I know that me and most of the players in my area don't bother selling > such starter only (and subsequently tournament promo) vampires on ebay > because we have so damn many of them we figured they were essentially > worthless. For whatever reason, it just doesn't seem to happen. I would be shocked if most sellers were quite that despondent for that exact reason. But clearly they don't feel like it's an endeavor they're likely to make money on or they'd do it. The proof is on EBAY. I suspect the reason you're saying this is that a ton of tournament promos have been handed out in your area. (And if so, they're likely Sabbat War and Final Nights starter-only vampires, no?) I really doubt you guys came by your wealth by opening lots of starters. That wouldn't make any sense. If these were from tournaments, that kind of thing seems to be very uneven. This is starting to remind of the shouting back and forth that went on years ago when the Marianna Gilbert and Don Murdoch promos were available. Places where they were being handed out, everybody thought they were the most common things in the world. But much of the world was not so blessed and a Marianna Gilbert promo was a prized artifact in many places. Suffice it to say, people from the different areas had a hell of time agreeing with each other about the merits of promo-only cards. > if you want to do a trade, Fred, drop me an email. i'm always after > more non-jyhad Deflections, WwEFs and Governs. :) (Did it.) Fred

"The Lasombra" <TheLa...@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:t0gju0l2bv2cpn4fr...@4ax.com... > On Sat, 15 Jan 2005 13:03:00 -0700, "Frederick Scott" > <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > >>WHERE?!? Again, I have constant searches on EBAY for a couple of the new >>10th Anniversary cards. One guy did one sale. Where are these secret >>dealers? > > http://www.TheLasombra.com/sales.htm :-) (Totally legitimate reference to internet sales site noted.) (For those keeping score at home, it is not a foul if the information becomes pertinent in the course of legitimate newsgroup discussion. Rarely happens, but there you go.) > I have routinely opened starters and sold their entire contents. > I am currently re-updating my inventory, they should be listed again > on Sunday evening. I'm glad to hear that and will keep watch. The interesting point, however, is whether you can keep such vampires on the shelves (unless you charge quite a premium for them, which isn't my experience with you). My guess is, you can not. Fred

>And I've been screaming about it since Sabbat War. And I think EVERYONE >should be bitching about it, especially estiablished players who don't >need the other cards in the starters. I think the reason more people >don't is that they don't quite understand how bad the problem is that >these starter-only cards create. It should be something I bitch about more, falling into one of my general areas, since it's a fairness issue, to bitch a lot about. I've had to open precons just to yank one vampire. Having 10-20 copies of the booster vampires for a set and 2-3 of the fixed ones is kind of ridiculous since vampires are vampires. I guess I've let it go because I've run into so many problems with precons. What role are they supposed to achieve for a game? Ones I've bought tended to try to achieve multiple goals and, thus, fail to do a good job at any of them. Starter only cards can be seen as having two purposes. For companies that want to sell precons, they provide a reason for everyone to buy them. Begs the question, then, why there's so much chaff in precons to go with the worthwhile cards. For companies that don't care, they are a bonus to the customer. A newbie could, for instance, trade them away. Except, if the card is good enough, you essentially end up with having created the situation that precons are meant to be sold since people will buy them just to get a couple cards. BTW, if anyone is wondering why I'd even consider the case of a company not wanting to sell precons, it's because it can happen that they lose money on them, that they sell them anyway just to enable people to have a good enough starting point for playing the game. I don't actually have a problem with precons, though I like random starters to exist for sealed deck play. My primary problem with the ones that get made is how much junk they have. Why not start newbies off with a reasonable constructed-level deck? Why not have enough good stuff to give veterans a reason not to feel shafted when they buy them for specific cards? Would better precons solve the "there's only 2-3 cards in here I want" problem? Not entirely. So, getting back to what to do about vampires and whatnot, one idea is to have the starter only vampires be 2 per precon. It's not like we desperately need a lot of the crypt fillers we get in the precons. Crypt duplication is common in constructed play and, if the newbie really wants more variety, the extra copy is easily traded.

Frederick Scott wrote: > Come on, Peter. The fact that Jeff Thompson did in fact open a few > starters and sold the starter-only vampire for a few minutes after he > got them in stock and before people managed to swamped him doesn't prove > anything. It's certainly no basis to run your mouth on and on about how > these things can be obtained on the net when, for all practical purposes, > they can't be unless one is in the exact right place at the right time. If you are in the exact right place at the exact right time, you can avoid buying a starter box. Sometimes even if you aren't in the exact right place (I got some starter only vampires off e-bay weeks after, say, Anarchs came out). If you aren't so fortunate? Buy a freaking starter deck and stop freaking complaing about it. It's 10 bucks. For a game that you have probably already sunk hundreds, if not thousands of dollars into. It isn't hard to buy a starter deck. They generally don't run out. And when they do, they often get reprinted. So they are readily available. And you know what you are getting when you buy them. Or, just don't get a few cards if you don't want to buy a starter deck. Is it going to kill you to not own every single one of them? This is a collectible card game. Sometimes you have to collect the cards. In this particular instance, you can: A) Buy a starter deck. You know exactly what you are getting. There is zero risk. You get other cards along with the ones you want. The cost is, relatively, minor. B) Buy them as singles. Contrary to your firmly established world view, it isn't that difficult to do, at least for a window of time. C) Trade for them. Also not impossible. Not nearly so. D) Live without them. E) Buy a freaking starter deck. None of these strike me as a problem. [ quoted text not captured ]

Frederick Scott wrote: > And it's more or less free (or a nominal cost to join) AND you get to > play in the league. The point I keep making OVER AND OVER is that > what you get WITH the card counts, too. With a starter box, you just > get a bunch of reprints you already own AND you pay $10. If you buy a booster pack, you get a random card that may or may not be the one you want and a bunch of cards that you already got enough of out of the previous 30 booster packs you just opened. The difference is what, exactly? > BZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzttt! We are going to keep going around and around > with this until you get the point. No, we are going to go round and round until you have an aneurism or something, as you have a tendancy to get *way* too caught up in these discussions, and it kind of cracks me up. Dude. Step back. Take a deep breath. Put down the caps lock key. > I don't NEED those cards. Most > longer-time players don't. So, unlike boosters where I *do* need the other > cards, for me and for many others it's spending $10 on two or three cards. Ok. Much like spending $10.00 on three booster packs after you have already opened 30 or so. Except you don't necessarily even get the cards you want to get. But you do get a 10th or 11th copy of some crapy new card you aren't going to use anyway (that 6th and 7th Crumudgeon I got in three Gehenna boosters somehow is a better deal than the extra Psyches, Pursuits, Blood Dolls, and Quickness I got in a Assamite starter for effectively the same price?). Even if it is new. I'd much rather spend the $10.00 on a starter deck and get some hard to get starter only cards and things I know I want anyway. > No. You're talking about a non-existant internet. See my other post > about searching EBAY for them. Basically, although it's possible an > odd one or two has appeared once in a blue moon, for the most part > all of your assertions about this are baseless. I don't care what you > claim, THEY'RE NOT THERE. Ahh, yes. My assertions are baseless. Which is why I have bought many starter only vampires off the internet. And just bought some 10th anniversary singles. 'Cause I'm on a magical, wonderful internet. > Damn right! You're running your mouth about how common these things > are, as if they're found on all sorts of "convention tables" all over > the world. Nah. Now I'm just running my mouth off so you'll freak out more. I'm really hoping you'll put more words in all caps in the next response. > If you don't like it, don't act like this is supposed to be an answer. It is an answer (getting singles off the internet--it happens). Another answer? Just buy a freaking starter deck. > The point being, the entire population of players needs an answer to > it. If it doesn't work for me but works for most people, that would > be fine. But then, I'd undoubtably find them on EBAY sold as singles > from time to time. And that would work for me, too. Oh, wait. There is an answer. Buy a starter deck. Or don't. Or find cards on the internet. Or trade for them. Your choice. [ quoted text not captured ]

salem wrote: > if you want to do a trade, Fred, drop me an email. i'm always after > more non-jyhad Deflections, WwEFs and Governs. :) Nah. Fred doesn't want to trade. He wants the magic everlasting gobstopper NOW!!!!!!! [ quoted text not captured ]

> Starter-only vampires are four-leaf-clovers by contrast. You have to > look hard to find any at all. > Every time I see a starter deck I see two starter only vampires. I waded through four starter boxes a couple of weeks ago to find the ones I wanted. Must've seen fifty or sixty of them! If you count the reprinted ones as starter only, that's easily two or three hundred!

Frederick Scott <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > So, really, not a single starter-only vampire > on all of EBAY at the moment. Not one. > > PLEASE! Tell me where you find these! At Origins, I give away 50+ of all the starter vampires, from EVERY White Wolf set. http://www.originsgames.com/ ;) > Fred Kevin M., Prince of Henderson, NV (USA) "Know your enemy, and know yourself; in one-thousand battles you shall never be in peril." -- Sun Tzu, *The Art of War* "Contentment... Complacency... Catastrophe!" -- Joseph Chevalier

Frederick Scott <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > You can NOT fill in all of these vampires > from dropping by a convention table, ... Incorrect. At Origins, I give away 50+ of all the starter vampires, from EVERY White Wolf set. http://www.originsgames.com/ > Fred [ quoted text not captured ]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Frederick Scott wrote: | "Peter D Bakija" <pd...@lightlink.com> wrote in message | news:BE0ED7BD.1C802%pd...@lightlink.com... | |>Frederick Scott wrote: |> |>>Of course. But the method used to distribute THESE particular cards |>>makes it extremely hard to collect them by any means. |> |>Sure. But the same was the case with the starter only Sabbat War, |>Camarilla, and Anarchs vampires. | | And I've been screaming about it since Sabbat War. And I think EVERYONE | should be bitching about it, especially estiablished players who don't | need the other cards in the starters. I think the reason more people | don't is that they don't quite understand how bad the problem is that | these starter-only cards create. Fred, the problem is that you've confused necessity with luxury again, and you're creating an artificial "need" in your own mind. I have little problem finding starter-only vampires as need; all I've ever had to do is go look for them. Show up at qualifiers and pick up from the promo pile, buy them from Jeff, trade for them (you know, trade?) with the guy who bought 6x starter boxes, etc... They are available to be found. I'm sorry, Fred, I just am not going to believe that you're out there spending ANY effort looking. And even if I'm wrong and you're just unlucky, well, it's time to face up to facts: If you want starter-only cards, the best route is to buy starters. The difficulty (or lack thereof) obtaining these cards on the secondary market is not White Wolf's concern; why are you bitching at them about it? Sometimes buying starters gives you more of other cards you already have; often, you get a bunch of cards that are ALSO in the new set, meaning you need to buy fewer boosters. Above I mentioned an artificial need. Honestly, Fred, how many of these vampires do you NEED to make a deck? 2, tops, right? It's rarely effective to do more than double up on a single vampire, unless you're running a one-star-wonder deck... and those are fairly rare, due to the difficulty in making them work. So once you have 2... you're set for most cases. I do not believe that purchasing 1-2 boxes of starters is an excessive investment in something that is purely, 100%, a fluffy luxury item that you absolutely NEVER need to continue on with your life. I used to routinely purchase 2 boxes of starters and 2 boxes of boosters for every set; and barring occasional booster rarity surprises, I was invariably able to make _any_ deck that I had come up with during playtest. (Gift of Bellona was a big, ugly rarity surprise, since I typically used 6-8 in a deck during playtest; less was just not adequate.) Starter-only cards were never a problem for me, though. What this comes back to is, once you have 2 copies of each vampire, Fred, you're going to be good to go. Any artificial "need" created by your desire to have 5-10 on hand of everything, or wishing to have multiple decks built? That just doesn't wash. If you want to create that artificial need for yourself, that's fine; but please don't come crying to us about it. That's a restriction you placed on yourself, not one that WW stuck you with. - -- Derek insert clever quotation here -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.5 (MingW32) iD8DBQFB6ozYtQZlu3o7QpERAuHzAKCWhr7ILkosnuIrn4sHg4coK2d/sACgwMsL ZoZ419bUHfolSgio9V1TRYo= =yioK -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

On Sat, 15 Jan 2005 13:03:00 -0700, Frederick Scott <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote: > > "Peter D Bakija" <pd...@lightlink.com> wrote in message > news:BE0ED7BD.1C802%pd...@lightlink.com... >> Frederick Scott wrote: >> >>> Of course. But the method used to distribute THESE particular cards >>> makes it extremely hard to collect them by any means. >> >> Sure. But the same was the case with the starter only Sabbat War, >> Camarilla, and Anarchs vampires. > > And I've been screaming about it since Sabbat War. And I think EVERYONE > should be bitching about it, especially estiablished players who don't > need the other cards in the starters. I think the reason more people > don't is that they don't quite understand how bad the problem is that > these starter-only cards create. Actually... I was just about to bitch some. Like, bitch-bitch. Then I realized that not many starters were completely junk except for the starter-only cards. I mean, when you are saying "you shouldn't need to buy the starters", I completely agree with you. Let's riot. But then again I've always bought at least one starter box off each set, because 1) there were other useful cards in them, and 2) I like the cool different colored paper boxes. ;) So while I completely agree with you in theory, in practice it makes little difference for me, as I would be buying the starters anyway. (The only starter I never bought was Setites, but then I never made a Setite deck in my life...) -- Bye, Daneel

In message <BE0ED7BD.1C802%pd...@lightlink.com>, Peter D Bakija <pd...@lightlink.com> writes: >Frederick Scott wrote: >> Right. So people who already have the reprints in the starter set >> must collect these cards by spending $10+ to get *3* cards they need! >> Wonderful! > >Yup. What--you can't use more Blood Dolls and Wakes? I was pretty psyched, >'cause last night, Sackett showed up with a handfull of FN starters he got >half off at a closeout. So I paid 4 bucks for an Assamite starter, and was >very pelased with the Legendary Vampire and extra Psyches I needed. There >are lot of cards that are worth getting in starters. Even if they are >reprints. Additional to this is that having a pile of a few hundred "wasted" commons is rarely bad. (I'm thinking, what, four starter packs here?) New player trying to get started - give them your "chaff". They're not bad cards, you just don't need more. Free stuff, meaning that people don't have to spend 40, 50 dollars to try out new things in a meaningful fashion, can help get players hooked. Hell, if it's a problem, don't "give" them. Loan them. Whatever. Sure, you'll probably mill out the cards you want, but there's still plenty of playable deck left out there when you combine them in a few ways. -- James Coupe PGP Key: 0x5D623D5D Who's ever heard of that, though! EBD690ECD7A1FB457CA2 Designing a deck that just calls votes. 13D7E668C3695D623D5D That's crazy talk, there.

In message <20hGd.54072$F25.38866@okepread07>, Frederick Scott <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> writes: >In other words, you're wrong. A couple may come up for sale but they >get snapped up quickly and never come up again. By contrast, booster >cards, including rares and even those R1s people (including myself) >complained about from Bloodlines, come up for sale every week. This assumes that someone seeing rabid, frenzied bidding in the snapped up quickly situation won't just get some more and sell them on. If you have fifteen players bidding, hell, I'd do it. In fact, Fred, you could even do that yourself. If the starter only vampires are so hard to get hold off, hell, you're going to get your hand bitten off. [ quoted text not captured ]

James Coupe wrote: > Additional to this is that having a pile of a few hundred "wasted" > commons is rarely bad. (I'm thinking, what, four starter packs here?) Opening a starter, just to get the plumb cards and trade off the commons/chaff to the newer players works out well for everyone. Going back to the Assamite starter I got the other night, I got a handfull of cards I wanted (Psyche!, Blood Doll, Legendary Vampire, Forced, a bunch of Quietus cards I don't have enough of already, more Pursuits, whatever) and gave John a bunch of utilitarian cards (Bum's Rush, Sport Bike, Minion Tap) that he needed as he is a newer player. I got stuff I wanted. John got stuff he needed. We were both pleased by the outcome. Out of curiosity, I went and looked over some random starter decks, to see exactly how much chaff one tended to get by picking up a starter. And really, there isn't that much, assuming: A) There are some good reprints you need. B) There are new cards from the set you can use, as they are new. C) There are some starter only cards that are hard to get otherwise. Looking at the generally considered crappy Anarchs Gangs deck, you get: -Eddie Gaines and Bobby Lemon, both good starter only vampires (the only 4 in the game with ANI and a group 3 one cap with pot) -3 Blood Doll (regardless of minority opinions, these are always good) -1 Coven (a previously rare card that is reasonably good and no one has that many, likely) -1 Ecstatic Agony (again, a previously rare card) -1 My Enemy's Enemy (again, previously rare card that is actually good to have a lot of) -1 Force of Will (a good card that is good to have a lot of, and if you already have too many, one of your newer groupmates can use them) -1 Govern (the same) -2 Wake (just like Blood Doll--you simply can't have too many in your collection. And if you somehow do, someone else doesn't have too many) -1 Pulled Fangs (again, previously a rare, not a bad card) -1 Torn Signpost (everone wants these--they still go for $2.00+ each on e-bay) -4 Garlick's Legacy (new card for the set that you likely want a bunch of) -3 Smash and Grab (new card from the set) -4 Diversoion (new card from the set) -A bunch of G3 vampires with their disciplines pushed up half an inch, so you don't have guys with "superior silver dot" in your sleeved crypt. And that is a crappy Anarchs deck. You get 2 starter only cards, 11 new cards in useful numbers, 4 cards that used to be rare, and 8 very utilitarian cards that you or someone in your group probably needs anyway. And then a handfull of cards that may or may not be useful for you (like Flash and Fake Out and Bum's Rush, and whatever) but will certainly be useful to someone you play with on a regular basis. And this isn't even a *good* Starter deck with, like, a Disarm and 2 Tastes or 2 Freak Drives and a PTO. Yeah, ok. The CE Nosferatu starter *sucked* (and even then, I still bought 2...), but other than that, the starter decks are pretty good, in a value for your buck sense. So yeah. To get starter only cards, assuming you can't manage to get them as singles or trade for them, you need to buy a starter deck for $10.00 (well, really, about $6.00 each if you go in on a box with some friends and order from The Lasombra or e-bay or whatever). But unless you are *extremely* jaded, even spending $10.00 for a starter isn't that bad of a deal, as illustrated above. And heck. Even if you *only* want the starter only cards and are going to throw the rest of the cards in the trash out of spite, if you get a starter for $6.00 (not even a remotely unreasonable expectation), you are paying $2.00 each for your 3 "starter only" cards (assuming we are talking about the KMW starters). Even if you were to buy them as singles and not waste your money on a useless starter deck, would you really expect to be able to get these cards for *less* than $2.00 each? [ quoted text not captured ]

On Mon, 17 Jan 2005, Peter D Bakija wrote: > The CE Nosferatu starter *sucked* I'll beg to differ with that opinion. The Nosferatu starter is the best source of Computer Hackings hands down. For your $10 you get four Computer Hacks. Half a Jyhad booster box might yield that many, but I don't think those go for $20 anymore. Plus, with the Nosferatu starter you get vampire backs on your cards (matters to some). It's also got these useful staples for a new player: 3 Aid from Bats 2 Blood Doll 5 Bum's Rush 2 Carrion Crows 3 Cats' Guidance 3 Fake Out 3 Increased Strength 4 Lost in Crowds 3 Pushing the Limit 1 Raven Spy 1 Sport Bike 3 Spying Mission 3 Swallowed by the Night 5 Undead Strength There's a Terror Frenzy, which is an otherwise hard-to-get rare. There's a Taste of Vitae which is a card almost everybody needs more of. Yeah, it's not as good as the Ventrue starter, but for staples and cards you want, I think it's not that bad. Matt Morgan

"Peter D Bakija" <pd...@lightlink.com> wrote in message news:BE0F5CFB.1C826%pd...@lightlink.com... > Frederick Scott wrote: > >> And it's more or less free (or a nominal cost to join) AND you get to >> play in the league. The point I keep making OVER AND OVER is that >> what you get WITH the card counts, too. With a starter box, you just >> get a bunch of reprints you already own AND you pay $10. > > If you buy a booster pack, you get a random card that may or may not > be the one you want and a bunch of cards that you already got enough > of out of the previous 30 booster packs you just opened. The > difference is what, exactly? The difference is that on the whole, the cards are desired and needed by all players, newer and older. So if you can't use it, someone else can. Players sort out the cards they need, trade, and buy singles from secondary market dealers who can readily make money from opening boosters and selling singles. Starters, outside of the two or three new cards, contain only cards newer players want. You can argue about the guy opening the pack having an immediate need for the other cards all you want but understanding rarity requires a deeper analysis than just that. And the proof is in the REAL secondary market - where all boosters rares are constantly sold but starter-only cards almost never are. >> BZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzttt! We are going to keep going around and around >> with this until you get the point. > > No, we are going to go round and round until you have an aneurism or > something, as you have a tendancy to get *way* too caught up in these > discussions, and it kind of cracks me up. Dude. Step back. Take a deep > breath. Put down the caps lock key. The annoyances come from trying to get through to you. Your view of this situation is incredibly unrealistic and it seems like you won't wake up and take an honest look at the situation in order to get what I'm saying. That part I don't mind so much. There'll always be people who won't get it when you make a point, especially one that takes a bit of thinking to understand. I do mind a lot when you represent starter-only cards are easy to get, as if the Internet were brimming with offers. The difference between singles sold from boosters and singles sold from starters is manifest. In fact, the latter market essentially doesn't exist. >> No. You're talking about a non-existant internet. ... > Ahh, yes. My assertions are baseless. Which is why I have bought many > starter only vampires off the internet. And just bought some 10th > anniversary singles. 'Cause I'm on a magical, wonderful internet. I don't know where you're getting your cards or what you're basing your assertions on, but experiments that aren't repeatable aren't accepted as valid. And your's don't seem to be. Fred

"Derek Ray" <lor...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:0I-dnZ4Ob_p...@giganews.com... > Fred, the problem is that you've confused necessity with luxury again, > and you're creating an artificial "need" in your own mind. > > I have little problem finding starter-only vampires as need; all I've > ever had to do is go look for them. Show up at qualifiers and pick up > from the promo pile, buy them from Jeff, trade for them (you know, > trade?) with the guy who bought 6x starter boxes, etc... > > They are available to be found. I'm sorry, Fred, I just am not going to > believe that you're out there spending ANY effort looking. We'll see about buying from Jeff. He was supposed to have updated his inventory last night and I see no BH or Anarch starter-only vampires in his stock right at the moment. Even so, Jeff is a "public service" dealer - I don't think he's charging the sort of premium it would require to keep these things in stock. Therefore, to buy from him, you have to leap on him the moment he updates. That's not the same thing as saying "these cards are for sale". One thing that's becoming clear: at a certain point, White Wolf printed up a bunch of Final Nights and Sabbat War vampires and have been passing them out in tournament packs and on their dealer tables. So if you're tapped into one of those sources, you can obtain them. If you work at it, quite like you can obtain handfuls of them. I guess that's good. Even people who don't show up at tournaments can find someone who does and eventually find them without buying starters. If they did the same with the other starter-onlies, it would probably make a huge difference. One of the reason I don't work that hard at finding them is that it's just easier, in the end, to raise your hands slowly and pull your wallet out of your breast pocket with your teeth and kick it over to the nearest dealer of starter decks, let him loot it as he pleases, and accept the fact that you're going to pay for a bunch of cards you don't need. That's basically what I do to a point. But the whole thing is stupid. It basically amounts to raising the price for the cards. White Wolf can charge anything they want for cards and they can make certain cards as rare as they want - which can amount to the same thing. Either way, they can only run the scam too far before people will start complaining that the game is too expensive. And what I can do, other people can't necessarily do. It's easy to say, "Just work harder and you can find this card." But if you make the chase too hard, people eventually say, "Fuck it, I'll find another game that's not so hard (or so expensive) to get into." Cards only cost money. I don't know where to buy opponents. > Honestly, Fred, how many of these vampires do you NEED to make a deck? > 2, tops, right? It depends on the vampire. Plenty decks have multiples of certain vampires, even 12-vampire gadget decks. I agree, so far none of them have been bad that way. Hopefully, some effort is being expended to avoid it. But if they keep going on it, sooner or later I expect a mistake will get made. Now they're doing library cards. Again, they've done well in the past making library cards quite specialized wherever they've needed to - Storyline promos and the like. But I'm specifically worried that a mistake will happen if they keep going to this well long enough. Fred

"James Coupe" <ja...@zephyr.org.uk> wrote in message news:hrmmcl8+...@gratiano.zephyr.org.uk... > In message <20hGd.54072$F25.38866@okepread07>, Frederick Scott > <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> writes: (concerning starter-only vampires) >>In other words, you're wrong. A couple may come up for sale but they >>get snapped up quickly and never come up again. By contrast, booster >>cards, including rares and even those R1s people (including myself) >>complained about from Bloodlines, come up for sale every week. > > This assumes that someone seeing rabid, frenzied bidding in the snapped > up quickly situation won't just get some more and sell them on. Well, "snapped up quickly" really refers to sales, not auctions. There aren't enough auctions with buy-it-now prices to even wonder about this. (And it would depend on the price even so.) The point about auctions is just that there aren't any, period. Peter is just wrong when he represents the existance of a singles market from breaking open starters. In fact, despite the occasional coveted reprint, I get the impression there's no singles-from-starter deck market whatsoever, reprints or otherwise. > If you have fifteen players bidding, hell, I'd do it. > > In fact, Fred, you could even do that yourself. If the starter only > vampires are so hard to get hold off, hell, you're going to get your > hand bitten off. I'm not a singles seller. It's just not my line of work and I don't have time for it. But if you had a any kind of a point, it shouldn't have to be. Others would do it. They don't. I expect they don't because there aren't enough sellable cards in a starter deck, starter- only and coveted reprint cards together. How much would I bid for a starter-only vampire? It doesn't make sense to bit up near the actual price of a starter since if I had to, I should just buy the starter. (As others have obliging pointed out to me when I overstated a proposed price of a starter-only card.) I think the fact that no one would ultimately bid more than a limited amount for such a card keeps it from being a profitable business. It always comes down to the same problem: given their price and fact that you're paying for reprints which have little value to older players, starter decks in general just aren't a very good deal. Fred

Matthew T. Morgan wrote: > Yeah, it's not as good as the Ventrue starter, but for staples and cards > you want, I think it's not that bad. Yeah, no, I know the Nosferatu starter. And it pretty much sucks. Unless you: A) Are a very new player. or B) Have somehow run out of Gird Minions. [ quoted text not captured ]

Frederick Scott wrote: > > The annoyances come from trying to get through to you. Your view of > this situation is incredibly unrealistic and it seems like you won't > wake up and take an honest look at the situation in order to get what > I'm saying. What you seem to be saying is: "I don't want to buy a starter deck. Even though I can get them for 6 bucks each. But I do want the starter only cards that are in them. But I don't believe that I can get them as singles. Or by trading for them. Or by going to conventions. So I'm angry that I have to buy starter decks (for $6.00 each) to get these cards. 'Cause I don't believe I can get them in any other way." Did I miss anything? > That part I don't mind so much. There'll always be > people who won't get it when you make a point, especially one that > takes a bit of thinking to understand. I do mind a lot when you > represent starter-only cards are easy to get, as if the Internet were > brimming with offers. I've never represented them as "easy to get" I've represented them as "possble to get". 'Cause they are. As singles. On the internet. Or at conventions. Or by trading (I've gotten starter only cards in all of these ways). But when you consider that when all else fails, you can just get some starter decks for $6.00 each, I'm not really seeing the problem. > The difference between singles sold from boosters > and singles sold from starters is manifest. In fact, the latter market > essentially doesn't exist. Except that it does. It might not be a huge market, but it is a market. I'm buying 10th anniversary singles (essentially the same thing as starter only singles) right now. I have purchased starter only singles on a regular basis. I have traded for them. I have picked them up for free as promos. You can believe all you want that these things don't happen. But they do. Or, ya know, you could just buy a starter deck. > I don't know where you're getting your cards or what you're basing your > assertions on, but experiments that aren't repeatable aren't accepted > as valid. And your's don't seem to be. Well, I don't know what to tell you. If your point is "I should always be able to get any card I want from any set at any time, regardless of the market", then, well, you might have trouble. But I tell you what. You can always get Freak Drives, and it seems likely that you'll be able to trade for any number of starter only cards, one for one, for Freak Drives, so in essence, you can probably get whatever starter only singles you want. [ quoted text not captured ]

Frederick Scott wrote: > They don't. I expect they don't > because there aren't enough sellable cards in a starter deck, starter- > only and coveted reprint cards together. A starter costs, at retail, $6.00, give or take (buy a CE starter box, it's 36.00 bucks for 6. Buy a Black Hand starter box, it is 48.00 for 8). If it comes with 3 starter only cards (we'll assume KMW here), and then at least 2 other good rare/reprints, you sell the 5 cards for 2 bucks each. Heck, make the non vampire starter only card 3 bucks. You likely sell all of these cards as singles, 'cause people want the starter only cards without buying the starter, and good reprints that go for $2.00 tend to sell. That's 11 bucks for an initial $6.00 investement. Plus, you can probably sell a bunch of the other starter cards for less money and/or as a lot sale. Seems like enough in a starter deck to sell to me. But then I might just be talking crazy. [ quoted text not captured ]

> And what I can do, other people can't necessarily do. It's easy to say, > "Just work harder and you can find this card." But if you make the chase > too hard, people eventually say, "Fuck it, I'll find another game that's > not so hard (or so expensive) to get into." Cards only cost money. I > don't know where to buy opponents. > You forgot "Fuck it, I'll find some other vampire to use." Because you know what? I'd love to have me a couple of Marianna Gilberts. But I have one, and I can live with one. I'd also love some Quentin King IIIs, and I'm a patient man. I know I'll get one sooner or later.

"Peter D Bakija" <pd...@lightlink.com> wrote in message news:BE11A5E4.1C8E4%pd...@lightlink.com... > Frederick Scott wrote: >> The annoyances come from trying to get through to you. Your view of >> this situation is incredibly unrealistic and it seems like you won't >> wake up and take an honest look at the situation in order to get what >> I'm saying. > > What you seem to be saying is: > > "I don't want to buy a starter deck. Even though I can get them for 6 > bucks each. But I do want the starter only cards that are in them. But > I don't believe that I can get them as singles. Or by trading for them. > Or by going to conventions. So I'm angry that I have to buy starter > decks (for $6.00 each) to get these cards. 'Cause I don't believe I > can get them in any other way." > > Did I miss anything? Not really. Except that I'll concede to you that if I go to the exactly correct two conventions they hold once a year each a thousand plus miles away from where I live, I could get the starter-only vampires from Final Nights and Sabbat War - not the other expansions - in spades. The rest is true facts. >> That part I don't mind so much. There'll always be >> people who won't get it when you make a point, especially one that >> takes a bit of thinking to understand. I do mind a lot when you >> represent starter-only cards are easy to get, as if the Internet were >> brimming with offers. > > I've never represented them as "easy to get" I've represented them as > "possble to get". 'Cause they are. As singles. On the internet. Except you won't show anyone. Saying "Jeff sells them" ignores the fact that Jeff doesn't consistently have them in stock for all the above reasons. Just how inconsistant that is is open to debate for the moment but I suspect it's vast: as in, the VAST MAJORITY of the time he won't have them. Making people wait to pounce is just a different cost of getting singles in place of money. Ultimately, it doesn't solve any problems either. >> The difference between singles sold from boosters >> and singles sold from starters is manifest. In fact, the latter market >> essentially doesn't exist. > > Except that it does. It might not be a huge market, but it is a market. Semantics. Waving your hands over a few isolated sales and calling it a "market" is irrelevent. It's like telling poor people to go win the lottery. >I have purchased starter only singles on a regular basis. Fine, Peter. Show me. Fred

"Gregory Stuart Pettigrew" <ethe...@sidehack.sat.gweep.net> wrote in message news:2005011718...@sidehack.sat.gweep.net... >> And what I can do, other people can't necessarily do. It's easy to say, >> "Just work harder and you can find this card." But if you make the chase >> too hard, people eventually say, "Fuck it, I'll find another game that's >> not so hard (or so expensive) to get into." Cards only cost money. I >> don't know where to buy opponents. >> > > You forgot "Fuck it, I'll find some other vampire to use." Because you > know what? I'd love to have me a couple of Marianna Gilberts. But I have > one, and I can live with one. Sure. The difference is, you COULD have one any time you want without too much difficulty. Marianna Gilberts are eminently easier to obtain than Tock as a single. Fred

"Peter D Bakija" <pd...@lightlink.com> wrote in message news:BE11A7BE.1C8E5%pd...@lightlink.com... > Frederick Scott wrote: >> They don't. I expect they don't >> because there aren't enough sellable cards in a starter deck, starter- >> only and coveted reprint cards together. > > A starter costs, at retail, $6.00, give or take (buy a CE starter box, > it's 36.00 bucks for 6. Buy a Black Hand starter box, it is 48.00 for 8). > If it comes with 3 starter only cards (we'll assume KMW here), and then > at least 2 other good rare/reprints, you sell the 5 cards for 2 bucks > each. Heck, make the non vampire starter only card 3 bucks. You likely > sell all of these cards as singles, 'cause people want the starter only > cards without buying the starter, and good reprints that go for $2.00 > tend to sell. That's 11 bucks for an initial $6.00 investement. Plus, > you can probably sell a bunch of the other starter cards for less money > and/or as a lot sale. > > Seems like enough in a starter deck to sell to me. But then I might > just be talking crazy. I don't know. I don't claim to know the ins and outs of selling singles. That's why I used the word, "expect", above. I was just proposing my best guess fort the reason that it doesn't happen. The point is, you're not arguing with me. I'm just reporting the facts of what happens on EBAY. So you're arguing with EBAY. EBAY says you're wrong. Fred

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Frederick Scott wrote: | "Derek Ray" <lor...@yahoo.com> wrote in message | news:0I-dnZ4Ob_p...@giganews.com... | |>Fred, the problem is that you've confused necessity with luxury again, |>and you're creating an artificial "need" in your own mind. |> |>I have little problem finding starter-only vampires as need; all I've |>ever had to do is go look for them. Show up at qualifiers and pick up |>from the promo pile, buy them from Jeff, trade for them (you know, |>trade?) with the guy who bought 6x starter boxes, etc... |> |>They are available to be found. I'm sorry, Fred, I just am not going to |>believe that you're out there spending ANY effort looking. | | We'll see about buying from Jeff. He was supposed to have updated his | inventory last night and I see no BH or Anarch starter-only vampires Do you know for certain that he did update it? Have you asked him about them? | in his stock right at the moment. Even so, Jeff is a "public service" | dealer - I don't think he's charging the sort of premium it would require | to keep these things in stock. Therefore, to buy from him, you have to Speculating about the internal workings of Jeff's business is an enormous load of poppycock, Fred. You don't have the slightest idea what his motives are, and you're fabricating spurious motives on the spot in order to support your argument. Let's stick to the facts we know, shall we? "Jeff sells cards." "Jeff currently has no BH/Anarch starter-only vampires listed." | leap on him the moment he updates. That's not the same thing as saying | "these cards are for sale". Have you asked him about BH/Anarch starter-only vampires? | One thing that's becoming clear: at a certain point, White Wolf printed | up a bunch of Final Nights and Sabbat War vampires and have been passing | them out in tournament packs and on their dealer tables. So if you're | tapped into one of those sources, you can obtain them. If you work at Alternately, you simply trade with someone who is tapped into one of those sources. I personally didn't make an effort to obtain handfuls, so you can't trade with me (I had the opportunity in spades) but I'm sure a number of people did. | it, quite like you can obtain handfuls of them. I guess that's good. | Even people who don't show up at tournaments can find someone who does | and eventually find them without buying starters. If they did the same | with the other starter-onlies, it would probably make a huge difference. Who's to say they aren't going to do just that? Who's to say they HAVEN'T been doing just that? Have you asked anyone? Have you done anything other than wail and gnash your teeth because White Wolf didn't publish the "Cards Fred is Short Of" starter, which contains nothing but 90 cards of what you need and is available for $10 in your local game store... nevermind that such a starter is worthless to everyone else? | One of the reason I don't work that hard at finding them is that it's | just easier, in the end, to raise your hands slowly and pull your wallet | out of your breast pocket with your teeth and kick it over to the nearest | dealer of starter decks, let him loot it as he pleases, and accept the | fact that you're going to pay for a bunch of cards you don't need. That's Dialing the "hysteria" knob back down a few notches (because that whole paragraph was a bunch of hyperbolic crap), we find that White Wolf is in the business of SELLING things, not GIVING things away, and therefore expecting you to pay money for product is quite apropos. Why don't you resell the rest of the cards to your local newbies for a dime each, if your wallet is so injured by the $10 per starter? At about 60-70 cards per starter that you don't want, that will leave you with paying a pretty infinitesimal amount for the cards you DO want, and the newbies are cool with all the semi-matched commons they get WITHOUT having to huck out for booster boxes or booster packs. Alternately, buy a box or two of starters instead of shelling out for them one at a time. | basically what I do to a point. But the whole thing is stupid. It | basically amounts to raising the price for the cards. White Wolf can Oh, horseshit, Fred. Again, please dial the volume on "hysteria" and "paranoia" back down a few notches. | charge anything they want for cards and they can make certain cards as | rare as they want - which can amount to the same thing. Either way, they | can only run the scam too far before people will start complaining that | the game is too expensive. And now you say they're running a scam? Really? scam -- Slang n. ~ A fraudulent business scheme; a swindle. It doesn't look like fraud to me, Fred. It looks like they're selling product at typical prices, and they're even nice enough to tell you exactly what you're getting in advance. Very unusual fraud, this. I don't think the label "scam" is appropriate, Fred, and when you throw words like that around, you ruin any logical argument you might be trying to support. In other words, you make yourself look like a paranoid hysteric. | And what I can do, other people can't necessarily do. It's easy to say, | "Just work harder and you can find this card." But if you make the chase | too hard, people eventually say, "Fuck it, I'll find another game that's | not so hard (or so expensive) to get into." Cards only cost money. I | don't know where to buy opponents. Fred, most people who play this game have money. That's because CCGs are a luxury item. They come way, way down the list of things people buy. Long after "TV" and "CDs" and the like. I don't think White Wolf is ever going to have to worry that people think this game is too expensive, especially compared to You-Know-What game that releases expansions every other week or so. |>Honestly, Fred, how many of these vampires do you NEED to make a deck? |>2, tops, right? | | It depends on the vampire. Plenty decks have multiples of certain | vampires, even 12-vampire gadget decks. I agree, so far none of them | have been bad that way. Hopefully, some effort is being expended to | avoid it. But if they keep going on it, sooner or later I expect a | mistake will get made. First: Fred, please make a list and post it here of which starter-only vampires you need more than 2 of to make a deck with. And I mean, vamps that simply are unusable unless you put 4-5 in a deck. We're talkin' Tariq-type vamps here (who, I might note, is a booster vamp). Get back to me when you're done. Second: PLEASE tell me all this hysteria is not (though you just admitted it above) a bunch of "the sky is falling" speculative what-if paranoid BULLSHIT? You freely admit that none of the starter-only vampires so far are the type you need more than 1 or 2 of, and then you in the same breath question that "well, they've been doing it right so far, they'll screw it up soon!" What an unbelievable crock of shit, Fred. I mean, seriously. | Now they're doing library cards. Again, they've done well in the past | making library cards quite specialized wherever they've needed to - | Storyline promos and the like. But I'm specifically worried that a | mistake will happen if they keep going to this well long enough. THE SKY WILL BE FALLING! THE SKY WILL BE FALLING! OH NO! - -- Derek insert clever quotation here -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.5 (MingW32) iD8DBQFB7HbStQZlu3o7QpERAtZSAJ4ywYWmjb02t9X2n0mwr9SVmckaEQCgm1l2 rcCUh+gX5dcYKa4fgjn/f+8= =7nSl -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Frederick Scott wrote: > Except you won't show anyone. Saying "Jeff sells them" ignores the fact > that Jeff doesn't consistently have them in stock for all the above > reasons. Just how inconsistant that is is open to debate for the moment > but I suspect it's vast: as in, the VAST MAJORITY of the time he won't > have them. Making people wait to pounce is just a different cost of > getting singles in place of money. Ultimately, it doesn't solve any > problems either. There aren't any problems. If you want starter only cards from the KMW starters, you can: A) Buy the starters for $6.00 each. In essence, you are paying $2.00 each for the 3 starter only cards (which is a bargain compared to most rare singles on the market), and get a bunch of other cards to boot. Some of which you might actually want. B) Find singles on the internet. After the KMW starters come out, I'll show you some. C) Trade for them. Someone you know will have bought multiple starters. You'll have something they want more than the starter only cards. Everyone is happy. Like, you keep saying "there are no single on the internet". Ok. Assuming you are correct, the starters are on the internet. For $6.00 each. Which is 2 or 3 bucks per starter only single. How much do you expect to get starter only singles for as singles? Less than 2 or 3 bucks each? > Semantics. Waving your hands over a few isolated sales and calling it > a "market" is irrelevent. It's like telling poor people to go win the > lottery. Or, ya know, telling CCG players to put some effort into collecting. Or, conversely, buying a starter deck. > Fine, Peter. Show me. After KMW comes out, I'll show you starter only singles. But, likely, I'll have bought them all up before you get there. Just for spite. But then, I'll be willing to trade them to you for Freak Drives... [ quoted text not captured ]

Frederick Scott wrote: > Marianna Gilberts are eminently easier to obtain > than Tock as a single. Huh. Again, I'll trade you pretty much any starter only single you want for a Freak Drive. You are going to tell me that you don't know anyone who will give you a Tock for a Freak Drive? Honestly? You can get Freak Drives. All the time. If you can get Freak Drives, you can swap them for starter only cards. I'm certain of it. [ quoted text not captured ]

Frederick Scott wrote: > Sure. The difference is, you COULD have one any time you want without > too much difficulty. Marianna Gilberts are eminently easier to obtain > than Tock as a single. If you want a Tock, you can always go buy the appropriate starter. Nothing complicated about it. Cards in the pre-constructed starters are the *easiest* cards to acquire. Cards in boosters, only, are much more difficult to acquire than cards that appear in starters. I either need to buy lots of boosters to find the cards that I want, or I need to trade, which always leaves me feeling like I've somehow been ripped off. It's the tournament-promos that are really tricky, however. If I want to get a tournament-promo I have to either organise a tournament or deal with Foreigners using Bizarre Currencies via the internet. Scary! * lehrbuch

"Peter D Bakija" <pd...@lightlink.com> wrote in message news:BE11E58F.1C8FC%pd...@lightlink.com... > Frederick Scott wrote: > >> Except you won't show anyone. Saying "Jeff sells them" ignores the fact >> that Jeff doesn't consistently have them in stock for all the above >> reasons. Just how inconsistant that is is open to debate for the moment >> but I suspect it's vast: as in, the VAST MAJORITY of the time he won't >> have them. Making people wait to pounce is just a different cost of >> getting singles in place of money. Ultimately, it doesn't solve any >> problems either. > > There aren't any problems. > > If you want starter only cards from the KMW starters, you can: > > A) Buy the starters for $6.00 each. I know about this. This is the real option people have and I started the whole thread to say that it's too much to ask people to pay, each and every expansion for vampires. You're just listing it to make it sound like a big list. > B) Find singles on the internet. After the KMW starters come out, I'll > show you some. Show me some Black Hand or Anarchs starter-only vampires now. Jeff doesn't have any at the moment. Jeff's comment last night turned out not to have anything to do with new starter-only vampires coming up for sale. Which, by the way, is the whole problem with your leaning on Jeff as proof that starter-only vampires can be bought. Jeff is just providing a service for card players. He can't single-handedly change the law of supply and and demand. He can open starters from time to time but his supply of the very rare things is going to run out quickly. Be that as it may, if some exist, you should be able to find them now. Not later. > C) Trade for them. Someone you know will have bought multiple starters. D. Win the lottery and buy out Potomac Distribution's stock of starters. If you're lucky enough, you can do anything. Sure, Peter. I know lots of guys who buy multiple starters just so they can trade me the chase cards from them. Fred

"Derek Ray" <lor...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:KJWdnVJC4vt...@giganews.com... > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > Frederick Scott wrote: > | "Derek Ray" <lor...@yahoo.com> wrote in message > | news:0I-dnZ4Ob_p...@giganews.com... > | We'll see about buying from Jeff. He was supposed to have updated his > | inventory last night and I see no BH or Anarch starter-only vampires > > Do you know for certain that he did update it? > > Have you asked him about them? I e-mailed him earlier today. He responded that he was not adding any starter-only vampires. > | in his stock right at the moment. Even so, Jeff is a "public service" > | dealer - I don't think he's charging the sort of premium it would > | require to keep these things in stock. Therefore, to buy from him, > | you have to > > Speculating about the internal workings of Jeff's business is an > enormous load of poppycock, Fred. You don't have the slightest idea > what his motives are, and you're fabricating spurious motives on the > spot in order to support your argument. > > Let's stick to the facts we know, shall we? Totally irrelevent objection. Whatever his motives, he doesn't seem to be keeping them in stock. That's the point. > | One thing that's becoming clear: at a certain point, White Wolf printed > | up a bunch of Final Nights and Sabbat War vampires and have been passing > | them out in tournament packs and on their dealer tables. So if you're > | tapped into one of those sources, you can obtain them. If you work at > | it, quite like you can obtain handfuls of them. I guess that's good. > | Even people who don't show up at tournaments can find someone who does > | and eventually find them without buying starters. If they did the same > | with the other starter-onlies, it would probably make a huge difference. > > Who's to say they aren't going to do just that? Who's to say they > HAVEN'T been doing just that? Have you asked anyone? No, I'm making a assumption. Anarchs came out a year and a half ago. If the issue is just waiting - on the order of YEARS - I think that still makes a pretty good reason to object. > Have you done anything other than wail and gnash your teeth because > White Wolf didn't publish the "Cards Fred is Short Of" starter, As usual, you're oblivious to the point in your passion for turning every complaint about the process into a moral shortcoming of the complainer. If it were just cards _I_ was short of, the whole of EBAY might put a few up for auction from time to time. > | And what I can do, other people can't necessarily do. It's easy to say, > | "Just work harder and you can find this card." But if you make the > | chase too hard, people eventually say, "Fuck it, I'll find another > | game that's not so hard (or so expensive) to get into." Cards only > | cost money. I don't know where to buy opponents. > > Fred, most people who play this game have money. That's because CCGs > are a luxury item. They come way, way down the list of things people > buy. Long after "TV" and "CDs" and the like. I don't think White Wolf > is ever going to have to worry that people think this game is too > expensive, especially compared to You-Know-What game that releases > expansions every other week or so. If that's true, then why not print super-rares? Ignore the "good rares" problem and go for the money. They can't. It causes problems, as does this. As for the you-know-what game that release expansions every other week or so (and fills their expansions chock full of crappy cards to boot), it's the same problem: trying to milk the system for too much dough. I used to spend a lot of money that game. Now I spend it on Jyhad. And I was a hell of lot more patient with it than a lot of guys. Fred

On Mon, 17 Jan 2005 17:17:19 -0500, Peter D Bakija <pd...@lightlink.com> scrawled: >Matthew T. Morgan wrote: > >> Yeah, it's not as good as the Ventrue starter, but for staples and cards >> you want, I think it's not that bad. > >Yeah, no, I know the Nosferatu starter. And it pretty much sucks. Unless >you: > >A) Are a very new player. > >or > >B) Have somehow run out of Gird Minions. C) Have plenty of Gird Minions, but prefer ones with naked lesbian blood fetishists on them. :D salem domain:canberra http://www.geocities.com/salem_christ.geo/vtes.htm (replace "hotmail" with "yahoo" to email)

"Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote in message news:08YGd.57278$F25.30135@okepread07... > Except you won't show anyone. Saying "Jeff sells them" ignores the fact > that Jeff doesn't consistently have them in stock for all the above > reasons. Just how inconsistant that is is open to debate for the moment > but I suspect it's vast: as in, the VAST MAJORITY of the time he won't > have them. Making people wait to pounce is just a different cost of > getting singles in place of money. In all fairness, Fred, you have no evidence that your characterization of their availability through Lasombra is at all like you say, either. Maybe Jeff will chime in, and let us know how quickly they move? DaveZ Atom Weaver

Fred wrote: >I know about this. This is the real option people have and I started >the whole thread to say that it's too much to ask people to pay, each >and every expansion for vampires. You're just listing it to make it >sound like a big list. No, I'm listing it 'cause it is the best and easiest way to get new starter only cards. Ok. You say that $6.00 is too much to pay for new expansion vampires. How much isn't too much to pay? For about $6.00 for, say, an Anarchs starter, you got 2 starter only vampires and then also about a dozen other brand new cards. So assuming that the reprints in the starter are of exactly zero use to you (You can't use them. You can't trade them. You can't sell them.), you are still getting 2 starter only cards and a dozen new cards anyway. For KMW, for that $6.00, you are getting 2 starter only vampires, (from what I understand) 1 starter only library card, and probably another dozen or so brand new cards. $6.00 is too much to ask people to pay for this? Especially when you are also getting a bunch of other cards, two or three of which are essentially rares? If you could get these starter only cards as singles on the internet, how much would expect to pay for them? Really? Like, a standard, moderately useful rare from a recent set tends to go for 2 or 3 bucks (plus shipping) on e-bay. Good rares go for 3-5 bucks. What are you expecting to be able to get these cards for on the internet? >Show me some Black Hand or Anarchs starter-only vampires now. If you'd like, I'll put some on e-bay. Heck. I have multiples of various BH and Anarchs only starter vampires. I'll trade them to you for Freak Drives. Which are readily available. Lemme know what you are looking for. >Jeff doesn't have any at the moment. No, but he does have Anarchs and Black Hand starter decks, that have all the starter only vampires you need. Plus a lot of other really good cards (you can't use more Disarms?). At a reasonable price. If there *were* BH and Anarch vampires, as singles, on the internet, how much would you be willing to pay for them? I'm betting that in the long run, the difference between what you are willing to pay for single starter only vampires and a $6.00 starter deck isn't really that big. >Jeff is just providing a service for card players. He can't single-handedly change the law of >supply and and demand. He can open starters from time to time but his supply of the >very rare things is going to run out quickly. Sure. A supply of any very rare thing is going to run out quickly. Jeff can't keep popular booster pack rares in stock either. 'Cause they sell. That is how this sort of thing works. Jeff doesn't have any Freak Drives for sale, generally speaking, either. Sometimes some show up, and they sell quickly. Just like starter only cards. > Be that as it may, if some exist, you should be able to find them now. Not later. You can't find KMW starter only single cards now 'cause they aren't on the market. When they are on the market, they'll be for sale on the internet. >D. Win the lottery and buy out Potomac Distribution's stock of starters. >If you're lucky enough, you can do anything. Sure, Peter. I know lots >of guys who buy multiple starters just so they can trade me the chase >cards from them. See, I have no idea who you hang out with. But I can only imagine that, from your particular apparent world view, you either hang out with a bunch of jerks or, well, no one. I don't regularly hang out with anyone who buys boxes and boxes of starters just to trade me the chase cards. But I do hang out with people who buy starter decks and trade and buy singles off the internet. And I have traded them chase cards from starter decks ('cause I wasn't using them at the time, they needed them, and they game me something good for them). They have traded me chase cards from starter decks for the same reasons. This is a *trading card game*. Sometimes, people trade you stuff. You seem to not have this experience. I don't know what to tell you. If you can't get people to trade you stuff (and I still maintain that you can get pretty much any starter only card in the world for a Freak Drive...), you can try and find singles on the internet. There aren't a lot of them, but they are there, especially right after a set comes out. Barring that, you can just suck it up and buy a starter deck. Luckily, starter decks are reasonably priced these days. -Peter

Fred wrote: >Show me some Black Hand or Anarchs starter-only vampires now. Ya know, just out of curiosity, I googled "vtes tock", and found 4 or 5 different sites that were selling or trading Tock. Granted, the ones selling them were in a language I didn't understand, using a currency I didn't understand, but they were there. For sale. And there were two or three people offering to sell or trade Tock on some VTES trade site with trade lists. Man. Clearly you just aren't trying that hard. Oh, wait. Neither was I. -Peter

"Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote in message news:T30Hd.57295$F25.50010@okepread07... > As for the you-know-what game that release expansions every other week > or so (and fills their expansions chock full of crappy cards to boot), > it's the same problem: trying to milk the system for too much dough. > I used to spend a lot of money that game. Now I spend it on Jyhad. > And I was a hell of lot more patient with it than a lot of guys. > > Fred Dearest Fred, I will sell you what ever starter vampires you want. Cost is a measely 5$ each, S&H included. Just email me and let me know which one and how many. Raille now maybe the thread will die

<pd...@lightlink.com> wrote in message news:1106062321.9...@c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com... > Fred wrote: >>I know about this. This is the real option people have and I started >>the whole thread to say that it's too much to ask people to pay, each >>and every expansion for vampires. You're just listing it to make it >>sound like a big list. > > No, I'm listing it 'cause it is the best and easiest way to get new > starter only cards. Ok. You say that $6.00 is too much to pay for new > expansion vampires. How much isn't too much to pay? > > For about $6.00 for, say, an Anarchs starter, you got 2 starter only > vampires and then also about a dozen other brand new cards. So assuming > that the reprints in the starter are of exactly zero use to you (You > can't use them. You can't trade them. You can't sell them.), you are > still getting 2 starter only cards and a dozen new cards anyway. If you're going to portray it that way, then by comparison in a booster, for $1.75, I get a rare and 10 other cards. I don't know that there's any one price that you can say, "This is a good deal." vs. "This is a ripoff". But clearly, boosters are the much better deal any way you cut it. The point being, starter-only cards stick out like a sore thumb in terms of being a bad value. >>Show me some Black Hand or Anarchs starter-only vampires now. > > If you'd like, I'll put some on e-bay. It sort of misses the point for anyone to personally go sell some cards on EBAY just to claim they can be had. Will you then become the eternal EBAY singles-from-starter seller - to match the hordes of dealers who rise up and spontaneously sell them from boosters? The reason I keep returning to EBAY is that it shows something profound about the practice of printing starter-only cards that no one really sells them there. You may single-handedly change the effect a little - but that doesn't affect the existence of the cause. >>If you're lucky enough, you can do anything. Sure, Peter. I know lots >>of guys who buy multiple starters just so they can trade me the chase >>cards from them. > > See, I have no idea who you hang out with. But I can only imagine that, > from your particular apparent world view, you either hang out with a > bunch of jerks or, well, no one. First of all, understand that there are very hideously few people who play in Arizona at all. Of those that do, it's my impression that few of them invest in cards, either boosters or starters, nearly as heavily as I do. I don't tend to trade, they don't tend to trade, not a lot of trading goes on in general that I've noticed. I'd be shocked if any of them had bought enough starter decks to have extra. > But I do hang out with people who buy starter decks and trade and buy > singles off the internet. And I have traded them chase cards from > starter decks ('cause I wasn't using them at the time, they needed > them, and they game me something good for them). (Getting off the topic, but perhaps explaining some of our differences.) That's a very commendable trading philosphy but it isn't one I could ever engage in. I tend to collect with the thought that I don't know what I'll need tomorrow or next year. In CCGs, I've found it to be amazing what cards you may think are drek today might turn out to be the key card in tomorrow's killer deck archetypes. Such turnarounds don't happen often but they certainly happen. It's not an attitude that's terribly condusive to trading. > This is a *trading card game*. I think that's a poor excuse for judging other people's way of playing it. Some people like trading, others don't care for it. But more to the point, I don't think trading is the answer you claim. Expending a bunch of effort running around trying to find the guy who has what you want and is willing to trade it for something you're got is just another way of spending resources: time instead of money. And if you paid $6 for two or three cards, why is your trade partner going to look at it any other way? Trading them what they want is just like spending the money you paid to get the trading stock. Fred

<pd...@lightlink.com> wrote in message news:1106069170.6...@c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com... [ quoted text not captured ] And were you trying very hard to determine if these "dealers" actually had a Tock in stock? A lot of internet sellers will list a price for every card in an expansion, but any resemblance to an actual working market for corner-case cards like starter-only vampires is mostly fictional. Running the same search, I found two sites, one of which listed some kind of number that might have been a price but clearly no amount of stock listed. Another listed something that looked like a price with another column containing an integer number right next to it. The number was zero. Fred

Frederick Scott wrote: > If you're going to portray it that way, then by comparison in a booster, > for $1.75, I get a rare and 10 other cards. You do. Correct. But you have no idea what cards you are going to get. And there is nothing saying you are going to get the particular rares you are looking for, ever. Conversely, with a starter, you can say "I want card X and I know how to get it" and just buy the card you want. I have had *much*more success getting specific cards from starters that I wanted than from boosters that I wanted. > I don't know that there's > any one price that you can say, "This is a good deal." vs. "This is a > ripoff". But clearly, boosters are the much better deal any way you > cut it. The point being, starter-only cards stick out like a sore thumb > in terms of being a bad value. But the value is so much less bad than you make it out. Especially as: A) there is no risk that you *won't* get the cards you are looking to get. B) you know exactly what you are going to get. When a new set comes out, generally, I'll open, like, half a box of boosters. After that, I have almost no incentive to buy booster packs any more--I likely have as many of the commons as I need, and opening a booster in hopes of getting a particular card that I want is pointless--in all likelyhood, I'm just going to get, like, another 2 or 3 bad Archetypes and another Praxis Seizure. > The reason I keep returning to EBAY is that it shows something profound > about the practice of printing starter-only cards that no one really > sells them there. You may single-handedly change the effect a little - > but that doesn't affect the existence of the cause. But they do. Right after the set comes out. When people are willing to pay a few bucks for the starter only cards. Really. Go look. > First of all, understand that there are very hideously few people who > play in Arizona at all. Of those that do, it's my impression that few > of them invest in cards, either boosters or starters, nearly as heavily > as I do. I don't tend to trade, they don't tend to trade, not a lot > of trading goes on in general that I've noticed. I'd be shocked if any > of them had bought enough starter decks to have extra. Well, that is unfortunate. And clearly leaves you in a situation that is not the same as many other people involved in this forum--I mean, like, I don't have a *huge* play group, but I have 4 or 5 regular pals I play with, and then another 4 or 5 I see about once a month in the next city over. And none of them are huge box buyers. And all of them are willing to trade things like promos, starter only chase cards, and things like that. 'Cause in general, the want to help your pals make the decks they want outweighs the greed of having a complete set. So if I have a starter only vampire I'm not using any time soon, and someone needs it, I'll trade it to them. And they generally do the same. > (Getting off the topic, but perhaps explaining some of our differences.) > That's a very commendable trading philosphy but it isn't one I could > ever engage in. I tend to collect with the thought that I don't know > what I'll need tomorrow or next year. In CCGs, I've found it to be > amazing what cards you may think are drek today might turn out to be the > key card in tomorrow's killer deck archetypes. Such turnarounds don't > happen often but they certainly happen. It's not an attitude that's > terribly condusive to trading. Well, then, there you go. I come from a world where I buy cards and trade cards. When someone needs something that I'm not using, even if it is something like a starter only card, I'll probably trade it to them for something I do need now. And if I need it back later? I can probably trade for it anyway. > I think that's a poor excuse for judging other people's way of playing > it. Some people like trading, others don't care for it. Which is fine. But realize that if you aren't willing to avail yourself of the possibilities of trading, which is a reasonable decision to make, you have to make up for it by spending money. Like by buying starter decks. Yes. 6-10 bucks is not an insignificant amount to pay if all you want is exactly two vampires. But it isn't, like, mortgaging your house. > But more to > the point, I don't think trading is the answer you claim. Expending > a bunch of effort running around trying to find the guy who has what you > want and is willing to trade it for something you're got is just another > way of spending resources: time instead of money. And if you paid $6 > for two or three cards, why is your trade partner going to look at it any > other way? Trading them what they want is just like spending the money > you paid to get the trading stock. Yes. Yes it is. And in the end, you can just cut out the middle man and buy a starter deck. [ quoted text not captured ]

salem wrote: > C) Have plenty of Gird Minions, but prefer ones with naked lesbian > blood fetishists on them. > :D Ah, yes. Strong point. I stand corrected :-) [ quoted text not captured ]

Frederick Scott wrote: > And were you trying very hard to determine if these "dealers" actually > had a Tock in stock? Nah. I spent about 3 minutes on the exercise. It is very possible that they were out of stock. Or old trade lists. But the point is that someone was willing to trade or sell them. And it wasn't that hard to find them. And have you ever tried the VTES trading list serve? Not even to trade, just to buy. If you sent a message that said something along the lines of: "I'm looking to buy the followign starter only vampires. I'm willing to pay $2.00 each for them..." You'd probably get a lot of responses quickly. And you still haven't indicated, really, what you are willing to pay for such cards. How much would you pay, in a reasonable sense, for: -Tock -Ingram Frizer -Amelia -Eddie Gaines Just for curioisities sake. [ quoted text not captured ]

On Tue, 18 Jan 2005 13:45:48 GMT, "David Zopf" <david...@snet.net> wrote: >> Except you won't show anyone. Saying "Jeff sells them" ignores the fact >> that Jeff doesn't consistently have them in stock for all the above >> reasons. Just how inconsistant that is is open to debate for the moment >> but I suspect it's vast: as in, the VAST MAJORITY of the time he won't >> have them. Making people wait to pounce is just a different cost of >> getting singles in place of money. >In all fairness, Fred, you have no evidence that your characterization of >their availability through Lasombra is at all like you say, either. >Maybe Jeff will chime in, and let us know how quickly they move? Starter only vampires tend to disappear immediately, with the rest of the starter quite a bit slower to sell, if it ever sells at all. Carpe noctem. Lasombra http://www.TheLasombra.com Carpe noctem. Lasombra http://www.TheLasombra.com Your best online source for information about V:TES. Now also featuring individual card sales and sales of booster and starter box displays.

"Peter D Bakija" <pd...@lightlink.com> wrote in message news:BE1305B0.1C974%pd...@lightlink.com... > Frederick Scott wrote: >> I don't know that there's >> any one price that you can say, "This is a good deal." vs. "This is a >> ripoff". But clearly, boosters are the much better deal any way you >> cut it. The point being, starter-only cards stick out like a sore thumb >> in terms of being a bad value. > > But the value is so much less bad than you make it out. Especially as: > > A) there is no risk that you *won't* get the cards you are looking to get. > > B) you know exactly what you are going to get. Risk doesn't really affect value. Or to the extent it does, I'd throw your arguments about trading back at you: you know you're going to get one rare in a booster - use it to trade for the rare you want. A corollary, therefore, is that lack of risk doesn't really enhance value as you seem to be suggesting. My comparison is accurate: 1 Rare plus 10 other cards that an older player is likely to have use for in a booster for $1.75 vs. 2 (before) or 3 (now) cards plus a small number (probably less than the booster or certainly not more) number of cards that an older player is likely to have use for for $6. >> The reason I keep returning to EBAY is that it shows something profound >> about the practice of printing starter-only cards that no one really >> sells them there. You may single-handedly change the effect a little - >> but that doesn't affect the existence of the cause. > > But they do. Right after the set comes out. When people are willing to > pay a few bucks for the starter only cards. Really. Go look. Well, rather than debate endlessly about it, I'll take care to put up a weekly search this time. My predication is that a smattering might be found in the first few weeks - but it'll be nothing like the number of the most coveted booster rare in the set. It doesn't make sense that a bunch of auctions would come up just after the release and then have it dry up to zero after a few weeks. EBAY doesn't work that way. There is certainly a curve but it's not usually that radical. ... > But realize that if you aren't willing to avail yourself of > the possibilities of trading, which is a reasonable decision to make, you > have to make up for it by spending money. Like by buying starter decks. Six of one, half a dozen of the other. Time and the cost of the trading stock I'm giving away prevent this from making much difference. I doubt it's a great answer, monetary-wise for anyone. I suppose if you really enjoy the activity of trading, running around chasing the annoyingly hard-to-get card might be a lot more tolerable. It's kind of turn off for the rest of us, though. > Yes. 6-10 bucks is not an insignificant amount to pay if all you want is > exactly two vampires. But it isn't, like, mortgaging your house. ... > And in the end, you can just cut out the middle man and buy > a starter deck. These are answers, of course. Just not to the question that was asked. I never said, "You can't get these vampires." Just that because of the enforced sale of a bunch of cards you don't need along WITH the vampires, they're the suckiest deal by far in every expansion they're in. Fred

Frederick Scott wrote: > These are answers, of course. Just not to the question that was asked. > I never said, "You can't get these vampires." Just that because of the > enforced sale of a bunch of cards you don't need along WITH the vampires, > they're the suckiest deal by far in every expansion they're in. Sure. But they aren't *that* sucky of a deal, especially when you get starters for $6.00 and can use the other new cards that it comes with. I mean, yeah, if you really feel you need to have 10 Tocks, you might have some trouble (but trouble that can always be overcome by money. Or Freak Drives). But if you are like most folks, and you really only want, like, 1 or 2 of a given starter only vampire? Not that big of a deal. [ quoted text not captured ]

I know this may be crazy talk, but what if the KMW precons are good decks? And while we're talking about the purpose of precons, I wanted to mention that I thought the ~30 card demo decks were really good for teaching the game. Thumbs up to whoever crafted those, and I encourage anyone teaching the game to use those. Therefore, IMO, precons should be more than demo decks. LSJ, who picks the contents of the precons? If that's public knowledge, could those people elaborate on their intentions when designing the precons? I suspect the people on this newsgroup are not the primary audience for precons. :) Ira Who banned Succubus Club? The Rules Team! YAY!!

On Tue, 18 Jan 2005 18:32:50 -0500, Peter D Bakija <pd...@lightlink.com> scrawled: >salem wrote: > >> C) Have plenty of Gird Minions, but prefer ones with naked lesbian >> blood fetishists on them. >> :D > >Ah, yes. Strong point. I stand corrected :-) got any spare ones to trade? although, i hear that those starter-only cards are very scarce.... ;) salem domain:canberra http://www.geocities.com/salem_christ.geo/vtes.htm (replace "hotmail" with "yahoo" to email)

ira...@gmail.com wrote: > LSJ, who picks the contents of the precons? If that's public > knowledge, could those people elaborate on their intentions when > designing the precons? I suspect the people on this newsgroup are not > the primary audience for precons. :) Me. Balance, playability, marketability, reprint cards that need reprinting (for errata or updates to wording or for new player access), deconstructability (the ability to use the deck to make other decks -- the precon shouldn't be too focussed), collection starting (similar to deconstructability, I suppose), equivalent worth, probably more. -- 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/

"The Lasombra" <TheLa...@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:qtgru0homkkghnhis...@4ax.com... > On Tue, 18 Jan 2005 13:45:48 GMT, "David Zopf" <david...@snet.net> > wrote: >>Maybe Jeff will chime in, and let us know how quickly they move? > > > Starter only vampires tend to disappear immediately, with the rest of > the starter quite a bit slower to sell, if it ever sells at all. > Thanks dude. One more Q; How would you characterize the profitability of opening starter decks for selling singles, as compared to boosters..? Is the margin the same, worse, or better? DaveZ Atom Weaver

Dave wrote: >Thanks dude. One more Q; How would you characterize the profitability of >opening starter decks for selling singles, as compared to boosters..? Is >the margin the same, worse, or better? I'm not Jeff. Nor I am I anyone who regularly sells singles on the internet. So basically, I'm talking out of my ass, here. But anyway, I'd figure: A starter that sells for about $6.00 retail in bulk likely (i.e. box of 6 CE starters for $36.00 kinda deal, like Jeff and Potomac have) costs, what, $4.00 to a retailer? Using, like, an Anarchs starter for example, you can probably sell the starter only vampires for $2.00 each. And at least 1 of the reprint rares for $2.00. And probably some other specific card for a buck or two--for instance, looking at the Gangs starter, there are two starter only vamps (sell'em for $2.00 each. They'll sell), a My Enemy's Enemy (a rare that people want a lot of, so it'll also likely sell for $2.00), and a Torn Signpost (heck--there is, like, a lot of 3 of these on e-bay right now for 8+ bucks. $2.00 isn't unreasonable to ask for a TS). If opening a single Gangs starter results in selling those 4 cards for $2.00 each, your $4.00 investment becomes $8.00. If you can turn the rest of the pack into some kind of money (i.e. sell the Blood Dolls, Deflections, and Forced Awakenings for .50 each, which also will sell, and the rest of the deck as a parcel of .25 vampires and .05 commons that folks will pick some up of along with the $2.00 starter only vamps), I'd think that breaking open most starters would be modreately profitable. I mean, yeah, the bulk of a given starter is likely to not fly off the shelves. But starter only vampires and good rares (and every starter has at least one of these. Well, ok, not the CE Nosferatu, but ya know, whatever) and utility uncommons will sell quickly (assuming folks know you have them). And if you can turn a $4.00 starter deck (as a retailer) into $8.00+ quickly, and then squeeze bits of cash here and there off the dregs for a while, that seems like it would be a reasonable sales plan. But again, that is me, and I have no experience in this sort of thing. The problem is, however, that not all starters in a given box have that much sellable stuff--in the Black Hand box, the !Nosferatu starter has easily enough singles to be profitable (2 starter only vamps, Disarm, 2x Taste, all of which will sell quickly), but the other 4 each only have, say, the 2 starter only vamps and then maybe one solid "rare" that'll sell quickly (!Tor have Palla Grande and Art Scam; !Malk have Deny; !Tre have Succubus and Infernal Pact?). But still, if you can get a box of BH starters at wholesale for, say, $32.00 ($4.00 a pack), and sell off: -16 starer only vampires at $2.00 each ($32.00) -2 Disarms for $3.00 each ($6.00) -4 Tastes for $1.00 each ($4.00) -2 Palla Grande for $2.00 each ($4.00) -2 Art Scam for $2.00 each ($4.00) -2 Deny for $2.00 each ($4.00) -2 Succubus for $1.00 each ($2.00) -2 Infernal Pact for $1.00 each ($2.00) You end up with $58 out of a $32 investment, Not a huge profit margin, but enough to, like, pay for the starter decks you want to buy for yourself (assuming you are, like, The Lasombra who sells and plays). And if you can sell off the Blood Dolls, Wakes, Deflections, Forceds for .25-.50 each (maybe in lot sales), it isn't that difficult to double your money. I'm assuming here that there are some cards will *will* just sell, based on my own experience--cards like Disarm, Taste, Palla Grande, and Art Scam always seem to sell on e-bay, and always seem to go for more money than I'm willing to pay (which is, like, about $2.00 per single. Maybe $3.00 for a Disarm.) And based on the rest of the discussion herabouts, I'd figure that starter only vampires would seel like hotcakes for $2.00 each. But I could be wrong. -Peter

On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 13:50:20 GMT, "David Zopf" <david...@snet.net> wrote: >Thanks dude. One more Q; How would you characterize the profitability of >opening starter decks for selling singles, as compared to boosters..? Is >the margin the same, worse, or better? In the long run, (like six months), the profit is better. The immediate profit from boosters is better, but usually no one buys commons in the first few months, so unless it was something special reprinted from another set, the starter cards won't move either. Camarilla Ventrue decks are the best for breaking up, as it is easily $15-20 recouped for your investment, but you usually have to buy them with Malkavian starters that don't move at all. Most individual cards sit in inventory, regardless of where they came from. Carpe noctem. Lasombra http://www.TheLasombra.com Your best online source for information about V:TES. Now also featuring individual card sales and sales of booster and starter box displays.

<ira...@gmail.com> wrote in message news:1106115382.9...@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com... >I know this may be crazy talk, but what if the KMW precons are good >decks? Well, that would be a good, helpful thing. :-) I think I have to acknowledge a couple of points other people made during this thread: Curevei is right: the value of precons tend to suffer from not quite doing anything well enough. I sympathize with the point that it's probably not very easy choosing a set of cards that's going to turn these babies into hot sellers for any purpose. LSJ said that they "shouldn't be too focussed" and that's probably true. But constructed decks need to be focussed on some level (even 'toolbox decks') or they're lousy constructed decks. It would be helpful if draft and sealed deck play in Jyhad weren't so boring. Then, the 'value' you'd get with precons would be a nice tournament that goes with them, which would make them more palatable to buy for that purpose. But even though limited tournaments certainly involve skill (and studying the expansion you're about to draft helps, too), the actual tournaments are just hard to play. Everything feels like it happens in slow motion because it's hard to mount much of an offensive, either combat or bleed, with the number of cards you're limited to given the price of a reasonable tournament. (That is, you can't use a precon AND draft from 8 or 10 or 12 boosters since it would cost too much.) The reprint choices don't always strike me as being the best ones, either. I don't know if that's because I have different needs than the ones imagined when the choices are made (quite likely, I suppose) or if there's a reluctance to reprint very many old, valuable rares for fear of upsetting too many collecters (that would be most unfortunate), or what. One guy did mention the point that, "At least now we're getting *3* new cards for our money, not *2*." Actually, that's pretty valid and if I weren't paranoid about a library card turning up that becomes too useful, I might take comfort in that point. If you want to go that way with it, maybe there should be *more* precon-only cards - and less rares in boosters (so older players wouldn't have to buy as many boosters to compensate for the money spent on buying precons). And more and better new cards from the boosters included in precons, such as printing at least one or two new rares from the boosters in each precon. This would definitely take the sting out of having to buy a set of precon decks to get the precon-onlies: essentially, it adds the value that the precons haven't had in the past. Fred

Frederick Scott wrote: > It would be helpful if draft and sealed deck play in Jyhad weren't so > boring. Exactly! That's why you should talk about the potential future of a [more] draftable VTES set! Get involved, make suggestions about what it might contain, how it could be done, and so forth. Does it need to be a base set? Will it contain ALL NEW cards? Will it only work out if you have a Precon + Boosters? Will it work if there is a generic starter of (mostly) random cards + Boosters? Discussion of the possibility of all of this stuff is/has been/will be discussed under the Google searchable terms 'fanset'. I and everyone who cares about a draftable (base?)set would like your feedback. ~SV

"Screaming Vermillian" <vermil...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:1106236763....@c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com... [ quoted text not captured ] I'm sorry, I don't mean to be negative about it. But what does "fanset" have to do with making a more draftable VTES set? I've always associated the term "fanset" with people proposing alternative cards to use in VTES-variant play, which doesn't interest me at all. If people want to spend time proposing specific cards, that's fine - to each his own. But that activity doesn't strike me as very productive in terms of the goal you're advocating. As you said above, there's lots of changes one might make to the game to cause it to be more amendable to limited play, many of which have nothing to do with "fanset", as I understand the term. I think the issue is more philosophical than one of just proposing the right cards. Fred

Unfortunately FANSET means a bunch of crap to me, at least, associated with this. it all stems from dissatisfaction from a gehenna booster draft. it was like 5 Cam + 5 Geh and the decks were still aweful... 10 boosters and it was hardly playable! Mostly it was because Gehenna had a bunch of crap in it that was unplayable by most of the vampires in Cam and Geh (like serpentis of vis cards). I was trying to think of some way one could draft VTES and have the option of playing all major clans depending on the material you get in the boosters (like, you'd be able to tell what clan(s) you were playing by the third booster or something). And I couldn't come up with anything without fabricating new cards. So that got me thinking... why doesn't WW print a draftable base set with all new cards? MTG does it all the time, so why not VTES? And that was a challenge I felt like working on. Fabricating the new cards neccesary to make such a set. The original threads to it included philosophical discussion about what sucha base set might need, things like 2-ways and cards with cycling capabilities, and cards that got better when playing it with a certain clan, and so forth, though most of the new material was generated by myself. It seems no one WANTS a draftable base set, or at least, they have no opinions about how it might be done... So if you'd like to talk about it, we can make a thread and do so, or ressurect an old thread and do so that way. I'll leave it up to you, if you'd like to philosophically chat about how a draftable set or reprint set might be organized and still sell. ~SV

"Screaming Vermillian" <vermil...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:1106246676.1...@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com... > it all stems from dissatisfaction from a gehenna booster draft. it was > like 5 Cam + 5 Geh and the decks were still aweful... 10 boosters and > it was hardly playable! Mostly it was because Gehenna had a bunch of > crap in it that was unplayable by most of the vampires in Cam and Geh > (like serpentis of vis cards). [...] > The original threads to it included philosophical discussion about what > sucha base set might need, things like 2-ways and cards with cycling > capabilities, and cards that got better when playing it with a certain > clan, and so forth, though most of the new material was generated by > myself. It seems no one WANTS a draftable base set, or at least, they > have no opinions about how it might be done... Yeah, it's not that I wouldn't love to have more draftable sets for VTES. It just doesn't seem like it's going to be something that White Wolf actually makes a priority any time soon. (As you noticed, none of the sets printed so far has seemed to be designed with draftability taken much into account.) It's possible, I imagine, that the next base set could be designed trying to be more draftable. But that probably won't be at least for another year (what was it between Sabbat War and Camarilla, three years?) and, well, unless I saw some indication from WW that they both are thinking about doing such a thing *and* would like fan help working on it, it would kind of seem like an interesting but ultimately not that productive use of time. You know? Josh does love draft

Joshua Duffin wrote: > "Screaming Vermillian" <vermil...@yahoo.com> wrote in message > news:1106246676.1...@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com... > Yeah, it's not that I wouldn't love to have more draftable sets for VTES. > It just doesn't seem like it's going to be something that White Wolf > actually makes a priority any time soon. (As you noticed, none of the sets > printed so far has seemed to be designed with draftability taken much into > account.) Perhaps its not a priority cause no one seems to be complaining about the expansions of VTES as it is (we're all probably just glad that WW is even releasing sets still!). Really, if this game is going to continue, WW is going to have to put out another base set soon, and I'm hoping that that one will be draftable! (CAM almost was draftable, but they excluded Wakes, Blood dolls and important things from the set, and even then, its just barely draftable... and only for the six major cam clans). > It's possible, I imagine, that the next base set could be designed trying to > be more draftable. But that probably won't be at least for another year > (what was it between Sabbat War and Camarilla, three years?) and, well, > unless I saw some indication from WW that they both are thinking about doing > such a thing *and* would like fan help working on it, it would kind of seem > like an interesting but ultimately not that productive use of time. You > know? I'm not 100% sure its even possible, or, if it were, if that would be the final set that would be draftable, as all the ideas that make it possible would have been placed in that set!

> it all stems from dissatisfaction from a gehenna booster draft. it was > like 5 Cam + 5 Geh and the decks were still aweful... 10 boosters and > it was hardly playable! Mostly it was because Gehenna had a bunch of > crap in it that was unplayable by most of the vampires in Cam and Geh > (like serpentis of vis cards). > I believe Ferox (Adv) was the only card in either set with Visceratika. Have you guys ever tried drafting from starters? Draft the boosters, then everybody opens up a (random) starter and takes, like, five cards and passes it.

"Gregory Stuart Pettigrew" <ethe...@sidehack.sat.gweep.net> wrote in message news:2005012014...@sidehack.sat.gweep.net... [ quoted text not captured ] It would probably be fairer and quicker to "boosterize" the starter (break it into 10-card boosters), or just table-draft it. -- LSJ (vte...@white-wolf.com) V:TES Net.Rep for White Wolf, Inc. V:TES homepage: http://www.white-wolf.com/vtes/ Though effective, appear to be ineffective -- Sun Tzu

"Joshua Duffin" <jtdu...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:35aeh9F...@individual.net... > It's possible, I imagine, that the next base set could be designed > trying to be more draftable. But that probably won't be at least for > another year (what was it between Sabbat War and Camarilla, three > years?) and, well, unless I saw some indication from WW that they both > are thinking about doing such a thing *and* would like fan help working > on it, it would kind of seem like an interesting but ultimately not that > productive use of time. You know? Well, that sort of an attitude does seem screamingly circular: if no one talks about it, White Wolf can't really be aware that there's dissatisfaction, and hence focusses its attention in other areas. Still, the issue to me seems mainly structural: the way the game works and the fact that it has a large number of different ways to go about winning it seems to make it hard to construct effective decks out of limited resources. Or at least, out of resources limited to the practical number of boosters and precons you can ask people to buy for a single tournament. (I'm sure if you used 15 or 20 boosters or something, at _some_ point you'd hit a number of boosters that would make for fun tournaments. But not many could afford them and the time engaged in non- game pretournament activities like drafting and deckbuilding would also begin to get prohibitive.) The answer that Magic tends to use (apart from just the game being structurally more condusive to limited play) is one I hate: strewing expansions with cards useful for limited play but not very good for collecting and using in constructed play. You want talk about sapping the value out of your game, try that! In fact, one of things I find commendable about this game is that the common cards are, by and large, useful. Not to say there aren't kind of crappy commons in the game, but I accept these as just the difficulties inherent in designing CCG expansions. It wouldn't make sense to chastise the designers to make precons ultimately more valuable (MY end goal, if not others') by majorly screwing over the value of what you can pull out of your average booster. Other than that, I don't know what to advocate. Maybe a set of rules for some sort of limited play that somehow allows for even better deck construction than draft? Or maybe there's some trick(s) that the designers could employ (or employ more often) to yield card designs that are useful for both constructed and limited play? I can't say. Fred

In message <1106249636.0...@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com>, Screaming Vermillian <vermil...@yahoo.com> writes: >Really, if this game is going to continue, WW is going to have to put >out another base set soon, Why? WW has shown a great willingness to keep older sets in print, more or less to demand. Camarilla Edition, Sabbat War and Final Nights are all three very good "base sets", in the sense that they have quite useful starters and an interesting card base. (Final Nights is the weakest of the three, but it's still usable by n00bs.) Unlike, e.g., Magic, WW don't use the base set mechanism to cycle key cards and strategies in and out of play. *All* cards and strategies are available for play, subjecting to grouping. And with a lot of expansions having starters that new players can pick up, lots and lots of basic cards are freely available to new players. It's not like you need a base set to make those freely available again (as happens in games where a set goes to print once, maybe twice, and is never seen again, so if you didn't get those cards and can't trade for them...) -- James Coupe PGP Key: 0x5D623D5D Who's ever heard of that, though! EBD690ECD7A1FB457CA2 Designing a deck that just calls votes. 13D7E668C3695D623D5D That's crazy talk, there.

Frederick Scott wrote: > Still, the issue to me seems mainly structural: the way the game works > and the fact that it has a large number of different ways to go about > winning it seems to make it hard to construct effective decks out of > limited resources. Like, as you mention, I think the main problem with VTES draft (keeping in mind that I think VTES draft is very entertaining, but it is a very unweildy and extra slow game style) is structural, and not so much the composition of the boosters or the set or whatever. I think that the problems with VTES draft are much deeper than simply what cards are included in boosters and starters, and I don't think "making a more draftable set" is really possible. That there are so many disciplines and so many different cards and card types means that draft decks, even in the best of situations, are going to be slow, unfocused, and difficult to get anywhere with. But I think that this is simply how the game is structured. The best bossible draft situation I have ever played in (i.e. the most condusive to making playable decks, to the the most cohesive set and highest likelyhood of getting useable cards) was, like, 9 pack CE draft--lots of cards, not many clans, not many disciplines. In theory, this is the best possible situation. But still, the games were slow and gridlocky. 'Cause that is simply how VTES draft works, 'cause that is how the game makes it work. Maybe if there was, like, a draft only set that consisted of, like, only 4 clans and only 6 disciplines and a very limited pool of master cards, you might be able to pull something off. But that isn't really VTES, and isn't really a product that has wide saleability possible. But then, I could be wrong. Peter D Bakija pd...@lightlink.com http://www.lightlink.com/pdb6 "How does this end?" "In fire." Emperor Turhan and Kosh

> Why? > > WW has shown a great willingness to keep older sets in print, more or > less to demand. Camarilla Edition, Sabbat War and Final Nights are all > three very good "base sets", in the sense that they have quite useful > starters and an interesting card base. (Final Nights is the weakest of > the three, but it's still usable by n00bs.) > Because of the crypts in the various starter decks: 100% of Sabbat/Final Nights crypts are incompatible with Group 4. 75% of all other Clan-based crypts are incompatible with Group 4. When Group 5 comes out, all existing Starter Deck Crypts will be completely incompatible with the new Vampires. In order for the game to remain accessible to newbies, they will have to be able to acquire starter decks that they can use with new cards. > Unlike, e.g., Magic, WW don't use the base set mechanism to cycle key > cards and strategies in and out of play. *All* cards and strategies are > available for play, subjecting to grouping. > No, they use the starter decks to cycle new players into play.

On Thu, 20 Jan 2005 17:26:16 -0500, Peter D Bakija <pd...@lightlink.com> wrote: >Maybe if there was, like, a draft only set that consisted of, like, only 4 >clans and only 6 disciplines and a very limited pool of master cards, you >might be able to pull something off. But that isn't really VTES, and isn't >really a product that has wide saleability possible. > >But then, I could be wrong. I don't think so. Whenever I see VTES 'draft', I just don't understand how it works. It seems like something like 75% of cards* have some form of restriction on them, ranging from Sect, to Discipline, to Clan, or something even less (Titles/Anarchs/Black Hand/Seraph). * It's less, according to ARDB, 892/1387 (64.31%), but there seems to be an inordinate amount of crap there. The reason why draft works in Magic, is twofold. First, you have 5 real variables for core. Which means you can reasonably pick 50% of all possible options (two colours+colourless), and possibly a splash of a third colour (as is common in the upper echelons of that format). The second, is free range of 'base'. In a VTES draft, you draft your vampires first. Each vampire has one of three sects. 1-6 of 8 common (Ani, Aus, Cel, Dom, For, Obf, Pot, Pre), 3 uncommon (Dem, Pro, Tha), 6 rare (Chi, Nec, Obt, Qui, Ser, Vis), and 10 ultra rare (Bloodlines) disciplines, and 1 of 34 Clans. Add to this the lesser traits, and that's a lot of minutae. Which ups the large number of cards that will be unusable to a fairly significant number. Add in that this is locked in place before the regular draft comes up, versus the Magic version of selecting your base in whatever numbers you want, AFTER you pick your core, with very few variables to consider. The only way I can see this transposing this to VTES, is for there to be either a large free selection of "Take whatever you need" vampires, or a "Construct a Clan", both AFTER the core (Library) draft. Personally, I don't see how VTES could really work in a draft format in any meaningful way. The diversity, the depth of 'character', and the strength of multiple dedicated archetypes, are what makes VTES great. Unfortunately, they hinder non-constructed formats, in much the same way the socio-political aspects that make VTES fun, is what acts as a detriment to VTES 2-player. Sometimes, a square peg just won't fit in a round hole. Morgan Vening

On Thu, 20 Jan 2005 17:26:16 -0500, Peter D Bakija <pd...@lightlink.com> scrawled: > >Maybe if there was, like, a draft only set that consisted of, like, only 4 >clans and only 6 disciplines and a very limited pool of master cards, you >might be able to pull something off. But that isn't really VTES, and isn't >really a product that has wide saleability possible. > >But then, I could be wrong. what if.....WW releases 3 more demo decks based on the other 3 camarilla clans. then you could also bundle those new demo decks with the 3 current demo decks together in a box, and sell it as a 'draft core' or something. then use them as your 'starter deck' and draft some CE boosters in pods of 6, 1 player for each clan. how would that sound? [ quoted text not captured ]

In message <2005012017...@sidehack.sat.gweep.net>, Gregory Stuart Pettigrew <ethe...@sidehack.sat.gweep.net> writes: <Me wondering why a base set has to be issued for 'continuation' of V:TES> >Because of the crypts in the various starter decks: >100% of Sabbat/Final Nights crypts are incompatible with Group 4. >75% of all other Clan-based crypts are incompatible with Group 4. > >When Group 5 comes out, all existing Starter Deck Crypts will be >completely incompatible with the new Vampires. In order for the game to >remain accessible to newbies, they will have to be able to acquire starter >decks that they can use with new cards. None of which necessitates a new base set. Certainly, adding new vampires to groups four and five is fine, but Anarchs, Black Hand and KMW show that you can easily drop out three or four starters in a smaller expansion, without the need for a base set. Indeed, KMW is dropping 7 vampires into play for the Assamites, which seems to be a perfectly reasonable way of handling it. [ quoted text not captured ]

James Coupe wrote: > In message <2005012017...@sidehack.sat.gweep.net>, Gregory > Stuart Pettigrew <ethe...@sidehack.sat.gweep.net> writes: > > Indeed, KMW is dropping 7 vampires into play for the Assamites, which > seems to be a perfectly reasonable way of handling it. Except that it's not. Assuming that all Indies are G4 in KMW, we'll end up with a GRAND TOTAL of *EIGHT* G3+4 Indies after KMW is out. How many G3+4 Camarilla will there be? 19 How many G3+4 Sabbat will there be? At least 11. We'll know after Brujah antitribu are finished. It is pathetic that things can't be evened out a bit more. The entire G3/4 generation of Independents is being screwed over by the release schedule. We've had Camarilla, Anarchs, Black Hand, Gehenna and now Kindred Most Wanted and the best we can do is get EIGHT FRIGGIN NEW VAMPIRES? I'm disgusted (but still hoping FN will be made G3). ;) Jeff

jeff_kuta wrote: > James Coupe wrote: > > In message <2005012017...@sidehack.sat.gweep.net>, Gregory > > Stuart Pettigrew <ethe...@sidehack.sat.gweep.net> writes: > > > > Indeed, KMW is dropping 7 vampires into play for the Assamites, which > > seems to be a perfectly reasonable way of handling it. > > Except that it's not. > Assuming that all Indies are G4 in KMW, we'll end up with a GRAND TOTAL > of *EIGHT* G3+4 Indies after KMW is out. I'm apparently too tired for math. We'll have TEN Assamites, plus 2 Advanced. That is still pretty disappointing to me. Jeff

> I'm apparently too tired for math. We'll have TEN Assamites, plus 2 > Advanced. That is still pretty disappointing to me. > That's more than they had before Final Nights.

Salem wrote: >what if.....WW releases 3 more demo decks based on the other 3 >camarilla clans. >then you could also bundle those new demo decks with the 3 current >demo decks together in a box, and sell it as a 'draft core' or >something. >then use them as your 'starter deck' and draft some CE boosters in >pods of 6, 1 player for each clan. >how would that sound? It sounds surprisingly similar to just using CE starter decks as the basis for your draft game. When I picked up some demo decks, I had the exact same thought--"these would be *great* for draft!", but upon further consideration, realized that it would result in all the draft decks being remarkably similar, and isn't really any financially more viable than just using starter decks. I mean, like, 40 card demo decks are gonna be cheaper to players, but as they have much less general utility, they are going to sell much less than just starter decks are, making them less useful to create and sell than starter decks. If you are going to go with the "6 clan based demo packs" as a draft core, you might as well just spend the $6.00 each on a CE starter. -Peter

James Coupe wrote: > In message <1106249636.0...@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com>, > Screaming Vermillian <vermil...@yahoo.com> writes: > >Really, if this game is going to continue, WW is going to have to put > >out another base set soon, > > Why? > Why... hmmm... lets see. Say KMW comes out and I'm a noob. Some guys approach me about playing this game, and so we decide to go all in together and we each buy a starter. We check it out, are a bit confused by the rules at first, but pull through and figure it out and start playing. We buy some packs of KMW to expand our individual pool of cards, cause we figure: We've got KMW starters, so lets buy some KMW boosters! What happens? The !Gangrel and Baali guy gets a bunch of redlist and indy stuff. Same thing with the Archon and Anathema guys, except they don't want the occasional Baali stuff, nor do they want the occasional PRO thing. They decide to trade, but one of the guys hates the fact that he can't find anymore copies of Social Charm or Lost in the Crowds without buying another Baali Precon. Some of them want Blood Dolls, but don't want more duplicates of the rest of the stuff in the starters "What's the point of buying another starter? I want to start playing other clans and strategies!" Someone suggests buying a different starter, but, as a previous MTG player, he understands that one gets more rares buying boosters. In comes a veteran VTES player. He's showing them great cards and game play with Deflections, Cel Guns, Kindred Spirit bleeder, and FoS stealer. They want to start buying boosters of set to start being able to put together their own decks of this type! So one of them starts to find some Final Nights. He finally finds it, buys a bunch of boosters, and doesn't see any Temptations or Form of Coruptions! Next month the veteran tells him that its because it was printed in Ancient Hearts or in the FoS precon. Confused and upset, the noob buys a FoS precon, but gets ONE of each. He is dismayed that he'll have to buy 4-5 more of these to make the tempt deck... Another guy wants to get into some old school Ventrue voting, so he gets some Cam packs. He's doing well. He gets deflections and everything else. Another guy buys into some Sabbat War and makes a Kindred Spirits deck, with help from a Black Hand !Malk starter. Oh. Then he gets busted for violating the grouping rule. Oh. Then other players are jealous of the extra Wakes and Blood dolls this guy is finding in the Sabat war packs. They're all confused and upset at dumping money and not really getting the basic cards thye need to build multiple decks that vary a bit from precons. "Why doesn't this game have a good base set?" they ask! Its not that the cards aren't availible. Its that the cards are availible in a bunch of scattered places, and each expansion doesn't include basic needed cards, or different versions of them, so that noobs buying these starters will have to go back to SW or starters to find the basics. ~SV

James Coupe wrote: > In message <2005012017...@sidehack.sat.gweep.net>, Gregory > Stuart Pettigrew <ethe...@sidehack.sat.gweep.net> writes: > <Me wondering why a base set has to be issued for 'continuation' of > V:TES> > >Because of the crypts in the various starter decks: > >100% of Sabbat/Final Nights crypts are incompatible with Group 4. > >75% of all other Clan-based crypts are incompatible with Group 4. > > > >When Group 5 comes out, all existing Starter Deck Crypts will be > >completely incompatible with the new Vampires. In order for the game to > >remain accessible to newbies, they will have to be able to acquire starter > >decks that they can use with new cards. > > None of which necessitates a new base set. > > Certainly, adding new vampires to groups four and five is fine, but > Anarchs, Black Hand and KMW show that you can easily drop out three or > four starters in a smaller expansion, without the need for a base set. > > > Indeed, KMW is dropping 7 vampires into play for the Assamites, which > seems to be a perfectly reasonable way of handling it. So the noobs, after buying a assamite precon, buys a bunch of KMW, as its the newest easiest to access set, and sees a bunch of Quitus (enough to jumpstart his new career in Assmites) and G4 assmites. He now has to choose between G4 and G2 (unless this rule is changed, as I suspect it to be). But beyond that, he's got a bunch of redlist stuff, and no Spying Missions, or Computer Hacks, nor has any extra blood dolls or minion taps or wakes, all which, he's noticed, people use 8+ or in decks... (and don't tell me Black Sunrise will help him out. I mean. It will, but reverse the scenario and use it with, say, FoS).

Frederick Scott wrote: > "Joshua Duffin" <jtdu...@yahoo.com> wrote in message > news:35aeh9F...@individual.net... > Still, the issue to me seems mainly structural: the way the game works > and the fact that it has a large number of different ways to go about > winning it seems to make it hard to construct effective decks out of > limited resources. Which is why we need a draft set that includes NEW cards, as the old one's aren't going to do it (alone). > The answer that Magic tends to use (apart from just the game being > structurally more condusive to limited play) is one I hate: strewing > expansions with cards useful for limited play but not very good for > collecting and using in constructed play. You want talk about sapping > the value out of your game, try that! How would the value of our game be sapped if we started having draftable expansions to introduce more product sales and a quick and easy way to introduce a some what noob into an expansion. How would the value of the game be sapped by printing cards like this: Quick Reflexes: Reaction. C2. Only useable by a tapped minion. This minion burns one blood or life to untap and attempt to block the acting minion. or Mind in the Darkness. AM. C1. 1 blood. Minions that possess dem or obt may play the inferior version of this card as if they had obf. Obf: +1 stealth. OBF: As above, and untap this minion if this action is successful. This minion may not act again this turn. Both are kinds of cards that will need to exist in draftable base sets, and also, both cards that seem to be useful to deck building. > Other than that, I don't know what to advocate. Maybe a set of rules > for some sort of limited play that somehow allows for even better deck > construction than draft? Like an alternate format for draft that's 8 vampires, 40 library and 250 pool? I like that idea! (though not having playtested it... I was going to use this format for teaching noobs how to play). > Or maybe there's some trick(s) that the > designers could employ (or employ more often) to yield card designs that > are useful for both constructed and limited play? Like the aforementioned? Or my Pillar concept? Or vampires that can be used as library cards too? ~SV

"what if.....WW releases 3 more demo decks based on the other 3 camarilla clans. then you could also bundle those new demo decks with the 3 current demo decks together in a box, and sell it as a 'draft core' or something. then use them as your 'starter deck' and draft some CE boosters in pods of 6, 1 player for each clan. how would that sound?" Great, for people that want to draft CE over and over and over again. For those of us who own enough CE, we want to draft and check out the latest newest hottest product, so, we try to draft KMW or The Next Expansion (TNE) and are disappointed cause it just wasn't made to accomidate draft. At all. One of these days I'd like WW to be more Noob friendly and playable expansions...

[ quoted text not captured ] WW has had four expansions to fill out the Indies and we've gotten four new vampires from it while all the other clans got a lot more, MAINLY IN GROUP 3. Giving the Indies a bunch of G4 vampires is only putting a bandaid on the problem since all our vamps are in G2 still. We still have to wait for another complete expansion before we'll be anywhere near competitive to the Camarilla from a pure numbers (and therefore flexibility and power) perspective. Jeff

SV wrote: >One of these days I'd like WW to be more Noob friendly and playable expansions... But really, expansions *can't* be nood friendly and playable on their own. As ever expansion comes out, the vast majority of the player base generally expects: -A "theme" for the set (Black Hand, Anarch, KMW, whatever) -At least some new vampires for, like, every clan (barring, say, the Bloodlines, that is still, what, 18 different clans or so?) -At least one new card for every discipline (again, barring the Bloodlines mostly) -New cool master cards -No reprints of stuff we already have tons of As a result, having a noob friendly, playable new set is almost impossible. Unless you make CE again (which isn't so much an "expansion"). But there isn't really a *need* to make CE again, as we have CE still. Consequently, trying to make an expansion that both: -Covers all of the above -Is noob friendly and playable on its own is virtually impossible. This being said, the expansion closest we have, really, is Bloodlines, which is pretty self contained. But still really werid and difficult to flesh out without having non Bloodlines vampires and cards for support. So in reality, the structure of the game is such that expansions, by necessity, are noob unfreindly and not really playable on their own. But CE is both. So really, if you are looking for draft, CE is the way to go, and anything they made that would do the same thing would be just like CE (except filled with G5 vampires, and maybe a few cards cycled in and out of the set). So until they do that, CE is what there is. -Peter

"jeff_kuta" <jeff...@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:1106326836.0...@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com... > > Gregory Stuart Pettigrew wrote: > > > I'm apparently too tired for math. We'll have TEN Assamites, plus 2 > > > Advanced. That is still pretty disappointing to me. > > > > > > > That's more than they had before Final Nights. > > WW has had four expansions to fill out the Indies and we've gotten four > new vampires from it while all the other clans got a lot more, MAINLY > IN GROUP 3. Four for Indies? I can see by your math that you don't count FN. That leaves, what? Anarchs and Gehenna? CE was for Camarilla, not for filling out Indies. BH was for Sabbat, not for filling out Indies. Check Group 2 (Final Nights) and you'll see why Group 3 is so thin. Or maybe you won't, but it's there. If grouping had been implemented "in time" for Final Nights, then the new vamires in Final Nights would've been group 3, naturally. With only a 1-expansion track record at that point, Grouping would've met with some added friction from players at that time, if it had been conceived of in time. > Giving the Indies a bunch of G4 vampires is only putting a bandaid on > the problem since all our vamps are in G2 still. We still have to wait > for another complete expansion before we'll be anywhere near > competitive to the Camarilla from a pure numbers (and therefore > flexibility and power) perspective. Yes. But a bandage is better than nothing which is in turn better than making a(nother, depending on your view of missing the grouping window at FN) mistake.

In message <1106322054....@c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>, Screaming Vermillian <vermil...@yahoo.com> writes: >Say KMW comes out and I'm a noob. Some guys approach me about playing >this game, and so we decide to go all in together and we each buy a >starter. We check it out, are a bit confused by the rules at first, but >pull through and figure it out and start playing. We buy some packs of >KMW to expand our individual pool of cards, cause we figure: We've got >KMW starters, so lets buy some KMW boosters! What happens? What happens if you buy *any* expansion oriented starter for any card game? Also, since the cards are in print, shops can just as easily have other expansions in at the same time. What do you do if a shop has a random Magic expansion for sale, but not some useful, basic starters? Same problem. Also also, it's quite possible to ask the guy behind the counter "Is this a good set to start from?" if you've played another card game. I know it's possible, as I've done it. >So one of them starts to find some Final Nights. He finally finds it, >buys a bunch of boosters, and doesn't see any Temptations or Form of >Coruptions! Next month the veteran tells him that its because it was >printed in Ancient Hearts or in the FoS precon. Confused and upset, the >noob buys a FoS precon, but gets ONE of each. One can't do a lot about idiotic, unhelpful oldbies - they happen in all games. And with hundreds, thousands of cards out there, and a base set only having three hundred (say), even if you have a 'base set', it won't contain all the strategies you're going to see anyway. You could, without a lot of effort, give them deck lists, or tell them where to find them. And... they get ONE Temptation, which is far, FAR better than having to buy a box of boosters and find one. (A sheet of fifty rares, one rare per booster, you're fucked, frankly.) Also: you appear to have missed the fact that I'm not saying don't reprint cards. Of course reprint cards. However, cards can be (and are) reprinted with or without a base set, and can be made freely available with or without a base set. [ quoted text not captured ]

In message <1106322384.4...@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com>, Screaming Vermillian <vermil...@yahoo.com> writes: >So the noobs, after buying a assamite precon, buys a bunch of KMW, as >its the newest easiest to access set, and sees a bunch of Quitus >(enough to jumpstart his new career in Assmites) and G4 assmites. He >now has to choose between G4 and G2 (unless this rule is changed, as I >suspect it to be). But beyond that, he's got a bunch of redlist stuff, >and no Spying Missions, or Computer Hacks, nor has any extra blood >dolls or minion taps or wakes, all which, he's noticed, people use 8+ >or in decks... That assumes that they don't turn up in starters. Blood Doll certainly does, for instance, and a lot of excitement has been generated by Black Sunrise (making Wake less important). Black Sunrise may be indicative of useful card effects being made available in different ways - you don't need a Wake, because you can get a good Wake-like effect from this expansion. A number of staple cards turn up in the demo decks, by the way. Just glancing through them, I see Computer Hacking, Threats, Skin of Rock, KRC, Staredown, Aire of Elation etc. However, if you were to buy one of each of the Black Hand starters, the obvious staple cards[0] I see with a couple of minutes work are: 8 Blood Doll (2 per starter) 5 Kine Resources (!Malk) 7 Forced Awakening (3 !Malk, 4!Trem) 3 Wake with Evening's Freshness (!Tor) 4 Consanguineous Boon (!Tor) 4 Harass (!Trem) 4 Concealed Weapon (!Tor) (and assorted mildly crap weaponry) Going into more specialised (disciplines etc., generally), you get things like Guard Dogs, bleed bounce (Telepathic Misdirection and Deflection), bleed reduction, Bonding, Bewitching Oration, various useful equipment (a Laptop, a Leather), and so on. Of course, this is missing some useful stuff from your list above. But, White Wolf happily keep older sets in print, at which point getting the other stuff is easier. The CE Malk starter, for instance, has 5 Spying Mission. The Nossy starter has 3 Spying Missions, 4 Computer Hacking, 5 Bum's Rush. Sure, you get cards you don't want. But if the argument of "Well, I don't want to buy a starter when it only has three cards I want in it" is unusual (see the PDB6/Fred argument), ignoring one when it has a lot of good useful cards in it is odd. It's not like you're concentrating on group three. You just happen to have some of those vampires. But that's no different to buying boosters and finding you've got some Toreador you don't give tuppence for, surely? Obviously, I'd like the pre-cons to have good and useful cards in them - but lots of the cards are easily (and guaranteed) available, whether or not we have a base set. [0] That is not to say there aren't other good cards in there - there are. But these are generally useful cards, IMO. [ quoted text not captured ]

LSJ wrote: > "jeff_kuta" <jeff...@hotmail.com> wrote in message > news:1106326836.0...@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com... > > > > Gregory Stuart Pettigrew wrote: > > > > I'm apparently too tired for math. We'll have TEN Assamites, plus 2 > > > > Advanced. That is still pretty disappointing to me. > > > > > > > > > > That's more than they had before Final Nights. > > > > WW has had four expansions to fill out the Indies and we've gotten four > > new vampires from it while all the other clans got a lot more, MAINLY > > IN GROUP 3. > > Four for Indies? > > I can see by your math that you don't count FN. > > That leaves, what? Anarchs and Gehenna? > > CE was for Camarilla, not for filling out Indies. > BH was for Sabbat, not for filling out Indies. This is all completely understandable, but the legacy of having 2 G3 vampires (so far) for each of the Indie clans *still* has repurcussions and will until G4 is buried and gone, probably beyond. It's still way too early for any indication if there will be only 2 G5 vampires for the Indies. I do expect these issues will be addressed, but it shouldn't take several more *years*. > Check Group 2 (Final Nights) and you'll see why Group 3 is so thin. > Or maybe you won't, but it's there. Oh, I understand. I presume you've seen all my number crunching on TPoB. > If grouping had been implemented "in time" for Final Nights, then the > new vamires in Final Nights would've been group 3, naturally. I'm glad to see this statement. > With only a 1-expansion track record at that point, Grouping would've > met with some added friction from players at that time, if it had > been conceived of in time. I hoped the original context would have made it clear that I was only talking about G3/4. While Final Nights had its own issues, it was wonderful for the Independent clans as a whole. I have no qualms about WWs design decisions at that time other than that they were slightly too conservative, but that is to be expected since it was only their second expansion. Overall, I was very happy with FN. > > Giving the Indies a bunch of G4 vampires is only putting a bandaid on > > the problem since all our vamps are in G2 still. We still have to wait > > for another complete expansion before we'll be anywhere near > > competitive to the Camarilla from a pure numbers (and therefore > > flexibility and power) perspective. > > Yes. But a bandage is better than nothing which is in turn better > than making a(nother, depending on your view of missing the > grouping window at FN) mistake. Camarilla Edition (with Grouping) was released in Fall 2002. There have been well over two years and now 5 sets (CE, AN, BH, GE, KMW) to fill out the G3 hole and the end result is 2 Indie clan G3 vampires. I just think it could have been and could still be addressed better. It's not too late. Jeff

"jeff_kuta" <jeff...@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:1106335367....@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com... > I hoped the original context would have made it clear that I was only > talking about G3/4. Talking about group 3 necessarily includes G2/3. > Camarilla Edition (with Grouping) was released in Fall 2002. There have > been well over two years and now 5 sets (CE, AN, BH, GE, KMW) to fill > out the G3 hole and the end result is 2 Indie clan G3 vampires. I just > think it could have been and could still be addressed better. It's not > too late. Group 3 "hole" is there becuase of group 2. Adding cards in any form will not make the group 2 vampires go away. It is too late to make group 2 smaller. [ quoted text not captured ]

LSJ wrote: > It is too late to make group 2 smaller. "Too late" by designer fiat, of course, not necessity. Changes to the grouping rule were publicly bandied about around the time of the developer chat, IIRC. While I think you are entitled to your fiats, I do think the current state of affairs is poor, and any fix requiring further *years* to correct it is a poor one. One possible "fix" would be to just make a public, official statement that the focus of the game is Sabbat and Camarilla, with the Indies existing somewhere between Bloodlines and full clans. At least then some players' expectations would more closely coincide with reality (at least reality as it has been up to this point). -- David Cherryholmes

"David Cherryholmes" <david.che...@duke.edu> wrote in message news:35d5d9F...@individual.net... > LSJ wrote: > > > It is too late to make group 2 smaller. > > "Too late" by designer fiat, of course, not necessity. Changes to the > grouping rule were publicly bandied about around the time of the > developer chat, IIRC. Well, outside of banning, you can't really reduce the size of group 2. If you call a decision not to ban a fiat, OK. > While I think you are entitled to your fiats, I do think the current > state of affairs is poor, and any fix requiring further *years* to > correct it is a poor one. Correct what? Years won't make Group 2 smaller. > One possible "fix" would be to just make a public, official statement > that the focus of the game is Sabbat and Camarilla, with the Indies > existing somewhere between Bloodlines and full clans. At least then > some players' expectations would more closely coincide with reality (at > least reality as it has been up to this point). Net state change: none. This is not a "fix", to most understandings. If it helps people sleep better, then it's fine by me, though. [ quoted text not captured ]

LSJ wrote: > Well, outside of banning, you can't really reduce the size > of group 2. We may be into semantics at this point. If you made FN group 3, then Group 2 would get smaller, yet nothing was banned. > If you call a decision not to ban a fiat, OK. I, at least, am not talking about banning. >>One possible "fix" would be to just make a public, official statement >>that the focus of the game is Sabbat and Camarilla, with the Indies >>existing somewhere between Bloodlines and full clans. At least then >>some players' expectations would more closely coincide with reality (at >>least reality as it has been up to this point). > > > Net state change: none. > This is not a "fix", to most understandings. > > If it helps people sleep better, then it's fine by me, though. Well, I did put "fix" in quotation marks for a reason. Technically it isn't a fix, but if their reduced status were factored in, the perceived problem would evaporate. I think it is best to look for solutions which disturb the status quo the least first, then work outward. -- David Cherryholmes

LSJ wrote: > If it helps people sleep better, then it's fine by me, though. Hey wait a minute, you sneaky bastard... are you saying that *is* the state of affairs? Say it! Say it out loud! ;) -- David Cherryholmes

"David Cherryholmes" <david.che...@duke.edu> wrote: > LSJ wrote: > > > Well, outside of banning, you can't really reduce the size > > of group 2. > > We may be into semantics at this point. If you made FN group 3, > then Group 2 would get smaller, yet nothing was banned. FN was already printed well before grouping (as you know). So that leaves: having implemented grouping in CE in an even more confusing manner (by having players have to remember if this-or-that FN vampire was new to FN or a reprint). That would have created much gnashing of teeth (probably many of the same teeth that now gnash at the thought of the size of group 3). > > If it helps people sleep better, then it's fine by me, though. > > Well, I did put "fix" in quotation marks for a reason. Technically > it isn't a fix, but if their reduced status were factored in, the > perceived problem would evaporate. I think it is best to look for > solutions which disturb the status quo the least first, then work > outward. OK. So be it. It's not my view, but whatever makes you happy, right? I'm all about making you happy, Dave. :-) [ quoted text not captured ]

jeff_kuta wrote: > James Coupe wrote: > > In message <2005012017...@sidehack.sat.gweep.net>, Gregory > > Stuart Pettigrew <ethe...@sidehack.sat.gweep.net> writes: > > > > Indeed, KMW is dropping 7 vampires into play for the Assamites, which > > seems to be a perfectly reasonable way of handling it. > > Except that it's not. > Assuming that all Indies are G4 in KMW, we'll end up with a GRAND TOTAL > of *EIGHT* G3+4 Indies after KMW is out. > > How many G3+4 Camarilla will there be? 19 > How many G3+4 Sabbat will there be? At least 11. We'll know after > Brujah antitribu are finished. Assuming all Sabbat clans get the same number of vampires, which may or may not be the case. So far we haven't seen ANY Sabbat vampires that aren't likely to be Red List-specific (to judge by Jayne Jonestown being in the Anathema deck and the assumed Dylan Adv being RL as well.) And I'm not sure how you're coming up with '11', since the !Brujah currently have 9 by my count (as do many Sabbat clans) and one spoiler. That's ten, not 11. > It is pathetic that things can't be evened out a bit more. The entire > G3/4 generation of Independents is being screwed over by the release > schedule. We've had Camarilla, Anarchs, Black Hand, Gehenna and now > Kindred Most Wanted and the best we can do is get EIGHT FRIGGIN NEW > VAMPIRES? (your self-correction about it being ten not eight noted) Yeah, let's see here. Camarilla, Anarchs, Black Hand, Gehenna KMW - including a set FOCUSED on the Sabbat, and quite a few Sabbat clans got.. ONE LESS vampire than the Independents for G3/4, not yet counting KMW Sabbat vamps - and I find it HIGHLY unlikely that each Sabbat clan will get more than one. (We know that at least some Camarilla vampires are in the set; 50 vamps, at least 4 Baali, hopefully 7x4 major indies is 28, leaves only 22 vamps in the set which includes some cam, some sabbat, and presumably more !Gangrel than the rest.. no way that each Sabbat clan gets 2 vamps.) Thus, my expectation is that after KMW, both the four major Independents and Sabbat clans will have an even 10 (or possibly 9 in a few cases) group 3/4 vamps. Oh, except your put-upon foot-stampy independents started with a half-dozen more vamps in group 2 than the Sabbat ones had. So forgive me if I find your ranting about how grossly unfair it is that your sect will have less vampires than the Camarilla overblown, considering you'll still have more vampires than a lot of clans, if not quite as much flexibility in it. Either that, or we need to unite against The Man. Either way. :P > I'm disgusted (but still hoping FN will be made G3). ;) That would certainly be a very interesting grouping change. Far, far from the worst suggestion I've heard. > Jeff -John Flournoy

LSJ wrote: > OK. So be it. It's not my view, but whatever makes you > happy, right? I'm all about making you happy, Dave. :-) Sweet. I want a pony. -- David Cherryholmes

LSJ wrote: > OK. So be it. It's not my view, but whatever makes you > happy, right? I'm all about making you happy, Dave. :-) I'm going to take a risk here and speak for Dave in saying that if you gave Dave a free crate of KMW cards and me a free box, it'd make him very happy indeed. :P > LSJ (vte...@white-wolf.com) V:TES Net.Rep for White Wolf, Inc. -John Flournoy

John Flournoy wrote: > I'm going to take a risk here and speak for Dave in saying that if you > gave Dave a free crate of KMW cards and me a free box, it'd make him > very happy indeed. :P I'd settle for a new game, one with slightly higher odds than finding a license plate with the letters "PTO" on it. Friggin' tease..... -- David Cherryholmes

LSJ wrote: > "jeff_kuta" <jeff...@hotmail.com> wrote in message > news:1106335367....@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com... > > I hoped the original context would have made it clear that I was only > > talking about G3/4. > > Talking about group 3 necessarily includes G2/3. > > > Camarilla Edition (with Grouping) was released in Fall 2002. There have > > been well over two years and now 5 sets (CE, AN, BH, GE, KMW) to fill > > out the G3 hole and the end result is 2 Indie clan G3 vampires. I just > > think it could have been and could still be addressed better. It's not > > too late. > > Group 3 "hole" is there because of group 2. > Adding cards in any form will not make the group 2 vampires go away. > It is too late to make group 2 smaller. > > -- > LSJ (vte...@white-wolf.com) V:TES Net.Rep for White Wolf, Inc. > V:TES homepage: http://www.white-wolf.com/vtes/ > Though effective, appear to be ineffective -- Sun Tzu My primary concern is not about Group 2--it is about the future of all odd groupings for the Independents. If the small G3 size precedent holds for the future, every even grouped rollout will screw the Indie clans over again and again. Group 3 was never "complete" for the Indies, so G4 should have never been opened up until the right time. I agree that the Indies all got *lots* of goodies in G2, primarily due to Final Nights being a very nice expansion for them. However, the existence of a large Group 2 to me doesn't mean it is necessary or even proper to severely limit the size of Group 3. Adding even just 2 more Indie vampires into Group 3 will *not* throw the current balance of G2/3 out of whack, nor will it hurt the future G3/4. The main thing it will do is set precedent for G5 so this awkward transitional period will not happen again later down the road. Ideally, there will be roughly the same number (12? 13?) of vampires in every group for every sect. I just don't see why we need to wait to get this started. The impact on G2/3 will be minimal while the benefit on G3/4 will be (and would have been) significant. Jeff

On Fri, 21 Jan 2005 16:10:22 -0500, David Cherryholmes <david.che...@duke.edu> scrawled: >John Flournoy wrote: > >> I'm going to take a risk here and speak for Dave in saying that if you >> gave Dave a free crate of KMW cards and me a free box, it'd make him >> very happy indeed. :P > >I'd settle for a new game, one with slightly higher odds than finding a >license plate with the letters "PTO" on it. does anyone else see vtes acronyms in license plates wherever they go? i don't consciously make a game of it or anything, but here in australia out license plates are 3letters-3numbers. well, aside from personalised plates, some later plates where the 3rd number was replaced by a letter, and the new NSW platers which seem to be 2-2-2, of any mix of letters or numbers. but anyway, i digress. i keep seeing things like: NCL - no card limit XCL - X card limit NRA - No repeat action GTA - Govern the unaligned etc. salem domain:canberra http://www.geocities.com/salem_christ.geo/vtes.htm (replace "hotmail" with "yahoo" to email)

jeff_kuta wrote: > My primary concern is not about Group 2--it is about the future of all > odd groupings for the Independents. If the small G3 size precedent > holds for the future, every even grouped rollout will screw the Indie > clans over again and again. Group 3 was never "complete" for the > Indies, so G4 should have never been opened up until the right time. "Primary concern" is irrelevant. One cannot expect a problem to go away by ignoring its existence. "Group 3 wasn't complete" has no basis. Groups do not exist in isolation. Group 2/3 was complete. Ergo no more 3s. If group 3/4 is not complete while 2/3 is, then more 3's is not the answer. One solution is to continue the pattern -- big even groups and miniscule odd groups. This leaves the door open for even/odd grouping, as well. Another solution is to abandon even/odd grouping and shorten group 4 so that the Indies are back on track for 4/5. That solution involves a smaller-than-normal sized 3/4, of course. > I agree that the Indies all got *lots* of goodies in G2, primarily due > to Final Nights being a very nice expansion for them. However, the > existence of a large Group 2 to me doesn't mean it is necessary or even > proper to severely limit the size of Group 3. To each his own. > Adding even just 2 more Indie vampires into Group 3 will *not* throw > the current balance of G2/3 out of whack, nor will it hurt the future > G3/4. The main thing it will do is set precedent for G5 so this awkward > transitional period will not happen again later down the road. Ideally, > there will be roughly the same number (12? 13?) of vampires in every > group for every sect. I just don't see why we need to wait to get this > started. The impact on G2/3 will be minimal while the benefit on G3/4 > will be (and would have been) significant. No matter what the number of any clans vampires in any group, adding two more will *not* [sic] throw the then-current balance out of whack. You could therefore proceed, adding two at a time, to make any group as large as you like and defeat the grouping mechanism altogether. -- 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/

LSJ wrote: > jeff_kuta wrote: > > My primary concern is not about Group 2--it is about the future of all > > odd groupings for the Independents. If the small G3 size precedent > > holds for the future, every even grouped rollout will screw the Indie > > clans over again and again. Group 3 was never "complete" for the > > Indies, so G4 should have never been opened up until the right time. > > "Primary concern" is irrelevant. One cannot expect a problem to > go away by ignoring its existence. > > "Group 3 wasn't complete" has no basis. Groups do not exist in isolation. > > Group 2/3 was complete. Ergo no more 3s. Group 2 does not exist in isolation from Group 4--the existence of Group 3 links the two inextricably. In fact, G2 and G4 they will probably have more similiarities than differences. > If group 3/4 is not complete while 2/3 is, then more 3's is not the > answer. > > One solution is to continue the pattern -- big even groups and > miniscule odd groups. This leaves the door open for even/odd > grouping, as well. > > Another solution is to abandon even/odd grouping and shorten > group 4 so that the Indies are back on track for 4/5. That > solution involves a smaller-than-normal sized 3/4, of course. But what is the solution? Apparently it is to have miniscule odd groups and gargantuan even groups, perpetuating the roll-out problem for Independents when a new even group arrives. > > I agree that the Indies all got *lots* of goodies in G2, primarily due > > to Final Nights being a very nice expansion for them. However, the > > existence of a large Group 2 to me doesn't mean it is necessary or even > > proper to severely limit the size of Group 3. > > To each his own. I guess if solving a problem just requires a solution, but perhaps not the best one. I certainly don't think the tiny G3 is a good one at all. > > Adding even just 2 more Indie vampires into Group 3 will *not* throw > > the current balance of G2/3 out of whack, nor will it hurt the future > > G3/4. The main thing it will do is set precedent for G5 so this awkward > > transitional period will not happen again later down the road. Ideally, > > there will be roughly the same number (12? 13?) of vampires in every > > group for every sect. I just don't see why we need to wait to get this > > started. The impact on G2/3 will be minimal while the benefit on G3/4 > > will be (and would have been) significant. > > No matter what the number of any clans vampires in any group, adding > two more will *not* [sic] throw the then-current balance out of > whack. You could therefore proceed, adding two at a time, to make > any group as large as you like and defeat the grouping mechanism > altogether. If you made an allowance for the odd numbered groups to slightly grow, and the even numbered groups to be slightly less, you'd eventually get to more or less parity in group size, which I think the goal ought to be. This makes new group roll-outs smoother for everyone involved instead of maintaining an unearned privilege for the few that got lucky when the Grouping Rule was introduced. Jeff

James Coupe wrote: > In message <1106322384.4...@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com>, > Screaming Vermillian <vermil...@yahoo.com> writes: > >So the noobs, after buying a assamite precon, buys a bunch of KMW, as > >its the newest easiest to access set, and sees a bunch of Quitus > >(enough to jumpstart his new career in Assmites) and G4 assmites. He > >now has to choose between G4 and G2 (unless this rule is changed, as I > >suspect it to be). But beyond that, he's got a bunch of redlist stuff, > >and no Spying Missions, or Computer Hacks, nor has any extra blood > >dolls or minion taps or wakes, all which, he's noticed, people use 8+ > >or in decks... > > That assumes that they don't turn up in starters. Blood Doll certainly > does, for instance, Mandating they buy 3-4 of a starter to get their deck, whislt getting tons of duplicates of cards they don't need dupes of, not seeing any NEW cards, and not getting any of the other cards they might need to expand on the current clan/strategy they've choosen. > and a lot of excitement has been generated by Black > Sunrise (making Wake less important). Black Sunrise may be indicative > of useful card effects being made available in different ways - you > don't need a Wake, because you can get a good Wake-like effect from this > expansion. You can NOT believe the crap you're saying, can you? Sorry. I don't mean to be rude, and that was, its just... its a wake-like effect for ONE FRICKIN' DISCIPLINE. And not even one that occurs on many vampires? How the HELL is that going to substitute in any shape and form for WWEF or FA as far as drafting or whatever the heck it is we're talking about? > A number of staple cards turn up in the demo decks, by the way. Just > glancing through them, I see Computer Hacking, Threats, Skin of Rock, > KRC, Staredown, Aire of Elation etc. Good. All with those tournament illegal symbols on them. And you can't BUY them. [snip perfectly valid point about buying one of each BH starter] But what about that guy who doesn't want to play any of those sabbat clans? Why should starters replace a base set (developement money for WW maybe...). It just seems a GOOD base set should exist for VTES. The fact that its feasibly possible to ge everything you want in precons doesn't mean that its the best solution, or desirable.

"Screaming Vermillian" <vermil...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:1106323069....@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com... > > Frederick Scott wrote: >> "Joshua Duffin" <jtdu...@yahoo.com> wrote in message >> news:35aeh9F...@individual.net... (about how to introduce decent limited tournaments to Jyhad) >> The answer that Magic tends to use (apart from just the game being >> structurally more condusive to limited play) is one I hate: strewing >> expansions with cards useful for limited play but not very good for >> collecting and using in constructed play. You want talk about sapping >> the value out of your game, try that! > > How would the value of our game be sapped if we started having > draftable expansions to introduce more product sales and a quick and > easy way to introduce a some what noob into an expansion. The same way starter-only cards are annoying to "non-noobs": inevitably such sets would contain a few decent constructed cards. But to get them, a person would have to sink money into buying boosters that don't have much of value to constructed play. Sorry - you're not creating stuff in a vacuum, you know. Anything published for VTES affects VTES constructed play as well as limited play. The last thing I'd ever want to see was moves designed to support limited play that screw constructed play. (Sorry, I have no interest in talking about individual cards. You asked a general, philosphical question at the top of your post so I answered it.) Fred

In message <35d8d7F...@individual.net>, David Cherryholmes <david.che...@duke.edu> writes: >LSJ wrote: >> OK. So be it. It's not my view, but whatever makes you >> happy, right? I'm all about making you happy, Dave. :-) > >Sweet. I want a pony. I want a pony with a 12 foot robot outfit that shoots LASERS. But I'm not called Dave. :( [ quoted text not captured ]

In message <1106373462....@c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>, Screaming Vermillian <vermil...@yahoo.com> writes: >Mandating they buy 3-4 of a starter to get their deck, whislt getting >tons of duplicates of cards they don't need dupes of, not seeing any >NEW cards, and not getting any of the other cards they might need to >expand on the current clan/strategy they've choosen. Why is this any better than having a base set? They have starters with similar card ratios in, and boosters where they're buying lots and not getting the cards they want due to randomness. Instead, they can spend twenty dollars on two starters and get a clutch of cards they know will be useful to them. >> and a lot of excitement has been generated by Black >> Sunrise (making Wake less important). Black Sunrise may be >indicative >> of useful card effects being made available in different ways - you >> don't need a Wake, because you can get a good Wake-like effect from >this >> expansion. > >You can NOT believe the crap you're saying, can you? Sorry. I don't >mean to be rude, and that was, its just... its a wake-like effect for >ONE FRICKIN' DISCIPLINE. I'm afraid you appear to be suffering from a brain malfunction. How about you deal with the crap YOU wrote? You asked, quite specifically, how he could jump-start his career with Assamites. If you don't want me to consider the implications of the cards available to Assamites, don't ask how he can jump-start his career with the Assamites. It's a Wake-like effect for the ONE FRICKIN' DISCIPLINE that was relevant to the question you asked. Now, with respect, either go get ONE FRICKIN' CLUE or shut up. >And not even one that occurs on many vampires? Try reading what you wrote: > >its the newest easiest to access set, and sees a bunch of Quitus > >(enough to jumpstart his new career in Assmites) and G4 assmites. He > >now has to choose between G4 and G2 (unless this rule is changed, as It's pretty freely available on Assamites. Why ask questions when you don't want them answered? >How the HELL is that going to substitute in any shape and form for WWEF >or FA as far as drafting or whatever the heck it is we're talking >about? Strangely, I was talking about the situation you presented - someone trying to get Assamites working. I'm not sure what flights of fancy you think you were talking about. >> A number of staple cards turn up in the demo decks, by the way. Just >> glancing through them, I see Computer Hacking, Threats, Skin of Rock, >> KRC, Staredown, Aire of Elation etc. > >Good. All with those tournament illegal symbols on them. And you can't >BUY them. Not everyone is playing tournaments, especially newbies. Many groups will let people proxy in cards they don't own/aren't legal. Actually, many groups will let people proxy cards full-stop. I've certainly seen people try out decks with commons they don't care about having the words "White Phosphorus Grenade" written on them with Tippex. You could just as easily do that with card sleeves and a bit of paper, of course. >[snip perfectly valid point about buying one of each BH starter] > >But what about that guy who doesn't want to play any of those sabbat >clans? What about them? You seem to think that a base set will cure all ills. Bollocks will it. They'll still be buying starters and boosters with cards they don't want. In this instance, it's a few vampires they don't want. In another instance, they might not care tuppence for the stealth cards but want those dementation bleed cards. So you get cards useful to the deck you want to build now, and you get cards that go in your collection for when you're interested later. JUST LIKE WITH A BASE SET. And buying boosters, they have no clue what they're going to get. You can easily buy dozens of boosters and not get the card you want. (Then there was the time I bought Alamut off a friend, and got two in the next five boosters I opened.) You can buy a couple of dozen and not get the cards you want. (From a box of Black Hand, for instance, I got precisely four of Black Hand Ritual. Which, were it a staple card I was looking for like Spying Mission, would my money be better spent buying the Nossie or Malk Camarilla starter, or would it be well spent getting four copies in a box of boosters?) >Why should starters replace a base set (developement money for >WW maybe...). It just seems a GOOD base set should exist for VTES. The >fact that its feasibly possible to ge everything you want in precons >doesn't mean that its the best solution, or desirable. A base set doesn't do anything about a lot of the problems you appear to think it does. Newbies getting access to staple cards are *much* better served by knowing "I can get these easy to find cards from these packs over here, instead of playing pot-luck with the boosters." They get much, much better bang for buck when that's what they want. Also: please learn to ask questions you want the answer to, rather than questions where you will abuse people who respond to you by dealing with those questions. HTH HAND [ quoted text not captured ]

James Coupe wrote: > In message <1106373462....@c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>, > Screaming Vermillian <vermil...@yahoo.com> writes: > >Mandating they buy 3-4 of a starter to get their deck, whislt getting > >tons of duplicates of cards they don't need dupes of, not seeing any > >NEW cards, and not getting any of the other cards they might need to > >expand on the current clan/strategy they've choosen. > > Why is this any better than having a base set? Don't you mean, why is this worse than havig a base set? I think a new base set is good here because 1.) They won't get to see the new cards featured in new VTES set. 2.) They are not opening their card collections up to alternative strategies. > Instead, they can spend twenty dollars on two starters and get a clutch > of cards they know will be useful to them. I usually buy 1 starter 5 boosters when I get into a new CCG. With those 5 boosters I'm aiming for some more of those clutch cards for my strategy and for the generic strategy of 'the bigger picture'. I'm also looking to get maybe half of the way to another viable strategy, involving the same faction/strategy or a different one. This is desirable to WW I believe as it gets us buying new product. THough I guess selling old product is better for them (no researching costs, no additional art costs). > >You can NOT believe the crap you're saying, can you? Sorry. I don't > >mean to be rude, and that was, its just... its a wake-like effect for > >ONE FRICKIN' DISCIPLINE. > > I'm afraid you appear to be suffering from a brain malfunction. How > about you deal with the crap YOU wrote? What. This? "(and don't tell me Black Sunrise will help him out. I mean. It will, but reverse the scenario and use it with, say, FoS)." Sorry, but important things are imparting within parathetical remarks sometimes. So lets, from now on, assuming we're talking about FoS (as if Black SUnrise were even the solution to the noobs problem...). > It's a Wake-like effect for the ONE FRICKIN' DISCIPLINE that was > relevant to the question you asked. It was a generic question, aimed towards any non cam clan vampire. > Now, with respect, either go get ONE FRICKIN' CLUE or shut up. My apologies for bring this discussion onto and perhaps slghtly over the borders of flaming. I was suffering a Hiccup attack last night when I posted this, and I get a bit testy/hostile during those. > I'm not sure what flights of fancy you think you were talking about. Thank you for telling me how you think Black Sunrise will solve the problem of his difficulty in accessing the Quietus and non disciplined cards he'll require to make a deck. Its more than just Wake and or BDs I was implying here... > Not everyone is playing tournaments, especially newbies. Many groups > will let people proxy in cards they don't own/aren't legal. Actually, > many groups will let people proxy cards full-stop. I've certainly seen > people try out decks with commons they don't care about having the words > "White Phosphorus Grenade" written on them with Tippex. You could just > as easily do that with card sleeves and a bit of paper, of course. Have you seen Noobs doing this? Only veterans in our area have tried doing this so far... and besides, its usually confusing. And furthermore, it doesn't get people out there buying more WW product. If they had cards that performed similar or perfectly acceptable card effects to these key cards we are discussing, then such proxing would be less needed and people would just pick up 3-4 packs of the base set, or people would be more willing to trade them to ya' cause they got them in their boosterage. > You seem to think that a base set will cure all ills. It'll cure SOMETHING. And its easier to say to a noob "Yeah, just pick up 10 boosters of the Base Set. That'll get you started real nicely with a few deck ideas." Rather than saying "yeah. Grab a starter and a few boosters. Oh no. Not anarch boosters. There's nothing in those you want. No, final nights doesn't have any temptations in them... yeah. The onyl set with Wakes or Blood Dolls that you saw us play with in the demo decks is Sabbat War, or in the starters, so its either buy Sabbat War, which in your FoS case, isn't very helpful, or purchase more starters, probably the FoS one. But maybe the Baali one. That might have something you want... oh and don't buy..." Etc... > You can buy a couple of dozen and not get the cards you want. (From a > box of Black Hand, for instance, I got precisely four of Black Hand > Ritual. Which, were it a staple card I was looking for like Spying > Mission, would my money be better spent buying the Nossie or Malk > Camarilla starter, or would it be well spent getting four copies in a > box of boosters?) Yeah, I suppose you're right, but, notice, Black Hand Ritual is not a key card to have that was printed in a base set. Its an expansion, with minuatae or whatever on many levels. Its not to be perchased in smallsh amounts and make a playable deck. (on a similar line, I was mad about my low Reunion Kamut count, I feel your pain). > A base set doesn't do anything about a lot of the problems you appear to > think it does. Newbies getting access to staple cards are *much* better > served by knowing "I can get these easy to find cards from these packs > over here, instead of playing pot-luck with the boosters." They get > much, much better bang for buck when that's what they want. I want NEW STAPLE CARDS I think... Alternatives to BD and WWEF availible to more than just one clan or sect or whatever. I think THAT'S my problem... > Also: please learn to ask questions you want the answer to, rather than > questions where you will abuse people who respond to you by dealing with > those questions. HTH HAND Try reading all of a persons post before replying. No hate. I make that mistake too, on occasion. ~SV

"However, cards can be (and are) reprinted with or without a base set, and can be made freely available with or without a base set." Really, I think I'm just unsatisfied with the multiple sources a noob needs to go to to get some key cards, and that these key cards are STILL key cards, this whole time, through all its life, and nothing is replacing some of these key strategies, or being comperable to, in the least. Eh. Can't you see ANY good in a new base set?

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 James Coupe wrote: | Also: please learn to ask questions you want the answer to, rather than | questions where you will abuse people who respond to you by dealing with | those questions. HTH HAND Yeah. That's MY job. YHBT! Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee (does anyone even remember alt.religion.kibology?) - -- Derek insert clever quotation here -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.5 (MingW32) iD8DBQFB8nhltQZlu3o7QpERAi1uAJsGB7QvBY+TkgQzvxS5dXDhpyUl4ACgutCd 7MAb8uxpTgWigyizQSXsjwE= =Odjf -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

pd...@lightlink.com wrote: > SV wrote: > >One of these days I'd like WW to be more Noob friendly and playable > expansions... > > But really, expansions *can't* be nood friendly and playable on their > own. As ever expansion comes out, the vast majority of the player base > generally expects: Why not? > -A "theme" for the set (Black Hand, Anarch, KMW, whatever) Sure, but that doesn't neccesitate stupid cards that require the latest stupid trait. There are ways to do themes without that, and there are ways to make more INCLUSIVE traits rather than EXCLUSIVE traits. Example: Familiarity [name(s) of clan]. A minion with Familiarity may play cards as if it were a membor of the clan listed. Furthermore, you may play cards as if you owned a membor of that clan. or Pillar. A card with the keyword Pillar is playable by any vampire at the capacity 6 or more, at any of the inferior versions of the card. A vampire of capacity 9+ possessing the inferior of one of the disciplines the card requires may play this card at the superior version of that discipline. or Newly Embraced. A vampire with this keyword, when transfered into your control, may come into play tapped to allow you to take a skill or achetype in your hand, ashheap or library and place it on it. or Ancient. A vampire with this keyword may pay one blood to play any card it would normally be restricted to play, due to discipline, sect, or clan. > -At least some new vampires for, like, every clan (barring, say, the > Bloodlines, that is still, what, 18 different clans or so?) Combine Cam+Indies together. 100 vampires. That's 8 for every Cam + Indy clan and 1 for all the rest. > -At least one new card for every discipline (again, barring the > Bloodlines mostly) With 14 disciplines, as above, that works out to like 6 of each main discipline and 1-2 of the non featured disciplines. > -New cool master cards I don't see how this is a constraint... > -No reprints of stuff we already have tons of Is the occasional reprint of stuff one already has tons of a sufficient deterrent? Like say the set only has 2-3 reprints per discipline and 15 reprints of other cards. Would you buy some then? > As a result, having a noob friendly, playable new set is almost > impossible. Unless you make CE again (which isn't so much an > "expansion"). But there isn't really a *need* to make CE again, as we > have CE still. Consequently, trying to make an expansion that both: > > -Covers all of the above > -Is noob friendly and playable on its own > > is virtually impossible. And is my challenge. See my previous Fanset incarnation. Do a search for it, with the keywords fanset, or go to Thelasombra.com and read it on his archived New Cards section. > This being said, the expansion closest we have, really, is Bloodlines, > which is pretty self contained. Yeah. If it weren't for that whole "not to be played on their own" design aspect pushed into it, its probably be pretty good. > So in reality, the structure of the game is such that expansions, by > necessity, are noob unfreindly and not really playable on their own. > But CE is both. So really, if you are looking for draft, CE is the way > to go, and anything they made that would do the same thing would be > just like CE (except filled with G5 vampires, and maybe a few cards > cycled in and out of the set). So until they do that, CE is what there > is. Forcing me to draft without BDs and WWEFs, without FoS or Ass or Tzi for the rest of my VTES unlife... Sweet. ~sv

[ quoted text not captured ] I don't see how a card can't be good for both limited and constructed play. Try thinking of some, and you might surprise yourself. > Sorry - you're not creating stuff in > a vacuum, you know. What? I'm not? Can someone please explain the presence of an atmosphere in my apartment then! Please? > Anything published for VTES affects VTES constructed > play as well as limited play. The last thing I'd ever want to see was > moves designed to support limited play that screw constructed play. Um... constructed play can't be screwed unless we print more POWERFUL cards. How has Zillahs Tears screwed constructed play? How has Special Report screwed it? Or conversely, how about those super bad cards that are useful in limited, like Blood Tears of Whoever, or Lucky Blow. Hmm... they don't even seem that super bad in constructed... care to give me an example of an aweful card that doesn't suck for limited, does for constructed, AND screws consructed play? > (Sorry, I have no interest in talking about individual cards. You > asked a general, philosphical question at the top of your post so I > answered it.) Well then... that's poopy. Your philosophy doesn't exist in a vacuum! :P At least, philosophically consider the possibility that there are cards that are both good for constructed play and limited play.

In message <1106408485.5...@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>, Screaming Vermillian <vermil...@yahoo.com> writes in response to me: >> I'm not sure what flights of fancy you think you were talking about. > >Thank you for telling me how you think Black Sunrise will solve the >problem of his difficulty in accessing the Quietus and non disciplined >cards he'll require to make a deck. Its more than just Wake and or BDs >I was implying here... And ample access to other cards has been repeatedly dealt with - remember the rest of the post I made? The staple cards are freely available, in a guaranteed fashion. This is not the same as exposing people to the rest of the set. But these are newbies trying to play an Assamite deck, from what you said. Not people trying to explore all of V:TES's rich tapestry. Newbies. Assamite deck. Specific staple cards you want them to have. Answer provided. Really, if you can't deal with the fact that your "hiccups" cause you to post questions you don't want the answer to, that's not my problem. Please learn to control your posting habits. You may also note, however, that the "Buy several starters and, oh look, you've got a clutch of generically useful cards" does, in fact, introduce people to lots of different cards. And, as you pointed out, decks tend to include 8 of them. A lot of the useful cards turn up in 3s, 4s and 5s in a given starter, which means you don't exactly have to buy a lot of them. No amount of "base set" will prevent people, however, from buying cards they don't need - whether they be group three vampires or a pile of political "crap" in a booster when what they really need is kick-ass combat. [ quoted text not captured ]

In message <1106408961....@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com>, Screaming Vermillian <vermil...@yahoo.com> writes (without acknowledge whose post he is following up, for reasons which are best known to him): [ quoted text not captured ] They're still going to need to go to multiple sources if a base set is printed. Or, indeed, they can just go and use one of the FREELY AVAILABLE, IN PRINT base sets that exists. Camarilla Edition is a base set. It therefore, by your logic, provides one source of all cards for newbies. And it's in print. And available. Right now. By your logic, there is no problem. There is a base set they can get cards from. Why the need for two? >Eh. Can't you see ANY good in a new base set? I have been disputing the specific points you have been making. Extending from "I disagree with the points you make" to "Can't you see ANY good in a new base set?" is not warranted and, indeed, wrong. [ quoted text not captured ]

In message <1106409864....@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>, Screaming Vermillian <vermil...@yahoo.com> writes: >pd...@lightlink.com wrote: >> As a result, having a noob friendly, playable new set is almost >> impossible. Unless you make CE again (which isn't so much an >> "expansion"). But there isn't really a *need* to make CE again, as we >> have CE still. Consequently, trying to make an expansion that both: >> >> -Covers all of the above >> -Is noob friendly and playable on its own >> >> is virtually impossible. > >And is my challenge. See my previous Fanset incarnation. I would hazard that your fixation on drafting and your fanset obscures your view of the efforts that the current design appear to be making, in favour of the efforts that you would be making if you were the designer. Your emphasis on draft is clearly obscuring your view of the utility of fixed starters, at least. Additionally, in a fanset incarnation that - per at least one incarnation - only includes five of each card for a given discipline (the version I've just looked at is 7), this is SHOCKINGLY bad for bad established players, new players and draft. Established players - a lot of the cards do exactly the same things as currently available cards, only without as good focus. Also, in such a huge set, the chances of getting any cards they specifically do want is difficult. New players - they can't build new decks easily, as there are 400 cards with little focus. They get a mishmash of useless crap, unless they get lucky. They don't get, e.g., a reasonable chance at a clutch of Obfuscate and Dominate cards as - instead of having a fairly high number of them in a smaller set, you have a low number in a LARGE set. Draft: My chances of drafting vampires who can use the cards I'm drafting is low. In a smaller, more focused set (e.g. Sabbat War), there are lots of vampires who can use a lot of the cards in the set. In a watered down set, there's much less chance of getting e.g. ANI vampires when the boosters have Animalism cards in. (See, for instance, the difficulties of drafting Bloodlines - so much disparate stuff, so little chance of getting what you need.) So then you add a whole load of mechanics designed to make cards playable - Pillar, or whatever. And in a fixed set, used only with itself, these could possibly work. But this ignores the fact that a set would need to be good for constructed play as well (or else it wouldn't sell). And every time you add cards that are generally available to other vampires, even without the relevant disciplines, you break the design templates. Arika doesn't have DEM, but can now play some DEM cards at Dem and/or DEM? (Alter according to exact formulation of rule.) That's letting her do things she wasn't designed to do and wasn't costed to do. Do you make such cards so weak that big vampires won't need to use them? Or good enough that they'll be an asset to such decks? It's a sticking plaster for a draft set. It's *not* suitable for constructed play. Then there's the fact that it breaks the general backstory. "So, why can my Brujah use Obfuscate even though he doesn't know any?" Backstory is not insignificant when converting players from the RPG. A fanset does not have the real-world, commercial constraints placed on it that actual sets have. You don't have to consider the *real* impact of dozens of new mechanics, how to market a set ("The New Base Set! With No Focus! And So Many Cards You'll Have To Buy Three Boxes To The One Rare You Need!") and so on. But you most certainly aren't addressing the needs of various different levels of players, whether you think you are or not. [ quoted text not captured ]

> > A number of staple cards turn up in the demo decks, by the way. Just > > glancing through them, I see Computer Hacking, Threats, Skin of Rock, > > KRC, Staredown, Aire of Elation etc. > > Good. All with those tournament illegal symbols on them. And you can't > BUY them. > What tournament illegal symbols? The Demo Decks are all perfectly legal in tournaments. And who would want to buy them when players who receive Demos get them for free?

>> It is too late to make group 2 smaller. > >"Too late" by designer fiat, of course, not necessity. Changes to the >grouping rule were publicly bandied about around the time of the >developer chat, IIRC. > >While I think you are entitled to your fiats, I do think the current >state of affairs is poor, and any fix requiring further *years* to >correct it is a poor one. There's a ton of clans in the game. A fair number don't work well with others do to having a signature discipline, nevermind putting out new clan cards. We have this slow expansion schedule. If I'm not being clear, we have all of these factors to deck construction such that we can't have new sets that handle everything well (unless people like sets like Gehenna that have a little bit of everything and a lack of depth in anything). So, there's a necessity of release rotation, right? Is there any good way to handle putting stuff out in the future? If the groups for indies were better balanced, would that solve the problem of getting a trickle of new cards for certain clans or just alter it to where every clan was in that sort of boat? >One possible "fix" would be to just make a public, official statement >that the focus of the game is Sabbat and Camarilla, with the Indies >existing somewhere between Bloodlines and full clans. At least then >some players' expectations would more closely coincide with reality (at >least reality as it has been up to this point). Three? separate issues: 1. The indies should have more vampires than average for the simple fact that the antitribu have such high crossover ability with the originals. The game is not currently treating clans with signature disciplines fairly in the number of vampires respect. Lasombra and Tzimisce are fine powerwise and to a degree interestingwise because their disciplines rock, but they don't crossover with other clans all that well (more of an issue for Tzimisce who don't have the Kiasyd) either, which is kind of disappointing. 2. Part of the problem with indie (I don't count Gangrel) strength is not due to numbers but due to certain lacks from their discipline complements and their lack of titles. If Serpentis would get a serious upgrade, I don't think there'd be a lot of bitching about the poor Settites even without a bunch of new vampires. Even the title inequity issue could be solved either by native barons in the indies, or more ways to title up, or, more likely, cards playable by titled independents. 3. Isn't it really that big of a deal if the indies are in a binge/purge situation? Maybe. I know I haven't been nearly as interested in indies for quite some time, but that could have been made up for how interesting they were when FN was new. Do new indies have to be more similar to old because the even groups have to be comprehensive? I could see that being an issue. What will the Ravnos do without a Gabrin, for instance? But, I think my interest in indies has more to do with their disciplines than with their vampires or clan cards such that I think I can tolerate longer waiting for new vampires to play around with than tolerate waiting for other fixes.

> > Another solution is to abandon even/odd grouping and shorten > > group 4 so that the Indies are back on track for 4/5. That > > solution involves a smaller-than-normal sized 3/4, of course. > That would be my plan. Make 3/4 small but good, and then you're good to go. Each Grouping (excep 1/2 and 3/4) has 28 vampires: Group 2: 26 Group 3: 2 Group 4: 14 Group 5: 14 ... A Descending Disparity plan solves the problem by giving all Independent Groupings (except 1/2) 27/28 vampires until a decade or so from now: Group 2: 26 Group 3: 2 Group 4: 25 Group 5: 3 Group 6: 24 Group 7: 4 ... Look, the real reason the Independents are screwed is because some fuckwod decided it would be cooler to make the Foobar Antitribu a different Clan than the Foobar. As a result, White Wolf has to finagle between giving the Foobar enough playability without the Foobar Antitribu but still can't give the Assamites or Giovanni the competetive power of both Clans combined. The only Antitribu that should have been made Clans were the City Gangrel and the Salubri Antitribu (and maybe the Ventrue Antitribu. I still don't understand where their Discipline Spread came from...).

Gregory Stuart Pettigrew wrote: >(and maybe the Ventrue Antitribu. I still don't > understand where their Discipline Spread came from...). Second edition. [ quoted text not captured ]

[ quoted text not captured ] Lots of different ways to finagle. ;) One thing I was thinking that could make the pain of a new group less would be to follow some routine like this. In a given clan, either: * No new group would be introduced unless there exist 10 vampires in the current group; or * Any new group introduced must have at least 10 vampires in it Simple. There would have been a lot less bitching and moaning if either of these guidelines had been considered. Back to your points about the fookwad... Since this is obviously the case, *WHY NOT* allow the the Independent clans a slightly larger than "normal" size cross groups? Sect-based cards for the Camarilla and Sabbat are very strong. The Independents currently have very little to offer. But more importantly, if roughly half the new vampires were Independent and the balance either Sabbat or Camarilla, their strength would be significantly diluted, especially if the Independents got *GOOD* sect based cards! No, we don't need 50 Indies in each group pairing, but why would 30 be too many? Why not allow the Indies to have 25 and limit the Camarilla and Sabbat to 20? Why not just fix the damn groups so there isn't a rollout problem ever again, or at least modify the rollout process? Jeff

jeff_kuta wrote: > One thing I was thinking that could make the pain of a new group less > would be to follow some routine like this. In a given clan, either: > > * No new group would be introduced unless there exist 10 vampires in > the current group; or > * Any new group introduced must have at least 10 vampires in it > > Simple. There would have been a lot less bitching and moaning if either > of these guidelines had been considered. Considered? Of course. You mean implemented. There are many other things to consider. Space is a primary competitor, for example. Not everything is designed to orbit the mono-clan sun, either. And anyway, the "lot less b&m" is pure conjecture. It very likely would be the same level of b&m, just about different things. See Google for examples. :-) [ quoted text not captured ]

James Coupe wrote: > In message <1106408961....@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com>, > Screaming Vermillian <vermil...@yahoo.com> writes (without > acknowledge whose post he is following up, for reasons which are best > known to him): > >"However, cards can be (and are) reprinted with or without a base set, > >and can be made freely available with or without a base set." > > > >Really, I think I'm just unsatisfied with the multiple sources a noob > >needs to go to to get some key cards, and that these key cards are > >STILL key cards, this whole time, through all its life, and nothing is > >replacing some of these key strategies, or being comperable to, in the > >least. > > They're still going to need to go to multiple sources if a base set is > printed. Or, indeed, they can just go and use one of the FREELY > AVAILABLE, IN PRINT base sets that exists. Arg! But I can't get them in boosters! I need to buy starters! And boosters I buy are providing me silly Redlist stuff, or things like Banner of Nuetrality, or Blood Work or Stunt Cycle! > Camarilla Edition is a base set. It therefore, by your logic, provides > one source of all cards for newbies. Not nearly all cards at ALL for noobs. They are lacking wakes, BDs, decent pool gain, and ANY card for anything not Cam. > And it's in print. And available. Right now. > > By your logic, there is no problem. There is a base set they can get > cards from. Why the need for two? Because the Cam set is old and has a bunch of G3 vampires. > >Eh. Can't you see ANY good in a new base set? > Extending from "I disagree with the points you make" to "Can't you see > ANY good in a new base set?" is not warranted and, indeed, wrong. Then allow me to bring up a different aspect of this conversation. Are there elements a new base set could provide that you would find argreeable? I'm just tired of disagreeing with someone I really don't want to be disagreeing. I don't want to be mean to you or flamey.

"Screaming Vermillian" <vermil...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:1106410291....@c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com... > > Frederick Scott wrote: >> The same way starter-only cards are annoying to "non-noobs": >> inevitably such sets would contain a few decent constructed cards. >> But to get them, a person would have to sink money into buying >> boosters that don't have much of value to constructed play. > > I don't see how a card can't be good for both limited and constructed > play. Well, then why don't all the existing cards already do the job? > Try thinking of some, and you might surprise yourself. I think I've already explained my view of the weakness of limited play and it has nothing to do with individual cards. Not that I'm sure I'm right about it. But if there's something the designers can do that they're not already doing, how about explaining it in general terms (first, before we start discussing individual cards)? >> Anything published for VTES affects VTES constructed play as well as >> limited play. The last thing I'd ever want to see was >> moves designed to support limited play that screw constructed play. > > Um... constructed play can't be screwed unless we print more POWERFUL > cards. No. It could be screwed by printing boosters containing mostly cards that are worthless in constructed, as I was explaining several posts ago and in the post you just responded to. Fred

In message <IzyId.14059$8u5....@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net>, LSJ <vte...@white-wolf.com> writes: >Gregory Stuart Pettigrew wrote: >>(and maybe the Ventrue Antitribu. I still don't >> understand where their Discipline Spread came from...). > >Second edition. IIRC, White Wolf later claimed this was an accident. Or at least I've seen players say that. And it's not like there's not precedent in V:TES for changing the discipline sets of a clan, a la the Group 3 Malks. [ quoted text not captured ]

In message <1106450245.8...@c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>, Screaming Vermillian <vermil...@yahoo.com> writes: >Arg! But I can't get them in boosters! I need to buy starters! This is a problem caused by your fixation on draft play. The starters are *precisely* there to cycle staple cards back in for newbies with every set, base set or no. As I've explained before, if I'm a newbie and I want the essential cards of the game - why do I want to buy a box of boosters and only get four of a common? You might do a LOT better if you moved off "Won't somebody think of the newbies?" and actually just said "But starters are bad for draft." (It does look like you're trying to masquerade the latter by protesting about the former, from here at least.) Newbies are GREATLY helped by the presence of fixed starters. They can get all the staple cards they need. (I'd be vaguely interested to see the implications a starter format where some proportion of the cards was fixed, but with a booster-like element too, but the logistics for that would almost certainly be nightmarish.) If you move on from your monomania about draft, you might find yourself on the same page as the rest of us. You might also find that using the "Supply the same cards to all players" option alleviates many of the problems with draft - give everyone the chance to include Blood Dolls, Computer Hacks and Leather Jackets (or whatever) by supplying them with three of each. And these would be cards which you can easily find in a guaranteed fashion by, uh, buying starters if you find yourself short of them. Which is better than buying a box of boosters and finding yourself with only four. [ quoted text not captured ]

In message <2005012214...@sidehack.sat.gweep.net>, Gregory Stuart Pettigrew <ethe...@sidehack.sat.gweep.net> writes: >What tournament illegal symbols? The Demo Decks are all perfectly legal in >tournaments. And who would want to buy them when players who receive Demos >get them for free? Hmm. I had a vague recollection that there was some issue with them, too. Turns out: http://groups.google.co.uk/groups?selm=3F9E6817.9050903%40white-wolf.com I was on crack. "It's legal. The demo cards are legal for all V:EKN play." [ quoted text not captured ]

James Coupe wrote: > LSJ <vte...@white-wolf.com> writes: >>Gregory Stuart Pettigrew wrote: >>>(and maybe the Ventrue Antitribu. I still don't >>>understand where their Discipline Spread came from...). >> >>Second edition. > > IIRC, White Wolf later claimed this was an accident. Or at least I've > seen players say that. Perhaps, but that it still "where the Discipline spread of the !Ven in VTES came from". > And it's not like there's not precedent in V:TES for changing the > discipline sets of a clan, a la the Group 3 Malks. Also correct. [ quoted text not captured ]

Frederick Scott wrote: > "Screaming Vermillian" <vermil...@yahoo.com> wrote in message > news:1106410291....@c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com... > > > > Frederick Scott wrote: > >> The same way starter-only cards are annoying to "non-noobs": > >> inevitably such sets would contain a few decent constructed cards. > >> But to get them, a person would have to sink money into buying > >> boosters that don't have much of value to constructed play. > > > > I don't see how a card can't be good for both limited and constructed > > play. > > Well, then why don't all the existing cards already do the job? Because of how many frickin' different strategies that exist in VTES. We have cards that are 1.) good for constructed, not for limited. 2.) Good for constructed good for limited. 3.) Bad for constructed, bad for limited, and 4.) bad for constructed, good for limited. 1.) Recalledto the Founder, PTO, Alamut, Parthenon, etc... 2.) Govern, Condition, Lost in Crowds, Computer Hack, WWEF, Blood D... 3.) Mummify, Paranoia, Channeling the Beast, Gift of Marena, Tithings... 4.) .... drawing a blank. Anything that's good for limited is probably good for constructed. > > Try thinking of some, and you might surprise yourself. > > I think I've already explained my view of the weakness of limited play > and it has nothing to do with individual cards. > > Not that I'm sure I'm right about it. But if there's something the > designers can do that they're not already doing, how about explaining > it in general terms (first, before we start discussing individual cards)? Yes. General new keywords and cards that make the mass of different card type requirements in this game seemingly decrease. Consider the following keywords: [discipline] Mastery. A vampire with this keyword must be able to play [discipline] at superior effects in order to use this ability. Once per turn you may discard a card from your hand and burn one blood from this vampire to search your deck for a card requiring [discipline], reveal it, and put it face down on this vampire. This vampire may play that card as if it were in your hand. Replace the card you discarded after this vampire plays this card. Scout. You may pay four transfers and burn a vampire with Scout in your uncontrolled region to search your deck for a card that requires something the Scout could play (discipline, sect, clan, capacity, other traits...). You may put that card into your hand, or into your ashheap. etc... etc... > >> Anything published for VTES affects VTES constructed play as well as > >> limited play. The last thing I'd ever want to see was > >> moves designed to support limited play that screw constructed play. > > > > Um... constructed play can't be screwed unless we print more POWERFUL > > cards. > > No. It could be screwed by printing boosters containing mostly cards > that are worthless in constructed, as I was explaining several posts > ago and in the post you just responded to. I don't think its possible to print a card that sucked for constructed but was great for limited. Could you make use of the two aforementioned special abilities were they to be printed on vampires, for constructed play? I think I could! ~SV

> (I'd be vaguely interested to see the implications a starter format > where some proportion of the cards was fixed, but with a booster-like > element too, but the logistics for that would almost certainly be > nightmarish.) > Precedence tried this with their CCGs: Babylon 5, Tomb Raider, Terminator, and Wheel of Time. It was kind of neat to get a "Grey Council Fleet" in a Human Stater, but really useless. Even though there were vital Starter-Only Cards in every deck, they didn't sell very well.

>>> Anything published for VTES affects VTES constructed play as well as >>> limited play. The last thing I'd ever want to see was >>> moves designed to support limited play that screw constructed play. >> >> Um... constructed play can't be screwed unless we print more POWERFUL >> cards. > >No. It could be screwed by printing boosters containing mostly cards >that are worthless in constructed, as I was explaining several posts >ago and in the post you just responded to. There's other ways. Cards that are only powerful in significant numbers (or key off having some card in multitude) aren't an issue for limited play but could be for constructed. One might make the argument that such a card would constitute being "a more powerful card" since the criterion we use for powerful is constructed, but it's possible to design a card that doesn't seem that powerful until you hit some sort of critical mass. Choir would be a bad example since it's not powerful in any amount. How about Specialization? I consider it a powerful card, so it could fall into the "they printed a powerful card" category, but maybe other people don't see it as that hot. Then, there's cards or combinations of cards that are so tricky to take advantage of but, once you find the deck for it, become extremely powerful that will have no impact on limited play. Baltimore Purge is the sort of card that would make sense here, but it may be too obviously good in constructed and not bad enough for limited (I don't think I've ever seen one go off in limited, so I have little idea). Powerbase: Berlin helps enable Turbo Arika, though it's not like it's bad for limited play. I'm sure there's a better example out there of a card too limited for limited and not obviously powerful in constructed but combos into something at least kind of powerful. I snipped the top of the post because I wasn't sure whether I was going to comment on the differences in constructed and limited in general, but I feel like providing an example of something. Constructed and limited are very different games. I played in a draft earlier this month where my entire crypt was Sabbat and I made a mistake by including The Hungry Coyote. Yet, if I had enough vampires with the discipline, Personal Scourge would have been a nobrainer. Unless constructed and limited play similarly, there's always going to be differences in the usefulness of cards. There's probably going to be differences anyway due to the one copy versus numerous copies issue. Further, in limited play, cards that don't see play in constructed because they are simply inferior to other cards can be worth playing. I'll play Secret Horde or Short Term in any realistic draft deck because I ain't got no Blood Dolls. Does that mean these inferior cards shouldn't exist? In some cases. Drives me nuts how Short Term keeps getting reprinted in precons/demo decks and not Blood Doll, a card vastly more useful to the people who make the most use of these decks.

>We have cards that are 1.) good for constructed, not for limited. 2.) >Good for constructed good for limited. 3.) Bad for constructed, bad for >limited, and 4.) bad for constructed, good for limited. > >1.) Recalledto the Founder, PTO, Alamut, Parthenon, etc... >2.) Govern, Condition, Lost in Crowds, Computer Hack, WWEF, Blood D... >3.) Mummify, Paranoia, Channeling the Beast, Gift of Marena, >Tithings... >4.) .... drawing a blank. > >Anything that's good for limited is probably good for constructed. Besides cards mentioned in the post I just made, in general, anti-equipment cards, a lot of equipment hardly ever played in constructed, Bloodlines cards with okay outferiors like Internal Recursion, other cards that are just weaker versions of cards played in constructed, a lot of presses like Dead End Alley, etc. Vampires too. I don't see a lot of Vasantasena in constructed, for instance. It mostly comes down to having better cards or strategies to choose from in constructed that distorts limited play so much. Also, if you hadn't divided the card pool into good/bad but had something like good/mediocre/bad, Dummy Corp goes from mediocre in constructed to good in limited.

"Screaming Vermillian" <vermil...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:1106496436....@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com... > Anything that's good for limited is probably good for constructed. Sorry, I disagree. In fact, I think one counterpoint is pretty obvious: you can do lots of stuff in limited involving depending on rarity levels to limit the effect of cards that are fairly balanced in small numbers but very powerful in multiples. A card like that would have a devastating effect on constructed play, forcing consideration of card limits or restricted classes of cards. > > Frederick Scott wrote: >> I think I've already explained my view of the weakness of limited >> play and it has nothing to do with individual cards. >> >> Not that I'm sure I'm right about it. But if there's something the >> designers can do that they're not already doing, how about explaining >> it in general terms (first, before we start discussing individual >> cards)? > > Yes. General new keywords and cards that make the mass of different > card type requirements in this game seemingly decrease. Consider the > following keywords: > > [discipline] Mastery. > A vampire with this keyword must be able to play [discipline] at > superior effects in order to use this ability. Once per turn you may > discard a card from your hand and burn one blood from this vampire to > search your deck for a card requiring [discipline], reveal it, and put > it face down on this vampire. This vampire may play that card as if it > were in your hand. Replace the card you discarded after this vampire > plays this card. > > Scout. > You may pay four transfers and burn a vampire with Scout in your > uncontrolled region to search your deck for a card that requires > something the Scout could play (discipline, sect, clan, capacity, other > traits...). You may put that card into your hand, or into your ashheap. In short, you want basically want to make major changes in the game in order to accommadate limited play. In fact, to me, these things don't sound balanced. That sound overpowered. Either way, no, I would not wish to include such things. >> > Um... constructed play can't be screwed unless we print more >> > POWERFUL cards. >> >> No. It could be screwed by printing boosters containing mostly cards >> that are worthless in constructed, as I was explaining several posts >> ago and in the post you just responded to. > > I don't think its possible to print a card that sucked for constructed > but was great for limited. Clearly, you can. Of course, what sucks and what's great for limited will depend on which expansions you're using in your tournament. But any card that's screwed by some readily available and often used card in constructed may suck in constructed but be a god card in a limited environment which doesn't use its "predator". > Could you make use of the two aforementioned special abilities were > they to be printed on vampires, for constructed play? I think I could! In this case, I think the issue is, "Would they be too powerful for constructed?" I think they would. Fred

In message <2005012311...@sidehack.sat.gweep.net>, Gregory [ quoted text not captured ] Out of interest (not playing those games in any depth - I once tried to get into B5 for some of interesting mechanisms it used, but never got the chance, really), how many of those vital starter only cards were already available in other sets? i.e. were these new cards which were vital (which is typically a bad design move, leading to escalation of power), or already available so established players had them? And were any of the games generating new players who would buy the starters because they didn't have a collection from an out of print set? [ quoted text not captured ]

In message <67%Id.2190$HZ.1915@okepread07>, Frederick Scott <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> writes: >"Screaming Vermillian" <vermil...@yahoo.com> wrote in message >news:1106496436....@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com... >> Anything that's good for limited is probably good for constructed. > >Sorry, I disagree. In fact, I think one counterpoint is pretty >obvious: you can do lots of stuff in limited involving depending on >rarity levels to limit the effect of cards that are fairly balanced >in small numbers but very powerful in multiples. A card like that >would have a devastating effect on constructed play, forcing >consideration of card limits or restricted classes of cards. It also greatly detracts from some cool cards like, say, Choir. This would be almost entirely arse for limited play, and designing for limited play compatibility would remove a very cool card[0] from the game. Ditto, lots of interesting dual-discipline cards can be extremely cool. Is Nightmare Curse suitable for limited play? Your chances of getting suitable vampires is low, ditto discipline master cards. (A limited format which gave people one of any discipline card they wanted might be to an option to compensate for some aspects of draft.) But it's a damn good card, and removing it from the set so that it's good for limited would be bad. Additionally, it may be instructive to look at what Screaming Vermillian believes is good for draft in his fanset, and consider how many of those cards would actually be good for constructed play. Drawing conclusions is left as an exercise for the interested student. [0] Note: This is not saying it's teh ub3r p0w3r3d. But it's a very cool card. Unreduceable, unbounceable, unvoteable pool damage, but which needs a lot of effort to get working. [ quoted text not captured ]

Curevei wrote: > >We have cards that are 1.) good for constructed, not for limited. 2.) > >Good for constructed good for limited. 3.) Bad for constructed, bad for > >limited, and 4.) bad for constructed, good for limited. > > > >1.) Recalledto the Founder, PTO, Alamut, Parthenon, etc... > >2.) Govern, Condition, Lost in Crowds, Computer Hack, WWEF, Blood D... > >3.) Mummify, Paranoia, Channeling the Beast, Gift of Marena, > >Tithings... > >4.) .... drawing a blank. > > > >Anything that's good for limited is probably good for constructed. > > Besides cards mentioned in the post I just made, in general, anti-equipment > cards, a lot of equipment hardly ever played in constructed, Bloodlines cards > with okay outferiors like Internal Recursion, other cards that are just weaker > versions of cards played in constructed, a lot of presses like Dead End Alley, > etc. Yes, dead end ally can be good in constructed! Yes, internal recursion is bad, but is this a GOOD card? (its useable...) !equipment seems to be a strong point on your behalf, true. Perhaps there are a FEW cards good for limited but bad for constructed. > Vampires too. I don't see a lot of Vasantasena in constructed, for instance. > It mostly comes down to having better cards or strategies to choose from in > constructed that distorts limited play so much. And I don't think ANY vampire can be 'bad' for constructed. Tha vic? That's sweet! > Also, if you hadn't divided the card pool into good/bad but had something like > good/mediocre/bad, Dummy Corp goes from mediocre in constructed to good in > limited. Oh, now we're getting less philosophical. :) So does a Mediocre card in con. hurt constructed play? (hmm... lets think of some other mediocre cards...). This whole conversation is silly, I just realized, at least, this tangent of the main one, is. LSJ hasn't really designed these sets very much for limited play to begin with, I believe. So saying "X is good for con. but bad for limited" is just talk, and doesn't reflect actually anything that is POSSIBLE for limited (because I believe he didn't really design BL or Geh or FN for limited play). IMHO

Frederick Scott wrote: > "Screaming Vermillian" <vermil...@yahoo.com> wrote in message > news:1106496436....@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com... > > Anything that's good for limited is probably good for constructed. > > Sorry, I disagree. In fact, I think one counterpoint is pretty > obvious: you can do lots of stuff in limited involving depending on > rarity levels to limit the effect of cards that are fairly balanced > in small numbers but very powerful in multiples. A card like that > would have a devastating effect on constructed play, forcing > consideration of card limits or restricted classes of cards. Good point. I suppose one would just have to limit power cards in rare slots. I don't really see how this is a problem with a limited set. I see it a generic problem, one that's already been done (Rotchrek is pretty good in big amounts, its not common, is it? PTO is good in big amount, right? Shadow step, balanced in limited, devestating in large amounts in con, perhaps?). Do we consider the mandate of card limits NOW? No. What you mentioned isn't a problem inherant in a base set (even excluding one that's good for a draft, too), its inherant in EVERY set. So yes, its possible to make a good lim. + bad (power level) for con. But I guess this falls under my UNLESS ITS MORE POWERFUL FOR CONSTRUCTED statement which I made later, or earlier... [ quoted text not captured ] Just as LSJ has been making major changes to suppliment WHATEVER PLAY VTES IS CURRENTLY. Anarchs. Events. Redlist. Hell, Grouping was the most devestatingly game changing rule so far, and my suggetsions, should they be costed correctly, are NOTHING compared to that, nor the above. In fact, to me, these things don't > sound balanced. That sound overpowered. Either way, no, I would not > wish to include such things. What if they were costed appropriately? Don't tell me you wouldn't love, in limited OR constructed, something like this: Jade Livingston Vampire, Toreador 6 cap PRE cel aus dom Camerilla. Scout. May maneuver once per combat. Or Devest Conrad Vampire, !Ventrue 9 cap AUS PRE FOR pot tha Bishop fortitude mastery How would these break the game? Really? > >> > Um... constructed play can't be screwed unless we print more > >> > POWERFUL cards. > >> > >> No. It could be screwed by printing boosters containing mostly cards > >> that are worthless in constructed, as I was explaining several posts > >> ago and in the post you just responded to. > > > > I don't think its possible to print a card that sucked for constructed > > but was great for limited. > > Clearly, you can. Of course, what sucks and what's great for limited will > depend on which expansions you're using in your tournament. But any card > that's screwed by some readily available and often used card in constructed > may suck in constructed What cards? BD? WWEF? Power bleed? KRC? > but be a god card in a limited environment which > doesn't use its "predator". Wait. What does this mean, doesn't use its 'predator'? Are you talking about deflection here? Really, I'm confused how this hypothetical card, when in limited, is god because [something... I guess the environment] doesn't use its predator... > > Could you make use of the two aforementioned special abilities were > > they to be printed on vampires, for constructed play? I think I could! > > In this case, I think the issue is, "Would they be too powerful for > constructed?" I think they would. And how would you break them? These are VAMPIRES. There are many GOOD vampires out there (Ian, etc...), and they haven't HURT constructed really, have they? ~SV

> how many of those vital starter only cards were already available in > other sets? B5CCG had 7 precons. Four were from the (heavily errata'd) Premiere Set. The game formula required you to have a Starter for every deck due to its Ambassador characters, so it did get kind of annoying for heavy buyers, but newbies rarely had to buy more than two of a given starter. Most of the Starter-only cards from Premiere were reprinted in Deluxe, with the "Fixed" rarity appearing once per booster pack, making them Rare for collectors. :) > And were any of the games generating new players who would buy the > starters because they didn't have a collection from an out of print set? > B5CCG only had three out of print sets, two were from the end of the game's run, the other was Premiere (boosters). Premiere was phased out so that Deluxe could get the errata into play. B5CCG starters can still be found, a couple of years after the game died. If a newbie picked up one of the Premiere Starters during the later stages of the game, they were pretty SOL. Most of the power cards for the main races were scattered between the various sets, and few people were interested in trading them. If a newbie picked up the Psi Corps Starter, they were really SOL because that set sold out FAST (but the starters are still widely available. I've been buying starters just to get the Uncommons and Rares in them). If a newbie picked up the Opposing Factions Stater, they were totally SOL because it wasn't designed to be playable - just to provide one each of a bunch of cards for playing two players of a given race at a time. BUT if a newbie picked up the Non-Aligned Starter, most of the cards they'd want were in only one or two sets. Frankly, I have no idea how a Newbie would get into B5CCG, so I ended up sharing my collection with my friends so that we could all use it.

James Coupe wrote: > In message <67%Id.2190$HZ.1915@okepread07>, Frederick Scott > <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> writes: > >"Screaming Vermillian" <vermil...@yahoo.com> wrote in message > >news:1106496436....@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com... > >> Anything that's good for limited is probably good for constructed. > > > >Sorry, I disagree. In fact, I think one counterpoint is pretty > >obvious: you can do lots of stuff in limited involving depending on > >rarity levels to limit the effect of cards that are fairly balanced > >in small numbers but very powerful in multiples. A card like that > >would have a devastating effect on constructed play, forcing > >consideration of card limits or restricted classes of cards. > > It also greatly detracts from some cool cards like, say, Choir. > This would be almost entirely arse for limited play, and designing for > limited play compatibility would remove a very cool card[0] from the > game. Nice footnote. But that cards mostly good in theory, and through many crazy loops you have to jump to accomplish. Anyhow, I think Choirs' merits and faults have been discussed enough. Assuming Choir is a Very Cool Card, would a draftable base set still lack Very Cool Cards? No! It'll just have fewer Very Cool Cards like Choir. > Ditto, lots of interesting dual-discipline cards can be extremely cool. > Is Nightmare Curse suitable for limited play? Your chances of getting > suitable vampires is low, ditto discipline master cards. (A limited > format which gave people one of any discipline card they wanted might be > to an option to compensate for some aspects of draft.) But it's a damn > good card, and removing it from the set so that it's good for limited > would be bad. I'm not suggesting we remove anything from the permanent VTES set, and if you're referring to, pre-production removal, its unncessary. We tweak the effects. Nightmate Curse is fun, but it would be infinitely more draft friendly had it been something like: Bad Dreams Curse 2 blood [chi] (D) Tap a ready minion and untap this acting vampire. [aus] (D) Put this card on a ready minion without aus. This minion doesn't untap as normal. During this minion's controller's untap, the minion may burn a blood to untap. Burn this card when the acting vampire leaves play. [AUS][CHI] (D) Put this card on a ready minion and tap that minion. This minion doesn't untap as normal. Burn this card when the acting vampire leaves play. Not that I neccesarily condone the nuetering of EVERY CARD like this. A few of these can exist in one of the rare slots of the Draftable Base Set, just not a ton. > Additionally, it may be instructive to look at what Screaming Vermillian > believes is good for draft in his fanset, and consider how many of those > cards would actually be good for constructed play. Drawing conclusions > is left as an exercise for the interested student. There were a few glaring errors of judgement on my behalf, in regards to that fanset incarnation. 1.) Its trying to include too many disciplines. 2.) Its trying to print all new cards, when its alright to allow for a few reprints within the common range. 3.) Some of the cards are costed incorrectly. 4.) The ratioes may not be all correct. However, some of the IDEAS that the set has may be something. Allowing a discipline requiring card to have a nondiscipline requiring use. Cycling. Elimination of "younger than this vampire" to the inclusion of "with less blood or life than this minion" as a requirement to playing some cards. 2-way cards (similar to Bad Dream Curse recommended above, but most likely some would be common and less powerful). Key words on vampires that allow you a way to get more of their type. Having cards that are playable by anyone, but that are better when used by a certain clan. Its not a bad try, seeing as how (very nearly) NO ONE ONLINE was willing to help me too seriously with anything but critique of power levels or whether they liked the card or not (Ok, some people suggested some cards they'd like to see, in general, but the effects weren't generating similarly already establish effects nor were they very good for draft. I did consider them for the few slots of the rares, however, but put my own in, because, well... I don't really need help making up cards, I ned help making up cards that'll fit a good for draft, good for constructed base set). ~SV

Curevei wrote: > How about Specialization? I > consider it a powerful card, so it could fall into the "they printed a powerful > card" category, but maybe other people don't see it as that hot. Sure. Its bad for limited but good for constructed. I never doubted the existence or multitude of such cards. > Then, there's cards or combinations of cards that are so tricky to take > advantage of but, once you find the deck for it, become extremely powerful that > will have no impact on limited play. Baltimore Purge is the sort of card that > would make sense here, but it may be too obviously good in constructed and not > bad enough for limited (I don't think I've ever seen one go off in limited, so > I have little idea). Powerbase: Berlin helps enable Turbo Arika, though it's > not like it's bad for limited play. I'm sure there's a better example out > there of a card too limited for limited and not obviously powerful in > constructed but combos into something at least kind of powerful. I'm not looking for good for constructed bad for limited. I'm looking for examples of good for limited, bad for constructed. I don't see how any of these cards, should similar ones be printed in the Hypothetical Draftable Base Set, would be a bad thing. But its a good topic none the less! > Unless constructed and limited play similarly, there's always going to be > differences in the usefulness of cards. There's probably going to be > differences anyway due to the one copy versus numerous copies issue. Further, > in limited play, cards that don't see play in constructed because they are > simply inferior to other cards can be worth playing. I'll play Secret Horde or > Short Term in any realistic draft deck because I ain't got no Blood Dolls. > Does that mean these inferior cards shouldn't exist? In some cases. Drives me > nuts how Short Term keeps getting reprinted in precons/demo decks and not Blood > Doll, a card vastly more useful to the people who make the most use of these > decks. Aha! Finally, cards that are truly Good For Limited Not So Good for Constructed. (short term, secret horde). But do these cards truly HURT the constructed environment anymore than just reguar ole' bad cards being printed? ~SV

James Coupe wrote: > In message <1106450245.8...@c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>, > Screaming Vermillian <vermil...@yahoo.com> writes: > >Arg! But I can't get them in boosters! I need to buy starters! > > This is a problem caused by your fixation on draft play. Perhaps. > The starters are *precisely* there to cycle staple cards back in for > newbies with every set, base set or no. As I've explained before, if > I'm a newbie and I want the essential cards of the game - why do I want > to buy a box of boosters and only get four of a common? Yes. It is good to cycle cards into the game that have been 'out' for a while. I'm not arguing the valuable nature of starters either, anymore (if I had been before. This conversation's been going on for a few days and I'm starting to loose track of it). I'm just supporting that base sets could have some good to impart into the VTES society. What's wrong with having this? Starters: Have staple cards that have already been printed, both for the clan or strategy of interest, and for generic strategies, but will still be applicable to the specific starter in question. Boosters: Have staple cards that have NOT been printed (variations of getting blood back from minions, untapping, generic damage prevention, equipment, etc...). (in adition to the multitude of other things a set needs, like theme). > You might do a LOT better if you moved off "Won't somebody think of the > newbies?" and actually just said "But starters are bad for draft." (It > does look like you're trying to masquerade the latter by protesting > about the former, from here at least.) Starters are nuetral for draft. Printing staple cards ONLY in starters, or rather not printing/making enough in any quantity in the boosters to make them draftable, is bad for draft. > Newbies are GREATLY helped by > the presence of fixed starters. They can get all the staple cards they > need. No new argument here. Yes. They can help noobs. But a base set could help them in a simpler way (this is all you need Joe. You've your Precon, now you want to move to the next level? Just buy the base set for a while). > (I'd be vaguely interested to see the implications a starter format > where some proportion of the cards was fixed, but with a booster-like > element too, but the logistics for that would almost certainly be > nightmarish.) A Game of Thrones tried this too. It isn't amazing, but its not terrible... Though for VTES, it just might be (imagine Jyhad Starters, but with fixed copies of BDs and so forth...). Now if a lot of these cards being included at random in these starters were to have multiple uses (like some card ideas created in the Fanset and elsewhere), like perhaps 50%, then perhaps including randoms in starters wouldn't be such a bad thing. > If you move on from your monomania about draft, you might find yourself > on the same page as the rest of us. OK. I'll try. What page are you on? I'm on the next book. :P :) > You might also find that using the > "Supply the same cards to all players" option alleviates many of the > problems with draft - give everyone the chance to include Blood Dolls, > Computer Hacks and Leather Jackets (or whatever) by supplying them with > three of each. And these would be cards which you can easily find in a > guaranteed fashion by, uh, buying starters if you find yourself short of > them. Which is better than buying a box of boosters and finding > yourself with only four. Right. AGOT create draft packs. A pack containing certain key cards. But they found it neccesary to print cards that were ONLY LEGAL for draft play, which I think crippled them... What would VTES draft packs have? 2 BDs, 2 Minion Taps, 2 WWEF, 2 FA, 1 Deal with the Devil (I as thinking the barrens, but including a unique probably isn't the best idea, and there's no other good hand cycler that I could think of that wasn't unique), 1 Generic Ally, 1 Computer Hack? ~SV

"Screaming Vermillian" <vermil...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:1106579855.7...@c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com... > This whole conversation is silly, I just realized, at least, this > tangent of the main one, is. LSJ hasn't really designed these sets very > much for limited play to begin with, I believe. So saying "X is good > for con. but bad for limited" is just talk, and doesn't reflect > actually anything that is POSSIBLE for limited (because I believe he > didn't really design BL or Geh or FN for limited play). IMHO The issue is really about what is the actual problem with that prevents Jyhad limited tournaments from working well with the avaiable product vehicles and what could you do to fix that. Proposing individual cards willy-nilly that might not "ruin" constructed while being useful for the limited game misses the point. And, if done en masse, could quite easily threaten the quality of the existing constructed game. A card that registers on the poor (moderately but not extremely useless) end of the scale might be OK by itself. But if all the cards are kind of crappy that way, eventaully the whole release becomes crappy. Furthermore, if you have a specific intent that you're filling with a given card, that might not be too bad for one instance. But if you keep working on that same intent for card after card, eventually it will have some kind of effect on the whole expansion which in turn will have an effect on the game. That's why I think it's better to talk about what you're trying to do overall before discussing specific cards or specific mechanics on specific cards. The latter are just examples for conveying a general idea. Fred

"Screaming Vermillian" <vermil...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:1106581283.3...@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com... > > Frederick Scott wrote: >> "Screaming Vermillian" <vermil...@yahoo.com> wrote in message >> news:1106496436....@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com... >> > Anything that's good for limited is probably good for constructed. >> >> Sorry, I disagree. In fact, I think one counterpoint is pretty >> obvious: you can do lots of stuff in limited involving depending on >> rarity levels to limit the effect of cards that are fairly balanced >> in small numbers but very powerful in multiples. A card like that >> would have a devastating effect on constructed play, forcing >> consideration of card limits or restricted classes of cards. > > Good point. I suppose one would just have to limit power cards in rare > slots. I don't really see how this is a problem with a limited set. I > see it a generic problem, one that's already been done (Rotchrek is > pretty good in big amounts, its not common, is it? PTO is good in big > amount, right? Shadow step, balanced in limited, devestating in large > amounts in con, perhaps?). See, this is why I don't want to talk about specific cards. There's no particular reason either of these cards is any more or less powerful in numbers, except to the extent they allow decks to be built around them. But building focussed decks is precisely what elevates the power level in constructed. Many cards work this way. > Do we consider the mandate of card limits NOW? No. Of course not. I only mentioned card limits to say, "This would be bad." Any card that begs for a card limit to be applied to it is just considered automatically bad, a card to not print at all. > What you mentioned isn't a problem inherant in a base set > (even excluding one that's good for a draft, too), its inherant in > EVERY set. Well, yes. I was just pointing out how a card can be balanced in limited would be unbalanced in constructed. Point being, you have to take that into account when designing cards for any set, no matter what purpose you intend to use it for. >> In short, you want basically want to make major changes in the game >> in order to accommadate limited play. > > Just as LSJ has been making major changes to suppliment WHATEVER PLAY > VTES IS CURRENTLY. Anarchs. Events. Redlist. Hell, Grouping was the > most devestatingly game changing rule so far, and my suggetsions, > should they be costed correctly, are NOTHING compared to that, nor the > above. I guess it depends on whether they're so powerful that all deckbuilders would be foolish to ignore them. Despite the existance of Anarchs, it's easy to build non-Anarch decks. (In fact, it's been implied by many that there's no point to building Anarch decks at all.) The ones you propose seem too powerful. >> In fact, to me, these things don't sound balanced. That sound >> overpowered. Either way, no, I would not wish to include such things. > > What if they were costed appropriately? Then I suspect they wouldn't make a dent on limited play. Again, first tell me what you're trying to do. THEN propose specific cards. Just creating more powerful cards clearly isn't the answer. (specific cards ellided; still NOT going to get caught up in anecdotal arguments, sorry...) >> > I don't think its possible to print a card that sucked for >> > constructed but was great for limited. >> >> Clearly, you can. Of course, what sucks and what's great for limited >> will depend on which expansions you're using in your tournament. But >> any card that's screwed by some readily available and often used card >> in constructed may suck in constructed but be a god card in a limited >> environment which doesn't use its "predator". > > Wait. What does this mean, doesn't use its 'predator'? Cards that make the use of other cards problematic. For instance, Immortal Grapple causes problems to decks employing scads of Strike: Combat Ends cards because, aside from preventing you from just waltzing out of combat free from all those horrible things your opponent would otherwise do to you, you wind up having to hold onto the S:CE card and it clogs your hand. In effect, you get "punished" for playing with a non-hand-strike. Immortal Grapple limits the use of S:CE, preventing it from being a "god card" in constructed. (Some might say it doesn't do enough, and that in general there aren't enough such S:CE-limiting cards in constructed to "prey" on S:CE. That's a separate issue, though.) Point being, S:CE might be much better in limited than constructed since a player attempting to win with combat strategies in limited would be highly unlikely to accumulate enough Immortal Grapples to be useful in limited. In fact, the reason S:CE isn't that important in limited is because combat offense in general is so terrible that combat defense seldom matters. The above represents the type of thinking I believe you have to do to find solutions to the problem of printing sets that would be better for draft. Talking about individual cards is _way_ premature until you've thought about what you're trying to accomplish by designing them. (about SV's proposed mechanics) >> In this case, I think the issue is, "Would they be too powerful for >> constructed?" I think they would. > > And how would you break them? These are VAMPIRES. There are many GOOD > vampires out there (Ian, etc...), and they haven't HURT constructed > really, have they? I didn't say it would break anything. They're just _better_ than existing vampires, meaning that existing vampires would be obselesced - which is definitely a bad thing. If you balanced such vampires with corresponding disadvantages, then the disadvantages would likely negate their effectiveness in limited decks as well as constructed decks - unless you've created disadvantages that only matter in constructed or something. Fred

"Screaming Vermillian" <vermil...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:1106582917....@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com... > Aha! Finally, cards that are truly Good For Limited Not So Good for > Constructed. (short term, secret horde). But do these cards truly HURT > the constructed environment anymore than just reguar ole' bad cards > being printed? Yes, they would. If _any_ of the cards in the set were arguable useful for constructed (a condition that's effectively impossible to avoid), then people wanting to use them would have to buy packs of cards containing mostly bad cards to get a few good cards. That's bad. In general, creating whole expansions of cards that are bad for constructed is bad - because they create expensive rares. Fred

In message <1106583698....@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com>, Screaming Vermillian <vermil...@yahoo.com> writes: >> You might do a LOT better if you moved off "Won't somebody think of >the >> newbies?" and actually just said "But starters are bad for draft." >(It >> does look like you're trying to masquerade the latter by protesting >> about the former, from here at least.) > >Starters are nuetral for draft. Printing staple cards ONLY in starters, >or rather not printing/making enough in any quantity in the boosters to >make them draftable, is bad for draft. And bad for established players if you print crap-loads of them. Lots of established players don't want to hack through base sets getting more Saturday Night Specials. They want to get the cool new cards. >> Newbies are GREATLY helped by >> the presence of fixed starters. They can get all the staple cards >they >> need. > >No new argument here. Yes. They can help noobs. But a base set could >help them in a simpler way (this is all you need Joe. You've your >Precon, now you want to move to the next level? Just buy the base set >for a while). If they already have the staples they want from the three or four starters they've bought, there's no real need to go for base set boosters. Sure, they *could* go for them. But it's not an over-riding need. If the base set boosters are just giving them more staples (which they already have) or very similar staples (e.g. giving them Forced Awakening instead of WwEF), they're not getting much new. If the boosters are giving them cool new stuff, they could just go and buy any set with cool new stuff. They already have the staples - even you agree that they have many of the staples[0] now. So they don't need to buy base set boosters to give them more. Will they want more later on? Sure, quite possibly. And there'll probably be another useful set of starters along for them to fiddle with. But the point is to get started, you don't need 15 Blood Dolls. You probably don't need many more than four. >What would VTES draft packs have? 2 BDs, 2 Minion Taps, 2 WWEF, 2 FA, 1 >Deal with the Devil (I as thinking the barrens, but including a unique >probably isn't the best idea, and there's no other good hand cycler >that I could think of that wasn't unique), 1 Generic Ally, 1 Computer >Hack? Generic Ally probably isn't necessary - lots of decks don't play them at all. I'd head for cards which are big "swing" cards. DwtD is a big swing for draft, yes. But there are also cards like e.g. Giant's Blood which are a potential huge boost, if you can draft them, whereas someone else get a packet with a crappy rare instead. Of course, this depends on what sets you're drafting from. My experience with sealed deck and draft is that things are slow, and not *that* interesting a lot of the time. And I'm not necessarily terribly engaged by the deck I've got. Cards which make it more brutal are potentially nicer for me. For a reasonably generic start, however, I'd be tempted to include, say: 2 Blood Doll 2 Wake/Forced 2 Minion Tap 2 Deal with the Devil 2 Computer Hacking 2 Leather Jacket 1 Autarkis Persecution 1 Bribes 1 Kine Resources Contested 1 .44 Magnum 1 Melee weapon - say Bang Nakh 1 Bum's Rush 1 Harass 1 Ambush That's along the lines I'd want to go, however - mixed enough that no one strategy is necessarily favoured (the weapons are there for defence, too), but varied enough that there is stuff you will probably want to discard. [0] That is, different staples, rather than 75 million copies of Blood Doll. Though the starter ratios do mean they probably have several of a lot of useful cards (3-8, say). [ quoted text not captured ]

"Joshua Duffin" <jtdu...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:35l8u6F...@individual.net... >> Still, the issue to me seems mainly structural: the way the game works >> and the fact that it has a large number of different ways to go about >> winning it seems to make it hard to construct effective decks out of >> limited resources. Or at least, out of resources limited to the >> practical number of boosters and precons you can ask people to buy for >> a single tournament. (I'm sure if you used 15 or 20 boosters or >> something, at _some_ point you'd hit a number of boosters that would >> make for fun tournaments. But not many could afford them and the time >> engaged in non-game pretournament activities like drafting and >> deckbuilding would also begin to get prohibitive.) > > I think it works reasonably well already. It probably takes some > practice at doing it, and some appreciation for decks and play that > aren't as effective (or at least as consistently effective) as > constructed VTES decks. But if you use useful sets, you can get decent > draft experiences. (Gehenna, Bloodlines, and Final Nights don't help as > much in making "effective" decks as Sabbat War, Camarilla Edition, Black > Hand, and Anarchs, I think. They can still be fun, just not so > "effective.") Well, I think that's where are tastes differ a great deal. To me, a game that's all defensive where getting an oust is difficult is about as interesting as watching paint dry. You find yourself constant asking not, "How can finish off my prey?" but "How do I make sure I can't be eliminated?" A lot of times, you're just waiting for someone to make a mistake or get involved in a personality war or something to have a shot at ousting him. And if your prey is a good enough player to just avoid those things, it's really hard to find a way to oust him in limited. I sort of have this complaint about constructed, too. But I don't feel nearly as helpless about it. >> Other than that, I don't know what to advocate. Maybe a set of rules >> for some sort of limited play that somehow allows for even better deck >> construction than draft? > > This is also possible - a "choose your own vampire adventure" format > would probably make it noticeably easier to make your draft decks > effective. (Something where you draft your entire library, and then can > choose any twelve vampires you want from the universe of VTES vampires.) Right. Basically, crypt is constructed, library is drafted. Not a bad idea, really. Don't know if it's enough to solve the problem (and of course, people will be at huge risk of getting screwed by choosing the same crypt as the other guys at their draft table) but would be worth trying out, at least. > There might be problems with most of these ideas though. (The "choose > your 12" has the problem of actually having a million zillion copies of > every vampire available, for example. :-) I don't understand. Could you clarify a bit? Fred

"Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote in message news:lRcJd.2557$HZ.1889@okepread07... > > "Screaming Vermillian" <vermil...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:1106581283.3...@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com... > > Good point. I suppose one would just have to limit power cards in rare > > slots. I don't really see how this is a problem with a limited set. I > > see it a generic problem, one that's already been done (Rotchrek is > > pretty good in big amounts, its not common, is it? PTO is good in big > > amount, right? Shadow step, balanced in limited, devestating in large > > amounts in con, perhaps?). > > See, this is why I don't want to talk about specific cards. There's > no particular reason either of these cards is any more or less powerful > in numbers, except to the extent they allow decks to be built around them. > But building focussed decks is precisely what elevates the power level > in constructed. Many cards work this way. While it's valid in a way to say "I don't want to get sucked into specifics", it doesn't seem productive to demand that examples never be used. Examples are good for illustrating more general ideas. :-) Regardless - cards for new sets are already being designed with their constructed-play power taken into account. I don't think that's going to change. Trying to *also* consider the usefulness-for-draft of cards in a base set doesn't seem like a bad thing to me. > > Do we consider the mandate of card limits NOW? No. > > Of course not. I only mentioned card limits to say, "This would be > bad." Any card that begs for a card limit to be applied to it is > just considered automatically bad, a card to not print at all. Of course it is. That's something already being done. It's hardly a new objection to making a VTES base set with draftability in mind. > > What if they were costed appropriately? > > Then I suspect they wouldn't make a dent on limited play. Again, first > tell me what you're trying to do. THEN propose specific cards. Just > creating more powerful cards clearly isn't the answer. He's trying to make cards that are usable in more draft decks than the kinds of cards we see now, by making them usable with either of two different disciplines, etc etc. Seems worthwhile to me. If the effects aren't broken in constructed, there's no reason they'd be problem cards. > Point being, S:CE might be much better > in limited than constructed since a player attempting to win with > combat strategies in limited would be highly unlikely to accumulate > enough Immortal Grapples to be useful in limited. In fact, the > reason S:CE isn't that important in limited is because combat offense > in general is so terrible that combat defense seldom matters. I'd disagree with both points in that last sentence. In my experience, combat defense *does* matter in draft and S:CE *is* important. Combat offense in draft is strong enough that you need to either have decent offensive combat of your own, or else a good amount of combat defense. Majesty is a definite power card in draft, as much so as Wake with Evening's Freshness. Anyway, I think you're right that there can be cards good in limited that aren't much good in constructed. But I don't think that's a big problem with making a limited-oriented base set. There are *already* lots of cards printed in most VTES sets that aren't very good for constructed. There's no reason the problem would have to get *worse* in a limited-oriented set. > > And how would you break them? These are VAMPIRES. There are many GOOD > > vampires out there (Ian, etc...), and they haven't HURT constructed > > really, have they? > > I didn't say it would break anything. They're just _better_ than > existing vampires, meaning that existing vampires would be obselesced - > which is definitely a bad thing. If you balanced such vampires with > corresponding disadvantages, then the disadvantages would likely negate > their effectiveness in limited decks as well as constructed decks - > unless you've created disadvantages that only matter in constructed or > something. Existing vampires are obsolesced all the time, although most of them have been obsolete for years already, since they're the ones that are just poor value for capacity compared to lots of other similar vampires. I don't think Vermilian's examples would obsolesce existing vampires any more than other new vampires do. The 6-cap is a 6-cap with only one superior, and the 9-cap has only a Bishop title and pays 2.5 points for its "Fortitude Mastery" ability. (The 6 seems more likely to be a little strong for its size, since it's paying about 0 points for the "Scout" ability, but then using the Scout ability does have a significant cost.) Josh still likes draft

In message <20050123114921...@mb-m28.aol.com>, Curevei <cur...@aol.commetal> writes: >Also, if you hadn't divided the card pool into good/bad but had something like >good/mediocre/bad, Dummy Corp goes from mediocre in constructed to good in >limited. I'm probably one of about three people who actually really likes Dummy Corporation. In a low master deck, I think it's a fine card for inclusion. [ quoted text not captured ]

"Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote in message news:HLeJd.2564$HZ.1542@okepread07... > "Joshua Duffin" <jtdu...@yahoo.com> wrote in message > news:35l8u6F...@individual.net... > > I think it works reasonably well already. It probably takes some > > practice at doing it, and some appreciation for decks and play that > > aren't as effective (or at least as consistently effective) as > > constructed VTES decks. But if you use useful sets, you can get decent > > draft experiences. (Gehenna, Bloodlines, and Final Nights don't help as > > much in making "effective" decks as Sabbat War, Camarilla Edition, Black > > Hand, and Anarchs, I think. They can still be fun, just not so > > "effective.") > > Well, I think that's where are tastes differ a great deal. To me, a > game that's all defensive where getting an oust is difficult is about > as interesting as watching paint dry. You find yourself constant > asking not, "How can finish off my prey?" but "How do I make sure I > can't be eliminated?" A lot of times, you're just waiting for someone > to make a mistake or get involved in a personality war or something > to have a shot at ousting him. And if your prey is a good enough player > to just avoid those things, it's really hard to find a way to oust him > in limited. Limited doesn't have to be like that. I can't prove it to you, if you haven't seen it work better, I guess. But it doesn't. > > This is also possible - a "choose your own vampire adventure" format > > would probably make it noticeably easier to make your draft decks > > effective. (Something where you draft your entire library, and then can > > choose any twelve vampires you want from the universe of VTES vampires.) > > Right. Basically, crypt is constructed, library is drafted. Not a bad > idea, really. Don't know if it's enough to solve the problem (and > of course, people will be at huge risk of getting screwed by choosing > the same crypt as the other guys at their draft table) but would be > worth trying out, at least. Yeah, that would be worth trying, but I'd be concerned too about possibly getting screwed by what cards show up versus the crypt you brought along. (In the method you seem to be thinking of, that is - see below.) > > There might be problems with most of these ideas though. (The "choose > > your 12" has the problem of actually having a million zillion copies of > > every vampire available, for example. :-) > > I don't understand. Could you clarify a bit? Ah, the idea I was thinking of was not "make your crypt first, bring it along, then draft a library". It was "draft a library, then make your crypt from whatever vampires you want." No restriction on the vampires you use being in the boosters you open, see - any vampires at all. The obvious problem with this idea is that it only works if you have on hand plenty of copies of every vampire printed. Josh signing off for the day

"Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote in message news:DXTHd.77$PB.42@okepread01... > "Joshua Duffin" <jtdu...@yahoo.com> wrote in message > news:35aeh9F...@individual.net... > > It's possible, I imagine, that the next base set could be designed > > trying to be more draftable. But that probably won't be at least for > > another year (what was it between Sabbat War and Camarilla, three > > years?) and, well, unless I saw some indication from WW that they both > > are thinking about doing such a thing *and* would like fan help working > > on it, it would kind of seem like an interesting but ultimately not that > > productive use of time. You know? > > Well, that sort of an attitude does seem screamingly circular: if no one > talks about it, White Wolf can't really be aware that there's > dissatisfaction, and hence focusses its attention in other areas. What can ya do? I'll mention that I like draft and would like VTES expansions to work better for draft every so often, but it's never seemed like White Wolf wanted its players to do their design work for them. Rather the contrary, in fact. > Still, the issue to me seems mainly structural: the way the game works > and the fact that it has a large number of different ways to go about > winning it seems to make it hard to construct effective decks out of > limited resources. Or at least, out of resources limited to the practical > number of boosters and precons you can ask people to buy for a single > tournament. (I'm sure if you used 15 or 20 boosters or something, at > _some_ point you'd hit a number of boosters that would make for fun > tournaments. But not many could afford them and the time engaged in non- > game pretournament activities like drafting and deckbuilding would also > begin to get prohibitive.) I think it works reasonably well already. It probably takes some practice at doing it, and some appreciation for decks and play that aren't as effective (or at least as consistently effective) as constructed VTES decks. But if you use useful sets, you can get decent draft experiences. (Gehenna, Bloodlines, and Final Nights don't help as much in making "effective" decks as Sabbat War, Camarilla Edition, Black Hand, and Anarchs, I think. They can still be fun, just not so "effective.") It always helps, I think, to be on a 4-player rather than 5-player table; it's true that draft does tend to be slower and a 5-player table is noticeably more likely to time out at 2 hours. But people can be ousted in draft, and their decks can do enough things well enough to be fun to play. That would all be *better* if more VTES sets were more useful for draft, I think. You're right that there are too many disciplines and clans in VTES for a single base set to accommodate them all in a draftable way. But I think probably up to about 10 clans and 12 disciplines can be accommodated in a fairly draftable way in a base set. (Sabbat War and Camarilla Edition are along those lines numberwise, and have enough chaff in them that could be cut for more useful cards that a better draft set is entirely conceivable, I'd say.) > Other than that, I don't know what to advocate. Maybe a set of rules > for some sort of limited play that somehow allows for even better deck > construction than draft? This is also possible - a "choose your own vampire adventure" format would probably make it noticeably easier to make your draft decks effective. (Something where you draft your entire library, and then can choose any twelve vampires you want from the universe of VTES vampires.) There might be problems with most of these ideas though. (The "choose your 12" has the problem of actually having a million zillion copies of every vampire available, for example. :-) Josh on the draftwagon

"LSJ" <vte...@white-wolf.com> wrote in message news:AIiId.11470$8u5....@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net... > jeff_kuta wrote: > > Adding even just 2 more Indie vampires into Group 3 will *not* throw > > the current balance of G2/3 out of whack, nor will it hurt the future > > G3/4. The main thing it will do is set precedent for G5 so this awkward > > transitional period will not happen again later down the road. Ideally, > > there will be roughly the same number (12? 13?) of vampires in every > > group for every sect. I just don't see why we need to wait to get this > > started. The impact on G2/3 will be minimal while the benefit on G3/4 > > will be (and would have been) significant. > > No matter what the number of any clans vampires in any group, adding > two more will *not* [sic] throw the then-current balance out of > whack. You could therefore proceed, adding two at a time, to make > any group as large as you like and defeat the grouping mechanism > altogether. But the Independents have so few vampires with their signature discipline - and so many of their existing vampires are weak - that having them go above "their share" of vampires per group would be noticeably less harmful than doing the same with a clan that's already strong. You know already that equality by numbers isn't always the same as balance - you certainly apply that knowledge in designing specific vampires, whose "points" don't always exactly indicate their power level. Most of the independent clans (the Giovanni, on account of their Dominate, may be an exception) would not become overpowered relative to other clans if they had a few more vampires in groups 2+3 than the other clans do. Josh group therapist

In message <1106581283.3...@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com>, Screaming Vermillian <vermil...@yahoo.com> writes: >Good point. I suppose one would just have to limit power cards in rare >slots. I don't really see how this is a problem with a limited set. I >see it a generic problem, one that's already been done (Rotchrek is >pretty good in big amounts, its not common, is it? PTO is good in big >amount, right? Shadow step, balanced in limited, devestating in large >amounts in con, perhaps?). Many, many cards in Jyhad are useful if you have many of them, rare, common or uncommon. Rare/rarer slots are often taken up by: - unusual cards, which are a bit off the wall - specialised cards - cards which are likely to cause problems anyway (e.g. unique) No-one will deny that there are some good cards in rare slots which can be used in large amounts. What separates this from the typical Magic situation is that you don't generally *need* to be playing that card in large amounts to win, or to spend similarly large amounts defending against it. I would, however, wonder about Shadow Step being "devastating" in large amounts. I love it, but it's not "devastating" IMO. [ quoted text not captured ]

"Screaming Vermillian" <vermil...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:1106408485.5...@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com... > It'll cure SOMETHING. And its easier to say to a noob "Yeah, just pick > up 10 boosters of the Base Set. That'll get you started real nicely > with a few deck ideas." Rather than saying "yeah. Grab a starter and a > few boosters. Oh no. Not anarch boosters. There's nothing in those you > want. No, final nights doesn't have any temptations in them... yeah. > The onyl set with Wakes or Blood Dolls that you saw us play with in the > demo decks is Sabbat War, or in the starters, so its either buy Sabbat > War, which in your FoS case, isn't very helpful, or purchase more > starters, probably the FoS one. But maybe the Baali one. That might > have something you want... oh and don't buy..." Etc... It's possible that you know this already, but Sabbat War boosters don't have Wakes or Blood Dolls in them either. They do have Forced Awakening and Tribute to the Master, though. White Wolf has not yet printed an expansion with Wake with Evening's Freshness or Blood Doll in its booster packs. The new demo decks don't have Wakes or Blood Dolls either, for that matter. Josh unwakeable

"James Coupe" <ja...@zephyr.org.uk> wrote in message news:Bej+BUu3...@gratiano.zephyr.org.uk... > In message <1106583698....@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com>, > Screaming Vermillian <vermil...@yahoo.com> writes: > >Starters are nuetral for draft. Printing staple cards ONLY in starters, > >or rather not printing/making enough in any quantity in the boosters to > >make them draftable, is bad for draft. > > And bad for established players if you print crap-loads of them. > > Lots of established players don't want to hack through base sets getting > more Saturday Night Specials. They want to get the cool new cards. Too late! Camarilla Edition *has* Saturday Night Special in it. Any base set is probably going to have stuff that established players don't want in it. It's the nature of a base set. Staples ought to go in the boosters of a base set because it *is* a base set. There can be other cards to attract established players, and there certainly should be. But staples shouldn't go *only* in the starters. (And they don't. Though Saturday Night Special wouldn't be my example of a good staple. :-) > If they already have the staples they want from the three or four > starters they've bought, there's no real need to go for base set > boosters. Sure, they *could* go for them. But it's not an over-riding > need. > > If the base set boosters are just giving them more staples (which they > already have) or very similar staples (e.g. giving them Forced Awakening > instead of WwEF), they're not getting much new. It might not all be that new, but it should be useful. They're going to buy boosters because they don't want more of the exact same thing that was in the precon, and because buying boosters is what CCG players do. If the base set boosters have enough interesting and good cards in them, they'll enjoy buying the base set boosters, even if *some* of the cards are more copies of things they already have from the starters. The ones that they're getting more of *should* be useful in multiples anyway, since if they're not, they shouldn't be in the boosters at all. :-) > If the boosters are giving them cool new stuff, they could just go and > buy any set with cool new stuff. They already have the staples - even > you agree that they have many of the staples[0] now. So they don't need > to buy base set boosters to give them more. Some sets are more useful than others to people with small collections, though. Cool new stuff is relative. > >What would VTES draft packs have? 2 BDs, 2 Minion Taps, 2 WWEF, 2 FA, 1 > >Deal with the Devil (I as thinking the barrens, but including a unique > >probably isn't the best idea, and there's no other good hand cycler > >that I could think of that wasn't unique), 1 Generic Ally, 1 Computer > >Hack? > I'd head for cards which are big "swing" cards. DwtD is a big swing for > draft, yes. But there are also cards like e.g. Giant's Blood which are > a potential huge boost, if you can draft them, whereas someone else get > a packet with a crappy rare instead. Of course, this depends on what > sets you're drafting from. I'm not sure Deal with the Devil is good even in limited play. As Vermillian said, it is one of the few non-unique hand cyclers. Dreams of the Sphinx might be nice, since even though it's unique, it's temporary... but I suppose White Wolf might not want to devalue existing Dreamses quite *that* much, heh. I wouldn't put Giant's Blood in a fixed draft pack either; its "once per game" nature makes it as dubious for everyone to automatically have one as a unique master. > My experience with sealed deck and draft is that things are slow, and > not *that* interesting a lot of the time. And I'm not necessarily > terribly engaged by the deck I've got. Cards which make it more brutal > are potentially nicer for me. I agree on brutality. Things don't have to be slow and uninteresting, though - that's sort of the point of this "try to make sets that are better for draft" exercise. > For a reasonably generic start, however, I'd be tempted to include, say: > > 2 Blood Doll > 2 Wake/Forced > 2 Minion Tap > 2 Deal with the Devil > 2 Computer Hacking > 2 Leather Jacket > 1 Autarkis Persecution > 1 Bribes > 1 Kine Resources Contested > 1 .44 Magnum > 1 Melee weapon - say Bang Nakh > 1 Bum's Rush > 1 Harass > 1 Ambush > > That's along the lines I'd want to go, however - mixed enough that no > one strategy is necessarily favoured (the weapons are there for defence, > too), but varied enough that there is stuff you will probably want to > discard. It's not a bad start. I think it's worth noting that Blood Doll and Wake do not necessarily make *draft* better. They make your *deck* better, yes - but if you make everyone's deck better at staying alive, you may just be making draft games longer than they already are. It's still probably worthwhile to put a couple Dolls and Wakes in everyone's draft pack because it reduces the unfairness of only *one* person having the Doll or Wake or whatever, but it's not going to make draft games go faster, or necessarily be more exciting. I'd really like to skip the Deals with the Devil in favor of a Dreams of the Sphinx in every pack, but like I mentioned, I'm not sure WW would go for it. Could be one Deal, one Dreams, I suppose, but I'm really not convinced that Deal is a good enough card even in draft. In my experience, hand cycling isn't all *that* crucial to draft success: sure, I'd take The Barrens if I saw it. But the normal end-of-turn discard is about as much hand cycling as you should need, most of the time. Leather Jackets, eh. I think they would make games go slower, and favoring combat over combat defense is not a bad thing for draft games, I think. I'd be willing to put in the two weapons even without the Jackets. (I might go with Brass Knuckles or Gas-Powered Chainsaw over Bang Nakh though, the lower expense makes them more worthwhile in draft in my opinion.) Likewise I think a KRC in every pack is reasonable, but Autarkis Persecution should be omitted. Bribes is probably okay. Replacing the Autarkis Persecution with a Conservative Agitation would be fine with me. Consanguineous Boon would also be OK, though not as generally useful. Domain Challenge or Ancilla Empowerment I would also endorse. :-) Three rush cards is probably more than a generic draft pack needs. One might be enough. Certainly no need for more than two, I think. There are, unfortunately, no generic +bleed action modifiers or stealth cards that could really go in. (Stealth Ritus, but only if you're playing Sabbat... ooh, Polaris Coach might be interesting.) Overall, I'd emphasize that it's offense that draft could usually use more of, rather than defense. The simple "keep my vampire untapped" defense is so effective in draft that ways to break equilibrium are pretty important, in my opinion, in making the game more exciting. Laptop Computer might not be a bad idea... maybe. Even an Anarch Revolt in every pack wouldn't be unwarranted, IMO - now there's an example of a card that's not likely to look overpowered in limited but can become annoying in numbers in constructed. :-) Sanguine Instruction might (perhaps) be worthwhile. A couple Lucky Blows could be nice. A couple Dodges too; that's a place that offense/defense parity seems reasonable to me. Even a Concealed Weapon might be cool. Fame would be cute, it'd get contested a fair amount, but that might not be a bad thing. Hey, you know, I could get behind a couple Life in the City rather than Giant's Blood... though the swing effect wouldn't be real huge most of the time. Misdirection is so good in draft that it might be worth including for the same reason as Blood Doll, though having it generally available would make draft noticeably more deadly I think. Sudden Reversal would be appropriate, but I don't know if we'd like having so many Suddens in every draft game. Surprise Influence would be funny (and is sometimes actually good in draft). Of course, we don't really want to go over 20 cards for a draft pack... even 20 might be rather much. 10 would probably be a better target, if we don't want to influence the final decks to look *too* much all the same. Josh exercise your right to draft

"Curevei" <cur...@aol.commetal> wrote in message news:20050123113750...@mb-m28.aol.com... > I snipped the top of the post because I wasn't sure whether I was going to > comment on the differences in constructed and limited in general, but I feel > like providing an example of something. Constructed and limited are very > different games. I played in a draft earlier this month where my entire crypt > was Sabbat and I made a mistake by including The Hungry Coyote. Yet, if I had > enough vampires with the discipline, Personal Scourge would have been a > nobrainer. Personal Scourge is only good as defense, I think - 1 damage isn't enough to go far even in limited. But yes, it is at least fairly useful as defense against the typically-significant number of weapons. (Not so good against guns, though...) > Unless constructed and limited play similarly, there's always going to be > differences in the usefulness of cards. There's probably going to be > differences anyway due to the one copy versus numerous copies issue. Further, > in limited play, cards that don't see play in constructed because they are > simply inferior to other cards can be worth playing. I'll play Secret Horde or > Short Term in any realistic draft deck because I ain't got no Blood Dolls. > Does that mean these inferior cards shouldn't exist? In some cases. Drives me > nuts how Short Term keeps getting reprinted in precons/demo decks and not Blood > Doll, a card vastly more useful to the people who make the most use of these > decks. Hmm, yeah. I would have said (before you brought it up) that those inferior cards shouldn't exist, in fact. But their being useful in draft is almost (almost!) enough justification for putting them in boosters - *along with* Blood Dolls and such. I agree with you that there's no realistic excuse for not reprinting Blood Doll in boosters as well, when Short Term Investment is going in. I think it would be better to skip the Short Terms entirely and put in *other* cards that are good in both constructed *and* limited, so that there are multiple common slots with such things in them. (Minion Tap wouldn't be a bad choice; the Jyhad set had both. :-) Josh tapped out

"James Coupe" <ja...@zephyr.org.uk> wrote in message news:zuIy9asY...@gratiano.zephyr.org.uk... > I would, however, wonder about Shadow Step being "devastating" in large > amounts. I love it, but it's not "devastating" IMO. It's definitely more powerful in numbers - if you're building a deck around the notion of being able to positively set range. (Not "devastating" though, no. I'd fault it for being a bit above the usual power curve.) Fred

In message <1106582493.5...@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com>, Screaming Vermillian <vermil...@yahoo.com> writes: > >James Coupe wrote: >> In message <67%Id.2190$HZ.1915@okepread07>, Frederick Scott >> <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> writes: <snip - discussion of "good for limited" is automatically "good for constructed"> >> It also greatly detracts from some cool cards like, say, Choir. >> This would be almost entirely arse for limited play, and designing >for >> limited play compatibility would remove a very cool card[0] from the >> game. > >Nice footnote. But that cards mostly good in theory, and through many >crazy loops you have to jump to accomplish. Anyhow, I think Choirs' >merits and faults have been discussed enough. I said it was cool. Would you rather it had never been printed because it's bad for draft? >Assuming Choir is a Very Cool Card, would a draftable base set still >lack Very Cool Cards? No! It'll just have fewer Very Cool Cards like >Choir. Quite. Again, you're missing what the designers are trying to do relative to what *you* would do if you were the designer. You really need to get beyond that. Consider: Choir is a very cool card. People want to make Choir decks work. People need a lot of Choir to stand a good chance of making a choir deck work. (Because, if nothing else, they need two in a given turn or it's wasted, leaving aside the possibility of blocks.) So, what does this mean? They have to buy quite a few boosters to get it. Or *someone* has to anyway, even if I trade for it. This drives sales. The presence of cards which you need to amass in relatively significant numbers (8-20, say) drives sales. Excluding the presence of such cards from a set denies that possibility for driving sales. See, these are the sorts of decisions *real* designers make. Not just "How can I make a set I'm happy with?" but "How can I make a set that'll make money?" and "How can I make a set that will mean I keep my job?" >> Ditto, lots of interesting dual-discipline cards can be extremely >cool. >> Is Nightmare Curse suitable for limited play? Your chances of >getting >> suitable vampires is low, ditto discipline master cards. (A limited >> format which gave people one of any discipline card they wanted might >be >> to an option to compensate for some aspects of draft.) But it's a >damn >> good card, and removing it from the set so that it's good for limited >> would be bad. > >I'm not suggesting we remove anything from the permanent VTES set, and >if you're referring to, pre-production removal, its unncessary. We >tweak the effects. Nightmate Curse is fun, but it would be infinitely >more draft friendly had it been something like: But it's not designed to be draft friendly. You're obsessing about draft again. Unlike Magic, V:TES has never had a strong draft scene (the wide number of disciplines makes that tricky, for a start, which the restricted number of colours in Magic mitigates against). V:TES has also never had a designer that's said "We make some bad cards that are there for draft tournaments." (Also, bad cards can force people to buy more cards, since the ones they've got are dross. Not that Magic is a cash cow, of course.) > >Bad Dreams Curse >2 blood >[chi] (D) Tap a ready minion and untap this acting vampire. >[aus] (D) Put this card on a ready minion without aus. This minion >doesn't untap as normal. During this minion's controller's untap, the >minion may burn a blood to untap. Burn this card when the acting >vampire leaves play. >[AUS][CHI] (D) Put this card on a ready minion and tap that minion. >This minion doesn't untap as normal. Burn this card when the acting >vampire leaves play. > >Not that I neccesarily condone the nuetering of EVERY CARD like this. A >few of these can exist in one of the rare slots of the Draftable Base >Set, just not a ton. Cards are made rare or common or whatever based on their utility. Not their utility to just draft. Some mistakes are made, of course, but the design team/commonality setters have shown a strong tendency to correct such things where major mistakes have been made. Again, not in all cases. But correcting mistakes from the past has certainly been done - making Immortal Grapple and Freak Drive significantly easier to get hold of, for instance. >Its not a bad try, seeing as how (very nearly) NO ONE ONLINE was >willing to help me too seriously with anything but critique of power >levels or whether they liked the card or not (Ok, some people suggested >some cards they'd like to see, in general, but the effects weren't >generating similarly already establish effects nor were they very good >for draft. I did consider them for the few slots of the rares, however, >but put my own in, because, well... I don't really need help making up >cards, I ned help making up cards that'll fit a good for draft, good >for constructed base set). What's significantly problematic is that you're completely fixated on draft. Most people aren't. Draft is a fun blast now and then, but it's not what most people care about, IME. Some, yes, of course. However, for instance: http://www.thelasombra.com/fanset_vermillian.txt One with the Night Action pillar 1 blood obf: This minion gets +1 stealth until the end of the turn or the end of its next action (whichever is first). Untap this minion if this action is successful. OBF: As above, but you may untap this vampire even if this action is not successful. First off, is this a good card? +1 stealth to the end of the turn, or the end of the next action. Well, I untap once, but I need to be able to take multiple actions for this to work out better than Lost in Crowds, or any similar common stealth card. It's costing a blood, too! This is a poor choice for constructed play, in many circumstances. At inferior, if I don't have obf/for, I might as well play Lost in Crowds. Or why not play Psychic Veil, even if I do have for? *All* my vampires get +1 stealth that way, not just this one. Sure, it's not the same effect, but many times, it's going to be just fine, and more flexible. Mundane Guise am pillar obf: +1 stealth on a non-cardless action. OBF: As above, but at +2 stealth. You may discard this card at the end of any succesful cardless action. Good for constructed? Not really, no. Again, for obf, I just want Lost in Crowds, almost always. Being able to discard the card also seriously undermines one of the fundamental mechanics of the game - if I don't attempt a block, you don't get to cycle stealth. If I don't block, you get choked. You don't want to make cycling easy. Also: consider the implication of pillar. Is it hard to get an action that requires a card? No. Include Computer Hacking. Include Govern the Unaligned. Whatever. The restrictions on, say, Shadow Body and Shroud of Night (restricting bleeds, or votes) are much, much more significant in this way. And now you just hand stealth to big vampires who don't need it. The Obfuscate vampires would rather have a good card. The vampires who don't have Obfuscate now want to use this to get 'disciplineless' stealth. Good design choice? Questionable, at least, which is going to end up supporting vampires who aren't "supposed" to use it in the first place, and be ignored by the ones who ostensibly should be using it. In which case, you're much better off writing useful but flawed cards like, say, Stealth Ritus, which actually address the needs of the people concerned directly. Scrolling down, alighting at random: Grace of Helena Combat Do not replace until the next discard phase. Prerange. Pre: Once this combat, this minion may burn one blood to strike: end combat. Untap this vampire after strike resolution, if this is done. PRE: As above but you may replace this card immediately. This is actually quite well done. (You might want to clarify "if this is done" as regards whether it's the choosing to do it, or executing the strike, and what happens if the strike is cancelled etc.) However, at superior, it's no better than Majesty. At inferior, it's better and worse than Majesty. I'm unsure how much the DNR will impact in practise, but it's a nice consideration. I might have been tempted to go for the more vanilla "Pre: ...may burn two blood to...." and "PRE: As pre, but burn one blood instead." Here, the cost implications are clear, but they may well be too harsh. But I'm not sure that your version isn't well costed. Again, alighting at random: Uniform Shift Combat pillar pro: Strike: If the opposing minion is not choosing dodge, or combat ends as its strike, combat ends. PRO: As above, and untap this striking minion. If I got this in a booster and I'm a Gangrel/Protean user, I'd be thinking "Jesus, why the fuck did they not just reprint Earth Meld which is simply better?" And then you've just handed S:CE to a whole bunch of people who didn't have it, without a lot of work - again, meaning that Protean cards don't actually support Protean. Possibly perfectly useful for limited play, where you don't get Earth Meld, but in constructed play when I want Protean, I'm going to take EVERY SINGLE COPY of this card and set it on fire with little photos of the designer stapled to it. (I have rage issues, by the way.) An Apple to the Victor Reaction 1 blood ser: Play when a methuselah is about to gain control of the edge. Control of the edge does not change. SER: As above, but that methuselah burns one pool. Probably fine for limited play - you only get one, unless you're lucky. For constructed play, I wait until my prey bleeds and then play three of these. Generate a few SER weenies, which isn't too hard with Aabt Kindred and some discipline cards. No, I don't make this a binding part of my deck, for when I get a political prey, but it's a good risk in many circles that my prey is going to bleed at some point, even in all but the most focused political decks. Pity the stealth and bleed deck that finds itself taking these from both sides... Consider: "You may only play one AAttV per action." Or: "Your minions may only play one AAttV (in total, across all minions) per action." Or something achieving the same effect. Or a Wake-like "Do not replace until your untap phase" as, if played against your prey, this is going to hurt - especially if you're using Wakes to play them. Or even: "SER: As above, but the Methuselah burns 1 pool but does take control of the Edge." - which leads to you not being able to play it on the *next* bleed they take, because they already have the Edge. You really want, need, to think "What happens if a player plays 20 of these in a deck?" (Or more.) The original design team clearly did try, with limits on action modifiers and so on, but they missed a number of obvious tricks - lots of S:CE and lots of KRC being the obvious problems. But it's an easy mistake to make. V:TES constructed is *nothing* like limited; if a card can be put into a deck twenty times, someone will consider it. [ quoted text not captured ]

"Joshua Duffin" <jtdu...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:35l843F...@individual.net... > > "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote in message > news:lRcJd.2557$HZ.1889@okepread07... >> See, this is why I don't want to talk about specific cards. There's >> no particular reason either of these cards is any more or less >> powerful in numbers, except to the extent they allow decks to be >> built around them. But building focussed decks is precisely what >> elevates the power level in constructed. Many cards work this way. > > While it's valid in a way to say "I don't want to get sucked into > specifics", it doesn't seem productive to demand that examples never be > used. Examples are good for illustrating more general ideas. :-) I never demanded example never be used. Examples are fine to use. But SV is ONLY posting card designs without a clue as to the overall intent, which I'm pretty sure is bad approach, given what's at stake. > Regardless - cards for new sets are already being designed with their > constructed-play power taken into account. I don't think that's going > to change. Trying to *also* consider the usefulness-for-draft of cards > in a base set doesn't seem like a bad thing to me. No, I don't think it's bad either - necessarily. Again, it depends on the approach. The problem is that limited play doesn't just demand that the odd card be sensitive to the needs of limited play. It really requires that the entire set be geared towards using it for that purpose. A major aspect of the problem (really THE problem, if you want to look at it that way) is that no packs exist that will provide the numbers of cards required to create decks with good ousting power. To fix that by just jiggering with the design of cards means that the you'd have to keep limited play in mind when designing large numbers of common and probably uncommon (to a lesser extent) cards. There's no way to do this by proposing individual cards. You have to adjust your entire philosophy of designing cards. >> Again, first tell me what you're trying to do. THEN propose specific >> cards. Just creating more powerful cards clearly isn't the answer. > > He's trying to make cards that are usable in more draft decks than the > kinds of cards we see now, by making them usable with either of two > different disciplines, etc etc. > > Seems worthwhile to me. If the effects aren't broken in constructed, > there's no reason they'd be problem cards. You need to be precise about your terminology. It may not be "broken" in the sense of allowing the creation of unbalanced decks. But if they obsolesce existing cards in constructed, clearly that's bad. I think these mechanics would obsolesce existing cards in constructed. The problem with this approach is that it's just making more powerful cards in general so they'll be more powerful in limited - but then they'll also be more powerful than existing cards in constructed and that's bad. > Anyway, I think you're right that there can be cards good in limited > that aren't much good in constructed. But I don't think that's a big > problem with making a limited-oriented base set. There are *already* > lots of cards printed in most VTES sets that aren't very good for > constructed. There's no reason the problem would have to get *worse* in > a limited-oriented set. Sure it would. It would be worse because that's your CRITERIA for printing these cards. Ergo, they'd ALL tend towards the bad side of the scale, making for packs that are overall a bad value for constructed purposes. > I don't think Vermilian's examples would obsolesce existing vampires any > more than other new vampires do. Then I think we just disagree about that, at least about the "Mastery" thing. Being able to search a library for a card that one could repeatedly use is pretty powerful. "Scout", in retrospect may not be that good. But then, I don't think "Scout" is going to do anything for limited. > The 6-cap is a 6-cap with only one superior, and the 9-cap has only a > Bishop title and pays 2.5 points for its "Fortitude Mastery" ability. I don't care. There's just no reason these things shine in limited but not constructed really. So they either fall in the territory of being overpowered for constructed or not helpful for limited or some combination of the two - point to where on the scale you think it should be. But if you disagree and you think they ARE better in limited than constructed...well, why didn't we start the conversation there in the first place? Then we can see what overall effect designing lots of such cards will have on constructed. Fred

"James Coupe" <ja...@zephyr.org.uk> wrote in message > > I'm probably one of about three people who actually really likes Dummy > Corporation. In a low master deck, I think it's a fine card for > inclusion. > Well, thats two of us. I wonder the third is? Seriously, I quite like Dummy Corporation. Its kept me going in a few games. I remember the odd looks I got when I first played it, and now its showing up fairly regularlly around Cambridge -- Colin "Eryx" Goodman Cambridge UK http://www.geocities.com/eryx_uk/Cambridge_by_night.html

[ quoted text not captured ] The Giovanni have an advantage because they are/were Capadocians. They have great synergy with the Nagajara and workable synergy with Harbingers, and Samedi, not to mention the heavy dose of Necromancy given to the G3 Thaumaturgists. The Setites have Presence bleed and a strong Dominate outferior, though they too suffer a bit with a small Cel/Pot dilution. The Ravnos have Ani/For which crosses with Gangrel nicely, but Chimerstry is the least available discipline outside any Independent clan, and Protean is specialized for the Gangrel. The Assamites of course have Cel/Obf which crosses with City Gangrel, but Quietus is still (prior to KMW) a 3rd tier discipline and not widely found outside Clan Assamite while the City Gangrel have Protean. Assamites are broken into three castes which may further dilute their cohesiveness, especially when you get into larger capacity vampires. For example, you rarely see Tegyrius and Ur-Shulgi in the same Assamite deck (and perhaps Tegyrius doesn't mind so much :)). Jeff

Category four, cards that are good for limited and bad for constructed play is somewhat huge. Identifying cards in this category is a key skill in draft play Here are examples of this category - Outclassed weapons : shotguns, bastard swords, bang nakhs and most weapons are good draft cards (but completely unpalyable in constructed). An improvised flamethrower could be a frst pick draft card (and too dangerous a bet in constructed) - Permanents, even suboptimal ones: Rumor Mill, club zombie, IR Googles - "Dominated" minion cards : nimble feet (outclassed by pursuit or psyche), media inluence (outclassed by legal manipulations), ambush (inferior to bum's or harass) ... thet still can do the job perfectly - anything that bloats : Short term investment being the best example - So-so mastercards usually evicted by staple master cards (see an old thread by Orpheus about boring staple masters, I fully subscribe to it) - Joe-Shmoe lowcaps : any four(or less) cap without a major drawpack can be a very good vampire. When is the last time you played Anwar in constucted - Some vampire with powerfull specials/titles . Guys like Lachlan, Vasantasena, Helena or William Biltmore are ultimate killers in limited environment (and outclassed fattie crap outside of it). William Biltmore being the "worse" of the category, as any one who played a CE draft tournament already knows".

On Mon, 24 Jan 2005 23:31:03 GMT, "Colin Goodman" <colin.g...@ntlworld.com> scrawled: >"James Coupe" <ja...@zephyr.org.uk> wrote in message >> >> I'm probably one of about three people who actually really likes Dummy >> Corporation. In a low master deck, I think it's a fine card for >> inclusion. >> > >Well, thats two of us. I wonder the third is? > >Seriously, I quite like Dummy Corporation. Its kept me going in a few games. >I remember the odd looks I got when I first played it, and now its showing >up fairly regularlly around Cambridge I liked it too. it was one shakey leg of my bleed defense package in a baali deck. banner of neutrality was in there too, plus a pair of AI. all together they worked out quite nicely. salem domain:canberra http://www.geocities.com/salem_christ.geo/vtes.htm (replace "hotmail" with "yahoo" to email)

"salem" <salem_ch...@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:rgbcv0tanjsi56u04...@4ax.com... > On Mon, 24 Jan 2005 23:31:03 GMT, "Colin Goodman" > <colin.g...@ntlworld.com> scrawled: > >>"James Coupe" <ja...@zephyr.org.uk> wrote in message >>> >>> I'm probably one of about three people who actually really likes Dummy >>> Corporation. >>Well, thats two of us. I wonder the third is? >> > I liked it too. You are now officially a plurality. So, go organize yourselves into some sort of help group, and write your 12-step program... ;-) DaveZ Atom Weaver Dummy Corp = Meh.

jeff_kuta wrote: > The Assamites of course have Cel/Obf which crosses with City Gangrel, > but Quietus is still (prior to KMW) a 3rd tier discipline and not > widely found outside Clan Assamite while the City Gangrel have Protean. > Assamites are broken into three castes which may further dilute their > cohesiveness, especially when you get into larger capacity vampires. > For example, you rarely see Tegyrius and Ur-Shulgi in the same Assamite > deck (and perhaps Tegyrius doesn't mind so much :)). And they are also spread out across all three sects, making most crypts functionally even smaller. And then there's the fact that almost none of the "good" assamites even have Obfuscate. When looked at individually, the Assamites have some really great vampires. When looked at as groups, they are horribly fractured. -- David Cherryholmes david.che...@gmail.com "OK. So be it. It's not my view, but whatever makes you happy, right? I'm all about making you happy, Dave. :-)" -- LSJ, V:TES Net.Rep for White Wolf, Inc.

e...@boursorama.com wrote: > - Joe-Shmoe lowcaps : any four(or less) cap without a major drawpack > can be a very good vampire. When is the last time you played Anwar in > constucted Yesterday. [ quoted text not captured ]

David Zopf wrote: > Dummy Corp = Meh. Hey, one of your padawans managed to withdraw from a game at DragonCon, with LSJ trying to kill him, because he had Dummy Corp out. That's friggin' sweet. [ quoted text not captured ]

James Coupe wrote: > In message <1106582493.5...@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com>, > Screaming Vermillian <vermil...@yahoo.com> writes: > >Nice footnote. But that cards mostly good in theory, and through many > >crazy loops you have to jump to accomplish. Anyhow, I think Choirs' > >merits and faults have been discussed enough. > > I said it was cool. Would you rather it had never been printed because > it's bad for draft? What? Now you're just putting words in my mouth. I was just applauding your use of a footnote and mentioning a card whose power level, to this day, gives me headaches. No I don't wish the card had never been printed! I don't want WW to go back and retroactively make every set a draftable set! I just want ONE, ONE draftable set that includes key cards that every clan can make use of, and, if purchased in enough quantity, can make a good deck out of JUST IT. (like Champions of Kamigawa, the latest MTG base set). > Consider: Choir is a very cool card. People want to make Choir decks > work. People need a lot of Choir to stand a good chance of making a > choir deck work. (Because, if nothing else, they need two in a given > turn or it's wasted, leaving aside the possibility of blocks.) So, what > does this mean? They have to buy quite a few boosters to get it. Or > *someone* has to anyway, even if I trade for it. > > This drives sales. The presence of cards which you need to amass in > relatively significant numbers (8-20, say) drives sales. Excluding the > presence of such cards from a set denies that possibility for driving > sales. > > See, these are the sorts of decisions *real* designers make. Not just > "How can I make a set I'm happy with?" but "How can I make a set that'll > make money?" and "How can I make a set that will mean I keep my job?" I understand this. Its also my job as a fake designer to figure out how to also make the expansion marketable. Should I think of the theme first and then graft the mechanics onto it, or should I think of the mechanics first and then graft the theme onto it? And I think that in even the fan base set there were sufficient cards there to drive sales... Though the VTESers might revolt had it been printed the way its listed exactly... > >I'm not suggesting we remove anything from the permanent VTES set, and > >if you're referring to, pre-production removal, its unncessary. We > >tweak the effects. Nightmate Curse is fun, but it would be infinitely > >more draft friendly had it been something like: > > But it's not designed to be draft friendly. And I'm just trying to stimulate this. By talking about it. (not obsessing so much as you think I am. Just talking. I'm on one side of the agument, whether I agree with it or not, and you're on some other side, maybe parallel to mine. Whatever...). > You're obsessing about draft again. Unlike Magic, V:TES has never had a > strong draft scene (the wide number of disciplines makes that tricky, > for a start, which the restricted number of colours in Magic mitigates > against). V:TES has also never had a designer that's said "We make some > bad cards that are there for draft tournaments." (Also, bad cards can > force people to buy more cards, since the ones they've got are dross. > Not that Magic is a cash cow, of course.) Yes, they just say "we make some bad cards for themes". Like Liberty Club Intrigue. Like that whole Seraph thing. Deep Cover Agent? Most of the events... And did we really need that many more Crusades? And the reason VTES has never had a strong draft scene, I reckon, is due to its undraftable nature from the get-go. Had it been draftable from the beginning, with every other expansion being a draft friendly one, it might have been a more draft friendly game. And I still believe that this can happen. > Cards are made rare or common or whatever based on their utility. Not > their utility to just draft. Some mistakes are made, of course, but the > design team/commonality setters have shown a strong tendency to correct > such things where major mistakes have been made. Again, not in all > cases. But correcting mistakes from the past has certainly been done - > making Immortal Grapple and Freak Drive significantly easier to get hold > of, for instance. Sure. But we can start including a few more of these into each set, and we'll infinitely improve the draftability of these sets. Consider some tweaking of the Gehenna set had been done, as far as vampires printed and discipline requiring cards being printed. Consider more cards like Murder Hack, Action. 1 blood. Bleed at +1 bleed. If a Gehenna card is in play, this vampire gains one blood and untaps at the end of the action, if successful. Had this been printed instead of, oh, say Diamond Thunderbolt the set would have been like 5 times more draftable. > What's significantly problematic is that you're completely fixated on > draft. Most people aren't. Draft is a fun blast now and then, but it's > not what most people care about, IME. Some, yes, of course. I just think that a draftable set, if done properly, would SUPER drive sales. I could be wrong, however. > One with the Night > Action > pillar > 1 blood > obf: This minion gets +1 stealth until the end of the turn or the end > of its next action (whichever is first). Untap this minion if this > action is successful. OBF: As above, but you may untap this vampire > even if this action is not successful. > > First off, is this a good card? +1 stealth to the end of the turn, or > the end of the next action. Well, I untap once, but I need to be able > to take multiple actions for this to work out better than Lost in > Crowds, or any similar common stealth card. It's costing a blood, too! > > This is a poor choice for constructed play, in many circumstances. At > inferior, if I don't have obf/for, I might as well play Lost in Crowds. > Or why not play Psychic Veil, even if I do have for? *All* my vampires > get +1 stealth that way, not just this one. Sure, it's not the same > effect, but many times, it's going to be just fine, and more flexible. First off, it was supposed to be an action inherantly at +1 stealth. (updated in a version on my PC that I havene't sent to Lasombra, because I'm actually embarrassed about a few things in the fanset...). Second, its a PILLAR. Useful for a LOT of people. Third its stealth you can cycle INSTANTLY. No hand jam. Use it whether you need it or not, and lets move on to this other crap thats in my deck. > Mundane Guise > am > pillar > obf: +1 stealth on a non-cardless action. OBF: As above, but at +2 > stealth. You may discard this card at the end of any succesful > cardless action. > > Good for constructed? Not really, no. Again, for obf, I just want Lost > in Crowds, almost always. And you can have it. THIS is probably why I don't like my fanset anymore, because of TOO much duplication of already existing cards. This set was my attempt of this without using reprints, as MTG doesn't and I was trying to sell VTES like MTG. However, if you look at 9th edition and what not, these are anual or so sets that include reprints (no new cards, but who has to be EXACTLY like MTG, huh?). > Being able to discard the card also seriously undermines one of the > fundamental mechanics of the game - if I don't attempt a block, you > don't get to cycle stealth. If I don't block, you get choked. You > don't want to make cycling easy. > > > Also: consider the implication of pillar. Is it hard to get an action > that requires a card? No. Include Computer Hacking. Include Govern > the Unaligned. Whatever. The restrictions on, say, Shadow Body and > Shroud of Night (restricting bleeds, or votes) are much, much more > significant in this way. > > And now you just hand stealth to big vampires who don't need it. The > Obfuscate vampires would rather have a good card. The vampires who > don't have Obfuscate now want to use this to get 'disciplineless' > stealth. Good design choice? Questionable, at least, which is going to > end up supporting vampires who aren't "supposed" to use it in the first > place, and be ignored by the ones who ostensibly should be using it. In > which case, you're much better off writing useful but flawed cards like, > say, Stealth Ritus, which actually address the needs of the people > concerned directly. Uhuh. Like one or two stealth here and there will really break big vampires, what, with how many intercept locations are out there now... > Grace of Helena > Combat > Do not replace until the next discard phase. > Prerange. Pre: Once this combat, this minion may burn one blood to > strike: end combat. Untap this vampire after strike resolution, if > this is done. PRE: As above but you may replace this card immediately. > > This is actually quite well done. Well thank you... so... what's the purpose of this excersize? I appreciate critique of the fan set in all its forms. (though this is the only kind of critique I get). > Uniform Shift > Combat > pillar > pro: Strike: If the opposing minion is not choosing dodge, or combat > ends as its strike, combat ends. PRO: As above, and untap this > striking minion. > > If I got this in a booster and I'm a Gangrel/Protean user, I'd be > thinking "Jesus, why the fuck did they not just reprint Earth Meld which > is simply better?" And then you've just handed S:CE to a whole bunch of > people who didn't have it, without a lot of work - again, meaning that > Protean cards don't actually support Protean. Think outside of the clan box, man. > Possibly perfectly useful for limited play, where you don't get Earth > Meld, but in constructed play when I want Protean, I'm going to take > EVERY SINGLE COPY of this card and set it on fire with little photos of > the designer stapled to it. Heheh. That'd be great. I admit, giving SCE to everyone is a bit harsh, but enough people have it, or can get it as it is. This card does need changed, though (or perhaps Pillar needs changed) so thank you for bringing my attention to it. > (I have rage issues, by the way.) Sorry to have riled your rage. > An Apple to the Victor > Reaction > 1 blood > ser: Play when a methuselah is about to gain control of the edge. > Control of the edge does not change. SER: As above, but that > methuselah burns one pool. > > > Probably fine for limited play - you only get one, unless you're lucky. > > For constructed play, I wait until my prey bleeds and then play three of > these. Generate a few SER weenies, which isn't too hard with Aabt > Kindred and some discipline cards. No, I don't make this a binding part > of my deck, for when I get a political prey, but it's a good risk in > many circles that my prey is going to bleed at some point, even in all > but the most focused political decks. Oh, this is just like that deck that makes people loose pool when they fail a vote. THAT card sees play ALL the time... and it DOES cost a blood. Perhaps it'd be best to say 'this vampire burns one blood' to avoid cost reduction with Path or Ankara... > Pity the stealth and bleed deck that finds itself taking these from both > sides... So what! Punish the stealth bleed mechanism a bit! The meta is allowed to change. And also, I'm not even sure that its possible to play mutiples of these. It says "when that methuselah gains the edge, they don't and burn one pool". Can you gain the edge mutiple times on one edge gain? It could be reworded to allow just one person to play it. I think that is a good change. Thank you for bring this to my attention. > V:TES constructed is *nothing* like limited; if a card can be put into a > deck twenty times, someone will consider it. I'm not doubting that they won't. Notice, however, that every card you had a complaint about, whose power levels you fear were going to be broken should they enter a constructed format, were FIXABLE. This would have been smoothed out in playtesting, and in thought experiments like what you've just done. I told you, I needed help with this, and that's its NOT a finished product. Just because I've failed in some areas, doesn't mean that its not possible. It just means I've failed and need to look at it some more. I'm going to change the pillar rule perhaps... Maybe "if you control a minion possessing the discipline in question..." so then you have to alliance with others... but then are these suddenly useful in limited? Or did I just KILL their utility all to hell... Probably the latter. I think I prefer my old method of making those cards. Three levels on each card. Outferior, playable by ANY, inferior and superior as (slightly less powerful) normal... Once again, thanks for the comments. ~SV

Frederick Scott wrote: > "Screaming Vermillian" <vermil...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:1106581283.3...@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com... > > Do we consider the mandate of card limits NOW? No. > > Of course not. I only mentioned card limits to say, "This would be > bad." Any card that begs for a card limit to be applied to it is > just considered automatically bad, a card to not print at all. So let us ban shadow step! :) > > What you mentioned isn't a problem inherant in a base set > > (even excluding one that's good for a draft, too), its inherant in > > EVERY set. > > Well, yes. I was just pointing out how a card can be balanced in limited > would be unbalanced in constructed. Point being, you have to take that > into account when designing cards for any set, no matter what purpose > you intend to use it for. Thank you for this insight of yours. I regret to inform you that I have been trying to take this into account as well. > > Just as LSJ has been making major changes to suppliment WHATEVER PLAY > > VTES IS CURRENTLY. Anarchs. Events. Redlist. Hell, Grouping was the > > most devestatingly game changing rule so far, and my suggetsions, > > should they be costed correctly, are NOTHING compared to that, nor the > > above. > > I guess it depends on whether they're so powerful that all deckbuilders > would be foolish to ignore them. Despite the existance of Anarchs, it's > easy to build non-Anarch decks. (In fact, it's been implied by many that > there's no point to building Anarch decks at all.) The ones you propose > seem too powerful. Well, had anarchs not been costed the way it was costed, it WOULD be too powerful. Imagine vampires that start as anarch. Imagine the go anarch action costed only ONE blood (and none if you already had an anarch) AND it let you untap afterwards, successful or not. Then it would have been, perhaps, too powerful. Same goes for my proposed mechanics. WOrd them and cost them correctly and you prevent escalation. Sometimes they need flat out axed, but sometimes you can save them. > > What if they were costed appropriately? > > Then I suspect they wouldn't make a dent on limited play. Again, first > tell me what you're trying to do. I'm trying to create Keywords (or general commonly seen card effects), that when included into a set, make it more playable for limited, and yet still interesting for constructed. > THEN propose specific cards. Just > creating more powerful cards clearly isn't the answer. > > (specific cards ellided; still NOT going to get caught up in anecdotal > arguments, sorry...) Its getting kinda' tough... but I'll try to hold back. :) > >> Clearly, you can. Of course, what sucks and what's great for limited > >> will depend on which expansions you're using in your tournament. But > >> any card that's screwed by some readily available and often used card > >> in constructed may suck in constructed but be a god card in a limited > >> environment which doesn't use its "predator". > > > > Wait. What does this mean, doesn't use its 'predator'? > > Cards that make the use of other cards problematic. For instance, > Immortal Grapple causes problems to decks employing scads of Strike: > Combat Ends cards because, aside from preventing you from just waltzing > out of combat free from all those horrible things your opponent would > otherwise do to you, you wind up having to hold onto the S:CE card > and it clogs your hand. In effect, you get "punished" for playing > with a non-hand-strike. Immortal Grapple limits the use of S:CE, > preventing it from being a "god card" in constructed. (Some might > say it doesn't do enough, and that in general there aren't enough > such S:CE-limiting cards in constructed to "prey" on S:CE. That's > a separate issue, though.) Point being, S:CE might be much better > in limited than constructed since a player attempting to win with > combat strategies in limited would be highly unlikely to accumulate > enough Immortal Grapples to be useful in limited. In fact, the > reason S:CE isn't that important in limited is because combat offense > in general is so terrible that combat defense seldom matters. Or just needs to be 'strike: dodge'. Yes. I understand. So in limited, SCE = S:Dodge pretty much. Perhaps if combat were to be better in limited... I understand the concept of "predator" and "prey" in this instance now. Yes. Note that without sufficient multitude of predator, many cards in limited could suck (presses to end, canceling of maneuvers, anti-bleed bounce, etc...). I am trying to think of God cards in limited because of the non-existence of a predator to it... and I'll be sure to think of that when designing cards for a draft friendly base set (as I already have). > The above represents the type of thinking I believe you have to do to > find solutions to the problem of printing sets that would be better > for draft. Talking about individual cards is _way_ premature until > you've thought about what you're trying to accomplish by designing > them. No card exists in a vacuum. Understood. This is why I need help analyzing the ENTIRITY of my fanset, not just individual cards. I think its apparent what I was trying to accomplish with it, and what a new draftable expansion is trying to accomplish. Beyond just making mony, new cards and maybe some theme, they're trying to make a draft friendly expansion. that's the goal. > (about SV's proposed mechanics) > >> In this case, I think the issue is, "Would they be too powerful for > >> constructed?" I think they would. > > > > And how would you break them? These are VAMPIRES. There are many GOOD > > vampires out there (Ian, etc...), and they haven't HURT constructed > > really, have they? > > I didn't say it would break anything. They're just _better_ than > existing vampires, meaning that existing vampires would be obselesced - > which is definitely a bad thing. If you balanced such vampires with > corresponding disadvantages, then the disadvantages would likely negate > their effectiveness in limited decks as well as constructed decks - > unless you've created disadvantages that only matter in constructed or > something. Just axe a few of those superfluous disciplines, or yeah, give them a disadvantage that really hurts in constructed (but then we're approaching the 'good for limited, bad for constructed' aspect that someone here thinks will break the game). What disadvantage WOULD be bad for constructed? ~SV

Joshua Duffin wrote: > "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote in message > news:lRcJd.2557$HZ.1889@okepread07... > He's trying to make cards that are usable in more draft decks than the > kinds of cards we see now, by making them usable with either of two > different disciplines, etc etc. > > Seems worthwhile to me. If the effects aren't broken in constructed, > there's no reason they'd be problem cards. If they ain't broke, why NOT include it? > I'd disagree with both points in that last sentence. In my experience, > combat defense *does* matter in draft and S:CE *is* important. Combat > offense in draft is strong enough that you need to either have decent > offensive combat of your own, or else a good amount of combat defense. > Majesty is a definite power card in draft, as much so as Wake with > Evening's Freshness. Yeah, combat can be fierce in limited, but its rarely fierce because of additional strikes. A simple dodge can often get accomplished what a SCE does in limited. > Anyway, I think you're right that there can be cards good in limited > that aren't much good in constructed. But I don't think that's a big > problem with making a limited-oriented base set. There are *already* > lots of cards printed in most VTES sets that aren't very good for > constructed. There's no reason the problem would have to get *worse* in > a limited-oriented set. Yeah. There's a ton of crappy cards out there already, and they ain't crappy cause they're good for limited, either. > Existing vampires are obsolesced all the time, although most of them > have been obsolete for years already, since they're the ones that are > just poor value for capacity compared to lots of other similar vampires. And really. Unless you print the exact clon of a preexisting vampire only mine has another half a point ability or something, the older vampire isn't obsolete. Nor would it be even if I did so, because of the Grouping Rule (there may be guys that the G2 guy can play with that the G5 guy can't that make the G2 guy preferable to some, and not to others). > I don't think Vermilian's examples would obsolesce existing vampires any > more than other new vampires do. The 6-cap is a 6-cap with only one > superior, and the 9-cap has only a Bishop title and pays 2.5 points for > its "Fortitude Mastery" ability. (The 6 seems more likely to be a > little strong for its size, since it's paying about 0 points for the > "Scout" ability, but then using the Scout ability does have a > significant cost.) Oh, come on now. 6 caps get 6.5 points of stuff now a days. that's 5 pts of disciplines and 1.5 for scout. Fortitude mastery seems to be strong, hence the hefty costing. > still likes draft I'm glad. Do you think more draftability for VTES would help sales?

"Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote in message news:zBeJd.2561$HZ.1118@okepread07... > > "Joshua Duffin" <jtdu...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:35l843F...@individual.net... > > While it's valid in a way to say "I don't want to get sucked into > > specifics", it doesn't seem productive to demand that examples never be > > used. Examples are good for illustrating more general ideas. :-) > > I never demanded example never be used. Examples are fine to use. But > SV is ONLY posting card designs without a clue as to the overall intent, > which I'm pretty sure is bad approach, given what's at stake. OK. I thought the intent - to come up with ideas for making more draftable VTES sets - was pretty clear. Maybe he didn't say it where you would have seen it, though. > > Seems worthwhile to me. If the effects aren't broken in constructed, > > there's no reason they'd be problem cards. > > You need to be precise about your terminology. It may not be "broken" > in the sense of allowing the creation of unbalanced decks. But if they > obsolesce existing cards in constructed, clearly that's bad. Well, only if those existing cards are ones that aren't already "effectively obsolete" by not being useful now. (Even if there isn't currently a card that's *directly* superior to them.) > I think > these mechanics would obsolesce existing cards in constructed. The > problem with this approach is that it's just making more powerful cards > in general so they'll be more powerful in limited - but then they'll > also be more powerful than existing cards in constructed and that's bad. Again, it's only bad if they'd cause a power spiral in the *actual* constructed game, not in the universe of "printed cards, many of which never get used in competition". > > Anyway, I think you're right that there can be cards good in limited > > that aren't much good in constructed. But I don't think that's a big > > problem with making a limited-oriented base set. There are *already* > > lots of cards printed in most VTES sets that aren't very good for > > constructed. There's no reason the problem would have to get *worse* in > > a limited-oriented set. > > Sure it would. It would be worse because that's your CRITERIA for > printing these cards. Ergo, they'd ALL tend towards the bad side of > the scale, making for packs that are overall a bad value for constructed > purposes. ...? You were just saying that our criteria for making draft better were going to ramp up the power of cards in general, making old constructed cards obsolete. Now you're saying that the draft-oriented cards aren't going to be any good in constructed, so people who like constructed won't buy the packs. Or are you saying that if we *intentionally* print cards that are good in limited but not in constructed, that worsens the existing "bad card problem"? Sure it does, but that's not what I'm proposing. We don't *want* to make more cards that are bad in constructed. Our goal is for all the draft-oriented cards to *also* be good in constructed. That should work out as well as the current (assumed) goal for all cards to be good in constructed. (Since the current goal seems to have a significant failure rate of weak cards already.) > > I don't think Vermilian's examples would obsolesce existing vampires any > > more than other new vampires do. > > Then I think we just disagree about that, at least about the "Mastery" > thing. Being able to search a library for a card that one could > repeatedly use is pretty powerful. "Scout", in retrospect may not be > that good. But then, I don't think "Scout" is going to do anything > for limited. Sure, Mastery is a cool ability. As I read it, though, the card is used once and then it's gone, just as if it were played from your hand. That's not *that* powerful. Yeah, it's kind of like Sibyl's Tongue without the action cost, but instead it does have a blood cost, a discipline limitation, a superior-discipline requirement, and a hand-size/discard cost. Scout's probably only going to do anything helpful in limited when you're already not going to be able to afford to bring that vampire into play. But that's at least *slightly* helpful, since you often can't afford all your starting vampires in draft. > > The 6-cap is a 6-cap with only one superior, and the 9-cap has only a > > Bishop title and pays 2.5 points for its "Fortitude Mastery" ability. > > I don't care. There's just no reason these things shine in limited > but not constructed really. So they either fall in the territory of > being overpowered for constructed or not helpful for limited or some > combination of the two - point to where on the scale you think it > should be. > > But if you disagree and you think they ARE better in limited than > constructed...well, why didn't we start the conversation there in > the first place? Then we can see what overall effect designing lots > of such cards will have on constructed. ...what? It's not necessary for the abilities to be better in limited than constructed. They're just supposed to be helpful for limited and not break constructed. They can be just as good in constructed as they are in limited, that's fine. Making limited more playable doesn't have to mean that a card or ability is useless in constructed. Where it *should* be, IMO, is "helpful for limited, helpful for constructed". There's no reason for an effect to have to fall into either "overpowered for constructed" or "not helpful for limited". Anyway. I do think Mastery is probably more useful in limited than constructed, because vampire blood (one of the notable costs for Mastery use) is a less-scarce resource in limited than it is in constructed - since there's not as much ability to turn that blood into pool, it's more likely you'll be willing to spend it on some effect, like that of Mastery. Scout may also be more useful in limited in that players are somewhat more likely to build their crypts with the intention of bringing all their vampires into play in constructed. But it's hard to say without playtesting; it seems possible with any of these "search" effects that overpowered combos could exist. (The Sibyl's Tongue experience leads me to think that VTES isn't terribly prone to overpowered stuff happening when you can search your library, but that's not an ironclad guarantee, I suppose.) Josh what's in it for me

Frederick Scott wrote: > "Screaming Vermillian" <vermil...@yahoo.com> wrote in message > news:1106582917....@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com... > > Aha! Finally, cards that are truly Good For Limited Not So Good for > > Constructed. (short term, secret horde). But do these cards truly HURT > > the constructed environment anymore than just reguar ole' bad cards > > being printed? > > Yes, they would. If _any_ of the cards in the set were arguable useful > for constructed (a condition that's effectively impossible to avoid), > then people wanting to use them would have to buy packs of cards > containing mostly bad cards to get a few good cards. That's bad. > In general, creating whole expansions of cards that are bad for > constructed is bad - because they create expensive rares. Yeah, but aren't we already in that situation? There's TONS of cards in gehenna that are crap, but I'm chasing some of them that aren't (mostly the vampires! :P). So I keep buying packs and I keep loading up on stunt cycles, Diamond Thunderbolts, Black Hand Ritual and so forth. Hell, I even get crap rares too! (Crusades and some events). Is it so bad if these bad cards were actually somewhat better for limited? And the way you're talking about it, you seem to think that ALL the cards in a limited friendly set would be bad for constructed. Not true. It is possible to have quite a few cards both good for limited and good for constructed, isn't it? Just because we're making a limited set, doesn't mean it has to suck for constructed. When we encounter a card that does suck in this way, we consider what could be done to make it better for constructed. This crap happens all the time. People USUALLY make new cards by thinking of their constructed applications first anyway. If we just do that, and then consdier their limited applications also, we'll probably suceed more often than not... ~SV

Frederick Scott wrote: > "Joshua Duffin" <jtdu...@yahoo.com> wrote in message > news:35l8u6F...@individual.net... > > This is also possible - a "choose your own vampire adventure" format > > would probably make it noticeably easier to make your draft decks > > effective. (Something where you draft your entire library, and then can > > choose any twelve vampires you want from the universe of VTES vampires.) > > Right. Basically, crypt is constructed, library is drafted. Not a bad > idea, really. Don't know if it's enough to solve the problem (and > of course, people will be at huge risk of getting screwed by choosing > the same crypt as the other guys at their draft table) but would be > worth trying out, at least. Well, there is something called signaling in drafting. Go look it up on a MTG website or something... Or google it. > > There might be problems with most of these ideas though. (The "choose > > your 12" has the problem of actually having a million zillion copies of > > every vampire available, for example. :-) > > I don't understand. Could you clarify a bit? Perhaps he suggests there should be an alternative format of VTES for limited that involves just playing with just 8 vampires?

"Joshua Duffin" <jtdu...@yahoo.com> wrote in messagenews:35ncdjF...@individual.net... > > "Frederick Scott" <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> wrote in message > news:zBeJd.2561$HZ.1118@okepread07... >> >> "Joshua Duffin" <jtdu...@yahoo.com> wrote in message > news:35l843F...@individual.net... >> I never demanded examples never be used. Examples are fine to use. >> But SV is ONLY posting card designs without a clue as to the overall >> intent, which I'm pretty sure is bad approach, given what's at stake. > > OK. I thought the intent - to come up with ideas for making more > draftable VTES sets - was pretty clear. Maybe he didn't say it where > you would have seen it, though. No, I understood that. The implication is that I think it's the wrong approach - at least, to the extent that it involves posting individual card suggestions in the absense of an understanding why they should be useful to pursue. By implication, that understanding would also explain why you wouldn't break anything in constructed at the same time, using designs like that. >> You need to be precise about your terminology. It may not be "broken" >> in the sense of allowing the creation of unbalanced decks. But if >> they obsolesce existing cards in constructed, clearly that's bad. > > Well, only if those existing cards are ones that aren't already > "effectively obsolete" by not being useful now. (Even if there isn't > currently a card that's *directly* superior to them.) Sure. But if it wasn't clear before, I think at least Mastery would obsolesce non-obsolete existing vampires. >> > Anyway, I think you're right that there can be cards good in limited >> > that aren't much good in constructed. But I don't think that's a >> > big problem with making a limited-oriented base set. There are >> > *already* lots of cards printed in most VTES sets that aren't very >> > good for constructed. There's no reason the problem would have to >> > get *worse* in a limited-oriented set. >> >> Sure it would. It would be worse because that's your CRITERIA for >> printing these cards. Ergo, they'd ALL tend towards the bad side of >> the scale, making for packs that are overall a bad value for >> constructed purposes. > > ...? You were just saying that our criteria for making draft better > were going to ramp up the power of cards in general, making old > constructed cards obsolete. Now you're saying that the draft-oriented > cards aren't going to be any good in constructed, so people who like > constructed won't buy the packs. You're getting confused because you haven't done your "thread history" lesson. ;-) My original response was to one of SV's posts that posited there could be no damage done to constructed by printing a set of cards that are only equal or less powerful in constructed (that happen to make for a good draft set). That's wrong, and the above is my proof of same. At the same time, SV then posted a couple of mechanics for draft and demanded I evaluate them to state what could possibly be wrong with printing cards using them. Well, to me, one of them looks like it would create more powerful vampires than much of what currently exists in constructed. More importantly, neither appear to offer any mechanic that solves problems in limited in any other way than just being more powerful in general. This is the whole weakness of SV's approach: no thought about how to create a mechanic that would be helpful for the purposes of playing limited tournaments while being pretty much neutral in a constructed environment. > We don't *want* to make more > cards that are bad in constructed. Our goal is for all the > draft-oriented cards to *also* be good in constructed. That should work > out as well as the current (assumed) goal for all cards to be good in > constructed. (Since the current goal seems to have a significant > failure rate of weak cards already.) OK. I agree with that. Just, think about how to do that by design (first) rather than by example (which should only be used to clarify what you're getting). >> > I don't think Vermilian's examples would obsolesce existing vampires >> > any more than other new vampires do. >> >> Then I think we just disagree about that, at least about the "Mastery" >> thing. Being able to search a library for a card that one could >> repeatedly use is pretty powerful. "Scout", in retrospect may not be >> that good. But then, I don't think "Scout" is going to do anything >> for limited. > > Sure, Mastery is a cool ability. As I read it, though, the card is used > once and then it's gone, just as if it were played from your hand. > That's not *that* powerful. Yeah, it's kind of like Sibyl's Tongue > without the action cost, but instead it does have a blood cost, a > discipline limitation, a superior-discipline requirement, and a > hand-size/discard cost. But ultimately, it strikes as something that's even MORE powerful in constructed - where you could build a deck around the power - than limited. So how do you cost something like that? If you make it too costly, it's actually a *bad* vampire in limited where you can't take as much advantage of its power. If you don't, then it will obsolesce things in constructed. This seems like a bad approach to me. > Scout's probably only going to do anything helpful in limited when > you're already not going to be able to afford to bring that vampire into > play. But that's at least *slightly* helpful, since you often can't > afford all your starting vampires in draft. In other words, it's OK to have design a crappy vampire in limited since the structural problems with draft already cause people to wind up with crappy vampires in their crypt? Reasons this is an unhelpful line of thinking left as a problem for the student to work out. >> I don't care. There's just no reason these things shine in limited >> but not constructed really. So they either fall in the territory of >> being overpowered for constructed or not helpful for limited or some >> combination of the two - point to where on the scale you think it >> should be. >> >> But if you disagree and you think they ARE better in limited than >> constructed...well, why didn't we start the conversation there in >> the first place? Then we can see what overall effect designing lots >> of such cards will have on constructed. > > ...what? It's not necessary for the abilities to be better in limited > than constructed. OK, sorry. Let me put it this way: There's no reason these things should be better for limited than those cards printed in the past and still well-balanced for constructed. > Where it *should* be, IMO, is "helpful for limited, helpful for > constructed". Right. But keep in mind: cards are currently designed to be balanced in constructed and generally turn out to be terrible in limited. So fulfilling this goal requires a shift in philosophy somewhat (at least for the cards designed into a limited set). > Anyway. I do think Mastery is probably more useful in limited than > constructed, because vampire blood (one of the notable costs for Mastery > use) is a less-scarce resource in limited than it is in constructed - > since there's not as much ability to turn that blood into pool, it's > more likely you'll be willing to spend it on some effect, like that of > Mastery. Maybe. But I gurantee you, people will find a way to make use of a search power that's far more valuable in constructed. > Scout may also be more useful in limited in that players are somewhat > more likely to build their crypts with the intention of bringing all > their vampires into play in constructed. Again, that just seems naive. I think you're underestimating what can be done with a search-your-library power in constructed. One of the reasons thinks like Magic of the Smith aren't far more useful is that they're randomized into the library along with the things you'd use them to search for. Put the power into the crypt, and I think it would be very valuable - certainly more valuable than in limited where you're restricted to the best card you drafted. In the case of these powers, you're restricted to the best thing you drafted of a certain set of limitations (which in constructed you could make sure matched up right). If you happen to have drafted the limited "god card" (something like Enchanted Marionette) and a Scout or Mastery vampire that finds it, then you have a "god deck" and the tournament will become horribly unbalanced. If you aren't so fortunate, I don't think these powers mean that much. Fred

In message <35ld37F...@individual.net>, Joshua Duffin <jtdu...@yahoo.com> writes: > >"James Coupe" <ja...@zephyr.org.uk> wrote in message >news:Bej+BUu3...@gratiano.zephyr.org.uk... >> In message <1106583698....@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com>, >> Screaming Vermillian <vermil...@yahoo.com> writes: > >> >Starters are nuetral for draft. Printing staple cards ONLY in >starters, >> >or rather not printing/making enough in any quantity in the boosters >to >> >make them draftable, is bad for draft. >> >> And bad for established players if you print crap-loads of them. >> >> Lots of established players don't want to hack through base sets >getting >> more Saturday Night Specials. They want to get the cool new cards. > >Too late! Camarilla Edition *has* Saturday Night Special in it. I know, and there were many whines from established players at the time at the lack of cool new cards, forcing them to buy a crap-load of boosters. The wider issue there, however, was card ratios in Camarilla Edition, IMO. >Any base set is probably going to have stuff that established players >don't want in it. It's the nature of a base set. Staples ought to go >in the boosters of a base set because it *is* a base set. There can be >other cards to attract established players, and there certainly should >be. But staples shouldn't go *only* in the starters. (And they don't. >Though Saturday Night Special wouldn't be my example of a good staple. >:-) No, I'm not saying they should only go in starters. (Obviously, they *could*.) Anarchs has a number of reprints in the boosters for the Gangrel, for instance. But filling up boosters with cards established people don't want won't help with sales, either. But the cry of "Won't somebody think of the newbies?" is fundamentally flawed. They can already get a lot of staples from starters, and these are very, very helpful for newbies. I *know* that I can get workable cards that will give me a useful deck right now. As I become an established player, I might want to get more, yes - perhaps so I can have four or five decks built at once, or so I can build a specialised "lots of masters" deck with a crap load of Blood Dolls for my Embraces, or something. But as a newbie, people being able to say "Well, buy those two decks and pay mix and match, you've got a bunch of useful cards in them, and they're both a bit combatty, so you'll probably enjoy them if you liked the fighting in that demo deck" is significantly more useful than "Well, buy a bunch of boosters and you might get some cards you like." Saturday Night Special isn't bad, but it's generally not good. It was more of an example of "This is the sort of thing that turns up in base sets that established players will not want to collect more of." If you're happy with Jackie Therman or IR Goggles as a maneuver away defence, IMO Saturday Night Special isn't too bad. Where it falls down, IMO, is that for that extra pool, .44 Magnum is better - cheap defence in Jackie, cheap defence with offence in a Magnum, so SNS is somewhere in between the two and a little unsatisfactory as a result. >> If the base set boosters are just giving them more staples (which they >> already have) or very similar staples (e.g. giving them Forced >Awakening >> instead of WwEF), they're not getting much new. > >It might not all be that new, but it should be useful. They're going to >buy boosters because they don't want more of the exact same thing that >was in the precon, and because buying boosters is what CCG players do. Oh, sure. But there's no actual need to buy the base set ones because: >If the base set boosters have enough interesting and good cards in them, they'll be happy enough with them anyway, 9 times out of 10. >> If the boosters are giving them cool new stuff, they could just go and >> buy any set with cool new stuff. They already have the staples - even >> you agree that they have many of the staples[0] now. So they don't >need >> to buy base set boosters to give them more. > >Some sets are more useful than others to people with small collections, >though. Cool new stuff is relative. Hard to say. Anarchs is possibly poor, but mostly because Anarchs is hard to get working and there's quite a lot of it in there. The fallback mechanism and hot, hot, hot vampires (in some cases) in Bloodlines means it isn't necessarily a bad choice - the cross-over isn't too bad. I like a lot of the Black Hand set, though a lot of it doesn't focus too much on the Black Hand with a lot of more general fun (or Sabbat) too. Gehenna has some good stuff, and some of the events can be a worthwhile inclusion in a number of decks. There's a lot of good vampires about in many of the sets, too. <suggestions for a fixed draft set> >I'm not sure Deal with the Devil is good even in limited play. As >Vermillian said, it is one of the few non-unique hand cyclers. Dreams >of the Sphinx might be nice, since even though it's unique, it's >temporary... but I suppose White Wolf might not want to devalue existing >Dreamses quite *that* much, heh. A fixed include in Final Nights, Precon Giovanni. So it's available for however many shiny pennies you can get one of them for. It's not a bad starter, either. >I wouldn't put Giant's Blood in a fixed draft pack either; its "once per >game" nature makes it as dubious for everyone to automatically have one >as a unique master. No, the bigger problem is that if you happen to get a strong card like that, it can give a deck a big boost. In constructed, it's no real issue since you can build a deck around as many or as few as you want. One of the significant problems with draft/sealed deck, IMO, is the ability for cards like that to turn up and give someone access to something that you have no hope of accessing. A more vague problem with limited formats in general is that, for example, a typical political deck will probably want a good few vote pushing cards. But between, say, Bewitching Oration and Bribes, you're likely to get a very small number in any draft - and much more unlikely to get Cryptic Rider or Awe. Whereas you're much more likely to get a lot of political action cards, with no way of passing them. Ditto, when that card comes out, you're unlikely to have a Delaying Tactics to counter it - so a LOT of common considerations are completely screwed. Also combat: you need to get blocked, or have a Bum's Rush (or similar). But again, the amount of combat cards you get is likely to be high, whilst in a set with all of Bum's Rush, Harass, Ambush and Haven Uncovered, you're unlikely to get a usable number. In general: V:TES has several strategies which benefit greatly from 'gateway' cards. The obvious one that doesn't is S&B. If you get a bleed action, you can play it just as though you were bleeding for 1. If you get a stealth modifier, you can play it too. If you get a bleed modifier, you can play that too. Or any subset of the three. Hence a lot of limited formats seem to heavily favour trying to make your deck into a (bad) stealth and bleed deck. >It's not a bad start. I think it's worth noting that Blood Doll and >Wake do not necessarily make *draft* better. They make your *deck* >better, yes - but if you make everyone's deck better at staying alive, >you may just be making draft games longer than they already are. True, but a lot of the game has built up assuming that you'll get a reasonable blood flow off vampires with Dolls and Taps and the like. I would be hard pushed to believe that any White Wolf created card, for instance, that has a significant pool cost hasn't had LSJ or Steve Wieck or whoever is involved with suggesting/writing/costing cards thinking: "Well, they're going to put this in their deck playing Minion Tap, aren't they?" (Where Minion Tap is actually any one of a number of pool generation cards - Consanguineous Boon, say, or Tribute to the Master. Alter according to taste.) IMO, it would be bad (read: lacking variety) for a set to not have that sort of range of cards - from the free Trifle that has a minor effect, through the 2 pool tasty location, the 3 pool clan toy up to the 5 pool ally from Hell. And the top end of these sort of cards drive the need for pool gain, since you can't otherwise afford them without taking a major action hit by having a lot less vampires. This can be filed under: why making a set useful for limited is much harder when you also want the set to be useful for constructed, too. However, IMO, they make draft "better" for the reason you note below - they make it fairer: >It's >still probably worthwhile to put a couple Dolls and Wakes in everyone's >draft pack because it reduces the unfairness of only *one* person having >the Doll or Wake or whatever, but it's not going to make draft games go >faster, or necessarily be more exciting. >I'd really like to skip the Deals with the Devil in favor of a Dreams of >the Sphinx in every pack, but like I mentioned, I'm not sure WW would go >for it. A card like Dreams would be cool - but it suffers from the unique problem already highlighted. Ditto, The Barrens and Fragment. A card like Visit from the Capuchin might be okay, since it's so short- term. Dreams isn't so bad from that point of view either, but you can deliberately hold on to Dreams to annoy others whereas it's much harder to do that with Visit. I'm not necessarily suggesting Visit explicitly, but a limited cycler like that might be possible. >Leather Jackets, eh. I think they would make games go slower, and >favoring combat over combat defense is not a bad thing for draft games, >I think. I'd be willing to put in the two weapons even without the >Jackets. (I might go with Brass Knuckles or Gas-Powered Chainsaw over >Bang Nakh though, the lower expense makes them more worthwhile in draft >in my opinion.) I was looking at Brass Knuckles, but I couldn't decide on a low level weapon I actually liked. Gas Powered might be a good option, though - I was mostly looking at Knuckles, Cleaver, Poker, Bastard Sword and similar. However, I didn't feel the Leather Jackets would be too problematic, as they're one-shot and the set includes several "Get into combat" cards, plus any you draft. >Likewise I think a KRC in every pack is reasonable, but Autarkis >Persecution should be omitted. Bribes is probably okay. Replacing the >Autarkis Persecution with a Conservative Agitation would be fine with >me. Consanguineous Boon would also be OK, though not as generally >useful. Domain Challenge or Ancilla Empowerment I would also endorse. >:-) Autarkis Persecution was for a different sort of pool gain, as above. >Three rush cards is probably more than a generic draft pack needs. One >might be enough. Certainly no need for more than two, I think. I find the high volume of combat cards relative to the low availability of "get into combat" to be a problem. You can't actually hit back against your predator. And if you're acting, you can't easily Wake (since you don't have many) to block him, and so on. I'd be reluctant to drop down to one, certainly. >There are, unfortunately, no generic +bleed action modifiers or stealth >cards that could really go in. (Stealth Ritus, but only if you're >playing Sabbat... ooh, Polaris Coach might be interesting.) I'd rather you had to pull stealth, to be honest. >Overall, >I'd emphasize that it's offense that draft could usually use more of, >rather than defense. The simple "keep my vampire untapped" defense is >so effective in draft that ways to break equilibrium are pretty >important, in my opinion, in making the game more exciting. Laptop >Computer might not be a bad idea... maybe. I was thinking of that, but as a permanent bleed modifier it's quite dependent on how early you draw it. That's true of any of the permanents, obviously, but.... It just feels icky. >Even an Anarch Revolt in every pack wouldn't be unwarranted, IMO UG SMASH SMASH SMASH JOSH SMASH >Sanguine Instruction might (perhaps) be worthwhile. Interesting, given my thoughts about discipline cards. > A couple Lucky >Blows could be nice. I'm not sure - I was trying to provide cards that wouldn't be useful in EVERY deck, but which could be of use to a wide range of decks. That is, if a draft pack is created that means that players include ALL of the cards, it's failed. >A couple Dodges too; that's a place that >offense/defense parity seems reasonable to me. I'm not really sure that the difference between Dodge and Leather Jacket is. (You know what I mean, I hope.) It's not like you're going to be up against dozens of Immortal Grapples making Dodge a poor choice though, I guess. >Even a Concealed Weapon >might be cool. Concealed Weapon struck me as poor - if you don't have many equipment in the first place, including one on the off chance you get both in your hand at once seems poor. >Fame would be cute, it'd get contested a fair amount, >but that might not be a bad thing. Hey, you know, I could get behind a >couple Life in the City rather than Giant's Blood... My thoughts on Giant's Blood were rather more "If this is available for drafting, it's a swing card so..." If it isn't available in the sets you're drafting from, it doesn't matter. (Parity Shift is similar, but the requirement means I'm less inclined to care.) Life in the City and Lucky Blow move me more towards "would be put in all decks" rather than "would be considered and put in some decks" than I'm comfortable with. >though the swing >effect wouldn't be real huge most of the time. Misdirection is so good >in draft that it might be worth including for the same reason as Blood >Doll, though having it generally available would make draft noticeably >more deadly I think. Sudden Reversal would be appropriate, but I don't >know if we'd like having so many Suddens in every draft game. Surprise >Influence would be funny (and is sometimes actually good in draft). Misdirection - your earlier comments about leaving people untapped to block jar with this, a little. If you don't have the wakes available, Misdirection is a top card - sufficiently so that I wouldn't want to see it draftable, really. >Of course, we don't really want to go over 20 cards for a draft pack... >even 20 might be rather much. 10 would probably be a better target, if >we don't want to influence the final decks to look *too* much all the >same. Agreed. My suggestions were aimed more at useful but questionable to achieve a similar end. [ quoted text not captured ]

"Screaming Vermillian" <vermil...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:1106674179.4...@c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com... > > Frederick Scott wrote: >> "Screaming Vermillian" <vermil...@yahoo.com> wrote in message >> news:1106582917....@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com... >> > Aha! Finally, cards that are truly Good For Limited Not So Good for >> > Constructed. (short term, secret horde). But do these cards truly >> > HURT the constructed environment anymore than just reguar ole' bad >> > cards being printed? >> >> Yes, they would. If _any_ of the cards in the set were arguably >> useful for constructed (a condition that's effectively impossible to >> avoid), then people wanting to use them would have to buy packs of >> cards containing mostly bad cards to get a few good cards. That's >> bad. In general, creating whole expansions of cards that are bad for >> constructed is bad - because they create expensive rares. > > Yeah, but aren't we already in that situation? There's TONS of cards in > gehenna that are crap, but I'm chasing some of them that aren't (mostly > the vampires! :P). So I keep buying packs and I keep loading up on > stunt cycles, Diamond Thunderbolts, Black Hand Ritual and so forth. > Hell, I even get crap rares too! (Crusades and some events). No, sorry, my impression of Gehenna is not the same. Of course, some people always seem to have the impression that any given set doesn't contain enough cards that are powerful enough to be worth collecting. (Sometimes different people depending on the set, too.) I think I always encounter a bit of frustration myself with the number of cards in many of the expansions that don't seem to be as effective as they should be for the cost. Whether that's a flaw in the design of the various sets or just my lack of ability to use the cards effectively is something I can't say. In any event, it's a separate issue. If you think Gehenna is generally unworth collecting, then I'd say that a set of cards designed to be good in limited but bad in constructed would be even worse in this respect. > Is it so bad if these bad cards were actually somewhat better for > limited? If they're "somewhat better for limited" then by logic they must be relatively worse for constructed. (Worse, even, than what you encountered in Gehenna.) This makes the constructed-useful cards that _are_ in the set relatively much more expensive to collect. Yes, it is "so bad". > And the way you're talking about it, you seem to think that ALL the > cards in a limited friendly set would be bad for constructed. Not true. Not "all" as in every single one of them, no. But if this is the philosophy you pursue in order to design a set of cards specifically for limited, a preponderance of them - or at least a significantly large percentage of them - would have to be. This triggers the problem. Or say it triggers the problem to the extent you use this philosophy of design. The point is to answer your original question up at the top (remember that?!?): "Aha! Finally, cards that are truly Good For Limited Not So Good for Constructed. (short term, secret horde). But do these cards truly HURT the constructed environment anymore than just reguar ole' bad cards being printed?" The answer is, "Yes. They do." The designers do not set out to create "bad cards" on purpose. Fred

Frederick Scott wrote: > "Screaming Vermillian" <vermil...@yahoo.com> wrote in message > news:1106674179.4...@c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com... > No, sorry, my impression of Gehenna is not the same. Of course, some > people always seem to have the impression that any given set doesn't > contain enough cards that are powerful enough to be worth collecting. > (Sometimes different people depending on the set, too.) I think I > always encounter a bit of frustration myself with the number of cards > in many of the expansions that don't seem to be as effective as they > should be for the cost. Whether that's a flaw in the design of the > various sets or just my lack of ability to use the cards effectively > is something I can't say. > > In any event, it's a separate issue. If you think Gehenna is generally > unworth collecting, then I'd say that a set of cards designed to be > good in limited but bad in constructed would be even worse in this > respect. I've never suggested ever making (m)any cards that were +lim&-con. > If they're "somewhat better for limited" then by logic they must be > relatively worse for constructed. (Worse, even, than what you > encountered in Gehenna.) OK. SOMEBODY is fixated on the logic "If made better for limited then its worse for constructed." Its NOT NECCESARY TRUE. EVEN IF IT WERE all one would have to do is simply NOT PRINT (m)any of those kind of cards in the set (because, you must hypothetically allow for the possibility that there is some near infinite amount of cards that are +lim&+con) > This makes the constructed-useful cards > that _are_ in the set relatively much more expensive to collect. > Yes, it is "so bad". And even if I HAVE to include bad cards in a set, imagine those 10-30 bad cards in a set. Make them slightly better (just in general, in any wlly nilly way). Now design them for limited. There. NOW, under your conclusions, they are worse for constructed, but since I made them better a second ago, now they are normal. Now we have a set that's of the same power and utilization level as it was before, except all of those normally bad cards, are just as bad, but are god for draft. (get it? This is even assuming +lim=-con and that I HAVE to print said cards). > Not "all" as in every single one of them, no. But if this is the > philosophy you pursue in order to design a set of cards specifically > for limited, a preponderance of them - or at least a significantly large > percentage of them - would have to be. This triggers the problem. > Or say it triggers the problem to the extent you use this philosophy > of design. The point is to answer your original question up at the > top (remember that?!?): "Aha! Finally, cards that are truly Good For > Limited Not So Good for Constructed. (short term, secret horde). But do > these cards truly HURT the constructed environment anymore than just > reguar ole' bad cards being printed?" Thank you. I'm losing track of the picture again. Why do they hurt con. scene? Because they're crap? Well, then there's a ton of crap out there, obviously. But should the other crap then, just be crap we can use in some other format? If all crap cards were somehow converted into bad for onstructed whatever for limited into just as bad for constructed and good for limited, then we'd have a like super increase in sets' draft friendly natures. > The answer is, "Yes. They do." The designers do not set out to create > "bad cards" on purpose. I'm sure they have a hunch!

Frederick Scott wrote: > "Screaming Vermillian" <vermil...@yahoo.com> wrote in message > news:1106579855.7...@c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com... > The issue is really about what is the actual problem with that prevents > Jyhad limited tournaments from working well with the avaiable product > vehicles and what could you do to fix that. Proposing individual cards > willy-nilly that might not "ruin" constructed while being useful for > the limited game misses the point. And, if done en masse, could quite > easily threaten the quality of the existing constructed game. A card > that registers on the poor (moderately but not extremely useless) end > of the scale might be OK by itself. But if all the cards are kind of > crappy that way, eventaully the whole release becomes crappy. > Furthermore, if you have a specific intent that you're filling with > a given card, that might not be too bad for one instance. But if you > keep working on that same intent for card after card, eventually it will > have some kind of effect on the whole expansion which in turn will have > an effect on the game. That's why I think it's better to talk about what > you're trying to do overall before discussing specific cards or specific > mechanics on specific cards. The latter are just examples for conveying > a general idea. Um... in general I'm trying to create a draftable set. I hope to accomplish this by having readily accessable synergy between many of the commons and other cards. By having more cards that are useable by many vampires. By including access to more permanents (and possibly more access to permanent removal if neccesary). By having access to vampires, that when drafted Off Clan, Off Strategy, can still be a use and not a hinderance, taking up that valuable crypt spot. By limited the number of STUFF requiring cards to mostly STUFF that can be used by the vampires that are limited in the expansion (say Cam+Indies and then only their disciplines). So this is how I plan on doing it, in general, most of which was discussed many many posts ago when I first took up this task (something like last June or so... do a google search under fanset if you care). ~SV

"Screaming Vermillian" <vermil...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:1106740321.5...@c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com... > > Frederick Scott wrote: >> The point is to answer your original question up at the top (remember >> that?!?): "Aha! Finally, cards that are truly Good For Limited Not So >> Good for Constructed. (short term, secret horde). But do these cards >> truly HURT the constructed environment anymore than just reguar ole' >> bad cards being printed?" > > Thank you. I'm losing track of the picture again. Why do they hurt con. > scene? Because they're crap? Well, then there's a ton of crap out > there, obviously. Yea, but not deliberately congregated in a single set. Again, my point is that you have to consider all the implications of where your design philosophy is leading you. > If all crap cards were somehow converted into bad for constructed > whatever for limited into just as bad for constructed and good for > limited, then we'd have a like super increase in sets' draft friendly > natures. Sure. But that's not doable. Bad cards don't exist (or at least I would certainly HOPE not) because some designer somewhere said, "Heehee, this card is REALLY GONNA SUCK!!!" They don't design bad cards on purpose. They most likely design bad cards because it's just very difficult to design 150+ good cards every expansion. Some just don't turn out right when they're let loose on the whole community of players using the entire set of available cards to build decks. You can argue that other designers might do a better job, but I'm pretty sure given the available time and resources a designers has, there will always be _some_ bad cards no matter who's doing it. So you've got to assume however you change your philosophy of design, count on the new philosophy being executed well in some cases and poorly in others. You can't just change the philosophy in some magic way the culls out all the "bad cards" and replaces them with "bad-in-constructed- OK-in-limited" cards. Fred

Frederick Scott wrote: > "Screaming Vermillian" <vermil...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:1106740321.5...@c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com... > > > > Frederick Scott wrote: > >> The point is to answer your original question up at the top (remember > >> that?!?): "Aha! Finally, cards that are truly Good For Limited Not So > >> Good for Constructed. (short term, secret horde). But do these cards > >> truly HURT the constructed environment anymore than just reguar ole' > >> bad cards being printed?" > > > > Thank you. I'm losing track of the picture again. Why do they hurt con. > > scene? Because they're crap? Well, then there's a ton of crap out > > there, obviously. > > Yea, but not deliberately congregated in a single set. Again, my point > is that you have to consider all the implications of where your design > philosophy is leading you. What areyou a philosophy degree holder? OK then. you know what I'm trying to do. Why don't YOU suggest an appropriate philosophy for constructing this VTES set, then, bub. (also, there's a post a bit further up the tree of me declaring my 'intentions'). > So you've got to assume however you change your philosophy of design, > count on the new philosophy being executed well in some cases and poorly > in others. You can't just change the philosophy in some magic way the > culls out all the "bad cards" and replaces them with "bad-in-constructed- > OK-in-limited" cards. Well, fine then. But can I change my philosophy so that I'm capable of making set consist of helpful for draft in a quantity of 50%, at the same time, making as many of these cards interesting for constructed as a normal set would have. Really, I don't think the last bit will be that tough. I mean, look at 9mm baretta here, just spoiled. Seems kinda' weird. Not too strong really, and um... well not good for draft (cept its equipment, which is almost always good, well... better than NOT being equipment). But guess what. PEOPLE ARE INTERESTED IN IT.

In message <1106669798....@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>, Screaming Vermillian <vermil...@yahoo.com> writes: >James Coupe wrote: >> You're obsessing about draft again. Unlike Magic, V:TES has never >had a >> strong draft scene (the wide number of disciplines makes that tricky, >> for a start, which the restricted number of colours in Magic >mitigates >> against). V:TES has also never had a designer that's said "We make >some >> bad cards that are there for draft tournaments." (Also, bad cards >can >> force people to buy more cards, since the ones they've got are dross. >> Not that Magic is a cash cow, of course.) > >Yes, they just say "we make some bad cards for themes". Like Liberty >Club Intrigue. Like that whole Seraph thing. Deep Cover Agent? Most of >the events... And did we really need that many more Crusades? Bad cards happen. Get over it. The point is that Magic: The Gathering has had a designer *specifically* say that they create bad cards for people to use in draft. Deep Cover Agent is actually kinda cool, though. Sure, not everyone likes hand revelation effects - not all cards are going to appeal to everyone. But a lot of people like hand revelation effects. As salem commented recently (when I talked about a splash of Owl Companion in a heavy for/splash of ani weenie deck), people seeing their hand unsettles them. Especially if you just read off all the cards each time, so the rest of the table knows. (Or you lie.) As a card to draw actions, I can see a fun Tzimisce deck based around Kazimir (or with a decent include of him) and other cards designed to draw people's actions, with a decent intercept combat side. (Smiling Jack might be another worthy card.) The possibility of Rotschreck is a nice thought. Pity that you can't play Talons for the Tzimisce. The Tremere Antitribu would be another interesting option, if only there was a good way to get a Seraph with them. >And the reason VTES has never had a strong draft scene, I reckon, is >due to its undraftable nature from the get-go. Had it been draftable >from the beginning, with every other expansion being a draft friendly >one, it might have been a more draft friendly game. Consider how slow V:TES is. Do I want to spend six hours of my day playing with a deck I don't actually care for? In a Magic draft in a local store, I can get most of this done in a few hours. Yeah, the huge tournaments for money or whatever draw a lot of people. But there you can be doing all sorts of crap in between games - trading, eating, walking around stalls, whatever. Much harder to do when the game you're playing takes up two hours, and you want to fit two + a final (or three + a final) into a day at hours which are sociable for your players. >Sure. But we can start including a few more of these into each set, and >we'll infinitely improve the draftability of these sets. Consider some >tweaking of the Gehenna set had been done, as far as vampires printed >and discipline requiring cards being printed. Consider more cards like > >Murder Hack, Action. 1 blood. Bleed at +1 bleed. If a Gehenna card is >in play, this vampire gains one blood and untaps at the end of the >action, if successful. > >Had this been printed instead of, oh, say Diamond Thunderbolt the set >would have been like 5 times more draftable. Cards you don't like get printed. Get over it. Also questionable for Constructed. If successful, it's just as good as a Computer Hack (free, +1 bleed), and you're untapped. And in Constructed, you can be including Gehenna cards and stealth as much as you want. >> What's significantly problematic is that you're completely fixated on >> draft. Most people aren't. Draft is a fun blast now and then, but >it's >> not what most people care about, IME. Some, yes, of course. > >I just think that a draftable set, if done properly, would SUPER drive >sales. I could be wrong, however. V:TES is a very different beast to Magic or Pokemon. Just because a set is draftable doesn't suddenly make people draft in droves. >Second, its a PILLAR. You say that like it's a good thing. The Pillar mechanism is deeply, deeply flawed. Every card which is weak for the relevant discipline will ignored by it in constructed play. This is one difficulty of creating a set which is useful for limited, but also for constructed. You're stumbling over it right now, and proclaiming it to be a good thing. > Useful for a LOT of people. Third its stealth you >can cycle INSTANTLY. This is also flawed, or at least questionable. Stealth has been balanced from the start by the difficulty of cycling it when it turns out >> And now you just hand stealth to big vampires who don't need it. The >> Obfuscate vampires would rather have a good card. The vampires who >> don't have Obfuscate now want to use this to get 'disciplineless' >> stealth. Good design choice? Questionable, at least, which is going >to >> end up supporting vampires who aren't "supposed" to use it in the >first >> place, and be ignored by the ones who ostensibly should be using it. >In >> which case, you're much better off writing useful but flawed cards >like, >> say, Stealth Ritus, which actually address the needs of the people >> concerned directly. > >Uhuh. Like one or two stealth here and there will really break big >vampires, what, with how many intercept locations are out there now... It's not what the vampires were designed for. You build a vampire without a stealth discipline, you know that they can't easily get stealth. Except suddenly they can. One aspect of dial-a-crypt (the problem that grouping attempts to solve) is creating perfect crypts. You don't *need* perfect crypts is every reasonably sized vampire can do everything. But go through that fanset: In The Corner Of Your Eye - blocker burns a blood or you get +1 stealth. One with the Night - already discussed. Mundane Guise - another +1 stealth. In the Shade - hands out -1 intercept. Body of Worms - another -1 intercept. That's a bit more than "one or two". >> Grace of Helena >> Combat >> Do not replace until the next discard phase. >> Prerange. Pre: Once this combat, this minion may burn one blood to >> strike: end combat. Untap this vampire after strike resolution, if >> this is done. PRE: As above but you may replace this card >immediately. >> >> This is actually quite well done. > >Well thank you... so... what's the purpose of this excersize? You think it's trivial to create a cardset that's good for limited and good for constructed. But a large number of your ideas are highly questionable when looked from that point of view. Is this good for draft? Any moreso than a set that just includes Majesty or Staredown? >> Uniform Shift >> Combat >> pillar >> pro: Strike: If the opposing minion is not choosing dodge, or combat >> ends as its strike, combat ends. PRO: As above, and untap this >> striking minion. > >Think outside of the clan box, man. Then why make it a Protean card? If you're creating Protean cards that aren't to be used by Protean users, why bother making it Protean in the first place? >> An Apple to the Victor >> Reaction >> 1 blood >> ser: Play when a methuselah is about to gain control of the edge. >> Control of the edge does not change. SER: As above, but that >> methuselah burns one pool. >> >> >> Probably fine for limited play - you only get one, unless you're >lucky. >> >> For constructed play, I wait until my prey bleeds and then play three >of >> these. Generate a few SER weenies, which isn't too hard with Aabt >> Kindred and some discipline cards. No, I don't make this a binding >part >> of my deck, for when I get a political prey, but it's a good risk in >> many circles that my prey is going to bleed at some point, even in >all >> but the most focused political decks. > >Oh, this is just like that deck that makes people loose pool when they >fail a vote. THAT card sees play ALL the time... Actually, I've seen it turn up in a potentially very strong deck - the Anarch Revolt deck with weenies. Includes enough Presence to demolish you, and defend itself, and outvote you when you come after it. Typically uses Elder Kindred Network. However, you're missing a significant point here. It's hard to get people to call votes, if they don't want to. If you have a political deck on the table, it's a crap shoot as to whether it's your prey (or predator) or not. Bleeding is a fundamental facet of the game. Garfield intended it to be so, by making it cardless and making it responsible for the Edge. (Which is useful for political decks, as well as its pool gain uses.) Bleed happens a lot. Also, you're missing how easy it is to get Ser weenies - Aabt Kindred aren't the greatest vamps but they don't contest. >> Pity the stealth and bleed deck that finds itself taking these from >both >> sides... > >So what! Punish the stealth bleed mechanism a bit! The meta is allowed >to change. Sure, but why hit stealth and bleed? It's a pretty balanced mechanism these days. Picking a random mechanism and trying to weaken it for no particular reason is a bit shit. >> V:TES constructed is *nothing* like limited; if a card can be put >into a >> deck twenty times, someone will consider it. > >I'm not doubting that they won't. You're not realising what that means in practise, though. >I'm going to change the pillar rule perhaps... Maybe "if you control a >minion possessing the discipline in question..." so then you have to >alliance with others... but then are these suddenly useful in limited? >Or did I just KILL their utility all to hell... Probably the latter. > >I think I prefer my old method of making those cards. Three levels on >each card. Outferior, playable by ANY, inferior and superior as >(slightly less powerful) normal... In either case, the increased cyclability means you want to tone the power of the cards down - which then means there's an issue of why the discipline heavy constructed decks wants to include them. Or you have a card which is equally powerful to Lost in Crowds, so the Obfuscate deck considers it, but significantly more cyclable - so obsolescing Lost in Crowds. The Bloodlines disciplines cope better with this, as their disciplines are far harder to access in the first place and were released with fallback levels as a designed in facet. So the ones without a fallback level fit in unique facets and/or are more powerful than might otherwise have been allowed, but don't compete amongst themselves. [ quoted text not captured ]

"Screaming Vermillian" <vermil...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:1106775946.5...@c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com... > > Frederick Scott wrote: >> "Screaming Vermillian" <vermil...@yahoo.com> wrote in message > news:1106740321.5...@c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com... >> > >> > Frederick Scott wrote: >> >> The point is to answer your original question up at the top >> >> (remember that?!?): "Aha! Finally, cards that are truly Good >> >> For Limited Not So Good for Constructed. (short term, secret >> >> horde). But do these cards truly HURT the constructed environment >> >> anymore than just reguar ole' bad cards being printed?" >> > >> > Thank you. I'm losing track of the picture again. Why do they hurt >> > con. scene? Because they're crap? Well, then there's a ton of crap >> > out there, obviously. >> >> Yea, but not deliberately congregated in a single set. Again, my >> point is that you have to consider all the implications of where your >> design philosophy is leading you. > > then. you know what I'm trying to do. Why don't YOU suggest an > appropriate philosophy for constructing this VTES set, then, bub. Because I'm not the one claiming it's possible. I'm not saying it's impossible. I just don't know of any way to constuct such a set. > (also, there's a post a bit further up the tree of me declaring my > 'intentions'). Yea, but you advanced no theory that I noticed why constructing cards in the way you proposed wasn't just plain making them more powerful - for both constructed or limited. Thus, your proposal would seem to involve fixing limited by introducing power cards into constructed. >> You can't just change the philosophy in some magic way that culls >> out all the "bad cards" and replaces them with "bad-in-constructed- >> OK-in-limited" cards. > > Well, fine then. But can I change my philosophy so that I'm capable of > making set consist of helpful for draft in a quantity of 50%, at the > same time, making as many of these cards interesting for constructed as > a normal set would have. Sure, that might be possible if you could think of the right thing. I just haven't seen it, yet. Fred

Frederick Scott wrote: > "Screaming Vermillian" <vermil...@yahoo.com> wrote in message > news:1106775946.5...@c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com... > > > > Frederick Scott wrote: > >> "Screaming Vermillian" <vermil...@yahoo.com> wrote in message > > news:1106740321.5...@c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com... > > (also, there's a post a bit further up the tree of me declaring my > > 'intentions'). > > Yea, but you advanced no theory that I noticed why constructing cards > in the way you proposed wasn't just plain making them more powerful - > for both constructed or limited. Thus, your proposal would seem to > involve fixing limited by introducing power cards into constructed. I'm just trying to defend my current ideas, get you to HELP me instead of beating the idea to the ground. Positive criticism please? Anyone? :) No but thanks regardless. And no. My proposal is not a flat power curve increase. The suggestions I've put up are NOT just making things more powerful? That's like saying anarch 3-ways are more powerful cause "they are cards with similar effects that are more flexible". > Sure, that might be possible if you could think of the right thing. > I just haven't seen it, yet. And I'm not claiming that I've hit it. As a matter of fact, let me declare right here and now, that I haven't. hence this discussion. I'm still looking, and I'm open to suggestions. Any suggestions, or comments (other than "its not possible, you're doomed to failure!)? And its not any ONE thing that's going to make it more draft friendly. It'll be lots of things (slight variations on key cards, broader discipine spread on vampires, certain keywords that help stuff...).

I think it was Screaming Vermillian <vermil...@yahoo.com>, who once wrote: > And no. My proposal is not a flat power curve increase. The suggestions > I've put up are NOT just making things more powerful? That's like > saying anarch 3-ways are more powerful cause "they are cards with > similar effects that are more flexible". Actually, flexibility _is_ powerful. That's why becoming anarch is such an effort. Still, I don't think making a card that's flexible for limited but strictly worse than Lost in Crowds is all that bad. I can think of a few of my decks with a splash of obfuscate that would really like Mundane Guise so my other big caps can also stealth their PA's through. However, Pillar might be a bit too powerful an ability to balance without making it worthless. Rogar

Rogar wrote: > I think it was Screaming Vermillian <vermil...@yahoo.com>, who once wrote: > > And no. My proposal is not a flat power curve increase. The suggestions > > I've put up are NOT just making things more powerful? That's like > > saying anarch 3-ways are more powerful cause "they are cards with > > similar effects that are more flexible". > > Actually, flexibility _is_ powerful. That's why becoming anarch is such > an effort. Right, so you pay for it. I'm NOT proposing anything different than this. You want flexibility? You might have to pay for it! I'mnot an idiot who will print a card that's flat out superior to Lost In The Crowds (incidentally better, perhaps, because I didn't catch it). > Still, I don't think making a card that's flexible for limited > but strictly worse than Lost in Crowds is all that bad. I can think of a > few of my decks with a splash of obfuscate that would really like Mundane > Guise so my other big caps can also stealth their PA's through. However, > Pillar might be a bit too powerful an ability to balance without making > it worthless. Yes, Pillar might be worthless, but is THIS worthless? Print a card with an effect usably by anyone, like "press to continue combat" another effect usabl by a discipline like "Pro: Burn one blood. Your hand strikes are agg for your next strike." And then a superior as normal (or not!) "As Pro above, but don't burn a blood."

[ quoted text not captured ] Wouldn't that make both Dead-End Ally and Wold Claws obsolete? Rogar

"Rogar" <MYNICKN...@phreaker.net> wrote in message news:slrncvn14s.23u9...@toad.stack.nl... > I think it was Screaming Vermillian <vermil...@yahoo.com>, who once wrote: > > Yes, Pillar might be worthless, but is THIS worthless? > > > > Print a card with an effect usably by anyone, like "press to continue > > combat" another effect usabl by a discipline like "Pro: Burn one blood. > > Your hand strikes are agg for your next strike." And then a superior as > > normal (or not!) "As Pro above, but don't burn a blood." > Rogar wrote: > Wouldn't that make both Dead-End Ally and Wold Claws obsolete? > Yes, Rogar is right... That is what i was saying in another thread, that WW is very careful (most of the times) not to release cards that are better, in each and every occasion, than some older cards and thus make the old cards obsolete... This must continue, we, the players, want nice new cards to keep us interested and give us access to new kind of decks, we don't really need new cards that are improved versions of the old cards. Imagine releasing a new card named: Super Flash: cel: maneuver or press CEL: maneuver with an optional maneuver and press :P that would really suck... George

[ quoted text not captured ] And apparently I'M worthless. That's why there are people like you to help correct me. Imagine this then (what I'd had on all of my 'nullferiors' to begin with). However, notice that even with the above printed exactly as it is, it is not a complete duplicate of wolf claws (which says for the remainder of the round) and the press here is specifically to end. Furthermore, I see nothing wrong with obsolescing Dead End Ally, but others might, so: Combat. Only useable by a vampire of capacity 5+. Press to end combat. Pro: Burn one blood to make your hand strikes agg for your next strike. PRO: As above but don't burn a blood. There. A small restriction that makes this cards power level questionably equal to that of wolf claws. I still say draftable new cards in an entire set are possible...

I think it was Screaming Vermillian <vermil...@yahoo.com>, who once wrote: > And apparently I'M worthless. That's why there are people like you to > help correct me. Imagine this then (what I'd had on all of my > 'nullferiors' to begin with). However, notice that even with the above > printed exactly as it is, it is not a complete duplicate of wolf claws > (which says for the remainder of the round) and the press here is > specifically to end. Furthermore, I see nothing wrong with obsolescing > Dead End Ally, but others might, so: True. Dead-End Ally was never really at the top of the power curve. ;) > Combat. Only useable by a vampire of capacity 5+. Press to end combat. > Pro: Burn one blood to make your hand strikes agg for your next strike. > PRO: As above but don't burn a blood. Better, I suppose. Personally, I don't like capacity restrictions, as they just replace one requirement for another. Maybe you could drop the superior ability completely. > There. A small restriction that makes this cards power level > questionably equal to that of wolf claws. > I still say draftable new cards in an entire set are possible... I never meant to imply it wasn't. I followed your fanset post with interest, mostly as a thought experiment (I'm not one for details). You had some good ideas, and in theory it could work. However, balancing the cards against existing cards while keeping as many cards interesting for both limited and constructed environments will be tough, very tough. Good luck! :P Rogar