Rarity and set design

With the upcoming Camarilla set doubtless featuring lots of reprints, I thought this would be an appropriate time to bring up the issue of rarity selection. It seems to me that it's good for the game - on a playability level - for everyone who likes competitive play to be able to get all the cards they want to make the decks they want to make. Given that, I'd expect that things like Freak Drive, Immortal Grapple, Awe, Temptation, probably even things like Disarm, Temptation of Greater Power, Hostile Takeover, should be uncommon rather than rare. (The move of Grapple to uncommon in Sabbat is one of the best decisions I think WotC ever made.) (Things like Coagulated Entity, Gift of Bellona, Hag's Wrinkles, Rewind Time, too, though they're probably much too recent to get reprinted already. ;-) Is this a point of view that's generally taken for granted, or more questionable than I think? I can see that, taken to its logical conclusion, my argument would suggest that rarity should be entirely flat (ie everything the same rarity) and apparently that's undesirable in CCGs for profitability reasons, but I do think that some flattening of rarity would be good for the game, and possibly even good for the game-publisher in that people would be less likely to become frustrated by the difficulty of collecting a set designed in this fashion. Comments? Agreement? Dissent? Josh will probably never have enough rock cats

"Joshua Duffin" <jtdu...@yahoo.com> wrote > Comments? Agreement? Dissent? > > > Josh Yeah, you RULE! I agree 100% You honestly wouldn't believe how much easier it would be getting new players into the game if they knew they could have an easy time getting cards. Oh wait, I forgot all the good cards are commons...yeah people that say that don't have any freak drives. Or maybe they want some of my over 30 canopic jars? -- Aaron The Nosferatu Stuff

>With the upcoming Camarilla set doubtless featuring >lots of reprints, I thought this would be an >appropriate time to bring up the issue of rarity >selection. Good idea Josh. >It seems to me that it's good for the game - on a >playability level - for everyone who likes competitive >play to be able to get all the cards they want to make >the decks they want to make. Given that, I'd expect >that things like Freak Drive, Immortal Grapple, Awe, >Temptation, probably even things like Disarm, Temptation >of Greater Power, Hostile Takeover, should be uncommon >rather than rare. (The move of Grapple to uncommon in >Sabbat is one of the best decisions I think WotC ever >made.) (Things like Coagulated Entity, Gift of Bellona, >Hag's Wrinkles, Rewind Time, too, though they're >probably much too recent to get reprinted already. ;-) I disagree. I personally liked the size and rarities used for the Jyhad/VTES base sets and Sabbat/SW. I think it would be best if the new Base Set mimicked these sets in terms of size and rarity distribution. I disagree about all of your proposed rare-->uncommon changes. Part of the fun, IMHO, is the collectible and/or trading aspect of the game. I myself only have 1 FD, like 2 IG's, 1 Awe, 1 ToGP, 0 Disarms, and 1 Hostile Takeover. Not nearly enough of any of them. But I'd rather keep them rares than to make them so easily accessible. If I really want them, I'll trade for them and get them the *hard* way. IMO, half of the fun of playing a ToGP deck is knowing that you managed to acquire half a dozen ToGP's. >Is this a point of view that's generally taken for >granted, or more questionable than I think? I can >see that, taken to its logical conclusion, my argument >would suggest that rarity should be entirely flat (ie >everything the same rarity) and apparently that's >undesirable in CCGs for profitability reasons, but >I do think that some flattening of rarity would be >good for the game, and possibly even good for the >game-publisher in that people would be less likely to >become frustrated by the difficulty of collecting >a set designed in this fashion. > >Comments? Agreement? Dissent? I prefer the status quo. If it's not broke, then don't fix it! The game is already quite playable as it is. I don't think it's too much to ask to have players do *some* work before putting together a ToGP or a Betrayer deck. Halcyan 2

"The Nosferatu Stuff" <roans...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:a3cr96$17fqhb$1...@ID-125246.news.dfncis.de... [ quoted text not captured ] I agree that some of the more useful cards (Disarm, Freak Drive) should be uncommon since they fit into alot of decks however Hostile Takeover, ToGP etc arent useful in most decks so they should stay rare. /The Emperor

>With the upcoming Camarilla set doubtless featuring >lots of reprints, I thought this would be an >appropriate time to bring up the issue of rarity >selection. > >It seems to me that it's good for the game - on a >playability level - for everyone who likes competitive >play to be able to get all the cards they want to make >the decks they want to make. It's good for the game on a playability level; it will likely also kill sales. Given that, I'd expect >that things like Freak Drive, Immortal Grapple, Awe, >Temptation, probably even things like Disarm, Temptation >of Greater Power, Hostile Takeover, should be uncommon >rather than rare. Freak Drive, definitely. The Embrace is the other rare that came to mind as being useful in ridiculous numbers. I don't consider Awe, Disarm, ToGP, or HT general use enough to be the least bit bothered if they are rare. (The move of Grapple to uncommon in >Sabbat is one of the best decisions I think WotC ever >made.) While changing Catatonic Fear and Festivo didn't make any sense. CF, at least, can be useful in multiples. Festivo was apparently due to excessive drug use. (Things like Coagulated Entity, Gift of Bellona, >Hag's Wrinkles, Rewind Time, too, though they're >probably much too recent to get reprinted already. ;-) > >Is this a point of view that's generally taken for >granted, or more questionable than I think? I can >see that, taken to its logical conclusion, my argument >would suggest that rarity should be entirely flat (ie >everything the same rarity) and apparently that's >undesirable in CCGs for profitability reasons, but >I do think that some flattening of rarity would be >good for the game, and possibly even good for the >game-publisher in that people would be less likely to >become frustrated by the difficulty of collecting >a set designed in this fashion. Um, not having R1s would flatten the rarity. I can see why Freak Drive and The Embrace were rare originally (except the whole Progeny is less rare thing, which isn't too hard to ignore). The problem with these being (relatively) scarce is that they are not only useful in large numbers in a single deck but useful in large numbers in large numbers of decks. THE best line I've ever seen on this newsgroup is "Every deck is better with Freak Drives." I can't argue.

halc...@aol.com (Halcyan 2) wrote in message news:<20020131211949...@mb-fo.aol.com>... > >With the upcoming Camarilla set doubtless featuring > >lots of reprints, I thought this would be an > >appropriate time to bring up the issue of rarity > >selection. > > Good idea Josh. Good idea indeed! > >It seems to me that it's good for the game - on a > >playability level - for everyone who likes competitive > >play to be able to get all the cards they want to make > >the decks they want to make. Given that, I'd expect > >that things like Freak Drive, Immortal Grapple, Awe, > >Temptation, probably even things like Disarm, Temptation > >of Greater Power, Hostile Takeover, should be uncommon > >rather than rare. (The move of Grapple to uncommon in > >Sabbat is one of the best decisions I think WotC ever > >made.) (Things like Coagulated Entity, Gift of Bellona, > >Hag's Wrinkles, Rewind Time, too, though they're > >probably much too recent to get reprinted already. ;-) Is it really? It will make some/multiple decks using established powerful 'techniques' more common, which is good for competition, sure, but is it good for casual play? I find that the most amusing games between beginners are with 'starters' or 'precons' that use a whole smattering of different cards, from useful to useless. When I played magic, way back when it first came out, me and a buddy had 1 starter each to start with. Can you imagine the mess of multi-colored lands, almost always the wrong creature, etc., but still learning how to play and play effectively? Compare that to meeting a ball-to-the-wall deck on your first outing. Granted, 'attracting' and 'teaching' are different from 'competing'. So your point that more competitive decks would be more prevalent is still right, but not something I would neccesarily like. Just like Halcyan 2 writes, I do not own very many of the cards you mention either. (2,6,1,1,0,1 out of some 3000 or so?) That's the way I like it, I strive to get more, and cringe when I meet a '10 hostile takeover' deck in a tourney. (maybe it's my 4CL for a long time history). That, and WW really needs to keep making money off of this game. In my short life, I've already seen many things I liked (and others liked a lot, too) die because there were not enough profits in them for the creators to keep on making them. You want that many cards? Buy 4 boxes (or more). Can't afford that? Buy 1, and trade for what you really need. I'll go with Halcyan: rarity distribution as in the original Jyhad/VTES distro. [ quoted text not captured ] (Right now, I'm fighting my greedy side, that wants more Freak Drives. DOWN. DOWN!!) Tobias

Joshua Duffin wrote: > With the upcoming Camarilla set doubtless featuring > lots of reprints, I thought this would be an > appropriate time to bring up the issue of rarity > selection. Well, aside from the little matter of WW probably not listening, anyway, you're right. > > It seems to me that it's good for the game - on a > playability level - for everyone who likes competitive > play to be able to get all the cards they want to make > the decks they want to make. While this is true, it certainly isn't practically possible - there's a number of cards that are particularly powerful but in only one kind of deck, which makes them impossible to get while everyone wants to try that deck (e.g. Armor of Terra Gargoyles), but which are completely and utterly useless to someone who decides not to bother with that kind of deck. To allow everyone to build that particular deck, these cards would have to be uncommon, but that might not necessarily be a good idea. > Given that, I'd expect > that things like Freak Drive, Immortal Grapple, Awe, > Temptation, probably even things like Disarm, Temptation > of Greater Power, Hostile Takeover, should be uncommon > rather than rare. Freak Drive and Awe are very good examples of cards that indeed should be uncommon in a game that bases rarity on card utility, being very useful in a number of different decks built around many vampires of various clans. [Any deck benefits from being able to untap a vampire, so Freak Drive might as well be common (most common cards require a discipline).] Temptation of Greater power is not: there's exactly seven vampires that can use a Justicar only card - so the card is only useful in a deck built around it. > (The move of Grapple to uncommon in > Sabbat is one of the best decisions I think WotC ever > made.) That is so true... and even so, IG isn't exactly easy to come by. > (Things like Coagulated Entity, Gift of Bellona, > Hag's Wrinkles, Rewind Time, too, though they're > probably much too recent to get reprinted already. ;-) Some of these are extremely specific cards so their being rare may well be justified... there's currently 3 vampires that can use Rewind Time (and that probably won't change anytime soon), so it's perfectly legitimate this card is rare. > > Is this a point of view that's generally taken for > granted, or more questionable than I think? Questionable to some extent, I seem to think. > I can > see that, taken to its logical conclusion, my argument > would suggest that rarity should be entirely flat (ie > everything the same rarity) and apparently that's > undesirable in CCGs for profitability reasons, WW seemed to think a non-flat rare-heavy distribution was the way to go with Bloodlines, and while sone of the R1s are indeed mostly useless, there's quite a few that should not have been ultra-rare (Armor of Terra again comes to mind - just because it's only useful in one deck, it shouldn't be so rare that said deck is all but impossible to assemble. I managed to trade for it because one player gave up on trying to get 5-6 of them, and while I'm happy I finally got one, I very seriously doubt that's a sign of BL rarity distribution actually having helped the game). > but > I do think that some flattening of rarity would be > good for the game, and possibly even good for the > game-publisher in that people would be less likely to > become frustrated by the difficulty of collecting > a set designed in this fashion. I totally agree. I'd very much like to see R1s disappear from VTES, with a shift toward more C1s - there were so many C2s in FN and BL that had no place being C2s, anyway. Anyone that has ever used more Masquers than they got from their Giovanni starters alone? So maybe the Path of Bone could have been C1 along with Masquer (hey, the AH paths were common, the SW paths uncommon, so why exactly is this one so much less useful it has to be rare?), and Augustus R2 instead of ultra-rare. [Repeat with 7 other cards to get a flat 50xR2 sheet and a handful of extra C1s.] Does anyone understand why Sense Vitality is C2 while Engling Fury is R1? The out-feriors are identical, the in-disciplines both are equally worth 2 blood, but the condition for playing in-discipline Sense Vitality [one ready vampire and a vampire in torpor somewhere] is more restrictive than the one for Engling Fury [one ready vampire]. Seems to me they could be both the same rarity, like, say, C1. [Any R1 of choice becomes R2 as a result. How about Armor of Terra?] Of course, with the untap effect, Engling Fury is slightly more powerful (when used on your own vampires) than Sense Vitality, but since WW doesn't rarify power cards, that can't possibly be the explanation for why one is R1 and one is C2. > Comments? Agreement? Dissent? It's probably become evident that I don't believe the "utility based rarity" fairy-tale, and think the current scheme is a profit-based one that is not exactly in the best interest of the game. I'm not going to pre-order the Camarilla set, because I'm not interested in buying another set with a distribution optimized for profit rather than playability, and certainly won't buy any of it unless I hear good things about it's rarity distribution. As a hint, Freak Drive should be R2 or better - making it R1 would be all the proof it takes that WW does rarify power cards (and would make me not buy another pack of VTES, ever). Thomas

> THE best line I've ever seen on this newsgroup is "Every deck is better with > Freak Drives." I can't argue. Freak drive is also one of the most important cards you need in order to make a deck with bigger vamps work since the design team seems to be devoted to making things more viable for "the big dudes" (and rightly so IMHO), making Freak drive uncommon would make a lot of sense JC

>Given that, I'd expect >>that things like Freak Drive, Immortal Grapple, Awe, >>Temptation, probably even things like Disarm, Temptation >>of Greater Power, Hostile Takeover, should be uncommon >>rather than rare. > >Freak Drive, definitely. The Embrace is the other rare that came to mind as >being useful in ridiculous numbers. I don't consider Awe, Disarm, ToGP, or >HT >general use enough to be the least bit bothered if they are rare. In addition, though some of the power cards might be changed a bit anyway, I think if they became Uncommon, they'd be much more likely to be watered down a bit. First off, I'm not exactly looking forward to getting Disarmed everytime I come across a Potence deck. Thank heavens the rarity distribution and scarcity has kept the supply of Disarms down! And if decks casually packing Disarms really start to unbalance the tourney scene, I wouldn't be surprised if Disarm was modified along the lines of Basilisk's Touch (only usable on a younger ally, though maybe the restriction exists only at inferior?). And if Freak Drive becomes really that powerful as well (in that every Fortitude deck packs a half dozen), I wouldn't be surprised to see a restriction as well. Maybe along the lines of limited to one a turn? (a la Domain of Evernight). - Halcyan 2

In message <20020201135443...@mb-cg.aol.com>, Halcyan 2 <halc...@aol.com> writes: >In addition, though some of the power cards might be changed a bit anyway, I >think if they became Uncommon, they'd be much more likely to be watered down a >bit. Which cards are you expecting to be reprinted in a powered-down fashion that the Rules Team do not want to address? >First off, I'm not exactly looking forward to getting Disarmed everytime I come >across a Potence deck. Thank heavens the rarity distribution and scarcity has >kept the supply of Disarms down! Oh, great. So it only happens when you come across rich players. Good one. I'm sure the newbies and poor players out there *love* that. -- James Coupe but I lust after the raw pow0r of c. PGP 0x5D623D5D together with the humping great EBD690ECD7A1FB457CA2 elephant arse of gnome. 13D7E668C3695D623D5D - Vashti

tobiasop...@hotmail.com writes: >Granted, 'attracting' and 'teaching' are different from 'competing'. >So your point that more competitive decks would be more prevalent is >still right, but not something I would neccesarily like. Just like >Halcyan 2 writes, I do not own very many of the cards you mention >either. (2,6,1,1,0,1 out of some 3000 or so?) That's the way I like >it, I strive to get more, and cringe when I meet a '10 hostile >takeover' deck in a tourney. (maybe it's my 4CL for a long time >history). Good cards need to be relatively common. Otherwise suitcase players have a big advantage and normal people head for the hills. You can make something of an exception for good cards that are hard to use, but that's risky. Even unique per game cards like Giant's Blood should be uncommon - you want one for every couple of decks. You shouldn't be spending $300 per, on average. Curt Adams (curt...@aol.com) "It is better to be wrong than to be vague" - Freeman Dyson

cur...@aol.com writes: >I can see why Freak Drive and The Embrace were rare originally (except the >whole Progeny is less rare thing, which isn't too hard to ignore). The problem >with these being (relatively) scarce is that they are not only useful in large >numbers in a single deck but useful in large numbers in large numbers of decks. Yes. *Card* rarity is a lousy way to enforce *use* rarity. For use rarity, the card should be less valuable - e.g. an Embrace costs pool as well as blood, etc. If such cards exist and are common, you just have to plan for everybody having a pile. If they're rare, the suitcases will tend to drive off the normal players and you *still* have to plan for everybody having a bunch, because you're left with suitcases who do. Ideally, rare cards would be useful in exotic decks but only there, and the exotic decks should be no better than regular decks. That's a tough goal, though. [ quoted text not captured ]

In message <20020201142041...@mb-md.aol.com>, CurtAdams <curt...@aol.com> writes: >Yes. *Card* rarity is a lousy way to enforce *use* rarity. For >use rarity, the card should be less valuable - e.g. an Embrace costs pool >as well as blood, etc. If such cards exist and are common, you just >have to plan for everybody having a pile. What would be nice, I think, is to see some of the 'good' rares come down to vampire/uncommon rarity (and I hope that a four rarity system is implemented), with some being left at R2. That way, a compromise between player utility and actually making money can be struck. [ quoted text not captured ]

On Fri, 01 Feb 2002 05:45:02 GMT, "The Emperor" <theem...@chello.se> wrote: > >I agree that some of the more useful cards (Disarm, Freak Drive) should be >uncommon since they fit into alot of decks however Hostile Takeover, ToGP >etc arent useful in most decks so they should stay rare. > >/The Emperor > I see no reason whatsoever to change any rarities personally. IG was only changed to give potence decks a SCE hoser, and combat decks are still tough to win with. There is no such balancing argument with the above quoted cards. Leave them as is. T

"Halcyan 2" <halc...@aol.com> wrote in message news:20020131211949...@mb-fo.aol.com... > >With the upcoming Camarilla set doubtless featuring > >lots of reprints, I thought this would be an > >appropriate time to bring up the issue of rarity > >selection. > > Good idea Josh. Thanks. There's certainly no guarantee that anyone in a position to make decisions will be influenced by what we say, but we can always hope. :-) > I disagree. I personally liked the size and rarities used for the Jyhad/VTES > base sets and Sabbat/SW. I think it would be best if the new Base Set mimicked > these sets in terms of size and rarity distribution. SW's not too bad, but Sabbat was horribly bloated IMO, not to mention packed with (a) crappy cards and (b) crappy rares. It only becomes more frustrating to get an Out of Control as your rare when Disarm is in the same set as a rare... > I disagree about all of your proposed rare-->uncommon changes. Part of the fun, > IMHO, is the collectible and/or trading aspect of the game. I myself only have > 1 FD, like 2 IG's, 1 Awe, 1 ToGP, 0 Disarms, and 1 Hostile Takeover. Not nearly > enough of any of them. But I'd rather keep them rares than to make them so > easily accessible. If I really want them, I'll trade for them and get them the > *hard* way. IMO, half of the fun of playing a ToGP deck is knowing that you > managed to acquire half a dozen ToGP's. I figured there must be some people who feel this way - and I can understand it to some degree - but I have to admit it doesn't convince me. To me it seems like a perverse embracing of frustration. :-) Getting, say, 12 Freak Drives is absurdly hard to do without buying vast quantities (and I do mean vast - there were about 100 rares in Jyhad; at 36 rares per booster box you'd need 3 boxes per set or 36 boxes for 12 of each rare) of cards. And there are many, many possible decks that can use lots of Freak Drives. Your argument (like mine) becomes silly if taken to its logical extreme - if it's fun to have things be hard to get, then it'd be more fun if *everything* was rare, right? ;-) (Of course, if everything is rare, then nothing is, but that's not the point.) My philosophy here boils down to "cards people want lots of shouldn't be rare". It's sort of an extension of "the good cards shouldn't all be rare". From my point of view, probably the most appropriately-rare cards would be uniques (not to say that *every* unique should be rare, but generally you won't want to build a deck around 5+ copies of a unique card). After that, effects that are extremely specialized can be rare - things like Hostile Takeover and Temptation of Greater Power may qualify, along with things like Kine Dominance, Entrancement, and Far Mastery. As the game turned out, cards like Shattering Blow, Fast Hands, and Canine Horde probably could've been rare too. The problem I suppose you run into is, you don't want the rares to suck, either. You want them to be interesting, so that people are excited about getting more rares when they open packs. But they *really* shouldn't (IMO) be cards that have really staple-type effects, like Awe, Freak Drive, The Embrace (as Ian pointed out), probably Flesh of Marble. > I prefer the status quo. If it's not broke, then don't fix it! The game is > already quite playable as it is. I don't think it's too much to ask to have > players do *some* work before putting together a ToGP or a Betrayer deck. But why should they have to do so much work collecting before they can play? Sure, it's a CCG, and part of being involved with it is collecting. But it seems to me that making things excessively rare only limits the variety of potential decks people can make, almost like a de facto CL. Josh relativistical

"Tobias" <tobiasop...@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:8aa6db00.02020...@posting.google.com... [I wrote] > > >It seems to me that it's good for the game - on a > > >playability level - for everyone who likes competitive > > >play to be able to get all the cards they want to make > > >the decks they want to make. [...] > Is it really? It will make some/multiple decks using established > powerful 'techniques' more common, which is good for competition, > sure, but is it good for casual play? Not all of these are hugely effective cards, you know; some of them are just things that you'd want to build decks around (or just using a lot of) but can't because they're too rare. (Hag's Wrinkles, Gift of Bellona, for example.) Also note that many of the "power" cards are already common, it's just that there are others that aren't. (Kine Resources Contested, Govern the Unaligned, Conditioning, Deflection, Blood Doll, Minion Tap, the list goes on...) > I find that the most amusing games between beginners are with > 'starters' or 'precons' that use a whole smattering of different > cards, from useful to useless. When I played magic, way back when it > first came out, me and a buddy had 1 starter each to start with. Can > you imagine the mess of multi-colored lands, almost always the wrong > creature, etc., but still learning how to play and play effectively? Well, I feel that there shouldn't be useless cards in the first place, but that may be a bit of a tangent. > Compare that to meeting a ball-to-the-wall deck on your first outing. Personally I find it more frustrating to not be able to do anything with your deck (as when your lands don't match the spells in your hand, or your vampires don't have the right disciplines for the cards you're holding) than to have to compete against other people also doing effective things. ie, if the new kid has the ability to make good decks too, they may not have any problem with facing opponents with good decks. (and even so, in my experience people are generally very forgiving with new players.) > Granted, 'attracting' and 'teaching' are different from 'competing'. > So your point that more competitive decks would be more prevalent is > still right, but not something I would neccesarily like. Just like > Halcyan 2 writes, I do not own very many of the cards you mention > either. (2,6,1,1,0,1 out of some 3000 or so?) That's the way I like > it, I strive to get more, and cringe when I meet a '10 hostile > takeover' deck in a tourney. (maybe it's my 4CL for a long time > history). But the rarity of Hostile Takeover doesn't keep you from meeting 10 Hostile decks, it just keeps lots of people from being able to make them. (And therefore keeps them from seeing their strengths and weaknesses and how to play against them.) > That, and WW really needs to keep making money off of this game. In my > short life, I've already seen many things I liked (and others liked a > lot, too) die because there were not enough profits in them for the > creators to keep on making them. You want that many cards? Buy 4 boxes > (or more). Can't afford that? Buy 1, and trade for what you really > need. This I understand and agree with, and I certainly don't want White Wolf to flatten rarity beyond what they can make money doing, but I do think that flatter rarity would be very helpful in letting players build the decks they want. > (Right now, I'm fighting my greedy side, that wants more Freak Drives. > DOWN. DOWN!!) But why shouldn't you want more Freak Drives? If the card is balanced enough for some people to have lots of, it's balanced enough for everyone to have lots of. :-) Josh power to the people!

"Curevei" <cur...@aol.com> wrote in message news:20020201024024...@mb-fi.aol.com... > >It seems to me that it's good for the game - on a > >playability level - for everyone who likes competitive > >play to be able to get all the cards they want to make > >the decks they want to make. > > It's good for the game on a playability level; it will likely also kill sales. Yes, that would be a problem. Making rarity *totally* flat isn't necessary here, and they can certainly leave enough "cool but not necessary in *every* deck with this discipline" cards at rare to keep sales going. > Freak Drive, definitely. The Embrace is the other rare that came to mind as > being useful in ridiculous numbers. I don't consider Awe, Disarm, ToGP, or HT > general use enough to be the least bit bothered if they are rare. I think it's fair to say that ToGP and HT aren't, but Disarm goes in every Potence-combat deck just as much as Immortal Grapple does. (It may also be somewhat unfair as a card, but that's an issue that should be separate from its rarity.) Awe is the second Presence vote-gain action-mod that ever existed, and probably the best one after Bewitching; it should definitely be less rare in my mind. > Um, not having R1s would flatten the rarity. Yeah, and I'd be in favor of that too. ;-) > I can see why Freak Drive and The Embrace were rare originally (except the > whole Progeny is less rare thing, which isn't too hard to ignore). The problem > with these being (relatively) scarce is that they are not only useful in large > numbers in a single deck but useful in large numbers in large numbers of decks. Some others just for fun that probably shouldn't be rare: Behind You, Day Operation, Giant's Blood, Murder of Crows, Pulled Fangs, Rumors of Gehenna. They actually did do a pretty good job in Jyhad - many of the rares are unique or otherwise things you wouldn't want too many copies of in any one deck - but failed in a few cases. Sabbat's quite a bit worse, though these aren't real likely to see reprinting in a Camarilla set - Art Scam, Awe, Blessing of Chaos, Breath of the Dragon, Creation Rites, Daring the Dawn, Derange, Direct Intervention, Disarm, Entombment, maybe Gangrel Conspiracy, Intimidation (!), Marked Path, Masochism, Mind Rape, My Enemy's Enemy, Terror Frenzy, Tier of Souls, Walk through Arcadia, War Ghoul. > THE best line I've ever seen on this newsgroup is "Every deck is better with > Freak Drives." I can't argue. Yeah, just don't forget that at some point more Freak Drives doesn't equal more better forever. ;-) (which I'm sure you know very well.) Josh electricity and gravity

"Halcyan 2" <halc...@aol.com> wrote in message news:20020201135443...@mb-cg.aol.com... [snip] > And if Freak Drive becomes really that powerful as well (in that every > Fortitude deck packs a half dozen), I wouldn't be surprised to see a > restriction as well. Maybe along the lines of limited to one a turn? (a la > Domain of Evernight). If a card's balanced, it's balanced at any rarity. Granted, it might become easier for the player population to demonstrate the brokenness of particularly rare cards if they became less rare. But if Freak Drive is fair now, it'd be equally fair if everyone owned 50 of them. Just like Govern the Unaligned. Same for Disarm. (Pulled Fangs used to generally do what Disarm does now, and was somewhat easier to come by, and it wasn't a big problem in my experience.) The Domain of Evernight restriction, IMO, is there because it has a blood cost of 0 where Freak Drive's is 1. Clotho's Gift costs 1 per untap and has no such restriction. Josh common as dirt

"Joshua Duffin" <jtdu...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:a3chj2$173faq$1...@ID-121616.news.dfncis.de... > > It seems to me that it's good for the game - on a > playability level - for everyone who likes competitive > play to be able to get all the cards they want to make > the decks they want to make. > Given the (very surprising, IMO) disagreement that I've seen, I figured I should chime in. I cannot understand why people would actually *want* power-rares to be out there. Cards like Protected Resources, or Hostile Takeover, which are very powerful, but of limited use, I can understand. But Freak Drive? The Embrace? > Given that, I'd expect > that things like Freak Drive, Immortal Grapple, Awe, > Temptation, probably even things like Disarm, Temptation > of Greater Power, Hostile Takeover, should be uncommon > rather than rare. (The move of Grapple to uncommon in > Sabbat is one of the best decisions I think WotC ever > made.) (Things like Coagulated Entity, Gift of Bellona, > Hag's Wrinkles, Rewind Time, too, though they're > probably much too recent to get reprinted already. ;-) > I don't necessarily agree with all of these. Rewind Time, as a dirty, dirty counterspell should definitely be rare. Not to mention that it's not even all that good. If you play with 10 of them in a deck, all you're doing is annoying everyone, not winning. Coagulated Entity and Gift of Bellona, I agree with. Hag's Wrinkles is kind of iffy (it's similar in utility to Gift of Bellona, but !Sal are useless without equip actions, whereas Samedi/anyone with obf can use Disguised Weapon instead, which is, in most cases, a better card). > Is this a point of view that's generally taken for > granted, or more questionable than I think? I can > see that, taken to its logical conclusion, my argument > would suggest that rarity should be entirely flat (ie > everything the same rarity) and apparently that's > undesirable in CCGs for profitability reasons, > Rarity wouldn't necessarily have to be entirely flat. Stuff like Wrath of the Inner Circle, Justicar Retribution, Form of Corruption, Regeneration, Powerbases (other than Montreal), clan Justicar votes, etc. *should* be rare, as they are of limited utility (some of those, of course, are not rare). Things like Freak Drive, which is to fortitude decks what Torn Signpost is to potence decks (i.e. it's not absolutely necessary, but damn, if you put in about 4-6 of 'em, it'll usually always make your deck better) should really be uncommon. Personally, my ideal rarity scheme would be a commons sheet, wherein everything is C1, a rare sheet, wherein everything is R2, and an uncommon sheet, holding the balance of the cards, most of which would have to be U1, to hold the rest of the cards. That would make for 100 C, 50 R, and the rest uncommon (ideally, no more than 75 uncommons). That is considerably flatter than WW likes to do things, and in any case, it wouldn't take much to convince me that C1 is too rare for some of the more necessary commons. Stone Travel was C1 and I only drew 2 from packs, the same number as some rares. But that's as much due to luck as anything else.

>Some others just for fun that probably shouldn't be rare: >Behind You, Day Operation, Giant's Blood, Murder of Crows, >Pulled Fangs, Rumors of Gehenna. They actually did do a >pretty good job in Jyhad - many of the rares are unique or >otherwise things you wouldn't want too many copies of in >any one deck - but failed in a few cases. > >Sabbat's quite a bit worse, though these aren't real likely >to see reprinting in a Camarilla set - Art Scam, Awe, >Blessing of Chaos, Breath of the Dragon, Creation Rites, >Daring the Dawn, Derange, Direct Intervention, Disarm, >Entombment, maybe Gangrel Conspiracy, Intimidation (!), >Marked Path, Masochism, Mind Rape, My Enemy's Enemy, >Terror Frenzy, Tier of Souls, Walk through Arcadia, War >Ghoul. Of these, the only ones I have a problem with being rare are Direct Intervention, Intimidation (which shouldn't be at all as it's way too redundant and boring to boot), and Terror Frenzy. When you have rares, which I'm in favor of, something has to be rare. For this game, clan specific cards are always candidates, cards that have no close substitutes are always candidates, and so forth. Putting aside whether these cards have too much utility, in fact, putting aside the whole issue of how useful a rare should be, Magic established one criterion for determining rarity early on. When you have different whatevers (colors, disciplines) that have different strengths, when you put a card in that is normally a weakness of that whatever, the card should be rarer. Behind You! made perfect sense to me using this criterion - Obfuscate being the discipline of stealth. Now, does this criterion make sense? Probably not, as you either end up with a crap card that doesn't fit its whatever or the card is so good that you want "lots" of copies of a rare card.

"The Emperor" <theem...@chello.se> wrote in message news:yXp68.4523$A%.1845375@news01.chello.se... [ quoted text not captured ] I totally agree with you .

"Joshua Duffin" <jtdu...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:a3et2h$17b853$1...@ID-121616.news.dfncis.de... > Yes, that would be a problem. Making rarity *totally* > flat isn't necessary here, and they can certainly leave > enough "cool but not necessary in *every* deck with this > discipline" cards at rare to keep sales going. Yeah. This is the only problem I see with the suggestion. Rares still need to be "cool" for people to want to buy the cards. :) > I think it's fair to say that ToGP and HT aren't, but > Disarm goes in every Potence-combat deck just as much > as Immortal Grapple does. (It may also be somewhat Well, I don't know that this is necessarily true, but Disarm *can* go in every Potence deck. I'd liken Disarm to Freak Drive...the deck can do without it, but it's much nicer with it in there. > unfair as a card, but that's an issue that should be > separate from its rarity.) Awe is the second Presence Agreed. I wonder about Disarm sometimes, but that doesn't stop me from playing it. I laugh when my Tremere get Disarmed. Heh. > vote-gain action-mod that ever existed, and probably > the best one after Bewitching; it should definitely be > less rare in my mind. Yeah...Awe could definitely stand to be less rare. > Some others just for fun that probably shouldn't be rare: > Behind You, Day Operation, Giant's Blood, Murder of Crows, Personally, I'd like Day Op simply replaced with Daring the Dawn from here on out. Day Op is just not right, given the increased use of allies. > Sabbat's quite a bit worse, though these aren't real likely > to see reprinting in a Camarilla set - Art Scam, Awe, > Blessing of Chaos, Breath of the Dragon, Creation Rites, > Daring the Dawn, Derange, Direct Intervention, Disarm, > Entombment, maybe Gangrel Conspiracy, Intimidation (!), > Marked Path, Masochism, Mind Rape, My Enemy's Enemy, > Terror Frenzy, Tier of Souls, Walk through Arcadia, War > Ghoul. I'd add Shadow Step to that list as well. And I'm intrigued by the comment about rarity going up as "relation to discipline" goes down. Shadowfist is similar, though I'm not sure about the rarity going up, the cost (of the individual card) definitely does. It makes sense, but I'm not sure how well this applies to V:tES. For example, it gives us Behind You! in the rare slot. :) It's an interesting paradigm, though. Xian

>Thanks. There's certainly no guarantee that anyone in >a position to make decisions will be influenced by what >we say, but we can always hope. :-) Yeah, but it's an interesting discussion nonetheless. Gives you a bit of a cross-section on the types and personalities of people who play the game. >SW's not too bad, but Sabbat was horribly bloated IMO, >not to mention packed with (a) crappy cards and (b) >crappy rares. It only becomes more frustrating to get >an Out of Control as your rare when Disarm is in the >same set as a rare... And getting a Smoke Grenade instead of an Ezmeralda is that much better? =P >I figured there must be some people who feel this way - and >I can understand it to some degree - but I have to admit >it doesn't convince me. To me it seems like a perverse >embracing of frustration. :-) Getting, say, 12 Freak >Drives is absurdly hard to do without buying vast quantities >(and I do mean vast - there were about 100 rares in Jyhad; >at 36 rares per booster box you'd need 3 boxes per set or >36 boxes for 12 of each rare) of cards. And there are >many, many possible decks that can use lots of Freak Drives. No, it just seems that most of the time someone's just whining. Let's take an example: we have 2 players with about the same resources. Player A spends some time and effort wheelin' and dealin' to trade and acquire 8 Freak Drives. Player B is lazy. He just complains that Freak Drives are hard to get. Instead of going out and getting them himself (like Player A did), he just argues that Freak Drives should be common. A few months a similar topic came up about how *hard* it is to get a hold of Mariana and Dan (which it isn't). There are plenty copies around, you just have to look for them. I'm sorry. Maybe it's too much to ask some players to do a little work. I apologize if every nifty cool card can't be served to you on a silver platter. :: Turns down the sarcasm level :: >Your argument (like mine) becomes silly if taken to its >logical extreme - if it's fun to have things be hard to >get, then it'd be more fun if *everything* was rare, right? >;-) (Of course, if everything is rare, then nothing is, >but that's not the point.) Agreed. Extremes = bad, usually. >My philosophy here boils down to "cards people want lots >of shouldn't be rare". It's sort of an extension of "the >good cards shouldn't all be rare". From my point of view, >probably the most appropriately-rare cards would be >uniques (not to say that *every* unique should be rare, >but generally you won't want to build a deck around 5+ >copies of a unique card). After that, effects that are >extremely specialized can be rare - things like Hostile >Takeover and Temptation of Greater Power may qualify, >along with things like Kine Dominance, Entrancement, and >Far Mastery. As the game turned out, cards like Shattering >Blow, Fast Hands, and Canine Horde probably could've been >rare too. Not necessarily. Take for example "that other game." My favorite card in the game was the ultra-cool, uber-cute, Savannah Lions! Which were indeed rare. But it was still fun collecting them (I ended up with about 23 of them). This is probably a corner-case example but collecting Savannah Lions wouldn't have been half as fun if they were common (compare to the say, just-as-cute Mtenda Lions which were common). >But why should they have to do so much work collecting >before they can play? Sure, it's a CCG, and part of >being involved with it is collecting. But it seems to >me that making things excessively rare only limits the >variety of potential decks people can make, almost like >a de facto CL. Because everything shouldn't simply be served to you on a silver platter. More people should do some work instead of whining incessently (not directed at anyone in particular). Halcyan 2

<Talo...@nospam.hotmail.com> wrote in message news:3c5dec12.515133166@news... [ quoted text not captured ] Whats a balancing argument? Who cares if I can use it in 1 or 20 decks? You see what happens when game designers try to figure out what people are going to want to play, they can never do it right. But seeing as how there might be such cards, I see no problem with an uncommon sheet and a common sheet. Combine with a vampire sheet and you are there. 3 cards from the uncommon sheet, 2 cards from the vampire sheet, and 6 from the common sheet. You will still have plenty of vampires to play, and you get 2:1 commons to uncommons. That is better then 1 rare, with some ultra rares, and on down. Better for everyone if you ask me. 1) players that play alot and have many decks buy as many cards, they just end up with better mixes. 2) players that play for fun, and are only going to buy a few packs, end up with more playable decks. 3) areas with poor trade populations win, less trading is needed to get a deck you can play. 4) white wolf makes more money, because its easy to get new players involved for a mininal investment 5) I end up with more freak drives and ivory bows, and less boxed in and cryptic missions. [ quoted text not captured ]

>I think it's fair to say that ToGP and HT aren't, but >Disarm goes in every Potence-combat deck just as much >as Immortal Grapple does. (It may also be somewhat >unfair as a card, but that's an issue that should be >separate from its rarity.) I agree it's a bit "unfair" as you put it. As I said earlier, I really don't want to see every Potence deck Disarming my poor, hapless vampires. >Some others just for fun that probably shouldn't be rare: In many cases, you have substitutes that are (just) as good. >Behind You Swallowed by Night is just as good. It provides a manuever (that can be used on non-first rounds) and can also be cyclable as stealth. Sure, Behind You can also give a dodge, but all of it's "first-round only" stuff hampers it quite a bit. >Giant's Blood 5th Tradition, Festivo dello Estinto, Concert Tour, and Renewed Vigor are good substitutes. >Murder of Crows Wolf Companion is usually just as good. MoC does ranged damage, but is far easier to kill. >Pulled Fangs Not that great especially once it was toned down. >Awe BO can do just as well usually. >Direct Intervention Uncommon. >Entombment Good, but it really doesn't see that much use. Like Coma, it's rather expensive and you still get hit by your opponent too (unless you use Arms). >Intimidation (!) Not that great. Easily substited with Social Charm or Media Influence. >My Enemy's Enemy Telepathic Misdirection is a good substitute. In many cases, there are close substitutes for rare cards. (In the cases where there aren't, those cards are much more specific). Especially since there are no card limits, 4 Telepathic Misdirections + 4 My Enemy's Enemy isn't that much better than 8 Telepathic Misdirections. 4 Social Charms + 4 Intimidations aren't that much better than 8 Social Charms. Etc. Halcyan 2

>> unfair as a card, but that's an issue that should be >> separate from its rarity.) Awe is the second Presence > >Agreed. I wonder about Disarm sometimes, but that doesn't stop me from >playing it. I laugh when my Tremere get Disarmed. Heh. So if Lazarus has a Rutor's Hand and is Disarmed, does this mean he can't use a Talbot's Chainsaw? (Or how about a Hackmaster +12 for that matter?) =P Halcyan 2

>> And if Freak Drive becomes really that powerful as well (in that every >> Fortitude deck packs a half dozen), I wouldn't be surprised to see a >> restriction as well. Maybe along the lines of limited to one a turn? (a la >> Domain of Evernight). > >If a card's balanced, it's balanced at any rarity. > >Granted, it might become easier for the player population >to demonstrate the brokenness of particularly rare cards >if they became less rare. But if Freak Drive is fair >now, it'd be equally fair if everyone owned 50 of them. >Just like Govern the Unaligned. Same for Disarm. (Pulled >Fangs used to generally do what Disarm does now, and was >somewhat easier to come by, and it wasn't a big problem in >my experience.) Well, I think Disarm and Freak Drive *are* overpowered as they are now. I don't think they necessarily have to be changed, but I do think they are incredibly powerful. >The Domain of Evernight restriction, IMO, is there because >it has a blood cost of 0 where Freak Drive's is 1. Clotho's >Gift costs 1 per untap and has no such restriction. Well, Clotho's Gift lets you do it every turn. But you can only do it *once per turn* (unless you have multiple Gifts). Halcyan 2

-- Aaron The Nosferatu Stuff "James Coupe" <ja...@zephyr.org.uk> wrote in message news:wptoRJKS...@gratiano.zephyr.org.uk... > In message <20020201142041...@mb-md.aol.com>, CurtAdams > <curt...@aol.com> writes: > >Yes. *Card* rarity is a lousy way to enforce *use* rarity. For > >use rarity, the card should be less valuable - e.g. an Embrace costs pool > >as well as blood, etc. If such cards exist and are common, you just > >have to plan for everybody having a pile. > > What would be nice, I think, is to see some of the 'good' rares come > down to vampire/uncommon rarity (and I hope that a four rarity system is > implemented), with some being left at R2. > > That way, a compromise between player utility and actually making money > can be struck. On what planet does white wolf make more money with 'rarer' cards? Everyone says this, but are you not going to buy boxes if freak drives are less common? Maybe people in the rest of the world don't buy cards like any of the people I know: Me: "Noal, how many boxes of final nights you getting?" Noal: "4" Me: "You know there are ultra rare vampires in there?" Noal: "And BAD Shy art?" Me: "oh, okay, well the new camarilla set is comming out soon, its chalked full of cards that are awesome, that you want to use, and there are no rares! How many boxes of that you getting?" Noal: "well I was going to buy 400 to fund white wolf..but now I will just get one and get all the cards I ever needed!" Me: "looks like they really screw up on this one!" NO, that just isn't going to happen. People are going to buy how ever many they want, and that is it. Ultra rares, sets with more rares then anything else, that kinda BS doesn't make me want to buy any more cards, I doubt they make anyone else want to buy more either...except idiot people who find out they can sell a single ultra rare on ebay for $30. If they printed the camarilla set as they did the VTES set. And I get 4 boxes I will probably get 2 freak drives. If they made them twice as common, so that in 4 boxes I got 4, what makes people think I will go, hell all I wanted was 2, now I only need to get 2 boxes! With a flater rarity scheme, its not like you are going to get all the cards you want out of minimal packs. People that say, "All I want from bloodlines is 5 Iron Heart" aren't going to buy 10 boxes and hope to get them. They are going to trade or buy them individually. Not helping white wolf make any extra money. Think about it this way, if you are a new player, I have so many freaking common potence cards I can build you a decent deck of them, and you can play for free...I will give them to you. But then you need some immortal grapples, so I have alot of those also, maybe I give you 4 of those. But you aren't getting free disarms. But you are happy, I mean you have a free deck...well you are happy until you see someone else that has the same deck as you, same crypt same commons, except that they have 8 immortal grapples and 5 disarms. So new player stops cause he sure isn't going to buy 10 boxes of sabbat war to make his brujah beat down deck. And you better believe no one is going to trade him disarms, cause they are so freakin hard to find. But he can HAVE all the undead strenghts he wants, and that is supposed to make him want to spend money? Yeah right. [ quoted text not captured ]

ja...@zephyr.org.uk writes: >What would be nice, I think, is to see some of the 'good' rares come >down to vampire/uncommon rarity (and I hope that a four rarity system is >implemented), with some being left at R2. >That way, a compromise between player utility and actually making money >can be struck. I don't see any compromise. I've certainly spent more on Jyhad than any other CCG, and the main reason is that it does *not* have a bad great rare problem. I buy more because there's a gazillion decks I'd like to make and I need a gazillion cards. When you zap the great rares, more people will play, and in the long term that will make more money. [ quoted text not captured ]

xian writes: >Yeah. This is the only problem I see with the suggestion. Rares still need >to be "cool" for people to want to buy the cards. :) Yes, so make them storyline related permanents and uniques with tough play restrictions. Clan hosers, wierd events, out-of-clan multidisciplines: there are lots of possibilities and the WW connections gives lots of storyline possibilities. [ quoted text not captured ]

In message <a3fges$177c6q$1...@ID-125246.news.dfncis.de>, The Nosferatu Stuff <roans...@yahoo.com> writes: >On what planet does white wolf make more money with 'rarer' cards? Flat distribution models don't work with the evidence available to us, ergo some levels of rarity would seem to be needed. Having some useful rare cards - but not broken or whatever - does create an element of buying more cards. If useful cards are also available at other distributions, they don't compete for the same slot. e.g. you could go out and buy a pack and find Freak Drive (uncommon), Protected Racehorses (Vampire 1), Kine Resources Contested (common), Awe (uncommon), Temptation of Greater Power (rare) and Psychic Veil (uncommon). Hence you can go out and buy lots of cards knowing that, though there is, of course, a finite number of slots, the popular cards are spread across different slots - so it's not a case of going out and buying a maximum of 36 of them in one box, but of buying potentially, say, 150 of them in one box, along with a hyowge number of other cards too. [ quoted text not captured ]

In message <20020201202356...@mb-fo.aol.com>, Halcyan 2 <halc...@aol.com> writes: >Well, I think Disarm and Freak Drive *are* overpowered as they are now. I don't >think they necessarily have to be changed, but I do think they are incredibly >powerful. Such can in part be done by other methods. (The following aren't perfect.) e.g. Traffic Jam Unique Master Put this card in play. Any card played which untaps a minion costs an additional blood or pool as appropriate (minion cards without a cost gain a blood cost). This card may be burned as a (D) action; Brujah, Ventrue and allies get +1 stealth on that action. Torpor Ward Action Thaumaturgy 2 blood Put this card on the acting vampire. If this vampire would go to torpor, you may burn this card to prevent them from going to torpor. A vampire may have only one Torpor Ward. (The card texts given above are public domain. All rights are relinquished.) [ quoted text not captured ]

Joshua Duffin wrote: > I think it's fair to say that ToGP and HT aren't, but > Disarm goes in every Potence-combat deck just as much > as Immortal Grapple does. Obviously, considering it has repeatedly been explained on this NG that R.G. did not intend for VTES to be a money game and that WW does not only not rare-ify power cards but actually bases card rarity on card utility, you must be mistaken in that assumption. I figure the reasoning goes something like this: Disarm is a corner case card in that it assumes a potence combat deck is actually capable of inflicting more damage at close range than another deck, which considering that 11 clans and most bloodlines pack pot and/or for (an thus can equal the amount of damage or prevent) and all the rest have acess to S:CE and/or maneuvers is a ridiculous assumption at best. Why on earth there's any non-rare cards in VTES, of course, is completely beyond me, as I have yet to find a card that does not suffer from similar sever limitations. > (It may also be somewhat > unfair as a card, but that's an issue that should be > separate from its rarity.) No, it should most definitely not while the claim that WW does not rare-ify power cards still stands. Thomas

Halcyan 2 wrote: > >I figured there must be some people who feel this way - and > >I can understand it to some degree - but I have to admit > >it doesn't convince me. To me it seems like a perverse > >embracing of frustration. :-) Getting, say, 12 Freak > >Drives is absurdly hard to do without buying vast quantities > >(and I do mean vast - there were about 100 rares in Jyhad; > >at 36 rares per booster box you'd need 3 boxes per set or > >36 boxes for 12 of each rare) of cards. And there are > >many, many possible decks that can use lots of Freak Drives. > > No, it just seems that most of the time someone's just whining. Let's take an > example: we have 2 players with about the same resources. > Assume these resources do not include Sabbat-only rares (because they're new to VTES) and a reasonably probable quantity of popular rares pro the recent sets like no more than one Diarm, Awe, ... because the 2 players are not suitcases [who'd just go buy FD at whichever ridiculous price the kid that actually needs money for other things than CCGs decides to part with his spare copy]. > > Player A spends some time and effort wheelin' and dealin' to trade and acquire > 8 Freak Drives. Sure. And the Ivory Coast is going to win the olympic ice hockey tournament, beating Turkey in overtime of the best match in history. [Say he gets 3, that's still a lot like saying Austria will take the championship - it means he finds 3 people parting with FD for less than a (Dis-)Arm and a leg, so he can afford trading for the lot with limited resources.] > > Player B is lazy. He just complains that Freak Drives are hard to get. Instead > of going out and getting them himself (like Player A did), he just argues that > Freak Drives should be common. Player B might also do that after having spent the better part of a year trying to get at least one FD with his limited resources and having encountered a more realistic run of luck than player A and the Ivory Coast [or Austria, for that matter]. > > I'm sorry. Maybe it's too much to ask some players to do a little work. As long as you haven't tried the getting 8 FDs [or Disarms, or Awes, or Succubi, or ...] stunt and succeed (thereby disproving the remainder of this statement - and all the best of luck to you trying, you'll need it), it damn well is, because it's not asking a little work, it's asking the impossible. Thomas

>Obviously, considering it has repeatedly been explained on this NG that R.G. >did >not intend for VTES to be a money game and that WW does not only not rare-ify >power cards but actually bases card rarity on card utility, you must be >mistaken >in that assumption. I find it more annoying to hear how cards haven't been made more rare because they are powerful than the fact that they have. I'm sure someone will contend that this hasn't been the case, so here's a list of cards from Bloodlines that come to mind that are annoying at the rare level, and sometimes R1 level, because they are highly useful. Art's Traumatic Essence - More because of the Auspex level than anything else. Ashes to Ashes - Could be the only good reason to play Thanatosis. Darkling Trickery - Yes, the superior level fits the low utility criterion, but the inferior is a highly useful, ordinary effect(s). Engling Fury - Can't imagine why I would want to have a bunch of Restorations that cause me to untap for a bloodline that could use the blood. Gestalt - Intercept may not be Sanguinus's forte, so there's an argument for the fish out of water criterion, but it's useful in multiples and not weird otherwise. Gift of Bellona - Okay, this is an unusual effect. OTOH, I figure the only way to *try* to have a tournament viable !Salubri melee weapon deck is to have a minimum of 6 of these. Essential cards for a basic deck being rare sucks. Hag's Wrinkles - Ah, Samedi, masters of equipping. Have a R1 to lessen the need for Freak Drives. Muricia's Call - Searching, for free. Like Art's, more because of the Animalism level. Shroud of Absence - It's like Shroud of Night only better outside of weenie decks.

"Halcyan 2" <halc...@aol.com> wrote: > No, it just seems that most of the time someone's just whining. Let's take an > example: we have 2 players with about the same resources. > > Player A spends some time and effort wheelin' and dealin' to trade and acquire > 8 Freak Drives. 'Some'? Just 'some' effort huh? Lets try this, you live in a place that doesn't have easy access to hordes of jyhad, so all you are buying is sabbat war/final nights/bloodlines...you are *gasp* a new player. Its not for lack of time or trying.. I just don't know where you think you are going to get 8 freakdrives from. Any that are avaliable are instantly pulled out of circulation. So you spend about a year trading your ass off and get your 8 freak drives! Your 4 "lazy" (have real lives and other things to do then try and trade VTES 24 hours a day) have none of these awesome cards, and are sick of the fact that if they want to play !gangrel, ravnos, blood brothers, daughters, gargoyles, harbingers, salubri, samedi, or !ventrue that they will be stuck with 1 action a turn while you can have 8. > Player B is lazy. He just complains that Freak Drives are hard to get. Instead > of going out and getting them himself (like Player A did), he just argues that > Freak Drives should be common. More then likely your 4 "lazy" friends are just going to give up VTES for a game that can somehow manage to make money without selling a case of product to ever player(it does happen, why people are convinced it cant with TCG is beyond me) such as settlers of catan. > Not necessarily. Take for example "that other game." My favorite card in the > game was the ultra-cool, uber-cute, Savannah Lions! Which were indeed rare. But > it was still fun collecting them (I ended up with about 23 of them). This is > probably a corner-case example but collecting Savannah Lions wouldn't have been > half as fun if they were common (compare to the say, just-as-cute Mtenda Lions > which were common). Bah humbug. I collected Ornithopters. I have literally 500 of the things. You cannot tell me that getting a few of something rare is more rewarding then getting a LOT of something common. Thats just a matter of personal perspective and have nothing to do with printing of cards.(I was trying to beat the guy that had 800 atogs! argh) VTES has so many bad things going against it. Its very complicated and difficult to learn. The erratas and various printings of cards that do different things is nuts.(See mind rape) There is an increasing show from white wolf that they are going to stack sets with rares in a vain attempt to sell more cards. The tournament scene is very intimidating to new players, and often times a down right turn off from the nature and spirit of the system in place.(hard nosed BS) Lack of female players(maybe that is only a problem for me? ;) With those problems I don't see why VTES needs another, with high utility crazy amounts of rares, or the design team trying to figure out which cards you are on -- Aaron The Nosferatu Stuffly going to need one or two of(engling fury) and which you need 20 of(Vengeance of Samiel)

"James Coupe" <ja...@zephyr.org.uk> wrote in message news:kco9MAxE...@gratiano.zephyr.org.uk... > In message <a3fges$177c6q$1...@ID-125246.news.dfncis.de>, The Nosferatu > Stuff <roans...@yahoo.com> writes: > >On what planet does white wolf make more money with 'rarer' cards? > > Flat distribution models don't work with the evidence available to us, > ergo some levels of rarity would seem to be needed. I think I agree with you. But 'flatter' distribution is prefered. I would not suggest everything be common(of the same rarity) but I believe that 3 sheets(uncommon/common and vampire) is really the perfect world. The continued use of rarity as a weapon against peoples pocketbooks is total crap. I don't think the "just trade" people know what they are talking about either. After 6 boxes of bloodlines(more then what I would expect any average/new player to spend) I am unable to play 5 of the 12 clans. I had to literally trade off all my cards from one clan, to make another playable. Some people think thats is great, they way it should be. Me, I think that if a set has 12 clans, I should be able to play all 12. [ quoted text not captured ]

Curevei wrote: > >Obviously, considering it has repeatedly been explained on this NG that R.G. > >did > >not intend for VTES to be a money game and that WW does not only not rare-ify > >power cards but actually bases card rarity on card utility, you must be > >mistaken > >in that assumption. > > I find it more annoying to hear how cards haven't been made more rare because > they are powerful than the fact that they have. > Uh... I was pretty sure I was safe leaving the <sarcasm> tag off that post, but I'm actually quite happy to be proven wrong - after all, it proves I'm not alone with my feelings :) > > I'm sure someone will contend that this hasn't been the case, so here's a list > of cards from Bloodlines that come to mind that are annoying at the rare level, > and sometimes R1 level, because they are highly useful. > Hmm... some of them are probably justifyable as R1s, such as Hag's Wrinkles (only useful in a Samedi deck that uses lots of equipment that can't be brought into play using Disguised Weapon is fairly borderline). However, several cards from your list are extremely good examples of cards that should not be R1 - I argued the case of Engling Fury elsewhere (comparing it to Sense Vitality, a C2, that is technically harder to play for any but the out-ferior effects), and Muricia's Call is similar to The Summoning (another C2, albeit from a different set). Thomas

"CurtAdams" <curt...@aol.com> wrote in message news:20020201213316...@mb-fi.aol.com... > xian writes: > > >Yeah. This is the only problem I see with the suggestion. Rares still need > >to be "cool" for people to want to buy the cards. :) > > Yes, so make them storyline related permanents and uniques with tough > play restrictions. Clan hosers, wierd events, out-of-clan multidisciplines: > there are lots of possibilities and the WW connections gives lots of > storyline possibilities. Agree, for the most part. (BTW, nice to see you back, Curt, since I haven't mentioned it before.) Disagree on the clan hosers. I *hate* seeing them in a rare slot, since they almost never see the light of day in my decks, nor should they in most decks, IMO. I never bother including them because I never know what I'm going to see at any given table, and it's not worth it to use the card slot for the slight chance of screwing a deck (briefly) that may not even be my prey's deck. I think Josh hit it pretty much on the head, and I agree that the out-of-clan multidisciplines, weird events, etc. could easily be rare. Not clan hosers, though...please... I'd rather have them uncommon, so even though I'd have more of them, there would be less of the feeling of "oh, god...not another crappy [blah] when it could have been [foo]." (This works the best when blah = Twisting the Knife, and foo = Disarm.) Xian

halc...@aol.com (Halcyan 2) wrote in message news:<20020131211949...@mb-fo.aol.com>... > >It seems to me that it's good for the game - on a > >playability level - for everyone who likes competitive > >play to be able to get all the cards they want to make > >the decks they want to make. Given that, I'd expect > >that things like Freak Drive, Immortal Grapple, Awe, > >Temptation, probably even things like Disarm, Temptation > >of Greater Power, Hostile Takeover, should be uncommon > >rather than rare. > I disagree. I personally liked the size and rarities used for the Jyhad/VTES > base sets and Sabbat/SW. I think it would be best if the new Base Set mimicked > these sets in terms of size and rarity distribution. > I disagree about all of your proposed rare-->uncommon changes. Part of the fun, > IMHO, is the collectible and/or trading aspect of the game. I myself only have > 1 FD, like 2 IG's, 1 Awe, 1 ToGP, 0 Disarms, and 1 Hostile Takeover. Not nearly > enough of any of them. But I'd rather keep them rares than to make them so > easily accessible. If I really want them, I'll trade for them and get them the > *hard* way. IMO, half of the fun of playing a ToGP deck is knowing that you > managed to acquire half a dozen ToGP's. Somehow I don't see how getting Vtes cards is the fun part of the game. If you're really into collecting cards that much, may I suggest INWO or Animayhem? INWO has a lot of really funny cards, between the text and the artwork, and Animayhem has excellent card art (if you like Anime). Good luck finding opponents for INWO, and don't bother wasting your time trying to play Animayhem. > I prefer the status quo. If it's not broke, then don't fix it! The game is > already quite playable as it is. I don't think it's too much to ask to have > players do *some* work before putting together a ToGP or a Betrayer deck. > Halcyan 2 Assuming you're trying to put together a finely tuned deck, deciding on the card selections is certainly going to be "some work," and in fact probably a lot of work... The base set is mostly fine; there's only a few cards I can really see that could use a shift up/down in rarity. There are plenty of cards, mostly the ones no one plays, that should disappear. FN and BL could use shifts, but I doubt we'll see many non-cam cards.

halc...@aol.com (Halcyan 2) wrote in message news:<20020201201907...@mb-fo.aol.com>... > >Some others just for fun that probably shouldn't be rare: > In many cases, you have substitutes that are (just) as good. > >Behind You > > Swallowed by Night is just as good. It provides a manuever (that can be used on > non-first rounds) and can also be cyclable as stealth. Sure, Behind You can > also give a dodge, but all of it's "first-round only" stuff hampers it quite a > bit. Uh.. sure, if you're fighting tremere 2nd round combat, or a trap deck. But then their damage is ranged anyways. > >Giant's Blood > 5th Tradition, Festivo dello Estinto, Concert Tour, and Renewed Vigor are good > substitutes. No, they aren't. Festivo is crap. -1 stealth and cost a pool? Whatever. The others either require particular vampires/clans, and they require that you have enough stealth to get an action through (via true stealth or intimidation). That being said, the usage restriction on GB should have it as a rare card. > >Murder of Crows > Wolf Companion is usually just as good. MoC does ranged damage, but is far > easier to kill. MoC is useful for ani combat, WC isn't. They aren't even close. > >Entombment > Good, but it really doesn't see that much use. Like Coma, it's rather expensive > and you still get hit by your opponent too (unless you use Arms). With arms, it's pretty strong. I haven't seen many lasombra decks that couldn't use it; its an excellent threat in any case.

>I think I agree with you. But 'flatter' distribution is prefered. I would >not suggest everything be common(of the same rarity) but I believe that 3 >sheets(uncommon/common and vampire) is really the perfect world. No rares? Wouldn't this just be like the Dark Sovereigns set, and we all know how vilified that was... Halcyan 2

>I'm sure someone will contend that this hasn't been the case, so here's a >list >of cards from Bloodlines that come to mind that are annoying at the rare >level, >and sometimes R1 level, because they are highly useful. Well you mentioned it a bit and someone has also brought it up but I just want to emphasize the "fish out of water criterion" thing you brought up. Some disciplines are better off doing some things than others. So oftentimes, the things it doesn't do well in are rare. Gestalt is primarily a combat discipline so the intercepty Gestalt is an anomaly, just like Behind You and Fade From View (both combat cards) in a stealthy discipline like Obfuscate. Throw in the bizarreness of some of these cards, and it's quite understandable how they became rares. Auspex isn't supposed to be that aggressive/proactive thus the tapping effect of Art is a bit odd. And Mythernecia(sp) isn't supposed to be that much of a combat discipline, which explains why Darkling Trickery and Basilisk's Touch are rares. Halcyan 2

In message <20020202192521...@mb-ch.aol.com>, Halcyan 2 [ quoted text not captured ] Partly that comes from having so much dross *anyway*. [ quoted text not captured ]

xi...@waste.org writes: >Agree, for the most part. (BTW, nice to see you back, Curt, since I haven't >mentioned it before.) Thanks. I've missed the folks here too. I finally played last night after, oh, four years or so and I'd forgotten how fun this is. And how stressful =:-0 >Disagree on the clan hosers. I *hate* seeing them >in a rare slot, since they almost never see the light of day in my decks, >nor should they in most decks, IMO. I never bother including them because I >never know what I'm going to see at any given table, and it's not worth it >to use the card slot for the slight chance of screwing a deck (briefly) that >may not even be my prey's deck. I agree you'd rarely want to use them - but that's exactly what you want to see in a rare card. They're pretty collectible, too, especially when inventive like Unnacceptable Appearance. The fact that you would get upset if you saw one in a rare slot reflects that currently you're expecting nice cards in your rare slot - probably a good expectation, these days, but it's bad for the game. There was a lot of junk in the original rare slots but it didn't bother me - I only had a few of them anyway. It's probably true that with effectively 20 clans (right?) clan-specific hosers are just hopeless and perhaps shouldn't exist at all. But if they're going to exist, shouldn't WW print as few as possible? Wouldn't uncommon Art's Traumatic Essence and rare Unnacceptable Appearance be preferable to the opposite? Which booster would you rather buy? [ quoted text not captured ]

In message <a3hbpo$17rcd1$1...@ID-125246.news.dfncis.de>, "The Nosferatu Stuff" <roans...@yahoo.com> mumbled something about: >about either. After 6 boxes of bloodlines(more then what I would expect any >average/new player to spend) I am unable to play 5 of the 12 clans. I had How hopeless can you be? I bought 2 boxes and 4 boosters. I can play all of the clans. I can also make good decks with all the clans. I cannot make every deck possible to every clan. This is not going to cause me to lose sleep at night. >Some people think thats is great, they way it should be. Me, I think that >if a set has 12 clans, I should be able to play all 12. So how difficult is it with 6 boxes? Jesus Christ, man, if I had 6 boxes I could work miracles with each of the clans. -- "There's no gray. There's just white that's got grubby." -- T.P.

In message <8f507d2e.0202...@posting.google.com>, smci...@onesourcecorp.com (Shaun McIsaac) mumbled something about: >No, they aren't. Festivo is crap. -1 stealth and cost a pool? Yeah, I bet the Lasombra, !Nossies, and !Malks really hate it. Tzimisce can use Changeling. !Brujah can just knock your block off and Taste. !Ventrue can use Seduction, and DO have some Obtenebration available as well. And if they're blocked they can prevent. !Tremere also have Seduction, and just play Theft when blocked anyway -- maybe it's not a fillup, but it's not TOO bad. Only the !Toreador are screwed, and they have PLENTY of good Masters. If you play Festivo at the right time, it's a helluva card. >That being said, the usage restriction on GB should have it as a rare >card. Of course. You never put more than 1 in your deck. You never NEED more than 1. Just take it out and put it in whatever deck you're playing. I don't know what delusions y'all are under about this "I NEED ONE GIANTS BLOOD FOR EVERY THREE DECKS", but let me just break it to you: No, you don't. You WANT one Giant's Blood for every three. You only NEED one Giant's Blood to be able to use it effectively in a deck. >> >Murder of Crows >> Wolf Companion is usually just as good. MoC does ranged damage, but is far >> easier to kill. > >MoC is useful for ani combat, WC isn't. They aren't even close. What, Drawing Out the Beast never hits the table in your group? That's a pretty good way to make people stay at close for the Wolf Companion's damage. Only ANI deck WC sucks in is the Aid from Bats/Carrion Crows deck. [ quoted text not captured ]

"Derek Ray" <lor...@yahoo.com> wrote: > >Some people think thats is great, they way it should be. Me, I think that > >if a set has 12 clans, I should be able to play all 12. > > So how difficult is it with 6 boxes? Jesus Christ, man, if I had 6 > boxes I could work miracles with each of the clans. Lets see, 8 bond with the mountain, 6 conscripted statues, 9 rock cats, and 6 soul of the earth. I REALLY want to play gargoyles. Compared to 1 Ashes to ashes, 0 Erebus mask, 0 Hags Wrinkles, and 1 Regenerative Blood. Its not like i don't also want to be able to play Samedi. Runs similar with other clans, I'm on with True Brujah, off with Ahrimanes. Maybe you don't play focused decks, but if I am going to play gargoyle defense with rock cat offense, I want more then 2 cats in my deck, and enough soul of the earth to keep things happy. If I try to play Samedi it would be nice to have the ability to use some of their cards. Unfortunatly due to the extra crappy amount of rares in the set I have traded away half the clans to make the others playable. Point being you need more then 1 of a card for a focused deck to work. Trying to make a decently focused deck out of bloodlines sucks, not because of the cards themselves but because of the districution of rares. [ quoted text not captured ]

"Halcyan 2" <halc...@aol.com> wrote in message news:20020202192521...@mb-ch.aol.com... [ quoted text not captured ] Yes, exactly like Dark Sovereigns. There is nothing wrong with that set, rarity wise. Buying 1 box won't get you 4 of any uncommon1, but buying 4 probably will. Just because you don't like the cards in the set, doesn't mean that the rarity mix isn't good. Random example from my personal collection, looking at my cards I have 3 acquired ventrue assets(uncommon) and 17 Blessing of Durga Syn(common) from dark sovereigns. I have 1 Akhenaten, The Sun Pharaoh(rare) and 21 Anachronism(common). Neither of these card I have traded for or away...none particularly wants them. Basically dark sovereigns traded in a few of the extra commons for an extra card from a 'rarer' sheet. Given the choice between a few more of the same commons, and a diversified mix of rares, I'll take the latter any time! I certainly won't use 21 anachronism any sooner then if I had only 17 of them. Unfortunatly I cannot build a deck around the sun pharaoh because I didn't get enough of him. I don't mess around with the math equasions, I could care less. Its just common sense that getting 1 card from the rare sheet is not as good as getting 2. And that getting twice as many rares should not decrease sales, but by improving the ability of new players to access cards actually get new players and increase sales. [ quoted text not captured ]

"CurtAdams" <curt...@aol.com> wrote: > It's probably true that with effectively 20 clans (right?) clan-specific hosers > are just hopeless and perhaps shouldn't exist at all. But if they're going > to exist, shouldn't WW print as few as possible? Wouldn't uncommon > Art's Traumatic Essence and rare Unnacceptable Appearance be preferable > to the opposite? Which booster would you rather buy? Check out Toreador's Bane. I love that card. That is exactly how clan hosers should be written. To make them hose a particular clan, but still be useable in other circumstances. Example, wouldn't it have been better if Gangrel Atavism had been printed as: Atavism Master 2 Pool Put this card on a vampire capacity less then 4, or any gangrel. If that vampire is gangrel this card costs 2 less pool. The vampire with this card gets -1 bleed on each bleed action. [ quoted text not captured ]

Talo...@nospam.hotmail.com wrote: > > On Fri, 01 Feb 2002 05:45:02 GMT, "The Emperor" <theem...@chello.se> > wrote: > > > > >I agree that some of the more useful cards (Disarm, Freak Drive) should be > >uncommon since they fit into alot of decks however Hostile Takeover, ToGP > >etc arent useful in most decks so they should stay rare. > > > >/The Emperor > > > > I see no reason whatsoever to change any rarities personally. IG was > only changed to give potence decks a SCE hoser, and combat decks are > still tough to win with. Potence decks already had an SCE hoser: Immortal Grapple. You don't seem to understand, making IG uncommon did not "give" potence decks a damn thing. It just made it possible for more people to build such decks. This shows the error in your thinking. The dedicated, rich collector can build any decks he wants. Changing rarity allows for more players to build the decks they want. Therefore, more players have more fun with the game. Anyone who doesn't understand why *that* is a good reason to change the rarities so that popular cards may be more common isn't choosing to look. Freak Drive, Awe, and Disarm all need to be uncommon. Some of the other things Josh mentions may not be appropriate to reprint in a Camarilla- centered printing but I at least agree with the principal, if not the specifics. Fred

Halcyan 2 wrote: > I disagree. I personally liked the size and rarities used for the Jyhad/VTES > base sets and Sabbat/SW. I think it would be best if the new Base Set mimicked > these sets in terms of size and rarity distribution. > > I disagree about all of your proposed rare-->uncommon changes. Part of the fun, > IMHO, is the collectible and/or trading aspect of the game. I myself only have > 1 FD, like 2 IG's, 1 Awe, 1 ToGP, 0 Disarms, and 1 Hostile Takeover. Not nearly > enough of any of them. But I'd rather keep them rares than to make them so > easily accessible. I've never understood this attitude - sort of, like, "I *like* frustration!" I acknowledge that a number of people seem to agree with it but you can repeat it as many times as you want and it won't make any sense to me. Understand that some players - perhaps you've played against them - have everything in the world they want. What is the point of a game where some people basically have all the playing pieces and some are missing a bunch of them and have to build inferior decks? Doesn't make much sense when looked at that way. I do think collectability and (relatively) high rarity can have a place in a game like this. But not with with useful, multiple-to-a-common-deck archetype sort of cards like Disarm and Freak Drive. Save that stuff for the rare, unique locations and the one-time-per-game cards (I'm thinking Reality Mirror or Lupine Assault) that players can easily dodge around needing if they don't want to go find one. Fred

Halcyan 2 wrote: > No, it just seems that most of the time someone's just whining. Let's take an > example: we have 2 players with about the same resources. > > Player A spends some time and effort wheelin' and dealin' to trade and acquire > 8 Freak Drives. > > Player B is lazy. He just complains that Freak Drives are hard to get. Instead > of going out and getting them himself (like Player A did), he just argues that > Freak Drives should be common. ...and quits the game. Now Player A cannot play against him. What did we accomplish? I find that the term "whining" on Usenet is a verb used to discuss what another person is complaining about that the speaker doesn't happen to agree with. Someone posting in the newsgroup had a rather perceptive comment about verb conjugation which I'll steal: in the first person, we always say, "I/we complain." But in the second or third person it's, "You/he/she/they whine." .... > I'm sorry. Maybe it's too much to ask some players to do a little work. I though Jyhad was a game, intended to be fun. I have to say, you make me wonder just how much work we're supposed to put in before we're allowed to have a few laughs around here. Can we take breaks? Maybe we need a Jyhad Player's Union to limit this sort of thing. (Check your state's right-to-work laws in advance, however.) And remember that minors are not allowed to do more than 8 straight hours of Jyhad, with time off for lunch - that's Federal law! Fred

>...and quits the game. Now Player A cannot play against him. What did we >accomplish? I find that the term "whining" on Usenet is a verb used to >discuss >what another person is complaining about that the speaker doesn't happen to >agree with. Someone posting in the newsgroup had a rather perceptive comment >about verb conjugation which I'll steal: in the first person, we always say, >"I/we complain." But in the second or third person it's, "You/he/she/they >whine." Hey, I readily admit that I'm a first-rate-whiner! Whining can be fun and helps relieve tension and stress (just like rants). But at least I'll admit that it's whining, as opposed to "claiming" that it's "complaining." >I though Jyhad was a game, intended to be fun. I have to say, you make me >wonder >just how much work we're supposed to put in before we're allowed to have a >few >laughs around here. Can we take breaks? Maybe we need a Jyhad Player's >Union >to limit this sort of thing. (Check your state's right-to-work laws in >advance, >however.) And remember that minors are not allowed to do more than 8 >straight >hours of Jyhad, with time off for lunch - that's Federal law! In that case, why stop at making Freak Drives uncommon? Let's just make them common and everyone will have plenty! Hell, why not just let players print out their own copies and use them, that way we can all have as many as our hearts desire!!! Halcyan 2

[ quoted text not captured ] Yup. I *loved* Dark Sovereigns for its gentle rarity levels. I'll bet a lot of people did. I just didn't care for some of the useless cards. Fred

Halcyan 2 wrote: > > >I'm sure someone will contend that this hasn't been the case, so here's a > >list of cards from Bloodlines that come to mind that are annoying at the > >rare level, and sometimes R1 level, because they are highly useful. > > Well you mentioned it a bit and someone has also brought it up but I just want > to emphasize the "fish out of water criterion" thing you brought up. Some > disciplines are better off doing some things than others. So oftentimes, the > things it doesn't do well in are rare. Reasonable only if the things are truly done badly. Alacrity would have been a good example of something they could have made rare based on this sort of reasoning. Behind You is not - though it does seem like all the clans that have obfuscate wind up having a better combat discipline anyway, so it probably doesn't hurt anything for Behind You to be rare. Such reasoning really fails when you get to a more crucial card, like Darkling Trickery. If Mytherceria is not intended as to be a combat discipline, the correct thing to do is to make sure there are no particularly useful Mytherceria combat cards - not make the ones that exist be rare cards. Fred

"Halcyan 2" <halc...@aol.com> a écrit dans le message news: 20020202225851...@mb-cu.aol.com... (snip) > In that case, why stop at making Freak Drives uncommon? Let's just make them > common and everyone will have plenty! Hell, why not just let players print out > their own copies and use them, that way we can all have as many as our hearts > desire!!! > That's the point. Of course, if we reason only on the basis of the current number of existing players, decreasing rarities will decrease sales, because the current players have accepted -reluctantly or not-that TCGs are a luxury. What isn't taken into account is the number of potential players who would like to get into the game, but who aren't willing or able to buy 2-4 boxes just for the sake of having the rares they want. I wonder if a CCG/TCG/whatever has ever been done without any rarity distribution. I do know there are many gamers out there who like they game when they borrow a deck, but just find it way too much expensive because of this rarity thing. For the price of one box, you won't be able to build all the decks you want, but you can have two complete board games, perhaps three. Sure, some people could stop "whining" and get to work on getting the rares they want. I understand the fun one might have at collecting, but wonder if the majority share that feeling. Many of the so-called whiners just don't have the time to spend hours trading, due to real life constraints. Personnally, I'd rather spend two hours to play a game rather than striving to get another Temptation or Greater Power or whatever. At any rate, a so-called "consumer-friendly" rarity distribution would be more logical if the rares were really expected to be needed in low numbers. If this was really the case, I would expect all the unique cards to be rare; I'd much rather see a hunting ground rare than Freak Drive or Disarm. How about a Police Department? Stone

Stone wrote: > I wonder if a CCG/TCG/whatever has ever been done without any rarity > distribution. Hmm... I vaguely recall hearing of some obscure game about two years or so ago, but I can't recall it's name (or ever having actually seen it, for that matter - of course, in Vienna, that doesn't mean that much). But I do know a CCG that tried a more "flat" distribution, which was Doomtown (the Episode 1-9 sets). Got lots of people to jump on. Of course, the game eventually went down due to poor sales - but that was way after the boom and *after* switching to a rarity distribution that was little better than that in Bloodlines [note: little, but still *better* than in Bloodlines]. > At any rate, a so-called "consumer-friendly" rarity distribution would be > more logical if the rares were really expected to be needed in low numbers. > If this was really the case, I would expect all the unique cards to be rare; > I'd much rather see a hunting ground rare than Freak Drive or Disarm. How > about a Police Department? > Lets see, I need different HGs for all the clans with FOR, but I do need Freak Drives with each... yes, I figure your statement makes sense. Thomas

Halcyan 2 schrieb: [ quoted text not captured ] I for one loved the rarity distribution - what I didn't like was the fact that so many cards were just plain bad. Honestly, why are you not using (much) DS in your decks - because the cards are easy to get or because so many of them stink? Thomas

>Hmm... I vaguely recall hearing of some obscure game about two years or so >ago, >but I can't recall it's name (or ever having actually seen it, for that >matter - >of course, in Vienna, that doesn't mean that much). >But I do know a CCG that tried a more "flat" distribution, which was Doomtown >(the Episode 1-9 sets). Got lots of people to jump on. > >Of course, the game eventually went down due to poor sales - but that was way >after the boom and *after* switching to a rarity distribution that was little >better than that in Bloodlines [note: little, but still *better* than in >Bloodlines]. Similarly, L5R (with our wonderful friend Ryan Dancey) tried what may well have been the largest and most concerted effort in the trading card game industry to release CCGs with flattened rarity with their Rolling Thunder project. It failed utterly and the flattened rarity was despised. If you're more interested in learning about that situation, here's a link with various e-mail and posting printouts: http://pages.sbcglobal.net/sarah-and-zen/l5r/rollingthunder.html Halcyan 2

"Halcyan 2" <halc...@aol.com> wrote in message news:20020203070431...@mb-mv.aol.com... [ quoted text not captured ] Hmm, maybe you should explain a little further, I read that article, and it seemed like they made the game with flatter rarity, because there were releasing HUGE quantities of cards every month?! 150 cards each month for 9 months? Hello, what did they think was going to happen? I don't know anybody that would buy into that. Seems that they were forced to make the rarity extra flat in order for people to be able to afford to play and still be able to buy boxes of cards every month. This article seems to have little to do with rarity schemes, and everything to do with selling practices. They did not release a full base set(300+) cards. They did not allow the print runs to fully fan out. If you told me that VTES card would only be common and uncommon I'd say GREAT, here is my preorder. If you said, well, they are also going to have 9 sets this year, I would say, wait a sec, got to go sell all my deranges/freak drives on ebay. Besides you can't do something like that that is going to hurt the distributer/reseller. Its like comming out with a new game every 30 days, no one likes taking chances on that. Where if you are selling the same game/product, they have less difficulty with repeat selling. If you are a distributor, and you get 100 boxes of VTES, and sell 90, thats 10% left over. Next month you only order 85 boxes, so you have 95, you only sell 85 that month, you only order 75(so you have 85 boxes) You can gague your purchases on last months sales till the deman gets low enough you only backorder. If that 100 boxes were of L5R set #1, and you have 10 left over, even if you only buy 90 boxes of set#2 next month, no one is comming back for the rest of set#1, you want the new thing to be competive. Seems like a system destined to fail. But an interesting article none the less. [ quoted text not captured ]

In message <3C5CD615...@removethis.com>, Frederick Scott <freds64_at_...@removethis.com> writes: >Alacrity would have been >a good example of something they could have made rare based on this sort of >reasoning. Possibly. Bear in mind, of course, that several different designers have had significant input into the game over the years and whilst the general principles usually hold true - rarity is not a balancing factor, you don't need dozens of rares to compete - there are, of course, a number of aberrations. >Behind You is not - though it does seem like all the clans that have >obfuscate wind up having a better combat discipline anyway, so it probably >doesn't hurt anything for Behind You to be rare. Depends what you mean by better combat discipline. For a start, Obfuscate gives access to Disguised Weapon. For someone like the Malkavians, this can be a huge bonus - I get rushed and Disguised Weapon out a Deer Rifle. The !Malks fair a little better, due to Dementation have a few nifty combat tricks up its sleeves. The Nosferatu and !Nosferatu love Obfuscate. Sure, it's not got the killer strikes of Potence or the environmental damage of Animalism, but it does have Behind You! and Swallowed by the Night which are excellent cards for the Nosferatu. Someone might like to check out the discipline spread again but when Josh Duffin was doing lots of things with obf/pot, he found obf a *much* cheaper discipline in terms of capacity than ani, which was the only other way of guaranteeing range (with Drawing out the Beast et al). And it's not totally bad for the Assamites. Sure, Flash is probably a better all round card for them (Celerity), but Hidden Lurker in small quantities is rarely sniffed at, in my experience. [ quoted text not captured ]

In message <a3jf23$18mbp5$1...@ID-125246.news.dfncis.de>, The Nosferatu Stuff <roans...@yahoo.com> writes: >> http://pages.sbcglobal.net/sarah-and-zen/l5r/rollingthunder.html > >Hmm, maybe you should explain a little further, I read that article, and it >seemed like they made the game with flatter rarity, because there were >releasing HUGE quantities of cards every month?! 150 cards each month for 9 >months? Hello, what did they think was going to happen? Erm, if I recall correctly (and it's games I never played much so I could easily be wrong): The basic design plan was to create expansions of 150 cards each. This is roughly equivalent to Dark Sovereigns or Ancient Hearts for us. However, a number of games effectively produce a new basic set each year. So three 150 card expansions would give you 450 cards. (The exact numbers may vary, but these are the rough ballparks.) So if we design three mini-expansions a year, we can regard them as a 'full' expansion for that year. In V:TES equivalent, that might be like producing a set for the Ravnos and Giovanni, a set for the Assamites and Setites and a set for the Tzimisce and Lasombra of about 150 cards each. Now, instead of releasing this in one 450 card bunch, we decide to release it in smaller packets. And instead of just randomly doing it, we keep each mini-expansion together. And then, instead of releasing each mini-expansion in one bunch, we split it up further. So, effectively, you get: January 1st - Release 50 Ravnos and Giovanni cards (Dark Sovereigns 1) February 1st - Release 50 Ravnos and Giovanni cards (DS 2) March 1st - Release 50 Ravnos and Giovanni cards (DS 3, final batch) April 1st - Release 50 Assamite and Setite cards (Ancient Hearts 1) May 1st - Release 50 Assamite and Setite cards (AH 2) June 1st - Release 50 Assamite and Setite cards (AH 3, final batch) July 1st - Release 50 Lasombra and Tzimisce cards (Sabbat 1) August 1st - Release 50 Lasombra and Tzimisce cards (S 2) September 1st - Release 50 Lasombra and Tzimisce cards (S3, final batch) October } November } Release nothing, allowing a period of equilibrium December } This is kind of equivalent to Magic releasing things like Mirage one month (with a lot of basic cards in it), then releasing Mirage expansion 1 a few months later, and Mirage expansion 2 a bit later still. As the web-page notes, this skeletal idea was manipulated for each set it was tried on. Most people I saw tended to buy the 'half-boxes' then trade for anything they were missing. Unlike V:TES, of course, in games with card limits you *can* buy more cards but the spares you get end up being mostly redundant, whereas in V:TES you *can* buy trucks of cards and get utility from them, or you can just buy singles from traders - up to you. One pseudo-nice thing with buying expansions that come out at once, also, is that you can just have one splurge and then recover. I wonder how many people could say they were going to spend $200 on their hobby every now and then and get away with it compared to someone who was going to spend $70 every month. (Adjust figures to taste.) It's odd in that slow-release delivery should allow you to plan but in the end, I'm not sure. Then there's the fact that it does seem a lot like Big Brother is watching you. If I buy Ancient Hearts, I buy Ancient Hearts. I get all the cards Ancient Hearts offers in half a dozen boosters, random assortment. Now, if you split up Ancient Hearts so that Return to Innocence went in that month, Tomb of Rameses III went in the next month and Alamut goes in next month, and then have Contracts in month 1, Taste of Death in month 2 and Khabar: Honor in month 3, well, it all looks a bit suspect. [ quoted text not captured ]

Halcyan 2 wrote: > > >...and quits the game. Now Player A cannot play against him. What did we > >accomplish? I find that the term "whining" on Usenet is a verb used to discuss > >what another person is complaining about that the speaker doesn't happen to > >agree with. Someone posting in the newsgroup had a rather perceptive comment > >about verb conjugation which I'll steal: in the first person, we always say, > >"I/we complain." But in the second or third person it's, "You/he/she/they > >whine." > > Hey, I readily admit that I'm a first-rate-whiner! Whining can be fun and helps > relieve tension and stress (just like rants). But at least I'll admit that it's > whining, as opposed to "claiming" that it's "complaining." Whatever it is, it's not always bad. Complaining or "whining", if you will, is how bad things change. > >I though Jyhad was a game, intended to be fun. ... > In that case, why stop at making Freak Drives uncommon? Let's just make them > common and everyone will have plenty! You can only affect relative distribution. If you make Freak Drives more common than necessary, you rob pack space from cards that do need to be common. (Seems like a lousy attempt at reductio ad absurdum argumentation but since you asked the question, there's the answer.) > Hell, why not just let players print out their own copies and use them, that way > we can all have as many as our hearts desire!!! Proxy cards can be annoying when done in tissue paper and crayon. If a player can make a really good proxy that does not stand out from the back side (using card sleeves, if necessary, and has full, easily readable text on its front side, then why not, indeed? If I'm playing against someone with such a proxy, I'm totally OK with it. In tournaments, people have to be a bit more anal about the potential for cheating with marked cards. If a judge wants to deal with examining proxies to see if they amount to a card being marked, I'd have no problem playing in a tournament that allowed it. Of course, you can't expect White Wolf to ever sanction a tournament allowing cards that violate their copyright so I wouldn't ask. Fred

Halcyan 2 wrote: > Similarly, L5R (with our wonderful friend Ryan Dancey) tried what may well have > been the largest and most concerted effort in the trading card game industry to > release CCGs with flattened rarity with their Rolling Thunder project. It > failed utterly and the flattened rarity was despised. There were a number of issues with Rolling Thunder other than flattened rarity. He just jumped to the reasoning that it was the flattened rarity that was the cause of its failure, which was not necessarily true. That said, however, I think there definitely needs to be some rarity curve around a CCG. If everyone can get all the playing pieces by buying a dozen packs, that's all they're going to buy. You'd have to have a damn popular game to sell as many boxes that way. The question, as far as WW making money on V:tES goes, is not whether rarity needs to exist but how much rarity and which cards need to be rare. Rarity, essentially, is another way of raising the price of a CCG. If you don't charge enough for your game, it's not going to be worth your while to make. If you charge too much, no one will buy it because it's too expensive. The trick is to find the optimal middle ground. Fred

In message <a3i6p2$18et91$1...@ID-125246.news.dfncis.de>, "The Nosferatu Stuff" <roans...@yahoo.com> mumbled something about: >"Derek Ray" <lor...@yahoo.com> wrote: > >> So how difficult is it with 6 boxes? Jesus Christ, man, if I had 6 >> boxes I could work miracles with each of the clans. > >Lets see, 8 bond with the mountain, 6 conscripted statues, 9 rock cats, and >6 soul of the earth. I REALLY want to play gargoyles. What's your problem? Is that what you've got? Or what you think you need? I have several effective Gargoyle decks right now from my two boxes. I have included 0 Bond with the Mountain, 0 Conscripted Statue, 1 Rock Cat, and 2 Soul of the Earth. They all work great. What delusion are you under that you NEED all that crap to play the Gargoyles? You don't. That falls under "miracle" to me, to cram the Gargoyles into some weird, twisted idea. Avoid combat with a combat clan? Sounds pretty damn corner-case to me. >Compared to 1 Ashes to ashes, 0 Erebus mask, 0 Hags Wrinkles, and 1 >Regenerative Blood. Its not like i don't also want to be able to play >Samedi. Funny, I have 2 Ashes, 1 Erebus, 1 Hag's, and 2 Regenerative Blood, and I can play the Samedi, too. Ashes to Ashes isn't the be-all and end-all of prevent, you know -- once you get into torpor, it can be pretty damn tough to get out, even if you have the blood to rescue yourself. And if nobody's doing preventable damage to you, you can't play the card in the first place. 8 in a deck? Please. >Runs similar with other clans, I'm on with True Brujah, off with Ahrimanes. >Maybe you don't play focused decks, but if I am going to play gargoyle I do play focused decks. It's not difficult to do with ANY of the Bloodlines. But you seem to be fixated on decks that are more "novelty" than "effective". >defense with rock cat offense, I want more then 2 cats in my deck, and How do you intend to oust your prey with this concept again? Let me check Rock Cat real quick: ah, yes, bleed for 0. No regeneration. Great, you can get out TONS of Gargoyles and be an intercept combat wall forever, and you can get TONS of Rock Cats and beat some things up forward (except things that prevent and maneuver), and you can play Clan Impersonation eventually to create a Tremere so you can... bleed for 1 a few times each turn. Right. Oh, wait, you NEED a Tremere in your crypt so you can play Soul of the Earth on your Gargoyles. Did you know that people who know what Soul of the Earth does will block the action every time if possible, no matter if it means fighting a Gargoyle? I suggest playing this deck with proxies before you go nuts trading. >enough soul of the earth to keep things happy. If I try to play Samedi it >would be nice to have the ability to use some of their cards. Unfortunatly >due to the extra crappy amount of rares in the set I have traded away half >the clans to make the others playable. Dude, your definition of playable is far different from mine. Your definition of "playable" seems to be "i can make any deck at all with this clan". That's not playable, that's extreme. >Point being you need more then 1 of a card for a focused deck to work. Only if you're trying to focus on something corner-case and create an "unbeatable" one-trick pony that will become a nutpuncher the first time it sits down next to something that happens to be able to hit its weaknesses. >Trying to make a decently focused deck out of bloodlines sucks, not because >of the cards themselves but because of the districution of rares. Only if you're trying to make a deck that's focused on the rares. You know what I think? I think a lot of y'all on this group have let yourselves get spoiled by the easy, CHEAP availability of mass quantities of Jyhad/V:TES cards. It definitely shows in Aaron's conception of "playable", and it kind of shows in some of y'alls bitching about the rarities. How many of you have built an RPG Launcher deck? How many boxes do you think you had to buy to get enough RPG Launchers? How much trading did you have to do, if you didn't have the boxes? What did you have to trade away? THINK ABOUT IT. The rarity isn't any worse than Jyhad. It's just that for the first time in a long time, y'all don't have an easy way to buy 10 boxes for $50 and effectively negate any rarity. [ quoted text not captured ]

"Halcyan 2" <halc...@aol.com> wrote in message news:20020203070431...@mb-mv.aol.com... > > Similarly, L5R (with our wonderful friend Ryan Dancey) tried what may well have > been the largest and most concerted effort in the trading card game industry to > release CCGs with flattened rarity with their Rolling Thunder project. It > failed utterly and the flattened rarity was despised. > It wasn't a very flattened rarity system. There were still 6 level of rarity. There wasn't, technically, a rare sheet, but there were U1's all the way to C3's. Certainly, a few people complained that there were no rares, but they were not the majority. The reason the Hidden Emperor series did poorly was because they released an expansion a month for 6 months. Nobody wanted to buy that many cards (gotta buy at least a box of each... the flattened rarity at least made it a little easier to collect a bunch of cards without buying 6 boxes of each set). Finally, they released the final planned 3 expansions as one single expansion. The other reason it did poorly was because nearly all of the commons were crappy, and each set had only a smattering of decent cards. Jyhad has its share of coasters, but it doesn't even come close to holding a candle to L5R. There are probably 100 different Battle: Terrain cards in all of the sets, but not more than 10 ever see serious play. Regions are almost as bad. Hidden Emperor just had more crappy cards than most. L5R also followed a philosophy of making the really good cards rare. In this way, its 3-card limit was actually good, as I only had to get my hands on 3 Poisoned Weapons, 3 Focuses, 3 Kitsuki Yasus, one Clan Sword, one Inheritance, one Imperial Gift, etc...

In message <3C5D6727...@removethis.com>, Frederick Scott <freds64_at_...@removethis.com> writes: >Whatever it is, it's not always bad. Complaining or "whining", if you will, is >how bad things change. Whining is usually reserved for complaining and foot-stamping that doesn't even attempt to justify itself. [ quoted text not captured ]

Aaron writes: >Example, wouldn't it have been better if Gangrel Atavism had been printed >as: >Atavism >Master >2 Pool >Put this card on a vampire capacity less then 4, or any gangrel. >If that vampire is gangrel this card costs 2 less pool. >The vampire with this card gets -1 bleed on each bleed action. With 20 clans, yes. Of, course, said card has a different value with 20 clans than with 7 - you just can't help that. So, perhaps it wasn't a mistake to omit it from the original. Actually, making all the hosers hose weenie vamps to a lesser extent would probably have other benefits, too. There is a risk to this card, though - if it's good enough against non-Gangrel it'll be everywhere and the Gangrel become unplayable. Toreador's bane averts this by being disciplinary. It's harder to balance clan-plus hosers than clan hosers. The value of clan hoser is proportional to the play rate for the clan; it's existence cannot make a clan completely unplayable. With a clan+ hoser the value ranges only over (non-clan value) to (non-clan value) + (clan value)*(clan play rate). With 20 clans, that tends to be a narrow spread. [ quoted text not captured ]

Derek Ray writes: >THINK ABOUT IT. The rarity isn't any worse than Jyhad. It's just that >for the first time in a long time, y'all don't have an easy way to buy >10 boxes for $50 and effectively negate any rarity. I can only think of one Jyhad rare - Freak Drive - which is an automatic benefit to any deck which can play it. Bloodlines has several, so it's worse. Actually, about 2/3 of the Jyhad rares, when I saw them, I thought "man, why would you ever play that one?" - or at least, I thought so after I tried. [ quoted text not captured ]

"Chris Berger" <ark...@ugcs.caltech.edu> schrieb im Newsbeitrag news:0Td78.15754$PC.7...@rwcrnsc52.ops.asp.att.net... > It wasn't a very flattened rarity system. There were still 6 level of > rarity. There wasn't, technically, a rare sheet, but there were U1's all > the way to C3's. well there were no rares and since you need only 3 copys each it was easy to collect. >Certainly, a few people complained that there were no > rares, but they were not the majority. The reason the Hidden Emperor series > did poorly was because they released an expansion a month for 6 months. > Nobody wanted to buy that many cards (gotta buy at least a box of each... > the flattened rarity at least made it a little easier to collect a bunch of > cards without buying 6 boxes of each set). Finally, they released the final > planned 3 expansions as one single expansion. i disagree most people liked the system; easy to collect and cheaper than 3 expansions a year. the real problem was that each expansion focused on one clan so 80 percent of the cards were mostly usefull for this one clan. so people who lets say didn´t like the mantis didn´t buy any packs of HE5. so sales went down, due to the fact that it was easier to collect people bought less boxes in general. so again lower sales. and it was very annoying for shop owners to have that many different sets on their shelves. so to sum it up for the player it was great for Wotc it produced lower income. thats why it failed. stefan

halc...@aol.com writes: >Similarly, L5R (with our wonderful friend Ryan Dancey) tried what may well have >been the largest and most concerted effort in the trading card game industry to >release CCGs with flattened rarity with their Rolling Thunder project. It >failed utterly and the flattened rarity was despised. >If you're more interested in learning about that situation, here's a link with >various e-mail and posting printouts: >http://pages.sbcglobal.net/sarah-and-zen/l5r/rollingthunder.html (Dancey says there are a lot of collectors in the CCG market and they like rarity, because they like the difficulty of collecting) So, the perfect system is the one outlined by - if not perfectly followed by- the first set. Make the cards you want to use with any frequency common or uncommon - and serious players ard newbies are happy. Print lots of rare, cool, BUT HARD TO USE, cards - and the collectors are happy. People who like both can do both - (now that I mention it, my rares are in a display binder and my others in boxes). Collectors want to get people to play the game so they can trade Reality Mirrors or whatever off them (as opposed to creating even more competition for the rare cards they find hard to get). Players want collectors in the game so they can offload low play value rares. Best of all worlds; everybody has fun and WW will make money. For the coup de grace, put in ultra-rare foil versions of cards. For those bored with collecting the rares, they can go for 400 ultra-rares! [ quoted text not captured ]

In message <3c5d8834$0$31734$3b21...@news.univie.ac.at>, Stefan Ferenci <a950...@nospamunet.univie.ac.at> writes: >the real problem was that each expansion focused on one clan so 80 percent >of the cards were mostly usefull for this one clan. so people who lets say >didn´t like the mantis didn´t buy any packs of HE5. so sales went down, due >to the fact that it was easier to collect people bought less boxes in >general. This also creates pretty major headaches for any shop. I know that I'd be more likely to order on demand for any of the given sets than have half a dozen lying around the shop which may never sell (losing any random purchases in the process, but that's fine by me because it's probably going to lose me money, but that's a case not sold by BigCompany). [ quoted text not captured ]

>In message <a3jf23$18mbp5$1...@ID-125246.news.dfncis.de>, The Nosferatu >Stuff <roans...@yahoo.com> writes: >>> http://pages.sbcglobal.net/sarah-and-zen/l5r/rollingthunder.html >> >>Hmm, maybe you should explain a little further, I read that article, and it >>seemed like they made the game with flatter rarity, because there were >>releasing HUGE quantities of cards every month?! 150 cards each month for 9 >>months? Hello, what did they think was going to happen? Ooops! When I posted the link to that article, I didn't mean that the article was going to be some magic bullet that would prove one side or the another to be correct. I just thought it would provide some interesting insight (as well as historic documentation) or rarity and set design. Halcyan 2

> Check out Toreador's Bane. I love that card. That is exactly how clan > hosers should be written. To make them hose a particular clan, but still be > useable in other circumstances. But let's look at it this way. Yes, TB is a Tor/!Tor hoser. It can also be played against younger vampires or allies. It requires Melpominee, a discipline that is on a total of five minions, the average capacity of which is 4. I've only seen TB played once - against a Toreador Antitribu. Usually, the player of the DoC is using the youngest vamps on the table. Of course, my entire playgroup has gravitated away from weenies for the most part, so that does affect the playability of the card, but it's a relevant point. Now, if there's no limitation on when you can play it (as you would have with a master card), the playability of the card goes up tremendously. The example you cite is TOO powerful - it makes it impossible for a Gangrel deck to oust, and because it's decisively anti-weenie, many decks will use it for that effect alone. Who'd play Gangrel with that card out? High-utility clan hosers either need to be temporary transient effects (like Toreador's Bane), or cards that can be removed (Troile's Revenge is an example). If it permanently destroys the game for the person playing that clan, and can be played to foil entire strategies as well, then you're telling the players not to play that clan at all. Fanboy

Halcyan 2 wrote: > >But I do know a CCG that tried a more "flat" distribution, which was Doomtown > >(the Episode 1-9 sets). Got lots of people to jump on. > > > >Of course, the game eventually went down due to poor sales - but that was way > >after the boom and *after* switching to a rarity distribution that was little > >better than that in Bloodlines [note: little, but still *better* than in > >Bloodlines]. > > Similarly, L5R (with our wonderful friend Ryan Dancey) tried what may well have > been the largest and most concerted effort in the trading card game industry to > release CCGs with flattened rarity with their Rolling Thunder project. It > failed utterly and the flattened rarity was despised. > Doomtown was the hot newcomer in 1998, in our area clearly drew people because it was so cheap to get into (1 starter, 8 boosters and a little trading each could complete a set of the monthly releases episode 3-9), and didn't fail until after a steeper rarity had been implemented. If Doomtown had been rejected because of the fairly flat rarity, it would've been dead from the start, and nobody would have bothered printing new sets after Ep. 9 now, would they? Rage said to the old players of the original game "sorry, you can't use most of your old cards" - would you keep playing VTES if someone suddenly took over and said, "hey, we're redoing the game with 3 levels in each discipline and the only old cards still play legal are the disciplineless ones"? You'd say "stuff you" and walk, and that's exactly what happened to Rage, so it's being dead from the restart proves exactly zilch with regard to rarities. L5R, LBS and Dune I can't say much about, but having the 2 out of 5 I had an interest in not follow a "flat rarity was despised" pattern is sufficient grounds for me to seriously doubt such a claim. > > If you're more interested in learning about that situation, here's a link with > various e-mail and posting printouts: > > http://pages.sbcglobal.net/sarah-and-zen/l5r/rollingthunder.html > Hmm... interesting. I'd very much like to know how they arrive at the 9 month storyarcs estimate for comic books though. I can immediately think of several major storyarcs that lasted one year, tons that lasted 2-4 months [hundreds that were started ages ago and never brought to a proper close], but 9 months? Not a one comes to mind. Thomas

> Doomtown was the hot newcomer in 1998, in our area clearly drew people >because it was so cheap to get into (1 starter, 8 boosters and a little >trading each could complete a set of the monthly releases episode 3-9), and >didn't fail until after a steeper rarity had been implemented. Perhaps this worked so well for Doomtown because it WAS the hot newcomer? I may be incorrect here (I got into it LONG after the episodic release schedule had been scrapped), but it was introduced episodically - it wasn't a standard CCG that was absorbed into the Rolling Thunder marketing scheme. That affected it's popularity. > If Doomtown had been rejected because of the fairly flat rarity, it would've >been dead from the start, and nobody would have bothered printing new sets >after Ep. 9 now, would they? Not while it still has the Hi Pro Glo on it. When a game first comes out, it does one of two things. It either succeeds because gameplay/story are worth the learning curve and initial investment (as Doomtown did), or it fails miserably (as 2/3 of all CCGs do). The rarity scheme had nothing to do with this - since it was still new, all the cards were equally rare to the new players, and the episodic releases actually helped it, since new cards kept on coming. This helps generate interest in a brand new game. > You'd say "stuff you" and walk, and that's exactly what happened to Rage, so >it's being dead from the restart proves exactly zilch with regard to rarities. Of course, in order to use the cards you used before the take over, you had to buy several different expansions to get the new version of it - and even then, a large number of your cards aren't updated (No Wyrm card were ever printed, as far as I can tell, under the new rules). If the entire print run of the original game had been updated within that sequence, we might have seen different results, but not likely. Rage was released under poor conditions, IMO. >L5R, LBS and Dune I can't say much about, but having the 2 out of 5 I had an >interest in not follow a "flat rarity was despised" pattern is sufficient >grounds for me to seriously doubt such a claim. LBS faltered from the get-go. The game wasn't nearly engaging enough from all accounts I've heard to warrant people investing in the second and future sequences. The software store I worked at got into CCGs as a sideline when Dune first came out. We got a large supply of Dune - which never sold. Not even impulse buyers took notice of it. We eventually cleared it off and wrote it off as a loss when we needed more room for Magic cards (which we couldn't keep in stock for more than two days - so it wasn't that CCG players weren't seeing them). From talking to game shop owners in my area, their Dune stock met much the same fate. I believe it was an ill-advised license (Dune fans make up a larger number of wargamers than CCG players, which are a younger audience on average), as well as a poorly executed design. L5R - L5R was probably the second most successful card game on the market before Scorpion Clan Coup. When I got into it, it was more popular than Magic or VTES in the stores I frequented, and I wasted a whole summer in that shop, playing L5R among other games. Where Rolling Thunder helped Doomtown, it doomed L5R. L5R players already had a large stock of cards when Scorpion Clan Coup came out. Now, in order to get the new cards, they'd have to buy boosters of cards they already had - a problem I already had with earlier L5R expansions was that certain cards appeared in every single expansion. Now, those cards are going to appear in three times the volume over the span of a single expansion. Wonderful. Under the tiered rarity system you see in Magic, VTES, and other games, when you open a pack, you're going to see a lot of cards you have PLENTY of, a few cards you have "enough, or close to enough" of, and a card that you MIGHT have one or two of (unless you're really gung ho, or really unlucky). Imagine my frustration when I opened my first three packs of Hidden Emporer, and got no cards I didn't already own from previous expansions. It's the same problem I had with Sabbat War (90% of my SW rares come from a list of 10 Sabbat Rares I had enough of before SW came out). At least with SW, I'm happy that I'm getting new product at all, and there's justification in that they were the first VTES cards to be printed AT ALL in four years. L5R didn't have that justification. They just crammed the same old cards into every single set - and now, if you bought all nine episodes of a story, you got those same old cards nine times more often. When the game imposes a three card limit - that's hardly fair to the customer. >Hmm... interesting. I'd very much like to know how they arrive at the 9 month >storyarcs estimate for comic books though. I can immediately think of several >major storyarcs that lasted one year, tons that lasted 2-4 months [hundreds ?>that were started ages ago and never brought to a proper close], but 9 months? >Not a one comes to mind. Sandman's first story arc was 7 issues long. Mind you, I'm not much of a comic reader - I read mostly Vertigo (Sandman, Books of Magic, and Preacher) and Strangers in Paradise (independent small press). Most Vertigo trades (encompassing entire arcs) are 8-9 regular issues with a special additions if necessary. Fanboy

"Frederick Scott" <freds64_at_...@removethis.com> wrote: > Proxy cards can be annoying when done in tissue paper and crayon. If a player > can make a really good proxy that does not stand out from the back side (using > card sleeves, if necessary, and has full, easily readable text on its front side, > then why not, indeed? If I'm playing against someone with such a proxy, I'm > totally OK with it. > > In tournaments, people have to be a bit more anal about the potential for cheating > with marked cards. If a judge wants to deal with examining proxies to see if they > amount to a card being marked, I'd have no problem playing in a tournament that > allowed it. Of course, you can't expect White Wolf to ever sanction a tournament > allowing cards that violate their copyright so I wouldn't ask. What do you play this game for fun or something? ;) Not with stuff that is unique like talbots chainsaw, but I would LOVE to see what some of the guys in my group could do with unlimited access to awe. Or derange. Or disarm. It really doesn't make me a great player that once my predator plays a disarm I know that he doesn't have anymore cause they are so hard to come by. I would much rather have to always worry about getting my butt whooped. And if freak drive is so good, why should I be the only one playing with 11 in my deck? Or why shouldn't I be able to use them in both my ravnos and gangrel deck? Long live proxies. I'll hold a "Dream Team" tournament with you Fred, and people can bring the most hard core decks they can imagine! [ quoted text not captured ]

"Derek Ray" <lor...@yahoo.com> wrote: > What's your problem? Is that what you've got? Or what you think you > need? I have several effective Gargoyle decks right now from my two > boxes. I have included 0 Bond with the Mountain, 0 Conscripted Statue, > 1 Rock Cat, and 2 Soul of the Earth. They all work great. Some times great isn't good enough. Anyone can look at gargoyle and go, wow I can like, beat stuff up...cool. Try doing something different. > What delusion are you under that you NEED all that crap to play the > Gargoyles? You don't. That falls under "miracle" to me, to cram the > Gargoyles into some weird, twisted idea. Avoid combat with a combat > clan? Sounds pretty damn corner-case to me. They are a combat clan huh? Interesting with fortitude/prevent and all the 'get your actions to happen' cards, Bond with mountain(dodge/SCE) Collapse the arches(defensive combat ONLY) flow with the mountian (SCE/continue the action) skin of the chameleon(stealth) Seems like there may be something more there then just a few more minions with potence Derek! > >Compared to 1 Ashes to ashes, 0 Erebus mask, 0 Hags Wrinkles, and 1 > >Regenerative Blood. Its not like i don't also want to be able to play > >Samedi. > > Funny, I have 2 Ashes, 1 Erebus, 1 Hag's, and 2 Regenerative Blood, and > I can play the Samedi, too. Ashes to Ashes isn't the be-all and end-all > of prevent, you know -- once you get into torpor, it can be pretty damn > tough to get out, even if you have the blood to rescue yourself. Unless you have obfuscate...wouldn't happen to know any vampires that that have than and obf would you? > And if nobody's doing preventable damage to you, you can't play the card > in the first place. 8 in a deck? Please. Wow, you just make skin of steel worthless, but its okay cause its common and you have 50 of them right? Yeah, and you can't immortal grapple if they don't play any minions, better not use 8 of those in any deck either. Thank you for telling me what is cool enough to need multiples of, why don't you just run the design team? > >Runs similar with other clans, I'm on with True Brujah, off with Ahrimanes. > >Maybe you don't play focused decks, but if I am going to play gargoyle > > I do play focused decks. It's not difficult to do with ANY of the > Bloodlines. But you seem to be fixated on decks that are more "novelty" > than "effective". Whats wrong with wanting to do something different with malkavians then bleed? Don't make me get my blood bond deck after you! > >defense with rock cat offense, I want more then 2 cats in my deck, and > > How do you intend to oust your prey with this concept again? You wouldn't understand. Like all good 'novelty' decks, you win a tournament with it so everyone can go: "that is too powerful, lets ban every card in that deck!"(see soul gem) > Let me check Rock Cat real quick: ah, yes, bleed for 0. No > regeneration. Great, you can get out TONS of Gargoyles and be an > intercept combat wall forever, and you can get TONS of Rock Cats and > beat some things up forward (except things that prevent and maneuver), > and you can play Clan Impersonation eventually to create a Tremere so > you can... bleed for 1 a few times each turn. Right. Oh, wait, you > NEED a Tremere in your crypt so you can play Soul of the Earth on your > Gargoyles. Did you know that people who know what Soul of the Earth > does will block the action every time if possible, no matter if it means > fighting a Gargoyle? See above, you are using your gargoyles all wrong, probably because you can't get enough of the 'good' cards to play them in any way other then bums rush. > I suggest playing this deck with proxies before you go nuts trading. I already have them all. The deck is built. It is good. > >enough soul of the earth to keep things happy. If I try to play Samedi it > >would be nice to have the ability to use some of their cards. Unfortunatly > >due to the extra crappy amount of rares in the set I have traded away half > >the clans to make the others playable. > > Dude, your definition of playable is far different from mine. Your > definition of "playable" seems to be "i can make any deck at all with > this clan". That's not playable, that's extreme. Is your definition: "I have 90 cards total, that I can use, not the ones I want, but there are 90 of them" If so then yes, they are different, and I am extreme. > >Point being you need more then 1 of a card for a focused deck to work. > > Only if you're trying to focus on something corner-case and create an > "unbeatable" one-trick pony that will become a nutpuncher the first time > it sits down next to something that happens to be able to hit its > weaknesses. That is the problem with anything you make that is focused. If you play hard core bleed the first time you sit down to an all bounce or combat deck you are screwed. You never make a deck and say: "I'm invincible, I can never lose" you say: "well I can beat votes that don't have stealth, and big bleed is screwed, and immortal grapple can't touch me, but pitch, weenie animalism, or guns will beat me, I hope I don't have to play that very often" Maybe for you focused means one trick pony, for me that means you pick one thing, and you do that. If that 1 thing is bring out rock cats helluva fast and rush people into oblivion, then that is my focus. > You know what I think? I think a lot of y'all on this group have let > yourselves get spoiled by the easy, CHEAP availability of mass > quantities of Jyhad/V:TES cards. It definitely shows in Aaron's > conception of "playable", and it kind of shows in some of y'alls > bitching about the rarities. What I think is that is what kept people playing VTES. I think people like having easy access to a good game that they can make what ever the hell they want to play with, and they don't need the design team telling them that they don't need as many engling furies as they do Chameleon's Colors! I think that if they keep making everything the Derek way they will kill the game again, and that will be fine because I will have cheap cards again. I think that if I can kick your behind with 10 rock cats, that is just as valid as you beating me down with 10 undead strengths...you shouldn't say what I can win with or not, or how many of any non-unique card I need to have in play to do that. I think, the worst thing of all about VTES is when I hear someone tell me about an awesome deck they can't make because they don't have 10 (insert any card here not just freak drive or disarm). Something original or very creative, and not from lack of brilliance, just lack of purchasing power. That really ruins everything. I guess in Derek world everything is just "tough shit kid" but in my world its just a game. Play to have fun. Impress me with some creativity, not how you can 'get by' on some commons. [ quoted text not captured ]

"The Fanboy" <texas...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:f99d61c5.02020...@posting.google.com... [ quoted text not captured ] I just made that up off the top of my head, but I really think stuff that people can burn is lame. Well stuff that I am paying insane amounts of pool for. Anyway, I just thought about the cost of archon investigation. It costs 3, has a high oppertunity cost, and produces a devestating effect. It costs 2 pool on the weenies, so its at least 2 turns before I see any reward. The oppertinity cost is lower, hopefully your prey or predator will gave either a gangrel or a some weenie vampire. And I'm sure it wouldn't make it so the gangrel deck 'impossible to oust its prey' What are you going to pay 2 pool for 4 mid cap minions? Thats 8 pool, not cheap. If they put it on your one giant gangrel, and all you have to oust your prey is 1 vampire bleeding for 1, what were you thinking in the first place? Clan hosers are just too weak, I'm sure not going to pack any except for Toreadors bane. Cause at least I know I can possibly use it some other time. Like I'm sure you don't get many 'Letter from Vienna' where you play. At least if it said: "Tap all ready Tremere, or tap an ally or vampire with auspex" Then it might see more use? [ quoted text not captured ]

[ quoted text not captured ] You also seem to be forgetting that the original Clan Hosers were most likely included for effective use in a draft/sealed environment. Granted, some of the old clan hosers are way underpowered. If the current environment is to see new clan hosers in The Camarilla, let's hope they have a more dramatic effect on gameplay. -1 Hand for Nosferatu. What-Ever.. BernieTime

"CurtAdams" <curt...@aol.com> wrote in message news:20020202202656...@mb-fw.aol.com... > xi...@waste.org writes: [clan hosers] > I agree you'd rarely want to use them - but that's exactly what you want > to see in a rare card. They're pretty collectible, too, especially when > inventive like Unnacceptable Appearance. The fact that you would get Heh. True, I am liking how more of the rares are not as useful in great numbers, and they're the "cards I only want one or two of at most in a deck" or belong in very specialized decks. > upset if you saw one in a rare slot reflects that currently you're expecting > nice cards in your rare slot - probably a good expectation, these days, Also true. I'm expecting something in a rare slot to be interesting and powerful in specific circumstances (which, I agree quite possibly fits clan hosers), but I...just don't like seeing clan hosers there. :) > but it's bad for the game. There was a lot of junk in the original rare slots > but it didn't bother me - I only had a few of them anyway. Hmm. I'm trying to think of what was really bad in the original set. The ante rares, right? Hmm...Al's Army Apparatus never struck me as that useful. I'm sure there are others. But for some reason, getting, say, Detection in a rare slot, as opposed to something a *little* more generally useful (rather than something that screws over one clan, which I might just want to play, and not screw) just irks me. > It's probably true that with effectively 20 clans (right?) clan-specific hosers > are just hopeless and perhaps shouldn't exist at all. But if they're going Yeah, that's pretty much my viewpoint. > to exist, shouldn't WW print as few as possible? Wouldn't uncommon > Art's Traumatic Essence and rare Unnacceptable Appearance be preferable > to the opposite? Which booster would you rather buy? Agh. Tough call. Maybe if there could just be no clan hosers, everyone would be happy? Heh. I guess I'd have to pick clan hosers in the rare spot when you put it that way (darn logic), but I still don't have to like it. :) Xian

In message <3c5e32dd...@netnews.attbi.com>, berni...@attbi.comHOLDLeSPAM writes: >You also seem to be forgetting that the original Clan Hosers were most >likely included for effective use in a draft/sealed environment. Or in an environment with only 7 clans, where such things were more likely to turn up and you could out-guess your friends with much more reliability. [ quoted text not captured ]

"Xian" <xi...@waste.org> wrote in message news:a3f8a3$17q6o7$1...@ID-123937.news.dfncis.de... > > "Joshua Duffin" <jtdu...@yahoo.com> wrote in message > news:a3et2h$17b853$1...@ID-121616.news.dfncis.de... > > I think it's fair to say that ToGP and HT aren't, but > > Disarm goes in every Potence-combat deck just as much > > as Immortal Grapple does. (It may also be somewhat > > Well, I don't know that this is necessarily true, but Disarm *can* go in > every Potence deck. I'd liken Disarm to Freak Drive...the deck can do > without it, but it's much nicer with it in there. I could've (should've?) qualified that to "every *close-range* Potence-combat deck", and then I think it'd be true - sure, it doesn't *actually* go into every deck, but probably every close-range Pot-combat deck would be better with some in. Much like every deck is better with Freak Drives, yes. :-) > And I'm intrigued by the comment about rarity going up as "relation to > discipline" goes down. Shadowfist is similar, though I'm not sure about the > rarity going up, the cost (of the individual card) definitely does. It > makes sense, but I'm not sure how well this applies to V:tES. For example, > it gives us Behind You! in the rare slot. :) It's an interesting paradigm, > though. As Ian (and Fred?) wrote, I think it's a bad idea to just make cards rarer when they're "out of theme" for their discipline. Making them suckier or more expensive (in terms of blood cost or whatever) seems to me like a good way to implement the idea of being something the discipline "doesn't normally do", but just making it "harder to get" by making it rarer is entirely unacceptable (IMO) as game design. Josh opinionate

"Halcyan 2" <halc...@aol.com> wrote in message news:20020201200920...@mb-fo.aol.com... [I wrote] > >SW's not too bad, but Sabbat was horribly bloated IMO, > >not to mention packed with (a) crappy cards and (b) > >crappy rares. It only becomes more frustrating to get > >an Out of Control as your rare when Disarm is in the > >same set as a rare... > > And getting a Smoke Grenade instead of an Ezmeralda is that much better? =P Well, at least Smoke Grenade is sorta playable. Out of Control is too narrow to even ever use, IMO. But anyway, what I'm arguing *against* is having the rares be so important that you're pissed to get one of the bad ones instead of one of the good ones. :-) > I'm sorry. Maybe it's too much to ask some players to do a little work. I > apologize if every nifty cool card can't be served to you on a silver platter. Others have written that they find it not just "a little work" but "virtually impossible" to acquire, say, eight Freak Drives by trading. I'd agree with that. First off, most people never have Freak Drives for trade, because if they actually have any, they want to keep them. Second, if they *do* have them for trade, since they're so in- demand, they're going to want lots of other good stuff for them, and unless you own vast quantities of *other* cards you might not even be *able* to make these trades. I'd be more likely to see your point if you had personally managed to trade for eight Freak Drives from a reasonably- limited amount of purchased cards. :-) > Not necessarily. Take for example "that other game." My favorite card in the > game was the ultra-cool, uber-cute, Savannah Lions! Which were indeed rare. But > it was still fun collecting them (I ended up with about 23 of them). This is > probably a corner-case example but collecting Savannah Lions wouldn't have been > half as fun if they were common (compare to the say, just-as-cute Mtenda Lions > which were common). OK, so what you're saying is, if you like "collecting" cards, it's more fun (because it's more interesting due to being more difficult) to collect the rarer ones. My argument has almost nothing to do with "collecting". To me, it's all about *playing*. These cards belong to a game; they're useful, IMO, primarily in that you use them to play that game, and only secondarily in that they are an item you can collect for fun and profit. Baseball cards are only the second thing; poker cards are (more or less) only the first thing; VTES cards are some of both, but it seems to me that it serves the game a lot better if rarity decisions are made based more on the gaming side of the equation than the collecting side. > Because everything shouldn't simply be served to you on a silver platter. More > people should do some work instead of whining incessently (not directed at > anyone in particular). I'm not talking about a silver platter here. I'm not saying that every pack should have a Freak Drive in it. I'm just saying that one Freak Drive per hundred packs isn't enough. One per ten packs might be more reasonable. It sounds to me - and I don't mean to be offensive - like your POV focuses more on the fun of collecting the cards than the playing fun, and that your idea of collecting fun includes the coolness of having things that other people don't have. Fair enough. But the fact that it's a game as well as a collectible means that people need copies of the high-utility card to be able to play competitively, and it leads to an unbalanced tournament environment if they can't get them relatively easily. In "that other game" they don't really seem to care about this, and it's taken for granted that you'll have to spend $200+ on cards every three months if you want to compete in tournaments. In VTES, I think most of the players would consider than an exorbitant expenditure, and I think we'll get more players interested in playing the game (*and* buying and collecting cards) if they don't have to spend *that* much to compete. Josh long-winded

"Halcyan 2" <halc...@aol.com> wrote in message news:20020201201907...@mb-fo.aol.com... [I wrote] > >I think it's fair to say that ToGP and HT aren't, but > >Disarm goes in every Potence-combat deck just as much > >as Immortal Grapple does. (It may also be somewhat > >unfair as a card, but that's an issue that should be > >separate from its rarity.) > > I agree it's a bit "unfair" as you put it. As I said earlier, I really don't > want to see every Potence deck Disarming my poor, hapless vampires. Yeah, and I don't want to see every bleed deck getting +2 bleed against me with Govern the Unaligned either, but there it is hitting me every time... > >Some others just for fun that probably shouldn't be rare: > > In many cases, you have substitutes that are (just) as good. Substitutes really aren't an appropriate answer here. If non-exact substitutes exist, the "rich" players can use them *and* the less-rare versions, and be better off than the "poor" players. Not a recipe for a "fair" competitive environment. > >Behind You > > Swallowed by Night is just as good. It provides a manuever (that can be used on > non-first rounds) and can also be cyclable as stealth. Sure, Behind You can > also give a dodge, but all of it's "first-round only" stuff hampers it quite a > bit. Swallowed only helps you in fights at superior, though. Behind You is useful at both inferior and superior as combat defense. > >Giant's Blood > > 5th Tradition, Festivo dello Estinto, Concert Tour, and Renewed Vigor are good > substitutes. Only if you meet the requirements for them, all of which are much more stringent than Giant's Blood. (GB only requires that you have a vampire to play it on; 5th needs princes, Festivo Sabbat vamps and not-getting-blocked, CTour must be a Daughter, RVigor must have Salubri.) > >Murder of Crows > > Wolf Companion is usually just as good. MoC does ranged damage, but is far > easier to kill. Far easier? How often do retainers get killed at all? Not very often IME. And if you want to do Animalism-combat, it's usually much better to be a long-range combat deck than close-range. (referring to Ani-only combat, that is.) > >Pulled Fangs > > Not that great especially once it was toned down. So? It still shouldn't have been rare, since its requirements are so minimal. > >Awe > > BO can do just as well usually. But both together is (much) better than just Bewitching. > >Direct Intervention > > Uncommon. No it's not. Was rare in Sabbat and only in the !Brujah precon in Sabbat War. (It was listed on WotC's checklist as uncommon but that was incorrect; it was actually printed as a rare. See R. David Zopf's post to r.g.t-c.j of Jan 22, 1997.) > >Entombment > > Good, but it really doesn't see that much use. Like Coma, it's rather expensive > and you still get hit by your opponent too (unless you use Arms). Yeah, but that doesn't mean it's not usable. And Coma was uncommon (and cost 3 instead of 2). Why not Entombment too? > >Intimidation (!) > > Not that great. Easily substited with Social Charm or Media Influence. I agree that it's not that great, but it's a ridiculously basic card effect to appear on a rare. > >My Enemy's Enemy > > Telepathic Misdirection is a good substitute. But costs 1 blood where MEEnemy costs 0. Obviously there are many decks that would rather have lots of MEEnemy. > > In many cases, there are close substitutes for rare cards. (In the cases where > there aren't, those cards are much more specific). Especially since there are > no card limits, 4 Telepathic Misdirections + 4 My Enemy's Enemy isn't that much > better than 8 Telepathic Misdirections. 4 Social Charms + 4 Intimidations > aren't that much better than 8 Social Charms. Etc. But if they're better at all, that's not really fair to the players who can't afford tons of rares. In no case should a company be making rares of "power cards" because of their power. (if it's going to make "power cards" at all, and assuming that they can't make each card exactly as good as every other card, there will be some cards at the top of the heap). Josh controversial

"Halcyan 2" <halc...@aol.com> wrote in message news:20020201202356...@mb-fo.aol.com... > Well, I think Disarm and Freak Drive *are* overpowered as they are now. I don't > think they necessarily have to be changed, but I do think they are incredibly > powerful. They're certainly near the top of the current power curve, but I don't think they're "unbalanced" in anything like the way old Return to Innocence was. Or no-NRA Majesty. I really don't expect to see them weakened at all if reprinted at *any* rarity, given that things like Clotho's Gift, Renewed Vigor, etc. have been printed recently. (Note that Disarm has already been weakened once - under original Sabbat wording, you could Disarm someone even if you were also going to torpor. Now *that* was a little unfair. :-) > Well, Clotho's Gift lets you do it every turn. But you can only do it *once per > turn* (unless you have multiple Gifts). That's what I meant. You can use multiple Clotho's Gifts for untaps if you want to, because they cost 1 blood per untap and are therefore (presumably) balanced. Multiple Domain untaps are ruled out by card text, because they cost 0 and would (presumably) be too good. Just like multiple Freak Drives, which also requires multiple cards, but costs you 1 blood per untap. Josh prolific

"James Coupe" <ja...@zephyr.org.uk> wrote in message news:xoy4higp...@gratiano.zephyr.org.uk... > In message <3C5CD615...@removethis.com>, Frederick Scott > <freds64_at_...@removethis.com> writes: > >Behind You is not - though it does seem like all the clans that have > >obfuscate wind up having a better combat discipline anyway, so it probably > >doesn't hurt anything for Behind You to be rare. > The Nosferatu and !Nosferatu love Obfuscate. Sure, it's not got the > killer strikes of Potence or the environmental damage of Animalism, but > it does have Behind You! and Swallowed by the Night which are excellent > cards for the Nosferatu. Someone might like to check out the discipline > spread again but when Josh Duffin was doing lots of things with obf/pot, > he found obf a *much* cheaper discipline in terms of capacity than ani, > which was the only other way of guaranteeing range (with Drawing out the > Beast et al). That was actually Peter Bakija that always played the obf/pot rush combat decks. I was playing mainly the cel/pot. (Peter loves the Nosferatu, I love the Brujah, that's pretty much how it went.) You're absolutely right about him using lots of Behind You and the reason for it, though - it lets you weeniefy much more than ani/pot, and somewhat more than cel/pot too for that matter. Just FYI, or whatever. :-) Josh still doesn't own enough behind yous to do the cheap obf/pot crypt

>My argument has almost nothing to do with "collecting". To >me, it's all about *playing*. These cards belong to a game; >they're useful, IMO, primarily in that you use them to play >that game, and only secondarily in that they are an item >you can collect for fun and profit. Baseball cards are only >the second thing; poker cards are (more or less) only the >first thing; VTES cards are some of both, but it seems to me >that it serves the game a lot better if rarity decisions are >made based more on the gaming side of the equation than the >collecting side. Of the best selling and most enduring CCGs, which haven't had power rares? The reality is that people will buy more cards to get the best cards at least up to a point. The popularity of any particular CCG is more heavily dependent on other factors than on play balance. >It sounds to me - and I don't mean to be offensive - like >your POV focuses more on the fun of collecting the cards >than the playing fun, and that your idea of collecting fun >includes the coolness of having things that other people >don't have. Fair enough. But the fact that it's a game >as well as a collectible means that people need copies of >the high-utility card to be able to play competitively, and >it leads to an unbalanced tournament environment if they >can't get them relatively easily. Does Magic have a balanced tournament environment? I think your answer is no based on the next part. But, what about Star Wars? L5R? Pokemon? >In "that other game" they don't really seem to care about >this, and it's taken for granted that you'll have to spend >$200+ on cards every three months if you want to compete >in tournaments. In VTES, I think most of the players would >consider than an exorbitant expenditure, and I think we'll >get more players interested in playing the game (*and* >buying and collecting cards) if they don't have to spend >*that* much to compete. While Magic is likely the most expensive CCG to keep up with as new sets are prolific, the most money intensive CCG per card, assuming you wanted to be competitive at the top level, I played was Wheel of Time. Did that kill WoT? No. Niche player base, screwing around with deciding what a new base set should be like, and distributor apathy in a sluggish market killed the game. CCGs are investments. I consider an initial minimum investment of $120 in a CCG reasonable. To compete on a tournament level, looking at five times that or so, minimum. As someone said, that's the equivalent of a number of boardgames (or computer games or whatever). But, that's the market. Realize that no one is forcing people to shell out this sort of money to play CCGs, yet lots of people do. Now, it is possible to spend less on CCGs and still have fun. As long as you play with people with similar collection sizes, everything should be copacetic. It's even possible to play some tournaments without dropping hundreds of dollars - just find a CCG with a good limited, sealed deck or draft, environment. Anecdote: I got back into Magic late last year. I don't buy boxes like I used to, though. I never see doing that again. I play a sealed league format. Low cost and more fun.

The Fanboy wrote: > > Doomtown was the hot newcomer in 1998, in our area clearly drew people >because it was so cheap to get into (1 starter, 8 boosters and a little >trading each could complete a set of the monthly releases episode 3-9), and >didn't fail until after a steeper rarity had been > implemented. > > Perhaps this worked so well for Doomtown because it WAS the hot > newcomer? > > I may be incorrect here (I got into it LONG after the episodic release > schedule had been scrapped), but it was introduced episodically - it > wasn't a standard CCG that was absorbed into the Rolling Thunder > marketing scheme. That affected it's popularity. > It was, possibly, the only Rolling Thunder release done right: started with a fairly large 3 faction base set (Episode 1&2 with over 150 cards), then had a little extra time before the monthly releases of the other 52 card sets (ep. 3-9), introducing one new faction each, cotaining new cards useful for the old factions and not containing reprints outside the starters). > LBS faltered from the get-go. The game wasn't nearly engaging enough > from all accounts I've heard to warrant people investing in the second > and future sequences. Could be true. Only saw it played as a fun, side game locally, buy only a small handful of players (including one or two who try just about anything that actually hits shelves in Vienna). > The software store I worked at got into CCGs as a sideline when Dune > first came out. We got a large supply of Dune - which never sold. Dune probably would have worked if it had been released under flattened rarity originally; as it was, it was fun to play on occasion, but not nearly good enough for me to actually give it serious consideration (or buy more than a few packs). > L5R - L5R was probably the second most successful card game on the > market before Scorpion Clan Coup. When I got into it, it was more > popular than Magic or VTES in the stores I frequented, and I wasted a > whole summer in that shop, playing L5R among other games. Where > Rolling Thunder helped Doomtown, it doomed L5R. Not technically a problem of flattened rarity but a problem of flawed set design - Dommtown at the very same time did *not* pack boosters with reprints but did include reprints of basic cards in the new starters. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you at least sound like you would not have minded a system like that for L5R at all. > It's the same problem I had with Sabbat War (90% of my SW rares come > from a list of 10 Sabbat Rares I had enough of before SW came out). > At least with SW, I'm happy that I'm getting new product at all, and > there's justification in that they were the first VTES cards to be > printed AT ALL in four years. Hmm... I kept pulling Catatonic Fears from my SW packs, so I didn't mind [much]. Of course, the fact that Crusades still seemed to be popping up a lot more than, say, Disarms, that I did consider to be a bit annoying. > L5R didn't have that justification. They just crammed the same old > cards into every single set - and now, if you bought all nine episodes > of a story, you got those same old cards nine times more often. Again, this is flawed set design, not an actual problem with flattened rarity. > >Hmm... interesting. I'd very much like to know how they arrive at the > >9 month storyarcs estimate for comic books though. > > Sandman's first story arc was 7 issues long. > > Mind you, I'm not much of a comic reader - I read mostly Vertigo > (Sandman, Books of Magic, and Preacher) and Strangers in Paradise > (independent small press). Most Vertigo trades (encompassing entire > arcs) are 8-9 regular issues with a special additions if necessary. Hmm, okay, I wasn't thinking along the lines of Vertigo, I was considering Marvel, DC and Image. After all, as a comparison, when deciding what's typical of CCGs, I should be thinking Magic, Pokemon and Star whatever franchises, no matter how much better I personally might consider VTES or Doomtown to be. Thomas

On Sun, 3 Feb 2002, The Nosferatu Stuff wrote: > Clan hosers are just too weak, I'm sure not going to pack any except for > Toreadors bane. Cause at least I know I can possibly use it some other > time. Like I'm sure you don't get many 'Letter from Vienna' where you play. > At least if it said: "Tap all ready Tremere, or tap an ally or vampire with > auspex" Then it might see more use? Basically, I agree with everything you've said. But what about the Malk clan hosers? I mean, you're *gonna* see them (realistically). Or at least, likely enough that I feel I'm willing to risk making them one of my twelve discards. Malk Dementia is free and pretty useful, and while Derangement: Alternate Personality's two pool cost is pretty steep, it never, ever goes away and having a coin-flip's chance of not taking that bleed for six mitigates its cost somewhat. Just a thought, David Cherryholmes Prince of Durham

> Not technically a problem of flattened rarity but a problem of flawed set >design - Dommtown at the very same time did *not* pack boosters with reprints >but did include reprints of basic cards in the new starters. Correct me if >I'm wrong, but you at least sound like you would not have minded a system like >that for L5R at all. It depends on what the distribution for the set is - a big part of the problem was that a portion of the set was reserved for reprints of cards that exist in EVERY set. With a 3 card limit imposed by the game, having these appear as often as all of the new cards mean you have to buy double what you would like - even with a flattened rarity. At least with a tiered rarity, if all the reprints are commons/set (which they were under non RT releases), then your uncommons and rares are going to be new cards - guaranteed. But under flattened rarity, you could buy a pack and get NO cards unique to the set you're buying. That's an inherently flawed distribution. > Hmm... I kept pulling Catatonic Fears from my SW packs, so I didn't mind >much]. Of course, the fact that Crusades still seemed to be popping up a lot >more than, say, Disarms, that I did consider to be a bit annoying. I pull a Changeling Skin Mask once in every four SW boosters I buy. If I could buy boxes more often, I wouldn't have this problem - but I don't have that luxury. > Again, this is flawed set design, not an actual problem with flattened rarity. But flattened rarity DID aggravate the issue. > Hmm, okay, I wasn't thinking along the lines of Vertigo, I was considering >Marvel, DC and Image. After all, as a comparison, when deciding what's >typical of CCGs, I should be thinking Magic, Pokemon and Star whatever >franchises, no matter how much better I personally might consider VTES or >Doomtown to be. I don't know what length arcs the hyper-cleavage comic market uses. 7-10 issue arcs are common for the comics I read. Even within standard superhero fare - Smith's Daredevil run was 8 issues, his Green Arrow arc was 10 (with the remainder of his run being 1-shots). Fanboy

cur...@aol.com writes: >Of the best selling and most enduring CCGs, which haven't had power rares? And of the unsuccessful CCGs, which haven't had power rares? Which has the better ratio? Having just one such successful games (Jyhad) probably makes the ratio in favor of successful games. >While Magic is likely the most expensive CCG to keep up with as new sets are >prolific, the most money intensive CCG per card, assuming you wanted to be >competitive at the top level, I played was Wheel of Time. Did that kill WoT? >No. Niche player base, screwing around with deciding what a new base set >should be like, and distributor apathy in a sluggish market killed the game. I don't know Wheel of Time, but great rare problems killed Star Trek and OnTE. Star Trek started great and then - poot. OnTE is a great game - if you can get a few dozen D'Aubaines, Pharoahs, tough Kergillians, etc. (or if you league - but that seems an unusual thing). [ quoted text not captured ]

In message <a3l2a6$190scr$1...@ID-125246.news.dfncis.de>, "The Nosferatu Stuff" <roans...@yahoo.com> mumbled something about: >"Derek Ray" <lor...@yahoo.com> wrote: >> What's your problem? Is that what you've got? Or what you think you >> need? I have several effective Gargoyle decks right now from my two >> boxes. I have included 0 Bond with the Mountain, 0 Conscripted Statue, >> 1 Rock Cat, and 2 Soul of the Earth. They all work great. > >Some times great isn't good enough. Anyone can look at gargoyle and go, wow >I can like, beat stuff up...cool. >Try doing something different. I am perfectly capable of doing that. However, my point still remains that you do not need to buy 6 boxes to be able to play a deck with the Gargoyles. Perhaps you cannot make the specific deck you WANT, but you know what? Not everyone can have everything. You are coming off like a HORRIBLE spoiled brat here, frankly. >> What delusion are you under that you NEED all that crap to play the >> Gargoyles? You don't. That falls under "miracle" to me, to cram the >> Gargoyles into some weird, twisted idea. Avoid combat with a combat >> clan? Sounds pretty damn corner-case to me. > >They are a combat clan huh? Interesting with fortitude/prevent and all the Let's see here real quick: Potence: All but 2 cards read "I hit you." Combat discipline. Fortitude: Vast majority of cards read "I ignore you hitting me." Some, like Restoration/Regeneration, read "I fix myself after you've hit me." This *IS* a combat discipline, no matter how much you want to stamp your foot and claim it isn't. It has some sidelines (freak drive, force of will), but by and large, Fortitude directly revolves around combat -- being tougher than your opponent. Visceratika: two S:CE cards, two strike cards, one stealth card (with combat options attached), one "i ignore aggravated damage and prevent one every combat" card, and one "this statue here fights you." Kind of a mix, but still 7 out of 7 cards that deal with combat -- this is a combat discipline. If you want to fudge on the stealth card that gives you an optional maneuver if caught, you could maybe say 6 out of 7. If you want to claim that S:CE isn't combat, that's fine; 4 out of 7. Notice combat is still in the majority. Flight: Three combat cards, one stealth card, and one intercept card (which will lead to combat if successful). This is the best "mix" of any of the Gargoyle disciplines, but it's still largely a combat discipline. Accessories? One huge intercept master, one intercept retainer (with extra damage in combat), one enter-combat-action retainer (with extra damage), one heavy combat ally, one "get any of those combat accessories for really cheap" card. These are ALL combat cards. Votes? One vampire has inferior Presence. That's gonna be a lot of skill cards, although at least the Cammie slaves can become Princes. Bleed? One bleed card available out of three disciplines and Flight. Also, one slave vampire has inferior Presence. Again, this is gonna be a lot of skill cards or retainers or Computer Hacking. Not to mention that without a slavemaster out, they can't bleed at all. What crack are you smoking that makes you believe this is not a combat clan? No, really, Aaron, WHAT CRACK ARE YOU SMOKING? >'get your actions to happen' cards, Bond with mountain(dodge/SCE) Collapse >the arches(defensive combat ONLY) flow with the mountian (SCE/continue the >action) skin of the chameleon(stealth) Seems like there may be something >more there then just a few more minions with potence Derek! What a bunch of horseshit. Use your head, man. They're a combat clan. Any attempts to make them otherwise are certainly creative, but don't expect me to accept your claim that they're a bleed clan just because you cram a Laptop and bleed retainer on each minion and then bleed with Flow Within the Mountain and Skin of the Chameleon. >> Funny, I have 2 Ashes, 1 Erebus, 1 Hag's, and 2 Regenerative Blood, and >> I can play the Samedi, too. Ashes to Ashes isn't the be-all and end-all >> of prevent, you know -- once you get into torpor, it can be pretty damn >> tough to get out, even if you have the blood to rescue yourself. > >Unless you have obfuscate...wouldn't happen to know any vampires that that >have than and obf would you? I guess you've never seen that pesky 2nd Tradition card, have you? Or those mean old decks that routinely generate +3 intercept? How about Raven Spy/Ignorant Fatass/Draba? We see these. Lots. We have found that simply having inferior OBF and two stealth cards in hand is not sufficient to "guarantee" anything happening. And what happens if you don't have the OBF card in hand? And what happens if you were blocking an action, and can't rescue yourself immediately? That's sure going to suck, being diablerized with an extra 2 blood on you. Let's see... FOR/OBF/THAN. Yeah, lots of intercept available there. Oh, wait, there's some NEC, so you can get Masquers or superior Spectral Divination... oops, only The Baron has superior NEC. Oh boy. That's gonna be a toughie. Especially if the person who blocked the action is the one with the intercept, since he's all in torpor and stuff and can't block anymore. Oops! Ashes to Ashes is a combat card and can't be played during diablerie actions. >> And if nobody's doing preventable damage to you, you can't play the card >> in the first place. 8 in a deck? Please. > >Wow, you just make skin of steel worthless, but its okay cause its common I can play Skin of Steel against a hand strike for 1 to cycle the card, if I have to. I'd like to see you play Ashes to Ashes against a hand strike for 1 and not feel completely stupid -- especially if you were blocking an action. >and you have 50 of them right? Yeah, and you can't immortal grapple if they >don't play any minions, better not use 8 of those in any deck either. Thank >you for telling me what is cool enough to need multiples of, why don't you >just run the design team? Oh, sorry, did I just slap your deck idea around like the ill-thought-out monstrosity it was again? Go on, put 8 in a deck. Then play it sitting next to non-combat decks. See how much fun it is to discard all 8 of the cards while wishing you had Skin of Steel instead, assuming you don't just get ousted in the meantime because of hand jam. >> I do play focused decks. It's not difficult to do with ANY of the >> Bloodlines. But you seem to be fixated on decks that are more "novelty" >> than "effective". > >Whats wrong with wanting to do something different with malkavians then >bleed? Don't make me get my blood bond deck after you! Just because your nutpunchers happen to work once locally doesn't mean I'm EVER going to regard them as viable concepts. Viable concepts are ones you can bring into a game against TOTALLY unknown opponents with TOTALLY unknown decks, and still expect them to do well. >> >defense with rock cat offense, I want more then 2 cats in my deck, and >> >> How do you intend to oust your prey with this concept again? > >You wouldn't understand. Like all good 'novelty' decks, you win a >tournament with it so everyone can go: "that is too powerful, lets ban every >card in that deck!"(see soul gem) Yes, actually, I *WOULD* understand, so I challenge you to explain it. In the meantime, I accept your concession that the deck really doesn't actually have a viable way to oust its prey. As regards the sideline whine: you and I both know that Soul Gem is not going to get errata just because of Rehlow's combo deck. Be for real, man, don't get caught up in all the hysteria like Talonz. >> Let me check Rock Cat real quick: ah, yes, bleed for 0. No >> regeneration. Great, you can get out TONS of Gargoyles and be an >> intercept combat wall forever, and you can get TONS of Rock Cats and >> beat some things up forward (except things that prevent and maneuver), >> and you can play Clan Impersonation eventually to create a Tremere so >> you can... bleed for 1 a few times each turn. Right. Oh, wait, you >> NEED a Tremere in your crypt so you can play Soul of the Earth on your >> Gargoyles. Did you know that people who know what Soul of the Earth >> does will block the action every time if possible, no matter if it means >> fighting a Gargoyle? > >See above, you are using your gargoyles all wrong, probably because you >can't get enough of the 'good' cards to play them in any way other then bums >rush. ACTUALLY, I haven't got a single "enter combat" card in any of my Gargoyles decks. No Bum's Rush, no Ambush, no Stone Dog (should put a Stone Dog in one of them, actually), no Nose of the Hound, no Monomancy, um, no Haven Uncovered, ... (ponder). Yeah. Do you really understand what is meant by "combat clan", or are you basically so paralyzed by your self-pitying whines that six boxes of Bloodlines weren't enough that you can't comprehend what's in front of your face? >> I suggest playing this deck with proxies before you go nuts trading. > >I already have them all. The deck is built. It is good. Post a decklist then. I want records of this deck. Who has it played against? What decks has it ousted? What was its predator while it was ousting the aforementioned decks? Has it ever gotten a Table Win? Against something other than three schoolchildren and a tame mouse? Have you actually even played the deck? I note you only say "built". >> Dude, your definition of playable is far different from mine. Your >> definition of "playable" seems to be "i can make any deck at all with >> this clan". That's not playable, that's extreme. > >Is your definition: "I have 90 cards total, that I can use, not the ones I >want, but there are 90 of them" Foolish hyperbole. My definition of "playable" is "Can I make an effective deck with this clan?" That's barely playable. "Can I make multiple effective decks with this clan?" is "playable". Multiple might only be 3, or it could be 6, or it could even be 10 (although that's "lots", really). But when you're going around trying to cram a square peg into a round hole, and wailing/shrieking/crying/stamping your foot because IT WON'T FIT, don't expect sympathy and for us to saw some corners in. Expect us to point out that you've got a square peg and a round hole, and to call you "dumbass". You must be the type of person who tries to make a Ventrue combat deck and is pissed off when everyone intercepts his "get weapon" actions, and says "man, my deck is so good if i dont sit next to that cheesy intercept!" >If so then yes, they are different, and I am extreme. Yes, you are. Extremists are NEVER representative of the community as a whole; your opinions will obviously be heavily biased by your extremism. Square peg, round hole. >> Only if you're trying to focus on something corner-case and create an >> "unbeatable" one-trick pony that will become a nutpuncher the first time >> it sits down next to something that happens to be able to hit its >> weaknesses. > >That is the problem with anything you make that is focused. If you play >hard core bleed the first time you sit down to an all bounce or combat deck >you are screwed. You never make a deck and say: "I'm invincible, I can >never lose" you say: "well I can beat votes that don't have stealth, and big >bleed is screwed, and immortal grapple can't touch me, but pitch, weenie >animalism, or guns will beat me, I hope I don't have to play that very >often" This is, in fact, my definition of "focused". This is not what your definition of "focused" comes across as. By the way, I don't consider "I hope I don't have to sit next to that kind of deck" to be very good deck design unless "that kind of deck" is something that tends to be an ineffective deck style itself. >Maybe for you focused means one trick pony, for me that means you pick one >thing, and you do that. If that 1 thing is bring out rock cats helluva fast >and rush people into oblivion, then that is my focus. That sounds great. Now how do you intend to oust your prey again? >> You know what I think? I think a lot of y'all on this group have let >> yourselves get spoiled by the easy, CHEAP availability of mass >> quantities of Jyhad/V:TES cards. It definitely shows in Aaron's >> conception of "playable", and it kind of shows in some of y'alls >> bitching about the rarities. > >What I think is that is what kept people playing VTES. It brought just enough new players in to ALMOST make up for the ones who left because of WotC's handling of the game. But it also spoiled an awful lot of the people who kept playing the game -- they went nuts buying up the cheap boxes and getting tons of ANY card they needed, and now they expect all future sets to be like that. It ain't gonna happen. >I think people like having easy access to a good game that they can make >what ever the hell they want to play with, and they don't need the design Guess what. That's not the way CCGs work. So sorry. >I think that if they keep making everything the Derek way they will kill the >game again, and that will be fine because I will have cheap cards again. Ah, now we come down to the real point. You don't actually want to spend money. You want the BENEFITS of having spent the money, but you don't actually want to spend the money. Hey, did you know that in the real world, fun frequently costs money? So this really comes down to a wallet whine. Aaron: get a job. If you already have a job, get a better one so you can spend the money, and quit bothering us with your square-peg round-hole pissing, moaning, and foot stamping. >I think that if I can kick your behind with 10 rock cats, that is just as >valid as you beating me down with 10 undead strengths...you shouldn't say >what I can win with or not, or how many of any non-unique card I need to >have in play to do that. Nor am I trying to. Let me break this one down to you logically. Rock Cat is a 4-pool ally with 4 life, 3 strength and 0 bleed. Rock Cat has a built-in Rush, a press, and can play POT cards. Rock Cat also has an anti-weenie special. The Gargoyles have no inherent pool gain mechanisms on the order of 5th Tradition/Minion Tap. They don't even have something like superior Govern, or Enchant Kindred available. About the best way they can gain pool is to use a Blood Doll/Minion Tap, and then superior Restoration to refill the blood. This means it is going to be very difficult for a Gargoyle deck to recruit multiple Rock Cats at 4 pool each. (Alternatively, you can use Taste of Vitae combined with Potence in combat, but that would be using a combat clan to do combat, and that's not "cool" enough for Aaron.) Enter Soul of the Earth, which will reduce each Rock Cat's cost to 1 pool -- at the cost of a second action. The second action must be taken by a Tremere or !Tremere ... probably a Tremere since there is only one !Tremere slave Gargoyle. Of the Tremere, only 6 have Potence, and only 3 have Fortitude. The cheapest worthwhile Tremere who have either are both 7-caps. This is sort of expensive -- however, you are perfectly capable of using Roreca Quaid (who can at least play the sideline discipline of all your VIS cards) if you want to. Enter yet ANOTHER problem: Soul of the Earth is a +1 stealth action. +1 intercept is extremely prevalent these days, largely because of such actions as Soul of the Earth. Roreca Quaid can generate no additional stealth on her actions. Competent players will block the Soul of the Earth action if it is at all possible for them to do so, because it is much better to get beaten up by one Gargoyle once than it is to get beaten up by Rock Cat over and over. There are only two Tremere with Obfuscate. One is an 8-cap, and one is an 11-cap. Neither have Potence or Fortitude. There are two Tremere with inherent +1 stealth on all actions. One has Potence. One has Fortitude and free diablerie. Both of these are definitely better choices than gluing OBF on Roreca Quaid or influencing Justine, but now, again, you're paying 7-8 pool for the ability to reduce your Rock Cats' cost by 3 each... until you've recruited 3 Rock Cats, you were probably better off just paying the full Rock Cat cost. For all practical purposes, it is going to be EXTREMELY difficult to actually get more than 2-3 Rock Cats in play, not to mention the difficulty inherent in keeping a 4-life non-regenerative combat ally alive through multiple combats in which it's getting hit for 1, at least. Therefore, Rock Cat is EMINENTLY well suited for a rare slot, and I consider WW to have made an excellent decision there. Can you follow this logic, Aaron? Or are we just going to hear more of the same old "but i want to i have it my waaaay" whine? >I think, the worst thing of all about VTES is when I hear someone tell me >about an awesome deck they can't make because they don't have 10 (insert any >card here not just freak drive or disarm). Something original or very Well, hell, it's a TCG! Trade for the freakin' card already, buy more boxes, or just make do. It's a goddamn shame that people can't have everything they want in this world just because they want it, isn't it? >creative, and not from lack of brilliance, just lack of purchasing power. SOMETIMES, FUN COSTS MONEY. IF YOU WANT THE FUN, SPEND THE MONEY. I was able afford two boxes' worth of fun of Bloodlines. It would be nice if I had enough money to blow on 10 boxes, but you know what? It's just a game to me. I have better things to spend my money on, and I can have PLENTY of fun with two boxes. >That really ruins everything. I guess in Derek world everything is just >"tough shit kid" but in my world its just a game. Play to have fun. I have great difficulty believing that it's just a game in your world, if you went and bought 6 boxes just to make one deck. -- "There's no gray. There's just white that's got grubby." -- T.P.

Josh wrote: >>That was actually Peter Bakija that always played the obf/pot rush combat decks. I was playing mainly the cel/pot. (Peter loves the Nosferatu, I love the Brujah, that's pretty much how it went.) You're absolutely right about him using lots of Behind You and the reason for it, though - it lets you weeniefy much more than ani/pot, and somewhat more than cel/pot too for that matter.>> Yeah, that's all me. I contend that the main strength of the Nosferatu is small vampires with POT and a reasonable support discipline (obf for manuvers). Well, the !Nos, actually. Building a crypt around Agatha, Nigel, and Olivia makes for a nice, lean crypt, where the Brujah have to go into the 6's for the most part to get POT/cel vampires. Peter D Bakija PD...@aol.com http://www.geocities.com/bakija6 "These streets are filled with danger and madness! MADNESS!" -Zim.

The Nosferatu Stuff <roans...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:a3jf23$18mbp5$1...@ID-125246.news.dfncis.de... snip > Hmm, maybe you should explain a little further, I read that article, and it > seemed like they made the game with flatter rarity, because there were > releasing HUGE quantities of cards every month?! 150 cards each month for 9 > months? Actually, you misread. It was 50 cards each month for 9 months, approximately, from what I recollect. Very small and easy to collect sets. The cards aren't worth anything besides their play value. And once they lose their play value, they are worth nothing. You can't even trade them. Which is one problem I have with flat rarity. What made Rolling Thunder a failure WAS the rarity scheme. Now, as for Doomtown. There were many reasons why it died, but the one most pertinent to this discussion was poor sales of AEG's base set, Boot Hill. Not much reason to buy a box of Boot Hill with regular distribution when you could get the cards from Episode 1-9 with almost flat distribution. Ultimately, the thing to remember is that: no matter how easy it is to get the cards, if people don't enjoy the game and don't buy the cards, you are wasting your money getting into the game. That's how I feel about Doomtown. I think you shouldn't assume that by increasing access to cards, you increase a player's enjoyment of the game. There is a lot of empirical evidence which goes against this. For me, distribution is not as important as play value. Cheers, Janus, Childe of Chronus

The Fanboy <texas...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:f99d61c5.02020...@posting.google.com... snip > > L5R players already had a large stock of cards when Scorpion Clan Coup > came out. Now, in order to get the new cards, they'd have to buy > boosters of cards they already had - a problem I already had with > earlier L5R expansions was that certain cards appeared in every single > expansion. Now, those cards are going to appear in three times the > volume over the span of a single expansion. Wonderful. > This isn't true. No cards were reprinted in the Scorpion Clan Coup boosters, similar to Final Nights. Cards were reprinted in the preconstructed starters only. > Under the tiered rarity system you see in Magic, VTES, and other > games, when you open a pack, you're going to see a lot of cards you > have PLENTY of, a few cards you have "enough, or close to enough" of, > and a card that you MIGHT have one or two of (unless you're really > gung ho, or really unlucky). > Well, this is not true. How many repeats you see depends on how many different cards are in each rarity. Which is why there are a lot of repeat Vampires (and Vampires are the most common cards) because they have such a small run. Also, I think one issue for V: tES is that unlike many CCGs, you wany MANY, MANY copies of certain cards such as IG. It takes a lot of cards to play constructed Vampire, which is different from say, Magic, where your deck works okay even just sealed. > Imagine my frustration when I opened my first three packs of Hidden > Emporer, and got no cards I didn't already own from previous > expansions. > This can't be true if you are talking about the Hidden Emperor booster packs. No card was reprinted from a previous set in those boosters, similar to Final Nights boosters in V:tES. > It's the same problem I had with Sabbat War (90% of my SW rares come > from a list of 10 Sabbat Rares I had enough of before SW came out). > At least with SW, I'm happy that I'm getting new product at all, and > there's justification in that they were the first VTES cards to be > printed AT ALL in four years. > > L5R didn't have that justification. They just crammed the same old > cards into every single set - and now, if you bought all nine episodes > of a story, you got those same old cards nine times more often. > If you wanted the new cards, you just got the boosters. Which were all new cards. [ quoted text not captured ]

Stefan Ferenci <a950...@nospamunet.univie.ac.at> wrote in message news:3c5d8834$0$31734$3b21...@news.univie.ac.at... > > "Chris Berger" <ark...@ugcs.caltech.edu> schrieb im Newsbeitrag > news:0Td78.15754$PC.7...@rwcrnsc52.ops.asp.att.net... > > It wasn't a very flattened rarity system. There were still 6 level of > > rarity. There wasn't, technically, a rare sheet, but there were U1's all > > the way to C3's. > > well there were no rares and since you need only 3 copys each it was easy to > collect. > > >Certainly, a few people complained that there were no > > rares, but they were not the majority. There were three types of HE episodes. One type had boosters with Rares, Uncommons, and Commons, but each booster had three cards which were either Rare or Uncommon. Another type had just Uncommons and Commons. A last type had Rares, Uncommons and Commons. They last type were the best investment because the rares from the last type were much more sought after and much more tradable than the cards from the first two types. Also, the Uncommon/ Common was the hardest to collect because there were so many Uncommons, despite having 2 Uncommons each booster. The reason the Hidden Emperor > series > > did poorly was because they released an expansion a month for 6 months. > > Nobody wanted to buy that many cards (gotta buy at least a box of each... > > the flattened rarity at least made it a little easier to collect a bunch > of > > cards without buying 6 boxes of each set). Finally, they released the > final > > planned 3 expansions as one single expansion. > > i disagree most people liked the system; easy to collect and cheaper than 3 > expansions a year. > the real problem was that each expansion focused on one clan so 80 percent > of the cards were mostly usefull for this one clan. so people who lets say > didn´t like the mantis didn´t buy any packs of HE5. so sales went down, due > to the fact that it was easier to collect people bought less boxes in > general. so again lower sales. and it was very annoying for shop owners to > have that many different sets on their shelves. so to sum it up for the > player it was great for Wotc it produced lower income. thats why it failed. > Actually, there were cards for every clan in each HE episode. Although the marketing suggested that the boosters were tailored for the featured clan, this wasn't the case. At most you can say this was bad marketing, but most informed L5R players knew that there was reason to collect each episode. Cheers, Janus, Childe of Chronus > stefan > >

"Derek Ray" <lor...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:kpcu5uo2h9lt3kd9g...@4ax.com... > In message <a3l2a6$190scr$1...@ID-125246.news.dfncis.de>, > "The Nosferatu Stuff" <roans...@yahoo.com> mumbled something about: > >Try doing something different. > > I am perfectly capable of doing that. However, my point still remains > that you do not need to buy 6 boxes to be able to play a deck with the > Gargoyles. Perhaps you cannot make the specific deck you WANT, but you > know what? Not everyone can have everything. You are coming off like a > HORRIBLE spoiled brat here, frankly. What the fuck, Derek? Why is it necessary to say "well, that's the way it is, so don't complain about it, don't try to get it changed, just suck it up or go away"? He's not saying that WW should give away the cards for free. He's just saying that as a *game* it would be better for more people to be able to get all the pieces they want. What's all this "spoiled brat" junk? How is it unreasonable to want to be able to explore all the different possibilities of a game you like playing? [cheap cards] > It brought just enough new players in to ALMOST make up for the ones who > left because of WotC's handling of the game. But it also spoiled an > awful lot of the people who kept playing the game -- they went nuts > buying up the cheap boxes and getting tons of ANY card they needed, and > now they expect all future sets to be like that. It ain't gonna happen. There's no unavoidable reason that people can't have the cards they want. And wanting what you want doesn't make you a spoiled brat. Sure, you can't always *have* what you want, but that's no reason not to ask for it. > >I think people like having easy access to a good game that they can make > >what ever the hell they want to play with, and they don't need the design > > Guess what. That's not the way CCGs work. So sorry. There's no clear evidence that it can't be the way CCGs work. Maybe they don't work that way past a certain point, but Final Nights and Bloodlines have been *far* past the "we can't make everything common or we won't sell any cards" point on rarity distribution. There *are* lots of games out there that somehow find a way to be profitable *without* selling every player $100+ of pieces every year. > Ah, now we come down to the real point. You don't actually want to > spend money. You want the BENEFITS of having spent the money, but you > don't actually want to spend the money. Hey, did you know that in the > real world, fun frequently costs money? Yeah. And? He's not saying it shouldn't cost money. He's saying it should cost *less* so that more people would find it a reasonable fun-to-cost ratio. It's really not always worse to have people paying you less money, if there are more people doing it. > Well, hell, it's a TCG! Trade for the freakin' card already, buy more > boxes, or just make do. It's a goddamn shame that people can't have > everything they want in this world just because they want it, isn't it? Actually, it is a goddamn shame. Are you really this unsympathetic, or is it just a cynical rhetorical pose? :-) Josh try a little tenderness!

In message <a3orud$19juc4$1...@ID-121616.news.dfncis.de>, Joshua Duffin <jtdu...@yahoo.com> writes: >> I am perfectly capable of doing that. However, my point still remains >> that you do not need to buy 6 boxes to be able to play a deck with the >> Gargoyles. Perhaps you cannot make the specific deck you WANT, but you >> know what? Not everyone can have everything. You are coming off like a >> HORRIBLE spoiled brat here, frankly. > >What the fuck, Derek? Why is it necessary to say "well, >that's the way it is, so don't complain about it, don't >try to get it changed, just suck it up or go away"? What tends to happen very often in these arguments is: - The Gargoyles suck. I need 5 copies of Stone Dog before I can even think about playing with them! THAT SUCKS! WHY I OUGHTA... - Erm, sure, you need 5 for that deck you've just designed. But you could play a perfectly good deck with.... (insert decks involving lots of commons and uncommons, and a handful of rares) - But I >>>N33|><<< >>>>5<<<< copies of Stone Dog or my deck will sux0r! - So why not design another deck with the cards you have access to? - But..... 5u><0|^.... l4m3r.... f4gg0t.... Stone Dog.... five.... *fades to black* There are way, way, *way* too many people out there who can't see the difference between needing 5 copies of a rare for the deck they *want* to play and needing 5 copies of a rare to be competitive. The former may well be true, the latter almost certainly never is. [ quoted text not captured ]

<napalm: on> In message <a3orud$19juc4$1...@ID-121616.news.dfncis.de>, "Joshua Duffin" <jtdu...@yahoo.com> mumbled something about: >"Derek Ray" <lor...@yahoo.com> wrote in message >news:kpcu5uo2h9lt3kd9g...@4ax.com... >> I am perfectly capable of doing that. However, my point still remains >> that you do not need to buy 6 boxes to be able to play a deck with the >> Gargoyles. Perhaps you cannot make the specific deck you WANT, but you >> know what? Not everyone can have everything. You are coming off like a >> HORRIBLE spoiled brat here, frankly. > >What the fuck, Derek? Why is it necessary to say "well, >that's the way it is, so don't complain about it, don't >try to get it changed, just suck it up or go away"? Because I can understand the publisher's side of it too. They have to sell a certain percentage of any given print run, or they've lost money on the set -- and once a CCG starts losing money, it's dead for good. V:TES even being alive today is a miracle. WW -must- make money on these sets, because the first set that doesn't make money will kill V:TES again, and it will be gone. And frankly, I am sick AND tired of all the FUCKING whining that goes on about this game and how people can't get this card, or that card, or this card is too rare, or that card isn't rare enough, or this card sucks, or whatever, and the spouting about "no rarity, give us all the pieces!", ignoring the fact that THIS LOSES MONEY FOR THE COMPANY and KILLS THE GAME DEAD. If you can buy all the pieces for $100, the cost of production had better be DAMNED low for you to make your money back, because nobody is going to buy more than $100 worth of pieces. It just doesn't work that way for CCGs. I don't give a shit what examples with twisted, wrong facts anyone wants to throw up, the numbers say "CCGs that do this fail to make money and die". The number one CCG out there today, Magic, has crazy rare chase cards and is the best example of skilled wallet-hoovering I've seen in some time. AND PEOPLE STILL FALL ALL OVER THEMSELVES TO OPEN THEIR WALLETS. What do you think that REALLY says about crazy rare chase cards? Do you really think that ALL Magic players are incapable of saying "Hey, what's this giant sucking sound from the hose attached to my wallet?" I'm sure this has all been argued and discussed before on the Magic boards, ad nauseam. But the bottom line is, it works. I am not advocating that WW should go to that extreme. I would much prefer that WW make "high-power, limited use" rares, which are still worth chasing for that weirdo crazy-ass deck based around it. But flattening the rarity just plain doesn't work. >He's not saying that WW should give away the cards for >free. He's just saying that as a *game* it would be >better for more people to be able to get all the pieces >they want. What's all this "spoiled brat" junk? How >is it unreasonable to want to be able to explore all >the different possibilities of a game you like playing? Fun costs money. It really is that simple. I am not going to go into the details over and over again. I will point out that I have a relatively limited collection of cards, and I would be one of the chief benefittors (new word!) of a flattened rarity scheme. I own, um, one Disarm somewhere. I own 7 Freak Drives. I am quite experienced at making use of these cards in the best way possible to me. I cannot make any deck I want. It would be nice to be able to make a certain 15-Freak Drive deck I have in mind, and it would be nice to be able to play a Blood Fury/Disarm deck. But I can't, and I'm not going to waste everyone's time whining about it, because I realize that the correct terminology here is "IT WOULD BE NICE IF". I also will continue to argue against a flattened rarity scheme. Aaron bought 6 boxes of Bloodlines. How many do you think he would've bought if the rarity had been flatter? I don't consider Bloodlines' rarity to be TOO bad, except where the common cards are concerned, and even then only the C1s (which work out to effectively be U2s -- bad call somewhere on the math, guys). Oh, wait, and here's another one. The set was what, something like 180 different cards? With a fixed number of cards per booster (11) and boosters per box, exactly what rarity scheme would you suggest that doesn't leave SOMEONE out in the cold? If you make them all common/uncommon, you STILL have to buy a ton of cards to have a ton of cards. >> >I think people like having easy access to a good game that they can make >> >what ever the hell they want to play with, and they don't need the design >> >> Guess what. That's not the way CCGs work. So sorry. > >There's no clear evidence that it can't be the way CCGs >work. Maybe they don't work that way past a certain Yes, there is. Fucking Magic, for godsake. I wish some of y'all would open your damned eyes and smell the coffee. As much as I hate Magic as a concept, hate the players as a bunch of twinks, and hate the wallet-hoovering as something I won't ever go near, the sad, sad, SAD fact is: IT WORKS, AND NOTHING ELSE HAS EVER WORKED AS WELL. >point, but Final Nights and Bloodlines have been *far* >past the "we can't make everything common or we won't sell >any cards" point on rarity distribution. Am I REALLY going to have to buy a box of Jyhad and post my results just to do the comparison? >There *are* lots of games out there that somehow find >a way to be profitable *without* selling every player >$100+ of pieces every year. CCGs don't work that way because of printing costs. They must print the whole run in one go, and then they must be certain that product sells. >> Well, hell, it's a TCG! Trade for the freakin' card already, buy more >> boxes, or just make do. It's a goddamn shame that people can't have >> everything they want in this world just because they want it, isn't it? > >Actually, it is a goddamn shame. Are you really this >unsympathetic, or is it just a cynical rhetorical pose? Actually, I really AM this unsympathetic. Someone buys 6 boxes and pisses and moans that he had to buy 6 boxes? Fuck that. Nobody held him down and forced him to write out checks to Potomac. And then he wants to say he had to buy 6 boxes because he wanted to cram square pegs into round holes? OK, yeah, what the FUCK ever. Expect ZERO sympathy from me, man. And then he wants to come and whine about how the RARITY is bad? Really, now. Come on. <napalm, napalm, sticks like glue, sticks to women, children too> -- "There's no gray. There's just white that's got grubby." -- T.P.

Couple minor comments. >The number one CCG out there today, Magic, has >crazy rare chase cards and is the best example of skilled >wallet-hoovering I've seen in some time. AND PEOPLE STILL FALL ALL OVER >THEMSELVES TO OPEN THEIR WALLETS. What do you think that REALLY says >about crazy rare chase cards? Magic has power rares. It has some hard to get promo stuff, but you don't need those, just lots of rares. Maybe you are referring to the Power 9, but that's only relevant for Type 1, which is a trivial format. Magic does not have relevant chase cards like Highlander, Rage, whatever other games have had them. >Actually, I really AM this unsympathetic. Someone buys 6 boxes and >pisses and moans that he had to buy 6 boxes? Fuck that. Nobody held >him down and forced him to write out checks to Potomac. > >And then he wants to say he had to buy 6 boxes because he wanted to cram >square pegs into round holes? OK, yeah, what the FUCK ever. Expect >ZERO sympathy from me, man. And then he wants to come and whine about >how the RARITY is bad? Really, now. Come on. I do have sympathy, however, for those who buy lots of boxes (more than 3) of a small expansion and can't get near a complete set. Specifically, Bloodlines is a very unfriendly set for the customer, but that's already been discussed in previous threads.

"Curevei" <cur...@aol.com> wrote in message news:20020204134818...@mb-cs.aol.com... > Of the best selling and most enduring CCGs, which haven't had power rares? The > reality is that people will buy more cards to get the best cards at least up to > a point. The popularity of any particular CCG is more heavily dependent on > other factors than on play balance. CCGs as a genre are, I would say, too young and too few in number to make any reliable generalizations about them like this. I wouldn't characterize Shadowfist as a "power rares" game; it does make the "big characters" pretty much always rare, but it's not really the case that any *particular* one is a lot more powerful (in the sense of "makes you win") than the others. IOW, you need some rares to be competitive, but you don't need lots of them, and everybody doesn't need the same ones. VTES hasn't been a power-rares game, for the most part. Those are the only "enduring" CCGs I know that well. I did play Magic for quite a while, but not recently; it was (and I presume still is) something of a "power rares" game. I played L5R for a while but never very competitively; I'm not really sure if it is/was a power-rares game, though I do recall hearing from people who did play in tourneys that it was. It does seem true that play-balance doesn't have a whole lot to do with what CCGs become popular, but I do think it may have more to do with which ones *stay* popular. VTES and Shadowfist are both (IMO) pretty well play-balanced, and they're also the only CCGs I know of that were defunct (in the sense of not having any cards printed) for a while and were then revived by other companies. Sure, people will buy more cards if they feel "forced" to, up to a point, but they also seem to start resenting it after a while. You seem to resent it yourself, in the case of Bloodlines. :-) > Does Magic have a balanced tournament environment? I think your answer is no > based on the next part. But, what about Star Wars? L5R? Pokemon? I really couldn't say. I've never played any of them at the tournament level. (I have played Star Wars and L5R, but never that competitively; it seems to be part of the "obsessive buying" nature of CCGs that I can only manage to allocate enough time and money for one or two of them at a time.) Also, I'm not sure that it was clear, but what I meant by an "unbalanced tournament environment" was basically that it's unbalanced on a monetary level, in that players who've spent a lot more money have much greater chances of winning. I do think that's a bad thing for a game. Winning should depend more on how much skill you've acquired than on how many cards you own. Obviously that'll never be entirely the case in a CCG, but it's (I think) a goal that should be kept in mind. > While Magic is likely the most expensive CCG to keep up with as new sets are > prolific, the most money intensive CCG per card, assuming you wanted to be > competitive at the top level, I played was Wheel of Time. Did that kill WoT? > No. Niche player base, screwing around with deciding what a new base set > should be like, and distributor apathy in a sluggish market killed the game. Is there really any way to know that you're right about what killed it, rather than the expense? I mean, we're awfully short on analytical data of any kind regarding players, expenditures, company revenues, really anything factual at all around CCGs. (If there are sources for this information, I don't know what they are.) Isn't the "niche player base" problem, for example, probably contributed to by the expense of playing competitively? > CCGs are investments. I consider an initial minimum investment of $120 in a > CCG reasonable. To compete on a tournament level, looking at five times that > or so, minimum. As someone said, that's the equivalent of a number of > boardgames (or computer games or whatever). But, that's the market. Well, I doubt that they're really investments in the monetary sense - I don't expect to ever get paid more for my CCG cards than I spent on them; even getting paid half as much would be fairly surprising to me. They certainly require a substantial outlay, if that's what you mean. :-) > Realize that no one is forcing people to shell out this sort of money to play > CCGs, yet lots of people do. This is true, but apparently there are a lot more people who are buying games that cost less. (at least, that would be my interpretation of the fact that other companies can afford to sell games that come with all the pieces for less than CCG companies charge for only X number of pieces - it's profitable because they don't make as much on each copy of the game but they do sell to more people.) Josh and they give you the golden keys

Derek Ray wrote: > If you can buy all the pieces for $100, the cost of production had > better be DAMNED low for you to make your money back, because nobody is > going to buy more than $100 worth of pieces. It just doesn't work that > way for CCGs. No. CCGs for an individual player (call him A) probably work in a "how much can I afford to spend on a set?" way, a quantity we shall refer to as X$. Let us assume 2 sets are produced a few months apart, call them sets 1 and 2. Scenario 1: A spends X$ on set 1 and happily sees he can actually make some of the cool deck ideas he has work. A few months later, he spends another X$ on set2, X$ that go toward the publishing company's production costs. Scenario 2: A spends X$ on set 1 and finds that almost every novel deck idea the set gives him demands tons of rares, because pot/for beatdown isn't really novel [there's been vampires for this since Jyhad] and technically that's all gargoyles do without tons of rares, pre/for political "if you have intercept I can't hurt your pool so lets hope I don't run out of SCE and damage prevention" is an old hat and technically that's all DoC do anyway (though undoubtedly they'd do it better with Opera Houses and other nifty rares), and animalism retainers were just as useful to vampires that actually had the discipline at superior as they'll ever be to a clan that can't use the nifty card to actually call the right retainer at the right time because the card is too damn rare anyway. Considering that based on what it focuses on, he can't even imagine set 2 giving him any novel deck ideas that wouldn't have been possible with the right impossible to get rares before, anyway, he decides to not spend a dime on it [so not a dime is what the company makes toward production costs], because he just knows the right impossible to get rares will stay impossible to get, anyway. Now, which scenario sounds more like VTES between Bloodlines and the new Camarilla set? Thomas

[ quoted text not captured ] Derek Man, I agree 100%, thought you'd like to hear it as the only people posting don't seem to get it. As for chase rares in Magic boiling down to the power Nine, that's entirely untrue. Thanks to Type II, there's always new chase rares that come about from each expansion set. Masticore for instance.. Sigh, BernieTime

"Derek Ray" <lor...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:h1uv5usb94vfvde18...@4ax.com... > <napalm: on> Funny, this didn't seem *that* flamey to me. :-) > In message <a3orud$19juc4$1...@ID-121616.news.dfncis.de>, > "Joshua Duffin" <jtdu...@yahoo.com> mumbled something about: > > >What the fuck, Derek? Why is it necessary to say "well, > >that's the way it is, so don't complain about it, don't > >try to get it changed, just suck it up or go away"? > > Because I can understand the publisher's side of it too. They have to > sell a certain percentage of any given print run, or they've lost money > on the set -- and once a CCG starts losing money, it's dead for good. > V:TES even being alive today is a miracle. WW -must- make money on > these sets, because the first set that doesn't make money will kill > V:TES again, and it will be gone. If White Wolf wants to "whine" about how they need to make money, can't they do it for themselves rather than needing you to step up for them? :-) > And frankly, I am sick AND tired of all the FUCKING whining that goes on > about this game and how people can't get this card, or that card, or > this card is too rare, or that card isn't rare enough, or this card > sucks, or whatever, and the spouting about "no rarity, give us all the > pieces!", ignoring the fact that THIS LOSES MONEY FOR THE COMPANY and > KILLS THE GAME DEAD. No one's saying that. They're really not. There have been people (including me, yes) saying that it'd be good for the game, and maybe even better for the publisher, for there to be *less* rarity in the cardsets. That doesn't mean *none*. > If you can buy all the pieces for $100, the cost of production had > better be DAMNED low for you to make your money back, because nobody is > going to buy more than $100 worth of pieces. It just doesn't work that > way for CCGs. I don't give a shit what examples with twisted, wrong > facts anyone wants to throw up, the numbers say "CCGs that do this fail > to make money and die". You know, they really don't. We don't *have* the facts. If there's a trade journal that tells us what the costs of production and revenues in CCGs look like, I don't know what it is, and nobody's been citing it. Nor are the companies that publish them (apparently) very eager to come out and tell us. > The number one CCG out there today, Magic, has > crazy rare chase cards and is the best example of skilled > wallet-hoovering I've seen in some time. AND PEOPLE STILL FALL ALL OVER > THEMSELVES TO OPEN THEIR WALLETS. What do you think that REALLY says > about crazy rare chase cards? I don't know that people *do* fall all over themselves to open their wallets. Is the Magic market, right now, bigger than it's ever been? I'm doubtful, but I don't have any statistics, and I don't suppose you do either? Regardless, I am *in no way* against crazy rare chase cards. What I *am* against is crazy rare *power* cards. I don't mind *at all* if it's good for profits to make foil-stamped holographic edible versions of rare cards. I do object to making it a big competitive advantage to spend vast sums of money on the game. > Do you really think that ALL Magic players are incapable of saying "Hey, > what's this giant sucking sound from the hose attached to my wallet?" > I'm sure this has all been argued and discussed before on the Magic > boards, ad nauseam. But the bottom line is, it works. It may be one thing that works. That doesn't mean it's the *only* thing that works. I know you're already aware that there's more than one way to oust a prey. ;-) > I am not advocating that WW should go to that extreme. I would much > prefer that WW make "high-power, limited use" rares, which are still > worth chasing for that weirdo crazy-ass deck based around it. But > flattening the rarity just plain doesn't work. Maybe making the rarity *totally flat* doesn't work. Making it *flatter* seemed to work fine for WotC when they printed Dark Sovereigns. (The existence of lots of DS on the market for cheap now doesn't mean that WotC didn't make enough money selling them when it came out.) > Fun costs money. It really is that simple. I am not going to go into > the details over and over again. Fun is available both with and without monetary costs. The more expensive sources of fun don't always make more money for their purveyors. > But I can't, and > I'm not going to waste everyone's time whining about it, because I > realize that the correct terminology here is "IT WOULD BE NICE IF". I > also will continue to argue against a flattened rarity scheme. Whining, much like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. :-) The correct terminology for *anything* in VTES is really "it would be nice if", of course. It *is* only a game. But that's no reason that we shouldn't try to convince WW to do things nicely. :-) I think everyone in this thread has recognized that WW needs to make money at this, and I think we're all fine with that. We'd just like them to, within those bounds, assign rarities such that more players could have more fun with the game. > The > set was what, something like 180 different cards? With a fixed number > of cards per booster (11) and boosters per box, exactly what rarity > scheme would you suggest that doesn't leave SOMEONE out in the cold? If > you make them all common/uncommon, you STILL have to buy a ton of cards > to have a ton of cards. Duh. But you don't have to buy ten tons of cards to have one ton of the cards you're looking for. :-) With 396 cards per box, you could (totally flat rarity) average 2.2 sets per box. Two boxes would then get you something over four of each card on average. At a distribution of, say, 50 R2, 50 U2, 60 C1, 20 C2, 7 commons, 3 uncommons, 1 rare per booster... you'd get, on average, 1.44 sets of rares, 4.32 sets of uncommons, 5.04 sets of C1s, 10.08 sets of C2s in two boxes. I think that would've been a more palatable distribution to a lot of people who were unhappy with the way BL actually came out, and I think it still would've resulted in WW selling plenty of cards. I don't object to the "spend $100+ on cards every set" aspect of CCGs. I just don't want it to get too out- of-hand, and I want it to be friendly to new players. I don't want it to become "spend $300+ on cards every set." > >There's no clear evidence that it can't be the way CCGs > >work. Maybe they don't work that way past a certain > > Yes, there is. Fucking Magic, for godsake. I wish some of y'all would > open your damned eyes and smell the coffee. As much as I hate Magic as > a concept, hate the players as a bunch of twinks, and hate the > wallet-hoovering as something I won't ever go near, the sad, sad, SAD > fact is: IT WORKS, AND NOTHING ELSE HAS EVER WORKED AS WELL. Dude, that's not clear evidence. That's one particular case. No other CCG has made as much money or had as many players, I'll agree. But there's no way to know that this is evidence that their rarity and set design scheme is the best one. It could all be just because they were there first, for all we can tell. > >point, but Final Nights and Bloodlines have been *far* > >past the "we can't make everything common or we won't sell > >any cards" point on rarity distribution. > > Am I REALLY going to have to buy a box of Jyhad and post my results just > to do the comparison? Would you really do that? Man, that's dedication to a cause. :-) You're right, Jyhad was pretty rare-heavy too. In fact all the VTES sets have been fairly rare-heavy. All I was saying there was, WW doesn't seem to be in *any* danger of approaching the "perfectly flat rarity and suddenly we don't make any money" point. > CCGs don't work that way because of printing costs. They must print the > whole run in one go, and then they must be certain that product sells. Why is it more feasible for non-CCG games to go back for extra print runs than for CCGs? I'm aware that it's cheaper to just do one really big CCG print run than to do multiple smaller ones, but surely that's the case for other games as well. And I know CCGs *have* done multiple print runs, when demand warranted it. (Sabbat War, for instance.) > And then he wants to say he had to buy 6 boxes because he wanted to cram > square pegs into round holes? OK, yeah, what the FUCK ever. Expect > ZERO sympathy from me, man. And then he wants to come and whine about > how the RARITY is bad? Really, now. Come on. I think what he's saying is that other people who *aren't* already insane enough to buy six boxes would be more likely to get into the game and buy *some* cards if the rarity seemed more player-friendly. Josh and i look and say 'yeah she's really blonde'

The Nosferatu Stuff wrote: > > Long live proxies. I'll hold a "Dream Team" tournament with you Fred, and > people can bring the most hard core decks they can imagine! You bet! Actually, isn't there a web site where people can play on line with any deck they can think up? I forget what it was called, JOL (Jyhad On Line) comes to mind. Someone with an actual memory, help me here. Fred

Frederick Scott wrote: > Actually, isn't there a web site where people can play on line with any > deck they can think up? I forget what it was called, JOL (Jyhad On Line) > comes to mind. > > Someone with an actual memory, help me here. http://www.deckserver.net/jol/ -- LSJ (vte...@white-wolf.com) V:TES Net.Rep for White Wolf, Inc. Links to revised rulebook, rulings, errata, and tournament rules: http://www.white-wolf.com/vtes/

Derek Ray wrote: > > Fortitude: Vast majority of cards read "I ignore you hitting me." Some, > like Restoration/Regeneration, read "I fix myself after you've hit me." > This *IS* a combat discipline, no matter how much you want to stamp your > foot and claim it isn't. It has some sidelines (freak drive, force of > will), but by and large, Fortitude directly revolves around combat -- > being tougher than your opponent. Actually, without damning the rest of your post or your position in this dispute, I have to say I disagree strongly with this specific point. Fortitude is very much usable as a combat defense discipline. Actually, it's probably reasonable for both aggressive combat decks AND decks that just want to survive combat. But if I had to classify for just one or the other, it looks like combat defense to me. I mean, the same argument can be made for Dodge: I've seen lots of effective use of Dodge with celerity combat with either additional strike cards or cards that combine both into one function: Dodge-with-an-additional-strike. Does that make Dodge a card thought as being for the aggressive combat deck? I don't think so. Most people would identify it as a combat defense card. Fred

berni...@attbi.comHOLDLeSPAM wrote: > > Derek Man, > > I agree 100%, thought you'd like to hear it as the only people posting > don't seem to get it. I'm pretty sure Josh gets Derek's point. He never said he wanted to eliminate rarity. Other people have said that and certain people are creating straw man arguments by suggesting that that's the only alternative. I think Josh was just pointing to some problems in terms of highly useful, high-demand cards that are probably way rarer than they should be in the context of the current game environment - at least from a game player's perspective. While I realize that (and I think Josh realizes that) there needs to be enough incentive for players to buy enough product to give White Wolf enough demand to print more cards, I'd like to think it's not necessary to create some of the existing situations on purpose to make this game sell. For instances, however you feel about the number of Disarms you can and should stuff into the average rush/potence deck, there's enough things to do with them that it clearly could be an uncommon without anyone complaining that they're pulling too many of these things out of their packs. I don't know why WotC choose to make them rares. Maybe they were deliberately intended to be power rares, in spite of their protests to the contrary. More likely, the WotC designers didn't realize it was as useful as it was when they printed it. Whatever the case, the new Camarilla set would be an excellent opportunity to correct the problem, the same way The Sabbat corrected the problem of players desiring many more copies of Immortal Grapple. A discussion of whether that is, in fact, true for Disarm and/or might be as true or more true for other cards is in order. On the other hand, the issue of whether it's a good idea to downgrade rarity at all isn't very interesting. About all I find that goes on is people having some kind of burr up their butt about making it too easy for the newbies to get the good cards. (whirls finger). Whup, whup! Why should anyone care? I guess if printing an uncommon Disarm is likely to drive White Wolf out of business, then they shouldn't do it. But I don't think it's going to. Fred

In message <3C603E6C...@aon.at>, Thomas Pichler <tom.p...@aon.at> mumbled something about: >Scenario 2: >A spends X$ on set 1 and finds that almost every novel deck idea the set gives >him demands tons of rares, because pot/for beatdown isn't really novel [there's This isn't factual, though. Sorry. Goodbye. Sit. Stay. You have deluded yourself into believing that the only thing the Gargoyles can do is POT/FOR combat. It's not. What you are actually saying here is "all I can think of besides these deck ideas that require 10x rares is to make them do POT/FOR Rush combat." >been vampires for this since Jyhad] and technically that's all gargoyles do >without tons of rares, pre/for political "if you have intercept I can't hurt your Not true, but I doubt you've tried -- I bet you've been spending all your energy on whines like this one. >pool so lets hope I don't run out of SCE and damage prevention" is an old hat and Like VIS and Flight don't have any stealth cards? >technically that's all DoC do anyway (though undoubtedly they'd do it better with And you demonstrate your lack of creativity by bashing ANOTHER clan. >Now, which scenario sounds more like VTES between Bloodlines and the new >Camarilla set? Scenario 1. Unless he's stupid enough to listen to people like you, who spend all their time whining and not enough of their time thinking. [ quoted text not captured ]

In message <3C608068...@removethis.com>, Frederick Scott <freds64_at_...@removethis.com> mumbled something about: >Derek Ray wrote: >> >> Fortitude: Vast majority of cards read "I ignore you hitting me." Some, >> like Restoration/Regeneration, read "I fix myself after you've hit me." >> This *IS* a combat discipline, no matter how much you want to stamp your >> foot and claim it isn't. It has some sidelines (freak drive, force of >> will), but by and large, Fortitude directly revolves around combat -- >> being tougher than your opponent. > >Actually, without damning the rest of your post or your position in this >dispute, I have to say I disagree strongly with this specific point. >Fortitude is very much usable as a combat defense discipline. Actually, >it's probably reasonable for both aggressive combat decks AND decks that >just want to survive combat. But if I had to classify for just one or the >other, it looks like combat defense to me. Right. Which still makes it a combat discipline. It does a couple of other things, but the vast majority of its cards deal with combat. Mono-Fortitude doesn't vote. One card can bleed, but at an extremely high cost compared to ANY other bleed discipline. What it does is protect you in fights. This makes it a combat discipline -- one oriented towards defense, granted, but a combat discipline nevertheless. >I mean, the same argument can be made for Dodge: I've seen lots of effective >use of Dodge with celerity combat with either additional strike cards or cards >that combine both into one function: Dodge-with-an-additional-strike. Does >that make Dodge a card thought as being for the aggressive combat deck? I >don't think so. Most people would identify it as a combat defense card. I haven't specified aggressive combat deck anywhere in anything I've said, and for a very good reason. But like it or not, if you're using the Gargoyles' inherent disciplines, you're focusing on combat in some way, because they've got three-and-a-half (Flight) combat disciplines. If you're going to try to bleed with retainers and Computer Hacking, sure, great, whatever. But I can see four easy-to-create deck styles from them -- guard-and-kill, guard-and-prevent/runaway, intercept-and-kill, intercept-and-prevent/runaway. I can also see some NOT-so-easy to create deck styles such as "Rush", due to their lack of ability to take (D) actions without a Tremere. [ quoted text not captured ]

In message <a3pgua$1aeih5$1...@ID-121616.news.dfncis.de>, "Joshua Duffin" <jtdu...@yahoo.com> mumbled something about: >"Derek Ray" <lor...@yahoo.com> wrote in message >news:h1uv5usb94vfvde18...@4ax.com... >> <napalm: on> > >Funny, this didn't seem *that* flamey to me. :-) well, you've been around and seen worse. :) >> Because I can understand the publisher's side of it too. They have to >> sell a certain percentage of any given print run, or they've lost money >> on the set -- and once a CCG starts losing money, it's dead for good. >> V:TES even being alive today is a miracle. WW -must- make money on >> these sets, because the first set that doesn't make money will kill >> V:TES again, and it will be gone. > >If White Wolf wants to "whine" about how they need to make >money, can't they do it for themselves rather than needing >you to step up for them? :-) (Disclaimer: I don't work for White Wolf, and I don't speak for them.) Anyway. I seriously doubt WW would waste its time pandering to some momos on a newsgroup who insist on complaining. Official attention would give such complaints legitimacy that they don't deserve. >> And frankly, I am sick AND tired of all the FUCKING whining that goes on >> about this game and how people can't get this card, or that card, or >> this card is too rare, or that card isn't rare enough, or this card >> sucks, or whatever, and the spouting about "no rarity, give us all the >> pieces!", ignoring the fact that THIS LOSES MONEY FOR THE COMPANY and >> KILLS THE GAME DEAD. > >No one's saying that. They're really not. There have Um. I've seen an awful lot of that lately, and there very certainly HAVE been people who claimed (Aaron was one, go read his post) that they should be able to "get all the pieces" for a game. >been people (including me, yes) saying that it'd be good >for the game, and maybe even better for the publisher, for >there to be *less* rarity in the cardsets. That doesn't >mean *none*. All this does, though, is take card slots away from the commons that I really want to have 15 of, and the uncommons that I want to have 8 of. >You know, they really don't. We don't *have* the facts. >If there's a trade journal that tells us what the costs >of production and revenues in CCGs look like, I don't >know what it is, and nobody's been citing it. Nor are >the companies that publish them (apparently) very eager >to come out and tell us. The actual numbers don't entirely matter in this case, believe it or not. What matters is the mechanics. A company must produce a set of cards totally out of view of the public, and production must be 100% completed before any are sold. "second print runs" are possible, but unpopular (see Sabbat War). This company must now FIRST sell enough product to make back its original investment in printing the set, or the game will be killed instantly as a money-loser. This company must THEN sell enough product above and beyond that point to make a decent-size profit... specifically, they must be making more money producing the CCG than they would make doing something else (such as washing windshields at stoplights). This is the bit that very few people seem to realize. It's not only if WW makes money - it's if they make enough money to justify the TIME spent. And it's not just this company's warehouse that will be stacked full if they guess wrong -- it's going to be the warehouses of all the dealers out there who bought product from this company. If dealers overbuy from WW and then the product doesn't sell, the shit will hit the fan (see: massive overprint of Jyhad). The dealers will likely also be good and pissed off at the company they overbought from for awhile. This is a big no no. You don't really need the numbers to see that you MUST keep at least a Dustbuster attached to your consumer's wallet, or it collapses on you like... well, like a house of cards. =) >> The number one CCG out there today, Magic, has >> crazy rare chase cards and is the best example of skilled >> wallet-hoovering I've seen in some time. AND PEOPLE STILL FALL ALL OVER >> THEMSELVES TO OPEN THEIR WALLETS. What do you think that REALLY says >> about crazy rare chase cards? > >I don't know that people *do* fall all over themselves to >open their wallets. Is the Magic market, right now, bigger >than it's ever been? I'm doubtful, but I don't have any >statistics, and I don't suppose you do either? Didn't "Meschenka" (sic) just post some drive-by statistics telling us that there are something like 15K auctions for Magic on e-bay, while Jyhad finally got to its first 1000? That, and walking into a gaming shop and seeing kids buying Magic boosters and running a Magic draft with 24 players alongside our demos... and apparently this Magic draft happens every week? That's enough for me. It's just damned obvious. >Regardless, I am *in no way* against crazy rare chase cards. >What I *am* against is crazy rare *power* cards. I don't We surely are all in agreement with you, except where such cards are only of limited utility. For example, Muricia's Call isn't as good as everyone thinks it is. If you used to put 6x Raven Spies and 2x Owl Companions in your deck, and now you put 3x Raven Spies and 1x Owl Companions and 4x Muricia's Call, what do you do when someone shoots your Owl Companion? (Happens a lot here - not always with guns. Theft, Thrown Gate, Taste of Death, Weather Control, take your pick. Lots of ways to do 2R these days.) If you were intending to untap after the recruit, what do you do when you draw the Raven Spies at the top, and the MC at the bottom? Less effective than advertised. Still a DAMNED good card, don't get me wrong, but less effective than people think. Not to mention that only one vampire can play it at superior "out of the box". >mind *at all* if it's good for profits to make foil-stamped >holographic edible versions of rare cards. I do object to >making it a big competitive advantage to spend vast sums of >money on the game. Correct. I do not consider a person who has spent vast sums of money on Bloodlines to have a significant competitive advantage over me, who has spent $100 (i pre-ordered my 2 boxes). Foil cards would be entertaining, actually. I like the wallet-hoovering that it encourages. =) But I don't like that foil cards are almost always distinguishable from "normal" ones. >> Do you really think that ALL Magic players are incapable of saying "Hey, >> what's this giant sucking sound from the hose attached to my wallet?" >> I'm sure this has all been argued and discussed before on the Magic >> boards, ad nauseam. But the bottom line is, it works. > >It may be one thing that works. That doesn't mean it's the >*only* thing that works. I know you're already aware that >there's more than one way to oust a prey. ;-) Other CCGs have tried a flatter rarity scheme. One person has mentioned Doomtown doing so. Doomtown is dead. I do not recommend we go the way of Doomtown. Despite other CCGs having tried a flatter rarity scheme, none of them have even begun to approach Magic's prominence. I know which way I will bet, at this point. CCGs have been around for 7+ years now. Plenty of time for ideas to be tried. >> I am not advocating that WW should go to that extreme. I would much >> prefer that WW make "high-power, limited use" rares, which are still >> worth chasing for that weirdo crazy-ass deck based around it. But >> flattening the rarity just plain doesn't work. > >Maybe making the rarity *totally flat* doesn't work. Making >it *flatter* seemed to work fine for WotC when they printed >Dark Sovereigns. (The existence of lots of DS on the market >for cheap now doesn't mean that WotC didn't make enough money >selling them when it came out.) No, actually, it's an EXCELLENT indicator that WotC didn't make enough money. I'm sure they covered their costs and even made a profit out of it, but a set should NEVER sit on distributors' shelves and in warehouses the way DS does. (Some of this, of course, is because DS had so many sucky cards -- but some of this is because you absolutely do NOT need to buy more than 2 boxes of DS to get all the stuff you'll ever need. This is exactly the rarity model that FAILS.) Sabbat, on the other hand, has sold out almost everywhere. It had a pretty wallet-unfriendly rarity scheme. But it's gone. It was a howling success. I want sets to fall somewhere between the Sabbat set and Dark Sovereigns. >> Fun costs money. It really is that simple. I am not going to go into >> the details over and over again. > >Fun is available both with and without monetary costs. >The more expensive sources of fun don't always make >more money for their purveyors. If fun is more expensive, it's because it costs more to create and provide the fun, or because there is a limited supply of fun and the fun is in high demand (hookers!). >The correct terminology for *anything* in VTES is really >"it would be nice if", of course. It *is* only a game. And some people need to get that through their thick little skulls. I volunteer to provide the lead pipe and the arm muscles. >But that's no reason that we shouldn't try to convince >WW to do things nicely. :-) I think everyone in this >thread has recognized that WW needs to make money at this, I do not think so, myself. I also think that some of the chief offenders haven't contributed to this particular thread yet, and have done much of their whining in other threads. >and I think we're all fine with that. We'd just like them >to, within those bounds, assign rarities such that more >players could have more fun with the game. I think they've already done that. >> The >> set was what, something like 180 different cards? With a fixed number >> of cards per booster (11) and boosters per box, exactly what rarity >> scheme would you suggest that doesn't leave SOMEONE out in the cold? If >> you make them all common/uncommon, you STILL have to buy a ton of cards >> to have a ton of cards. > >Duh. But you don't have to buy ten tons of cards to have >one ton of the cards you're looking for. :-) Nope. I only bought two boxes. I may buy a third, just because I'd like to have more of ALL the cards. That, to me, doesn't indicate a problem with rarity at all, it indicates that the set was freakin' huge. >With 396 cards per box, you could (totally flat rarity) >average 2.2 sets per box. Two boxes would then get you >something over four of each card on average. See, here's the other problem -- what you give to the rares you have to take from somewhere. With a 180-card set and a 400-card box, there's just no room to play around. You gotta draw the line somewhere. >At a distribution of, say, 50 R2, 50 U2, 60 C1, 20 C2, >7 commons, 3 uncommons, 1 rare per booster... you'd get, >on average, 1.44 sets of rares, 4.32 sets of uncommons, >5.04 sets of C1s, 10.08 sets of C2s in two boxes. I Um, I don't know if you realize this or not, but that's almost exactly what I got in my two boxes. About 10 of each C2, 5 of the U2, 2-3 of the U1, 5 of the C1, and 1-2 of each rare. =) And I got a basically "even" distribution. >think that would've been a more palatable distribution >to a lot of people who were unhappy with the way BL >actually came out, and I think it still would've resulted >in WW selling plenty of cards. That appears to be the way they DID distribute it. >I don't object to the "spend $100+ on cards every set" >aspect of CCGs. I just don't want it to get too out- >of-hand, and I want it to be friendly to new players. >I don't want it to become "spend $300+ on cards every >set." I don't see that happening. I only spent $100. I may spend another $60. There is absolutely no need for me to spend $300. >> Yes, there is. Fucking Magic, for godsake. I wish some of y'all would >> open your damned eyes and smell the coffee. As much as I hate Magic as >> a concept, hate the players as a bunch of twinks, and hate the >> wallet-hoovering as something I won't ever go near, the sad, sad, SAD >> fact is: IT WORKS, AND NOTHING ELSE HAS EVER WORKED AS WELL. > >Dude, that's not clear evidence. That's one particular >case. No other CCG has made as much money or had as >many players, I'll agree. But there's no way to know that >this is evidence that their rarity and set design scheme >is the best one. It could all be just because they were >there first, for all we can tell. Other CCGs have had 7 years to come up with a different scheme. I believe a number of different schemes HAVE been tried. One stands alone. >> Am I REALLY going to have to buy a box of Jyhad and post my results just >> to do the comparison? > >Would you really do that? Man, that's dedication to >a cause. :-) Who are you kidding? That's "Freak Drive/ToGP scrounging" at its finest. I just now have a philanthropic excuse. ;) >You're right, Jyhad was pretty rare-heavy too. In fact >all the VTES sets have been fairly rare-heavy. All >I was saying there was, WW doesn't seem to be in *any* >danger of approaching the "perfectly flat rarity and >suddenly we don't make any money" point. (shrug) I don't see anyone complaining about the rarity model in Jyhad, except for some obvious mistakes such as Freak Drive. But then again... are they mistakes, considering the set is still selling 7 years after its original print run? Hmmmmm.... >Why is it more feasible for non-CCG games to go back for >extra print runs than for CCGs? I'm aware that it's >cheaper to just do one really big CCG print run than to >do multiple smaller ones, but surely that's the case for >other games as well. And I know CCGs *have* done multiple >print runs, when demand warranted it. (Sabbat War, for >instance.) There isn't a rarity issue with books or board games. You DO get all the pieces. =) As far as Sabbat War, I KNOW you remember the howling that ensued when the first print run sold out instantaneously and people couldn't get cards, right? >I think what he's saying is that other people who *aren't* >already insane enough to buy six boxes would be more >likely to get into the game and buy *some* cards if the >rarity seemed more player-friendly. I think everyone is overdue for some perspective on this. =) I'll go grab an eyeful of Jyhad/V:TES booster prices, I think... maybe I can produce some good numbers. [ quoted text not captured ]

lor...@yahoo.com writes: >Anyway. I seriously doubt WW would waste its time pandering to some >momos on a newsgroup who insist on complaining. Official attention >would give such complaints legitimacy that they don't deserve. I dunno. This is a pretty important newsgroup. No rgtcj, probably no V:EKN, probably no current Vampire. >All this does, though, is take card slots away from the commons that I >really want to have 15 of, and the uncommons that I want to have 8 of. You want 15 of every common in Bloodlines? Or even half? Woah, surprising. >And it's not just this company's warehouse that will be stacked full if >they guess wrong -- it's going to be the warehouses of all the dealers >out there who bought product from this company. If dealers overbuy from >WW and then the product doesn't sell, the shit will hit the fan (see: >massive overprint of Jyhad). The dealers will likely also be good and >pissed off at the company they overbought from for awhile. This is a >big no no. Right, and power rares chase people off. Magic has somehow escaped that, but it's the exception. Print power rares, people stop playing your game, and eventually you will get a major bomb set. >Despite other CCGs having tried a flatter rarity scheme, none of them >have even begun to approach Magic's prominence. I know which way I will >bet, at this point. CCGs have been around for 7+ years now. Plenty of >time for ideas to be tried. Magic has printed flattened-rare expansions and they seem to do just fine. >a set should NEVER sit on distributors' shelves and in >warehouses the way DS does. (Some of this, of course, is because DS had >so many sucky cards -- but some of this is because you absolutely do NOT >need to buy more than 2 boxes of DS to get all the stuff you'll ever >need. This is exactly the rarity model that FAILS.) >Sabbat, on the other hand, has sold out almost everywhere. It had a >pretty wallet-unfriendly rarity scheme. But it's gone. It was a >howling success. I want sets to fall somewhere between the Sabbat set >and Dark Sovereigns. The reason for that is that DS had a larger print run with many fewer cards. And Sabbat cards were pretty cheap for a while anyway. >Nope. I only bought two boxes. I may buy a third, just because I'd >like to have more of ALL the cards. That, to me, doesn't indicate a >problem with rarity at all, it indicates that the set was freakin' huge. Or that the game is a lot of fun and permits a lot of different decks. Over the long term, I find it very depressing to look at boxes of cards I never use. I *think* of cool decks all the time - but tend to lack crux cards to build them. I just get more interested in games where looking at cards makes me think of things I can do with them rather than realize how useless they are. >I don't see anyone complaining about the rarity model in Jyhad, >except for some obvious mistakes such as Freak Drive. But then again... >are they mistakes, considering the set is still selling 7 years after >its original print run? Definitely. We buy Jyhad because of all the cool things you do with common cards. The great rares have always left a bad taste in my mouth. Especially Freak Drive. Curt Adams (curt...@aol.com) "It is better to be wrong than to be vague" - Freeman Dyson

In message <36416ug4c2arghqak...@4ax.com>, Derek Ray <lor...@yahoo.com> writes: >Anyway. I seriously doubt WW would waste its time pandering to some >momos on a newsgroup who insist on complaining. Official attention >would give such complaints legitimacy that they don't deserve. One assumes, however, that legitimate player grievances are channelled via LSJ when such things as randomisation, rarity, printing and distribution are discussed at those levels. -- James Coupe but I lust after the raw pow0r of c. PGP 0x5D623D5D together with the humping great EBD690ECD7A1FB457CA2 elephant arse of gnome. 13D7E668C3695D623D5D - Vashti

In message <20020205223208...@mb-cg.aol.com>, CurtAdams <curt...@aol.com> writes: >Right, and power rares chase people off. Magic has somehow escaped >that, but it's the exception. Print power rares, people stop playing >your game, and eventually you will get a major bomb set. Critical mass of people, most likely. You have enough people, they'll make up their own industry regarding such things regardless - people, for instance, who make money (and sometimes pretty damn close to a living) going along to auctions and buying cards cheap and then reselling them. (We've all seen it done at GenCon et al, I'm sure.) Once you get up to something along those sort of levels, you have enough people that - in part - it doesn't matter what you do, there are sufficient people who'll buy some to carry you through. [ quoted text not captured ]

"Derek Ray" <lor...@yahoo.com> wrote: > >He's not saying that WW should give away the cards for > >free. He's just saying that as a *game* it would be > >better for more people to be able to get all the pieces > >they want. What's all this "spoiled brat" junk? How > >is it unreasonable to want to be able to explore all > >the different possibilities of a game you like playing? > > Fun costs money. It really is that simple. I am not going to go into > the details over and over again. Over and over again? What ever man. Sure fun costs money, but when I go to spend $300 for fun, I think there are a few things I can expect. For a 200 set(I just bought 2376 cards remember) that I can get at least a few of each. Guess what, that didn't happen. Not even close actually. I didn't even manage to get 1 full set from 6 boxes. On a huge set like sabbat war/jyhad I could expect less of each card by title. But when its just an expansion of 200 cards? Whats that point of making so many rares? I cannot see your "because you can't have everything you want" justifing that of my 2376 cards that 1512 are the same 50 over and over which only 216 are comprised of 70 different cards. Are those rare cards really that less useful that they should make up only 9% of my 2376 cards? I can only expect 3 of each card(less because of the R1/R2 difference) If there had only been 50 rares, hence a flatter rarity scheme(what I'm "whining" about) I could have expeced 4 or more of each card by title. I can't see me getting 1-2 more of gift of belona as the game killer you make it out to be. It would just make things easier to play/collect/trade. Keeping rares to a moderate level and making all 'rares' the same rarity...I can't see how you think that will cause VTES to go belly up? -- Aaron The Nosferatu Stuff

James Coupe wrote: > > In message <20020205223208...@mb-cg.aol.com>, CurtAdams > <curt...@aol.com> writes: > >Right, and power rares chase people off. Magic has somehow escaped > >that, but it's the exception. Print power rares, people stop playing > >your game, and eventually you will get a major bomb set. > > Critical mass of people, most likely. You have enough people, they'll > make up their own industry regarding such things regardless - people, > for instance, who make money (and sometimes pretty damn close to a > living) going along to auctions and buying cards cheap and then > reselling them. (We've all seen it done at GenCon et al, I'm sure.) > > Once you get up to something along those sort of levels, you have enough > people that - in part - it doesn't matter what you do, there are > sufficient people who'll buy some to carry you through. I don't think "critical mass" is the answer to the problem he's talking about. It's true that there are other factors besides that might attract people while the power rares are driving them off simultaneously, for instance a popular backstory or a good game system. And the number of other players already in the game has an important effect - but nothing that can't be undone for other reasons. As far as the secondary market goes, it's not an answer to the issue of power rares. It doesn't manufacture cards out of thin air. It just makes it more convenient to get them to the people willing to pay the money. Fred

Derek Ray wrote: > In message <3C603E6C...@aon.at>, > Thomas Pichler <tom.p...@aon.at> mumbled something about: > > >Scenario 2: > >A spends X$ on set 1 and finds that almost every novel deck idea the set gives > >him demands tons of rares, because pot/for beatdown isn't really novel [there's > > This isn't factual, though. Sorry. Goodbye. Sit. Stay. > What isn't factual? That set 1 gives player A tons of novel deck ideas? [Pretty dense player A.] That lots of them require multiples of new (and/or old) rares? [Must be a player A that's not Mr. Suitcase and didn't even see enough of them to see the obvious combos.] That pot/for could be done before? [Player A only started the game and didn't see some of the old Gangrel, who, between ani and pro, can mimic almost any non-rare vis or flight card.] > You have deluded yourself into believing that the only thing the > Gargoyles can do is POT/FOR combat. It's not. What you are actually > saying here is "all I can think of besides these deck ideas that require > 10x rares is to make them do POT/FOR Rush combat." > What I'm saying is is "without using their rares Gargoyles don't do much of anything new", because, well, ani/pro/pot/for is a four discipline spread like vis/flight/pot/pro, and (without rares), one can almost perfectly mimic the other. > >been vampires for this since Jyhad] and technically that's all gargoyles do > >without tons of rares, pre/for political "if you have intercept I can't hurt your > > Not true, but I doubt you've tried -- Of course I haven't tried pre/for political without rare and hard to find cards - have you? If not, why not, and what did DoC commons actually change beyond Tzimisce X having to use superior instead of inferior enhanced senses? > > >pool so lets hope I don't run out of SCE and damage prevention" is an old hat and > > Like VIS and Flight don't have any stealth cards? > You should really learn to read what you're replying to. After you've done that, you can probably tell me yourself why this is largely irrelevant to DoC. > >Now, which scenario sounds more like VTES between Bloodlines and the new > >Camarilla set? > > Scenario 1. For VTES's sake I hope you're actually right. > Unless he's stupid enough to listen to people like you, who > spend all their time whining and not enough of their time thinking. > You mean it's better if he's stupid enough to listen to people even less tolerant of differing opinions than I am? I doubt that, irrespective of which opinion might be closer to the truth about the game. Thomas

Thomas Pichler <tom.p...@aon.at> wrote in message news:<3C618A6E...@aon.at>... > What I'm saying is is "without using their rares Gargoyles don't do much of > anything new", *coughSlaveMechaniccough*

"Derek Ray" <lor...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:36416ug4c2arghqak...@4ax.com... > In message <a3pgua$1aeih5$1...@ID-121616.news.dfncis.de>, > "Joshua Duffin" <jtdu...@yahoo.com> mumbled something about: > > >Funny, this didn't seem *that* flamey to me. :-) > > well, you've been around and seen worse. :) True enough. > Anyway. I seriously doubt WW would waste its time pandering to some > momos on a newsgroup who insist on complaining. Official attention > would give such complaints legitimacy that they don't deserve. Eh, I dunno. Customers with something to say are usually worth listening to, even if you decide that they're actually full of it after you listen to them. [re no rarity just give us the pieces] > Um. I've seen an awful lot of that lately, and there very certainly > HAVE been people who claimed (Aaron was one, go read his post) that they > should be able to "get all the pieces" for a game. I don't remember Aaron ever saying that. Maybe other people did, but I don't remember that either. If you can point to a specific article I'll believe it? :-) Aaron did say that he wasn't suggesting totally flat rarity but just flatter rarity, but that's sort of the opposite of this. > >been people (including me, yes) saying that it'd be good > >for the game, and maybe even better for the publisher, for > >there to be *less* rarity in the cardsets. That doesn't > >mean *none*. > > All this does, though, is take card slots away from the commons that I > really want to have 15 of, and the uncommons that I want to have 8 of. If you want 15 of the commons and 8 of the commons, you can just buy more cards, can't you? If the rares are in any way useful, how is it bad to have a more-usable quantity of them? I mean sure, it's *possible* to make the rare/uncommon/common decisions based solely on how many copies people will want to play with, but that's certainly not the way VTES sets have always been designed. ;-) [snip] > You don't really need the numbers to see that you MUST keep at least a > Dustbuster attached to your consumer's wallet, or it collapses on you > like... well, like a house of cards. =) Granted, and obvious. But what we're really debating here is the required magnitude of the vacuum, and that's not knowable to us without actual figures. We may "know" that totally flat rarity wouldn't get enough sales, but we don't know *how much* rarity is necessary. We can guess that it's probably not as much (six levels) as there was in Bloodlines, and probably more than one level. [magic's vast moneymaking engine] > Didn't "Meschenka" (sic) just post some drive-by statistics telling us > that there are something like 15K auctions for Magic on e-bay, while > Jyhad finally got to its first 1000? > > That, and walking into a gaming shop and seeing kids buying Magic > boosters and running a Magic draft with 24 players alongside our > demos... and apparently this Magic draft happens every week? That's > enough for me. It's just damned obvious. It is obvious that Magic is still the biggest CCG. It's certainly not obvious (to me) that it's the biggest right now, with all the super-chase-card tricks, that it's ever been. Magic's had lots of well-attended tournaments for years; I don't know how the attendance figures track over the last several years, but it's not obvious to me that they're on a continuous upward trend. > >Regardless, I am *in no way* against crazy rare chase cards. > >What I *am* against is crazy rare *power* cards. I don't > > We surely are all in agreement with you, except where such cards are > only of limited utility. Sure. This argument is (for me) really much less about Bloodlines cards than it is about older rares that (IMO) should never have been rare (based on their utility). The Freak Drives and Disarms and Behind Yous of the world. [snip example of BL rare that's not *that* amazing] > Correct. I do not consider a person who has spent vast sums of money on > Bloodlines to have a significant competitive advantage over me, who has > spent $100 (i pre-ordered my 2 boxes). Probably true, in that nothing in Bloodlines looks at first glance extremely powerful. OTOH it may turn out that some of the rares *are*, and we just don't know yet because nobody's collected enough of them to prove it with tourney-winning decks. I do think someone who's spent vast sums on older sets and now has lots of Freak Drives and Disarms is substantially more able to make competitive Fortitude- and Potence-using decks than someone without. > Foil cards would be entertaining, actually. I like the wallet-hoovering > that it encourages. =) But I don't like that foil cards are almost > always distinguishable from "normal" ones. Yeah, if that's true (I wouldn't really know) it's probably a bad thing. Though we have enough ways of distinguishing cards already in this game, maybe one more wouldn't hurt. :-) > Other CCGs have tried a flatter rarity scheme. One person has mentioned > Doomtown doing so. Doomtown is dead. I do not recommend we go the way > of Doomtown. We don't know *why* they failed. There are vast hordes of dead CCGs and only a few living ones (I think, without doing any substantial amount of research). Only a few of them ever tried "flat" rarity; both Magic and VTES, which are still living, have had sets with "flatter" rarity and survived it. (Arabian Nights had no rares IIRC, as well as Homelands (widely reviled for having sucky cards but that's a separate issue); on the VTES side there's the obvious Dark Sovereigns.) > Despite other CCGs having tried a flatter rarity scheme, none of them > have even begun to approach Magic's prominence. I know which way I will > bet, at this point. CCGs have been around for 7+ years now. Plenty of > time for ideas to be tried. Yeah, and automobiles have been around for 80+ years. Obviously all the good ideas have already been tried and we don't need to look for any more. :-) > No, actually, it's an EXCELLENT indicator that WotC didn't make enough > money. I'm sure they covered their costs and even made a profit out of > it, but a set should NEVER sit on distributors' shelves and in > warehouses the way DS does. (Some of this, of course, is because DS had > so many sucky cards -- but some of this is because you absolutely do NOT > need to buy more than 2 boxes of DS to get all the stuff you'll ever > need. This is exactly the rarity model that FAILS.) You only don't need to buy more than two boxes of DS because it doesn't have enough cards useful enough in multiples to encourage you to buy more. If the cards were better, people would want more of them. I think those two pieces are pretty inextricably linked... > Sabbat, on the other hand, has sold out almost everywhere. It had a > pretty wallet-unfriendly rarity scheme. But it's gone. It was a > howling success. I want sets to fall somewhere between the Sabbat set > and Dark Sovereigns. Sabbat sat on distributors' shelves for quite a while too. It was available fairly cheap for, as I remember, *years* after its release date. It's expensive *now* but that hardly points to its rarity model being more "successful" than DS's - they had different cards in them, different print run sizes, and different set sizes. > >Fun is available both with and without monetary costs. > >The more expensive sources of fun don't always make > >more money for their purveyors. > > If fun is more expensive, it's because it costs more to create and > provide the fun, or because there is a limited supply of fun and the fun > is in high demand (hookers!). Um, I know this. But does Coca-Cola make more money or less than Chateau Lafite? And does it cost more to drink a bottle of Coke or a bottle of Lafite? > >The correct terminology for *anything* in VTES is really > >"it would be nice if", of course. It *is* only a game. > > And some people need to get that through their thick little skulls. I > volunteer to provide the lead pipe and the arm muscles. Always an ambassador of goodwill for this game, you are. ;-) > I do not think so, myself. I also think that some of the chief > offenders haven't contributed to this particular thread yet, and have > done much of their whining in other threads. OK, well, if they *don't* recognize that WW needs to make money, they're just ignoring the facts and their desires can be ignored too. But everyone reasonable here is well aware that WW needs to make money. :-) > >and I think we're all fine with that. We'd just like them > >to, within those bounds, assign rarities such that more > >players could have more fun with the game. > > I think they've already done that. How would it not be more fun to get 2-3 Gift of Bellonas in a box of Bloodlines than 0.36 Gifts in a box? I mean really, it's more fun for it to be relatively easy to get multiples of cards that are useful in multiples than for it to be relatively impossible. :-) > Nope. I only bought two boxes. I may buy a third, just because I'd > like to have more of ALL the cards. That, to me, doesn't indicate a > problem with rarity at all, it indicates that the set was freakin' huge. 180 cards isn't freaking huge in the CCG world, though... VTES was around 400, right? The only thing that made it easier to collect was that (a) there were 19 cards per booster (instead of 11, which is a pretty big effect) and (b) the most-rare cards were about 25% of the set rather than about 40% of the set. IOW, for a truly large set at Bloodlines-type rarity, you'd need a *lot* of boxes to get the cards you'd want. Like 4-6+, or even more than that if you wanted multiples of various rares. > >At a distribution of, say, 50 R2, 50 U2, 60 C1, 20 C2, > >7 commons, 3 uncommons, 1 rare per booster... you'd get, > >on average, 1.44 sets of rares, 4.32 sets of uncommons, > >5.04 sets of C1s, 10.08 sets of C2s in two boxes. I > > Um, I don't know if you realize this or not, but that's almost exactly > what I got in my two boxes. About 10 of each C2, 5 of the U2, 2-3 of > the U1, 5 of the C1, and 1-2 of each rare. =) And I got a basically > "even" distribution. You can't have gotten 1-2 of each rare. There were 70 rares in the set and you got 72 rares. If you got a perfectly even distribution you'd have one of each and then two extras. That even a distribution is *highly* unlikely. Likewise at lower rarity levels. With 50 R2s, perfect evenness would have gotten you a full set plus 26 dupes - quite a few more extras to trade for the others you might want multiples of. Also, my "proposed" distribution *isn't* that far off of what BL's rarity setup was actually like. It's just modified a little to having fewer rarity levels and pushing more cards to lower rarities so as to make the set easier to collect and trade, especially at the highest rarity level. (no "your R1 is worth two of my R2s" problem.) > I don't see that happening. I only spent $100. I may spend another > $60. There is absolutely no need for me to spend $300. You'd have to on the Camarilla set, if it were all-new and three times as large as Bloodlines... > >> Am I REALLY going to have to buy a box of Jyhad and post my results just > >> to do the comparison? > > > >Would you really do that? Man, that's dedication to > >a cause. :-) > > Who are you kidding? That's "Freak Drive/ToGP scrounging" at its > finest. I just now have a philanthropic excuse. ;) Heh, heh. You don't have to do it for me. But feel free to do it for yourself if you want. :-) > (shrug) I don't see anyone complaining about the rarity model in Jyhad, > except for some obvious mistakes such as Freak Drive. But then again... > are they mistakes, considering the set is still selling 7 years after > its original print run? Well, they're mistakes in a "rarity assignments based on play value" model. If that's not really the model they're using, they've chosen to give monied players a larger advantage than they'd otherwise have. Which is, IMO, a mistake in terms of how attractive the game becomes to new players. Josh i'd sell off my savior for a set of new rings and some sandals

"Derek Ray" <lor...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:ld316u8c7u958c5dp...@4ax.com... > > >been vampires for this since Jyhad] and technically that's all gargoyles do > >without tons of rares, pre/for political "if you have intercept I can't hurt your > > Not true, but I doubt you've tried -- I bet you've been spending all > your energy on whines like this one. > I'm sure you're relying on your history as an unreasonable ass to carry you through on this one, but I'm sorry to say that you just sound like a little Halcyan2 follower here. "Everybody's whining. Why won't you stop whining? You're all a bunch of whiners. Whine, whine, whine. Stop whining." I was hoping just the first couple of posts from you and he on this topic were going to be of the "I'm right and you're all dumb, so there!" nature. Any chance of it ending anytime soon, or shall we expect more of the same?

In message <eul88.2983$Pz4.20882@rwcrnsc53>, "Chris Berger" <ark...@ugcs.caltech.edu> mumbled something about: >I'm sure you're relying on your history as an unreasonable ass to carry you And are you relying on your history as a pompous prick to somehow make me dash myself across the forehead and say "My god! I didn't realize I was being so vicious! Please forgive me"...? >through on this one, but I'm sorry to say that you just sound like a little >Halcyan2 follower here. "Everybody's whining. Why won't you stop whining? >You're all a bunch of whiners. Whine, whine, whine. Stop whining." When he quits whining, I'll quit calling him on it. The statement "technically that's all gargoyles do without tons of rares" (referring to POT/FOR combat) is so absolutely and completely wrong on the face of it (as someone else posted in this thread, "Slave Mechanic" are the only words you need to know) that it immediately leads to the conclusion that he's been spending all his time pissing, moaning, and bitching and hasn't actually spent any time thinking about what can be done with the Gargoyles. Is there something else I should draw from his statement? Is there any actual point you have here, or was this post simply flag-waving on the part of the "Derek Is A Meanie" crusade? If so, your presence is noted: thank you for making an appearance. I was beginning to feel like I was losing my touch. >I was hoping just the first couple of posts from you and he on this topic >were going to be of the "I'm right and you're all dumb, so there!" nature. >Any chance of it ending anytime soon, or shall we expect more of the same? If it bothers you that much, you know where your kill-file is, and you know how to use it. [ quoted text not captured ]

"Derek Ray" <lor...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:oat36ugaavuanfl91...@4ax.com... > In message <eul88.2983$Pz4.20882@rwcrnsc53>, > "Chris Berger" <ark...@ugcs.caltech.edu> mumbled something about: > > >through on this one, but I'm sorry to say that you just sound like a little > >Halcyan2 follower here. "Everybody's whining. Why won't you stop whining? > >You're all a bunch of whiners. Whine, whine, whine. Stop whining." > > When he quits whining, I'll quit calling him on it. > Any estimated time on when you'll quit whining *about* the whining? Just wondering. > The statement "technically that's all gargoyles do without tons of > rares" (referring to POT/FOR combat) is so absolutely and completely > wrong on the face of it (as someone else posted in this thread, "Slave > Mechanic" are the only words you need to know) that it immediately leads > to the conclusion that he's been spending all his time pissing, moaning, > and bitching and hasn't actually spent any time thinking about what can > be done with the Gargoyles. > > Is there something else I should draw from his statement? > The Gargoyles suck. You ignoring this fact doesn't make it not so. > >I was hoping just the first couple of posts from you and he on this topic > >were going to be of the "I'm right and you're all dumb, so there!" nature. > >Any chance of it ending anytime soon, or shall we expect more of the same? > > If it bothers you that much, you know where your kill-file is, and you > know how to use it. > True, but then I wouldn't have the pleasure of responding to you.

Frederick Scott <freds64_at_...@removethis.com> wrote in message news:3C60865B...@removethis.com... > berni...@attbi.comHOLDLeSPAM wrote: > On the other hand, the issue of whether it's a good idea to downgrade rarity at > all isn't very interesting. About all I find that goes on is people having > some kind of burr up their butt about making it too easy for the newbies to > get the good cards. (whirls finger). Whup, whup! Why should anyone care? > I guess if printing an uncommon Disarm is likely to drive White Wolf out of > business, then they shouldn't do it. But I don't think it's going to. > About Disarm specifically, I'd rather not see it in a booster because it is a rare in Sabbat War boosters. I feel that the most appropriate place for it would be fixed in starters. Again, I'd like it if there was no overlap between Sabbat War and Cam boosters. I sure hope that Freak Drive is reprinted though. And Embraces. That way I'd be able to play some of the [cheesey, in a good way] decks that YOU play, Fred;) Cheers, Jason > Fred

The Nosferatu Stuff <roans...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:a3ra9h$1a6p48$1...@ID-125246.news.dfncis.de... snip > Over and over again? What ever man. Sure fun costs money, but when I go to > spend $300 for fun, I think there are a few things I can expect. For a 200 > set(I just bought 2376 cards remember) that I can get at least a few of > each. Guess what, that didn't happen. Not even close actually. I didn't > even manage to get 1 full set from 6 boxes. On a huge set like sabbat > war/jyhad I could expect less of each card by title. But when its just an > expansion of 200 cards? Whats that point of making so many rares? I cannot > see your "because you can't have everything you want" justifing that of my > 2376 cards that 1512 are the same 50 over and over which only 216 are > comprised of 70 different cards. Are those rare cards really that less > useful that they should make up only 9% of my 2376 cards? I can only expect > 3 of each card(less because of the R1/R2 difference) > Aaron, It would be useful if you broke down your boxes into an analysis of what you got out of them (e.g.10 R1 3 copies, 20 R1 2 copies, 5 R1 1 copies), so we can figure out where the problem lies. Cheers, Jason > Aaron > The Nosferatu Stuff > >

Jason Liang wrote: > > Frederick Scott <freds64_at_...@removethis.com> wrote in message > news:3C60865B...@removethis.com... > > berni...@attbi.comHOLDLeSPAM wrote: > > > On the other hand, the issue of whether it's a good idea to downgrade > > rarity at all isn't very interesting. About all I find that goes on is > > people having some kind of burr up their butt about making it too easy > > for the newbies to get the good cards. (whirls finger). Whup, whup! > > Why should anyone care? I guess if printing an uncommon Disarm is > > likely to drive White Wolf out of business, then they shouldn't do it. > > But I don't think it's going to. > > About Disarm specifically, I'd rather not see it in a booster because it is > a rare in Sabbat War boosters. ...as well as being a rare in The Sabbat boosters, yes. > I feel that the most appropriate place for it would be fixed in starters. I don't understand the reason for this. If you're trying to draw an analogy between the policy for Final Nights and what they're likely to do for the new Camarilla set, I think a lot of people - myself, included - are expecting a large number of reprints and relatively few new cards. In short, this should look a lot more like the relationship between Sabbat War and The Sabbat than between Final Nights and Dark Soveriegns/Ancient Hearts. If so, it would be problematic to attempt to confine reprints to starter decks. Even in Final Nights, the whole scheme basically got wrecked when someone at White Wolf succumbed to the temptation to print a couple new vampires *ONLY* in each of the starter decks. (GRRRRR!!!!!) That meant that the starter decks that we older players weren't SUPPOSED to have to buy at all suddenly had something that we couldn't find elsewhere. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!! I REALLY hated that! By corrupting the otherwise well-laid out scheme this way, the end result was in one sense far worse than if they hadn't bothered to even try. As it is, to get those two vampires in each clan, we have to buy starter decks that are other mostly useless in terms of getting us new cards. The only compensation was that at least there was some decent reprinted stuff in the starters. But still - GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!! (I know this is kind of side issue. But I had to vent about this. I hadn't really managed to get it off my chest before.) > Again, I'd like it if there was no overlap between Sabbat War and Cam > boosters. Such a policy would be absolutely unprecedented - and, I think, uncalled for. Sabbat War and The Sabbat contained a significant amount of overlap with the earlier Camarilla editions in terms of non-discipline and discipline- related library cards where the disciplines overlap. (And clearly, Potence is a discipline found in both Camarilla and Sabbat Clans.) An obvious example is the Immortal Grapple card reprint that's already been discussed. So why would you suddenly want to enforce a new rule that didn't exist before? I don't think it's a very good rule because it would preclude a highly useful reprint such as Disarm. > That way I'd be able to play some of the [cheesey, in a good way] decks that > YOU play, Fred;) Exactly. The more sinister newbies who can get these things, the more...er... fun we can all have! :) Fred

Chris Berger wrote: > The Gargoyles suck. You ignoring this fact doesn't make it not so. > That I wouldn't say. I see some quite interesting options for Gargoyles using larger number of new and old rares, but I'm not convinced of their originality or usefulness without. [Slave mechanics, as a side note, is indeed new. Of course, whether it can be used to build competetive decks unless focusing on (!)Tremere with particular disciplines is another matter, and I can safely say I've never seen a deck trying to make good (ab)use of for Tremere without, uh, lots of rares.] Thomas

In message <3C6225ED...@removethis.com>, Frederick Scott <freds64_at_...@removethis.com> writes: >Even in Final Nights, the whole scheme basically got wrecked when someone at >White Wolf succumbed to the temptation to print a couple new vampires *ONLY* >in each of the starter decks. (GRRRRR!!!!!) That meant that the starter >decks that we older players weren't SUPPOSED to have to buy at all suddenly >had something that we couldn't find elsewhere. Well, except from buying singles, trading, borrowing and so forth. [ quoted text not captured ]

Jason Liang wrote: > About Disarm specifically, I'd rather not see it in a booster because it is > a rare in Sabbat War boosters. I feel that the most appropriate place for it > would be fixed in starters. > Actually, I think that starter-only reprints of power rares are not really a good idea - it'd lead to old players buying lots of starters [or, worse still, lots of a particular starter], which wouldn't be all that helpful to getting new players into the game [who'd wind up getting one of that power rare when they buy their first starter and then find that starter sold out before they could get another, an actual change for the *worse* from the current " situation. Having them starter-fixed and in the boosters would probably be best: vets can just go for the boosters (which they want because of new cards anyway), new players have improved chances of actually getting multiples. > Again, I'd like it if there was no overlap between Sabbat War and Cam > boosters. I sure hope that Freak Drive is reprinted though. And Embraces. > I assume there won't be any overlap in rares; overlap in (un)commons is probably unavoidable, because new players should be able to pick up Blurs, Enhanced Senses, Master: Disciplines and the like [and I think they should be able to have reasonably good chances of getting multiple IGs, Forgotten Labyrinths, etc., too]. Thomas

Thomas Pichler wrote: > disciplines is another matter, and I can safely say I've never seen a deck > trying to make good (ab)use of for Tremere without, uh, lots of rares.] > > Thomas > > I have, but then effective block-deny/bleed in this case was dominate-based, so the player in question 'changed' decks from time to time merely by substituting his crypt for some other clan with several vampires with DOM. *growl* Sten During

"Thomas Pichler" <tom.p...@aon.at> wrote in message news:3C6249F2...@aon.at... > Jason Liang wrote: > > > About Disarm specifically, I'd rather not see it in a booster because it is > > a rare in Sabbat War boosters. I feel that the most appropriate place for it > > would be fixed in starters. > > > > Actually, I think that starter-only reprints of power rares are not really a > good idea - it'd lead to old players buying lots of starters [or, worse still, > lots of a particular starter], which wouldn't be all that helpful to getting new > players into the game [who'd wind up getting one of that power rare when they > buy their first starter and then find that starter sold out before they could > get another, an actual change for the *worse* from the current " situation. > Having them starter-fixed and in the boosters would probably be best: vets can > just go for the boosters (which they want because of new cards anyway), new > players have improved chances of actually getting multiples. Why not just have all the new cards in the starters. So old players that have all the disarms they need...don't need to buy a ton of boosters to get more of them. Just get a few starters and we have all the new cards! [ quoted text not captured ]

"Jason Liang" <jli...@uclink4.berkeley.edu> wrote in message news:a3t7e8$2m9$1...@agate.berkeley.edu... [ quoted text not captured ] That would be rough, with the set already being out for 3 months...well I have done some extensive trading. For example: 7 Blessing of the name 9 Bond with the Mountain 7 madmans quill 10 Martyrs Resilience 7 Neutral Guard 7 Rewind Times 9 Rock Cats 6 Soul of the Earth The averages should be enough though. With a purchase of 6 boxes giving you 216 rares. There are 70 rares, if they were all the same rarity you should get about 3 of each rare. Since there were actually 40 R1 and 30 R2 . You will probably get 2 of each R1 and 4 of each R2. If the rarity was flatter and less inflated, say there were only 50 rares. Then you have 4 of each rare period. I don't know about you, but I would rather have gotten 4 True Faith and 4 Engling Fury....then 4 True Faith and 2 Engling Fury. Then at least when I am making a 8 engling fury deck I can conceivably trade away my 4 true faiths, since they are both the same rarity.(not talking about card utility here!) Now trading is an up hill battle. You don't want to trade your already lacking R1 cards, but your R2 cards aren't as valuable as trade bait. I certainly don't think this kind of design would go breaking white wolf bankroll. [ quoted text not captured ]

In message <M1n88.3816$Pz4.58899@rwcrnsc53>, "Chris Berger" <ark...@ugcs.caltech.edu> mumbled something about: >> The statement "technically that's all gargoyles do without tons of >> rares" (referring to POT/FOR combat) is so absolutely and completely >> wrong on the face of it (as someone else posted in this thread, "Slave >> Mechanic" are the only words you need to know) that it immediately leads >> to the conclusion that he's been spending all his time pissing, moaning, >> and bitching and hasn't actually spent any time thinking about what can >> be done with the Gargoyles. >> >> Is there something else I should draw from his statement? >> >The Gargoyles suck. You ignoring this fact doesn't make it not so. No evidence. No support. No backup. No facts. Just some noise. And frankly, no skill, and no clue. Who exactly do you regularly play against? The Gargoyles are one of the stronger clans out of Bloodlines. Of course, for someone who still hasn't managed to quit whining about Sleeping Mind, DESPITE the fact that it's long since irrelevant, I expect no less. [ quoted text not captured ]

James Coupe wrote: > > In message <3C6225ED...@removethis.com>, Frederick Scott > <freds64_at_...@removethis.com> writes: > >Even in Final Nights, the whole scheme basically got wrecked when someone at > >White Wolf succumbed to the temptation to print a couple new vampires *ONLY* > >in each of the starter decks. (GRRRRR!!!!!) That meant that the starter > >decks that we older players weren't SUPPOSED to have to buy at all suddenly > >had something that we couldn't find elsewhere. > > Well, except from buying singles, trading, borrowing and so forth. FROM *WHO*, JAMES?!? Everybody wants them. The newer players, for whom these starter decks are intended, need them just as badly as the older players do. This is only a "solution" to the extent that people with more money (and as I always like to point out, trading is simply buying with other forms of capital) to buy better decks from the people with less money who want the money enough to live with a suckier deck. Cut it any way you want - an older player has no need for the other 10 vampires in those decks - it's just deck quality (by means of vampire variety) for money, straight up. This is exactly what the WotCs and the White Wolves of the world claim they DON'T DO with booster pack rarity. Why should they be doing it with starter decks? There are a few opportunities for card trading/singles buying that I'm ignoring here (e.g. a singles dealer buying starter decks to sell in-demand reprints to one faction and the new vampires to the highest paying customers) but they're not very significant.*** Fact is, this is another awkward situation that doesn't lend itself to being solved very well by the secondary market, similar to the small number of R1s in Final Nights. The most annoying thing to me about it is that it probably *wasn't* a deliberate attempt to hold up older players to make them buy starter decks. It was most likely some kind of throw-in that wasn't thought through very well. I think I hate well-meaning gestures that have evil effects due to stupidity a lot more than I hate straight-up greed. Fred - who has to put with traffic snags caused by "nice", well-meaning Arizona driving maneuvers far too often! *** - (Just to check that I'm not whinging about it unnecessarily, I checked Errol's last Final Nights list and Jeff's current posting. Errol isn't selling any of the starter deck vampires at all that I can see. I don't see any evidence right off that he's selling anything from starter decks. Jeff is but seems to have none of the eight vampires in question except for one copy of Hesha, who was a promo if I recall correctly.)

>*** - (Just to check that I'm not whinging about it unnecessarily, I checked >Errol's >last Final Nights list and Jeff's current posting. Errol isn't selling any >of >the starter deck vampires at all that I can see. I don't see any evidence >right >off that he's selling anything from starter decks. Jeff is but seems to have >none of the eight vampires in question except for one copy of Hesha, who was >a >promo if I recall correctly.) Well in general, Errol seems to regularly sell out of the starter-only vampires, which is why he isn't selling them. He had a handful of Amelia's a while back (all the others were quickly sold off). Halcyan 2

"Derek Ray" <lor...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:sa656uom07ho92iqa...@4ax.com... > In message <M1n88.3816$Pz4.58899@rwcrnsc53>, > > >The Gargoyles suck. You ignoring this fact doesn't make it not so. > > No evidence. No support. No backup. No facts. Just some noise. > You have evidence that they don't suck? The Tremere are a joke of a clan. Now we have a clan that can only be used effectively by watering them down with Tremere. Oh, that's a great tactic. > > Who exactly do you regularly play against? The Gargoyles are one of the > stronger clans out of Bloodlines. Of course, for someone who still > hasn't managed to quit whining about Sleeping Mind, DESPITE the fact > that it's long since irrelevant, I expect no less. > What the hell are you talking about??? I never *started* to whine about the Sleeping Mind. I don't even have a problem with the ruling. You really are an idiot.

In message <3C632E2B...@removethis.com>, Frederick Scott <freds64_at_...@removethis.com> writes: >> Well, except from buying singles, trading, borrowing and so forth. > >FROM *WHO*, JAMES?!? From those offering them for sale, for trade, for loan and so forth. > Everybody wants them. For varying values of "everybody". [ quoted text not captured ]

In message <ttG88.10271$AV5.1...@rwcrnsc51.ops.asp.att.net>, Chris Berger <ark...@ugcs.caltech.edu> writes: >You have evidence that they don't suck? > >The Tremere are a joke of a clan. Okay, that's two wild assertions we've had so far. Would you care to actually now try backing up any of your statements, or do you want to wildly gesticulate some more first? [ quoted text not captured ]

"James Coupe" <ja...@zephyr.org.uk> wrote in message news:xy1YX7SK...@gratiano.zephyr.org.uk... > In message <ttG88.10271$AV5.1...@rwcrnsc51.ops.asp.att.net>, Chris > Berger <ark...@ugcs.caltech.edu> writes: > >You have evidence that they don't suck? > > > >The Tremere are a joke of a clan. > > Okay, that's two wild assertions we've had so far. > > Would you care to actually now try backing up any of your statements, or > do you want to wildly gesticulate some more first? > Cf. jokes about Tremere. Search google for Xian, Tremere, tournament, fish. Other examples are numerous, but you can probably search for them yourself.

James Coupe wrote: > > In message <3C6225ED...@removethis.com>, Frederick Scott > <freds64_at_...@removethis.com> writes: > >Even in Final Nights, the whole scheme basically got wrecked when someone at > >White Wolf succumbed to the temptation to print a couple new vampires *ONLY* > >in each of the starter decks. (GRRRRR!!!!!) That meant that the starter > >decks that we older players weren't SUPPOSED to have to buy at all suddenly > >had something that we couldn't find elsewhere. > > Well, except from buying singles, trading, borrowing and so forth. Actually, I've got no problem buying the starters. In general, they tend to be a great source of defensive untap (Wake) and master blood gain (Blood Doll). Those have always my limiting cards. The starters let me use much more of my collection than otherwise practical. I'm guessing my new limit will be power rares - Jyhad is very good that way, but it does have some. I'll see. Curt Adams (curt...@aol.com) "It is better to be wrong than to be vague" - Freeman Dyson

ark...@ugcs.caltech.edu writes: >Search google for Xian, Tremere, tournament, fish. >Other examples are numerous, but you can probably search for them >yourself. I've seen the jokes, and I understand the problem of an intercept combat clan without combat defense. However, there's quite a few Tremere decks in the Lasombra's deck archive. They actually seem rather an average clan. Ravnos and !Tremere are the basket cases. (Why !Tremere and not Tremere? D****d if I know) [ quoted text not captured ]

"CurtAdams" <curt...@aol.com> wrote in message news:20020207223245...@mb-ch.aol.com... > ark...@ugcs.caltech.edu writes: > > >Search google for Xian, Tremere, tournament, fish. > >Other examples are numerous, but you can probably search for them >yourself. > > I've seen the jokes, and I understand the problem of an intercept > combat clan without combat defense. However, there's quite a > few Tremere decks in the Lasombra's deck archive. They actually > seem rather an average clan. Ravnos and !Tremere are the basket > cases. (Why !Tremere and not Tremere? D****d if I know) > According to Derek and various others who like to scream and shout whenever anyone posts anything resembling an opinion, *every* clan is way above average ("X clan is not really very good." "You're so wrong. They're the best clan! Stop WHINING."). The !Tremere can be better than the Tremere, as they have the same basic capabilities, but are better at making trick decks (due to Ian and Infernal Pact). The Ravnos can be extremely annoying, but they're incredibly hard to play. The Tremere, by all indications, are a decidedly below average clan. They and the Gangrel pretty much share the dubious honor of being original clans that, while they can do a hell of a lot of cool stuff (protean is really a great discipline, fortitude is almost on a par with dominate for usefulness, and animalism is quite good as well... all 3 are, unfortunately, more along the lines of utility disciplines), aren't really fearsome opponents.

ark...@ugcs.caltech.edu writes: >The Tremere, by all indications, are a decidedly below average clan. They >and the Gangrel pretty much share the dubious honor of being original clans >that, while they can do a hell of a lot of cool stuff (protean is really a >great discipline, fortitude is almost on a par with dominate for usefulness, >and animalism is quite good as well... all 3 are, unfortunately, more along >the lines of utility disciplines), aren't really fearsome opponents. I dig the theory, but they apparently *do* win tournaments reasonably often. How better to define quality? They're apparently not below average. Against other combat clans they're not good - but they have a lotta bounce and I find it believable they do well in bleedy environments. [ quoted text not captured ]

"Chris Berger" <ark...@ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote in message news:ZaH88.10518$Pz4.87964@rwcrnsc53... > Search google for Xian, Tremere, tournament, fish. Note that I won the second largest (I think?) tournament at GenCon this year with a Tremere deck. Anyway, the Shadow Twin event...got shut out at the NA Championship Qualifiers playing Lasombra Potence Rush the day before. Xian

>I'm sure you're relying on your history as an unreasonable ass to carry you >through on this one, but I'm sorry to say that you just sound like a little >Halcyan2 follower here. "Everybody's whining. Why won't you stop whining? >You're all a bunch of whiners. Whine, whine, whine. Stop whining." > >I was hoping just the first couple of posts from you and he on this topic >were going to be of the "I'm right and you're all dumb, so there!" nature. >Any chance of it ending anytime soon, or shall we expect more of the same? You say that all with so much tact. Halcyan 2

>>I'm sure you're relying on your history as an unreasonable ass to carry you > >And are you relying on your history as a pompous prick to somehow make >me dash myself across the forehead and say "My god! I didn't realize I >was being so vicious! Please forgive me"...? I'll second that. You know, I have no idea how, but it seems like Mr. Berger has suddenly decided to make the arguments in this thread personal... >>through on this one, but I'm sorry to say that you just sound like a little >>Halcyan2 follower here. "Everybody's whining. Why won't you stop whining? >>You're all a bunch of whiners. Whine, whine, whine. Stop whining." > >When he quits whining, I'll quit calling him on it. > >The statement "technically that's all gargoyles do without tons of >rares" (referring to POT/FOR combat) is so absolutely and completely >wrong on the face of it (as someone else posted in this thread, "Slave >Mechanic" are the only words you need to know) that it immediately leads >to the conclusion that he's been spending all his time pissing, moaning, >and bitching and hasn't actually spent any time thinking about what can >be done with the Gargoyles. > >Is there something else I should draw from his statement? Um...actually...that wasn't me? I think that was actually Thomas Pichler: http://groups.google.com/groups?q=technically+that%27s+all+gargoyles+do+wi thout+tons+of+group:rec.games.trading-cards.jyhad+group:rec.games.trading- cards.jyhad&hl=en&selm=3C603E6C.4BE5CBA7%40aon.at&rnum=1 >If it bothers you that much, you know where your kill-file is, and you >know how to use it. I'll second that. I'd rather that you kill-file us as opposed to wasting bandwidth with personal attacks (addressed to Chris, not Derek). Halcyan 2

In message <ZaH88.10518$Pz4.87964@rwcrnsc53>, Chris Berger <ark...@ugcs.caltech.edu> writes: >> Would you care to actually now try backing up any of your statements, or >> do you want to wildly gesticulate some more first? >> >Cf. jokes about Tremere. See under "joke". Now, would you actually care to provide some proof, or are you just going to continue flailing round unhelpfully? If you want to prove that the Gargoyles are crap, you actually need to get off your arse and do something about it. [ quoted text not captured ]

"James Coupe" <ja...@zephyr.org.uk> wrote in message news:lu3dwvbDj9Y8Ew$n...@gratiano.zephyr.org.uk... > In message <ZaH88.10518$Pz4.87964@rwcrnsc53>, Chris Berger > <ark...@ugcs.caltech.edu> writes: > >> Would you care to actually now try backing up any of your statements, or > >> do you want to wildly gesticulate some more first? > >> > >Cf. jokes about Tremere. > > See under "joke". > See my original post.... specifically the word "joke".

In message <DyR88.14460$AV5.1...@rwcrnsc51.ops.asp.att.net>, Chris Berger <ark...@ugcs.caltech.edu> writes: >> >Cf. jokes about Tremere. >> >> See under "joke". >> >See my original post.... specifically the word "joke". And there is a difference between the Tremere being a joke of clan - and thus unplayable - and the Tremere being the subjects of "joke". See under "joke". Now, would you finally care to actually provide some backing to your increasingly vague and pointless statements? [ quoted text not captured ]

"James Coupe" <ja...@zephyr.org.uk> wrote in message news:LRZmfgq4...@gratiano.zephyr.org.uk... > In message <DyR88.14460$AV5.1...@rwcrnsc51.ops.asp.att.net>, Chris > Berger <ark...@ugcs.caltech.edu> writes: > >> >Cf. jokes about Tremere. > >> > >> See under "joke". > >> > >See my original post.... specifically the word "joke". > > And there is a difference between the Tremere being a joke of clan - and > thus unplayable - and the Tremere being the subjects of "joke". > Actually, they mean almost precisely the same thing. Perhaps you understood something different? The reason there are so many jokes about the Tremere being unplayable is because they are very difficult to play. And even when you play them very well with a well-made deck, they can fall against many other well-played well-made decks. In general, the Tremere are a little bit weak, like the Gangrel. Both clans can win, but not as easily as many other clans. I really don't understand how every clan can be above-average, but maybe some of you who think so will enlighten me... Do you really want me to go into the reasons why Tremere are below-average? It's all stuff you know, but I'll try and go through the motions, since you appear to want me to... The Tremere suffer mainly from a lack of offense. They have bleed, but they have no stealth or unblockability. They have some titles, but no Princes below 9 capacity, and they do not have Presence or any clan cards supporting vote. So, aside from slightly odd decks, they are mostly relagated to bleeding for their offense. So... they have dominate for +bleed, but they have no stealth discipline. So instead, we turn to bruise and bleed. Despite the rumours, Tremere are not that great in combat. Theft of Vitae is a *great* first round strike, but it's not going to torporize anyone, or save you if you get hit by a combat deck. With no dodge w/add strike or damage prevention, the Tremere have a hard time with combat defense in any case. Second round is when they are supposed to shine. And Walk of Flame is definitely good. It's better than Claws, but the thing is... since it requires 2 cards (the Walk and a Press... which may be provided by a permanent in play, but those have their own limitations) and a second round of combat, it's not really *enough* better than Claws to build a really destructive deck around it. Telepathic Tracking helps a lot, now that they finally have it, but you have to pack as many TT's as your opponent has S:CE. You can use Thoughts Betrayed for defense *and* offense, but it's quite expensive. You can Theft it back, but if you're already low on blood, you have problems. The other 2nd round combat cards are worse than Walk by varying degrees. Thaumaturgy combat is, simply put, not as effective as Potence combat. On the flip side, you have intercept combat decks. These could possibly win, but with the new Game Wins rule, it's a losing strategy. You pretty much need to have voting power to pass through your Dramtic Upheaval and get you into the sweet spot, in order to have a chance at a table win. Like I said, the Tremere are a little low on voting power. What it all boils down to is a clan that is low on (pool-destruction) offense and weak in combat defense. It is very good at pool-destruction defense, but only so-so at combat offense. Gangrel, on the other hand, have almost the opposite problem. They have stealth but no bleed discipline, and have tons of combat power, but no real way to affect pool loss (offensively or defensively), other than semi-decent intercept. This is not to say that trick decks cannot be made with either clan that work great, but the clans as a whole are a little weak, due mainly to discipline mix. And those trick decks really aren't unbeatable either.

In message <IvS88.14755$bh3.1...@rwcrnsc52.ops.asp.att.net>, Chris Berger <ark...@ugcs.caltech.edu> writes: >> And there is a difference between the Tremere being a joke of clan - and >> thus unplayable - and the Tremere being the subjects of "joke". >> >Actually, they mean almost precisely the same thing. Perhaps you understood >something different? I can tells jokes about the intelligence of Irish people. This does not actually make them "a joke" of a people, which is far more pervasive suggesting that the jokes are entirely correct. Would telling jokes about you make you a joke of a person? The latter suggests something far deeper than regaling people with a humorous anecdote about you does. YMMV. [ quoted text not captured ]

curt...@aol.com (CurtAdams) wrote in message news:<20020208033018...@mb-cv.aol.com>... > ark...@ugcs.caltech.edu writes: > > >The !Tremere can be better than the Tremere, as they have the same > >basic capabilities, but are better at making trick decks (due to > >Ian and Infernal Pact). Though I know you love Uncle Ian, making trick decks does not necessarily make the !Tremere decidedly better than the Tremere. The Camarilla Tremere also have access to a number of cards that are incredibly useful in assisting any general strategy, rather than just tricks. 1) Ankara Citadel, Turkey 2) Arcane Library 3) Traditions 4) Chantry Admittedly, the !Tremere probably have better allies on the whole, but they're hard to use properly. > >The Tremere, by all indications, are a decidedly below average clan. They > >and the Gangrel pretty much share the dubious honor of being original clans > >that, while they can do a hell of a lot of cool stuff (protean is really a > >great discipline, fortitude is almost on a par with dominate for usefulness, > >and animalism is quite good as well... all 3 are, unfortunately, more along > >the lines of utility disciplines), aren't really fearsome opponents. Well, auspex and dominate are probably better than "utility" disciplines, they're probably among the top in the game, but you're correct. The Gangrel have 3 disciplines that are really good at combat stuff, with some other random tricks from Protean, but nothing else going for them. The Tremere have three disciplines that are individually good (or at least interesting, in the case of Thaumaturgy) but they do not support each other. This does make it hard to win with the Tremere. They have the premiere intercept discipline, the premiere bleeding discipline, and a discipline that *looks* like a combat discipline, but isn't really. Though it has tricks. > I dig the theory, but they apparently *do* win tournaments reasonably > often. How better to define quality? They're apparently not below 2 tournaments already in 2002, and about 4 in 2001. Not lots, but they're winning more. I think that's more than rush combat in the last year. (Unfortunately...) > average. Against other combat clans they're not good - but they > have a lotta bounce and I find it believable they do well in bleedy > environments. Yeah, I'll say this time and again. Thaumaturgy, in and of itself, is *not* a primary combat discipline, no matter how much people want it to be. With support from another discipline (cel, for, pot?), it can be effective in combat, but the cards required to make this happen tend to rule out much else being in the deck. With intercept (not that I use it much) and lots of bleed, along with the ability to bounce pretty much anything, they can do a lot of stuff, as long as you know what your end goal is, and you build your deck with their weaknesses in mind. Xian

"James Coupe" <ja...@zephyr.org.uk> wrote in message news:567a1MByX$Y8E...@gratiano.zephyr.org.uk... > In message <IvS88.14755$bh3.1...@rwcrnsc52.ops.asp.att.net>, Chris > Berger <ark...@ugcs.caltech.edu> writes: > >> And there is a difference between the Tremere being a joke of clan - and > >> thus unplayable - and the Tremere being the subjects of "joke". > >> > >Actually, they mean almost precisely the same thing. Perhaps you understood > >something different? > > Would telling jokes about you make you a joke of a person? The latter > suggests something far deeper than regaling people with a humorous > anecdote about you does. > One of the meanings of the word "joke" is the same as "laughingstock", an object of ridicule. This was the sense that I meant it in. Perhaps you think that it is too strong of a term, but I stand by it. This is in the sense of, "I've been nothing but a joke ever since I poured grenadine down my pants at the Christmas party." It's uncommon usage, but *shrug*... it sounded right to me when I wrote it. The stronger sense of joke that you are talking about was probably derived from this usage. See, look, now you've got me arguing grammar again. Grr...

In message <6vU88.15462$bh3.1...@rwcrnsc52.ops.asp.att.net>, Chris Berger <ark...@ugcs.caltech.edu> writes: >One of the meanings of the word "joke" is the same as "laughingstock", an >object of ridicule. This was the sense that I meant it in. Perhaps you >think that it is too strong of a term, but I stand by it. I felt you were wildly gesticulating without providing any back-up, undercutting any comments you had made about the Gargoyles even further. People make jokes about lots of clans. That doesn't always reflect the fact that the clans themselves are unplayable. And, indeed, the Tremere are playable but they're certainly not *easy* to play. [ quoted text not captured ]

The Tremere suffer mainly from a lack of offense. They have bleed, but they > have no stealth or unblockability. They have some titles, but no Princes > below 9 capacity, and they do not have Presence or any clan cards supporting > vote. So, aside from slightly odd decks, they are mostly relagated to > bleeding for their offense. > > So... they have dominate for +bleed, but they have no stealth discipline. > So instead, we turn to bruise and bleed. Despite the rumours, Tremere are > not that great in combat. Theft of Vitae is a *great* first round strike, > but it's not going to torporize anyone, or save you if you get hit by a > combat deck. With no dodge w/add strike or damage prevention, the Tremere > have a hard time with combat defense in any case. Second round is when they > are supposed to shine. And Walk of Flame is definitely good. It's better > than Claws, but the thing is... since it requires 2 cards (the Walk and a > Press... which may be provided by a permanent in play, but those have their > own limitations) and a second round of combat, it's not really *enough* > better than Claws to build a really destructive deck around it. Telepathic > Tracking helps a lot, now that they finally have it, but you have to pack as > many TT's as your opponent has S:CE. You can use Thoughts Betrayed for > defense *and* offense, but it's quite expensive. You can Theft it back, but > if you're already low on blood, you have problems. The other 2nd round > combat cards are worse than Walk by varying degrees. Thaumaturgy combat is, > simply put, not as effective as Potence combat. > Wellll - thanks to the powers that be for visceratika then - it makes Tremere look a whole bunch better thanks to.... Bond with the Mountain: Strike Dodge with an optional Press (Every Tremere combat deck needs a fistful of these and Apportations) Skin of the Chameleon: Same as above, if not even more so! Yes Tremere are difficult to play, more so than other clans. But they can win well if they are played and built well. I do agree that a lower capacity Tremere prince than 9 would be of great help (hell - even an 8 capacity one!) or a Thaumaturgy Stealth card would also be good. Hopefully the Camarilla set will fix these small holes in the Tremere. Us dubious Tremere players demand it :-)

Thomas Pichler <tom.p...@aon.at> wrote in message news:3C6249F2...@aon.at... > Jason Liang wrote: snip > I assume there won't be any overlap in rares; overlap in (un)commons is probably > unavoidable, because new players should be able to pick up Blurs, Enhanced > Senses, Master: Disciplines and the like [and I think they should be able to > have reasonably good chances of getting multiple IGs, Forgotten Labyrinths, > etc., too]. > As I recall, Blur was not reprinted in Sabbat War boosters. In fact, there were many common cards which were not reprinted in Sabbat War boosters (from what I remember, Deflection, Redirection, Telepathic Misdirection) which would be perfect for including in Camarilla common/ uncommon slots. As for the Master: Discipline cards, I like the idea of them fixed in the starters only, as is the case for Final Nights. If you really need them, its not too hard to find J/ VtES boosters or starters for cheap. As for Enhanced Senses and other cards printed in the Sabbat War boosters... well, new players can pick them up from a Sabbat War booster. Cheers, Jason > Thomas >

Xian writes: >Yeah, I'll say this time and again. Thaumaturgy, in and of itself, is >*not* a primary combat discipline, no matter how much people want it >to be. Thaumaturgy is a very good combat discipline against non-combat decks. It naturally *gains* blood against such opponents in combat, which is very nice. The price for this advantage is that it's pretty much plastered head-to-head with aggressive combat disciplines. [ quoted text not captured ]

In message <ttG88.10271$AV5.1...@rwcrnsc51.ops.asp.att.net>, "Chris Berger" <ark...@ugcs.caltech.edu> mumbled something about: >"Derek Ray" <lor...@yahoo.com> wrote in message >news:sa656uom07ho92iqa...@4ax.com... >> In message <M1n88.3816$Pz4.58899@rwcrnsc53>, >> >> >The Gargoyles suck. You ignoring this fact doesn't make it not so. >> >> No evidence. No support. No backup. No facts. Just some noise. >> >You have evidence that they don't suck? As regards the Gargoyles, I have demonstrated repeatedly in the past when someone has said "X card sucks" that X card generally does not suck; someone just hasn't thought of the right way to use it yet. I gave one argument in favor of the Gargoyles, which I will restate: Slave mechanic. I require no others. I will now clarify it somewhat: Mustafa Rahman bleeds. Do you block? - Yes? Good. I untap Mustafa, and you may now fight Ublo-Satha, who plays all these POT/FOR/VIS/Flight cards in my hand (depends on construction of deck), and sends your blocker to torpor. (if you have more than one Gargoyle out: Mustafa hunts. Do you block?) - No? Mustafa plays Conditioning. Ublo-Satha bleeds. Do you block? Eventually, the Gargoyles can get Dominate skill cards and play that Conditioning THEMSELVES when they bleed. And slowly, they get some Razor Bats and the like to intercept actions, which also give them extra damage in fights! Neat! Note that I have not used a single rare yet, although adding Defender of the Haven into the mix is even more brutally good. Season lightly with Patrol for transient intercept as necessary, and add in a few Deflections (why block bleeds if you don't have to?)... presto. Mustafa will eventually end up empty: who cares? The Gargoyles can save him there, too, and by then you've got Jing Wei out as well, and possibly even Sarah Cobbler if you want to go that high. I personally go with 1x Mustafa, 1x Ignatius, 1x Jing Wei, 1x Sarah Cobbler in the crypt. That's one version. There are others. If you aren't using the Slave mechanic with the Gargoyles, you are wasting their primary strength. If you can't comprehend the strength the Slave mechanic provides for both Gargoyles and Tremere, you're an idiot. Enough said. Speaking of Tremere, as Xian pointed out, they (the Tremere) won a tournament at GenCon. I'm sure they've won others. I have made multiple effective Tremere decks. So have many others. Matt Green can get away with saying "the Tremere are shite" because he's at least PARTLY tongue-in-cheek about it. You can't, because you're not and it's obvious. >The Tremere are a joke of a clan. Now we have a clan that can only be used >effectively by watering them down with Tremere. Oh, that's a great tactic. (shrug) Whatever. The Tremere are one of the most difficult clans to play. They have no access to stealth, which makes them unplayable for most players. They have what on first glance appears to be a great combat discipline, which actually is one of the weaker ones. And they have Auspex and Dominate, which are superb in their own right but generally require a supporting discipline to work their "magic". They end up on the same end of the stick as the !Ventrue, who have NO deterrent to blocking their actions (unlike the Tremere, who can at least bruise-and-X with some effort)... but the !Ventrue have won tournaments, and while they're not on the same level as the Ventrue, they also certainly aren't shite. Nor are the Tremere, in the hands of a skilled player. Let me know if you find one of those in your part of the world. I'll be quite curious. >> Who exactly do you regularly play against? The Gargoyles are one of the >> stronger clans out of Bloodlines. Of course, for someone who still >> hasn't managed to quit whining about Sleeping Mind, DESPITE the fact >> that it's long since irrelevant, I expect no less. >> >What the hell are you talking about??? I never *started* to whine about the >Sleeping Mind. I don't even have a problem with the ruling. You really are >an idiot. Oh, that's a DIFFERENT Chris Berger over in another thread pissing and moaning about how the whole Sleeping Mind issue was errata as opposed to simply a clarification of text, and leaping up and down in place even when he's told directly what the reasons were, what the logic was that led up to them, and why that logic is valid? Not that the entire issue is anything but mental masturbation on Chris Berger's part ANYWAY, because the card has been reprinted without the extraneous sentence and it's easy enough to advise people of this when they try to play it incorrectly ("no, they ruled long ago that it doesn't stop Wake because of ________, and they reprinted the card to just say 'vampires can't untap' to get rid of the confusion). Unless you go out of your way to be unreasonable about this sort of thing, it's not that difficult. Oh, but wait; it's you. You go out of your way to be unreasonable about all SORTS of issues, mostly just to find a reason to disagree and argue with LSJ, it seems. It would probably be far easier to just come right out and say that you think he's doing a bad job and if YOU were in charge, things would be so much better. That way we could all just ignore you, and you would've had your say, and everyone would be happy and we could get back to other things instead of this crap. [ quoted text not captured ]

>Though I know you love Uncle Ian, making trick decks does not >necessarily make the !Tremere decidedly better than the Tremere. The >Camarilla Tremere also have access to a number of cards that are >incredibly useful in assisting any general strategy, rather than just >tricks. > >1) Ankara Citadel, Turkey >2) Arcane Library >3) Traditions >4) Chantry > >Admittedly, the !Tremere probably have better allies on the whole, but >they're hard to use properly. It's not that *trick* decks make the !Tremere better than the Tremere, the !Tremere are simply better...period... =P >1) Ankara Citadel, Turkey >2) Arcane Library >3) Traditions >4) Chantry Those clan cards are good, but then again, Infernal Pact and Spirit Summoning Chamber are really good as well. The latter especially now with all the new Tha/Vis cards. And though the !Tremere don't get Traditions, they get Eternal Vigilence, Hungry Coyote, and Festivo dello Estinto (using maybe Obt for stealth). And yes, the !Tremere have much cooler allies (and who are non-unique to boot!). Halcyan 2

>You can Theft it back, but >if you're already low on blood, you have problems. The other 2nd round >combat cards are worse than Walk by varying degrees. I beg to differ. Blood to Water is still a very useful (though costly) card, which cannot be S:CE'ed. Even if they try to S:CE first round, use Telepathic Tracking and then follow through with Blood to Water. Also, Cauldron of Blood isn't really that bad. 3 or 5 damage for just 1 blood is actually pretty good, but it always seems to get so maligned. And finally, Eldritch Glimmer is simply awesome. Especially with Taste of Vitae. When you're playing a non-fortitude deck (and possibly used Thoughts Betrayed vs. Dodge or S:CE decks), you can use the Glimmer to do say, 9 damage, and taste the blood back. >On the flip side, you have intercept combat decks. These could possibly >win, but with the new Game Wins rule, it's a losing strategy. You pretty >much need to have voting power to pass through your Dramtic Upheaval and get >you into the sweet spot, in order to have a chance at a table win. Like I >said, the Tremere are a little low on voting power. Not necessarily true. Auspex (and Spiritus) intercept decks can still function fine. You intercept your prey's actions, beat him up, and then oust him. Eagle's Sight and that Falcon thingy make sure you can intercept actions directed at others (such as your grandprey). And then focus on surviving the eventual 2-player game. Halcyan 2

Jason Liang wrote: > Thomas Pichler <tom.p...@aon.at> wrote in message > news:3C6249F2...@aon.at... > > I assume there won't be any overlap in rares; overlap in (un)commons is > probably > > unavoidable, because new players should be able to pick up Blurs, Enhanced > > Senses, Master: Disciplines and the like [and I think they should be able > to > > have reasonably good chances of getting multiple IGs, Forgotten > Labyrinths, > > etc., too]. > > > > As I recall, Blur was not reprinted in Sabbat War boosters. In fact, there > were many common cards which were not reprinted in Sabbat War boosters (from > what I remember, Deflection, Redirection, Telepathic Misdirection) which > would be perfect for including in Camarilla common/ uncommon slots. > True. There's quite a few more of these (Aid from Bats, all Thaumaturgy cards, etc.). If "some" overlap actually turns into "little" overlap, that's a good thing. > As for the Master: Discipline cards, I like the idea of them fixed in the > starters only, as is the case for Final Nights. Doesn't really work unless every clan gets a starter: Tha and Pro are unique disciplines, if Camarilla Malks do get Dem in the new set, that is, too; the fourth starter would have to be Brujah to cover all disciplines. It works, but I doubt too many people would be happy with this selection of starter clans. Also note that following WoD, a Gangrel starter may not be ideal; for new players, a Tremere starter might not be ideal, as the clan is really fairly difficult to play. > If you really need them, its not too hard to find J/ VtES boosters or starters > for cheap. This statement is simply not true *everywhere* [e.g. it is not generally true outside North America, where s&h and import taxes become a factor if mail ordering, and even within the continental US, "for 33$ [or whatever] a full box from Potomac" is not actually a cheap and easy way for new players to get a handful of packs to have a look at the game], and as such, should be ignored by WW in creating a set that should draw new players *everywhere*. > As for Enhanced Senses and other cards printed in the Sabbat War boosters... > well, new players can pick them up from a Sabbat War booster. > They should not have to - a new player drawn by the Camarilla set should be able to really start improving his deck with Camarilla boosters, without having to go back to some set that may no longer be readily available *everywhere* [and I believe SW is sold out in some areas already] at the time the Camarilla set appears. [If WW were to release another print run of SW alongside the Camarilla set, that would change things considerably. That, however, seems doubtful.] Thomas

"Halcyan 2" <halc...@aol.com> wrote in message news:20020209015623...@mb-fd.aol.com... > follow through with Blood to Water. Also, Cauldron of Blood isn't really that > bad. 3 or 5 damage for just 1 blood is actually pretty good, but it always > seems to get so maligned. And finally, Eldritch Glimmer is simply awesome. The only thing good about Cauldron of Blood is that it's *not* Drain Essence. :) > Especially with Taste of Vitae. When you're playing a non-fortitude deck (and > possibly used Thoughts Betrayed vs. Dodge or S:CE decks), you can use the > Glimmer to do say, 9 damage, and taste the blood back. Ugh. The cost of including both of those cards in a deck, though are prohibitive. Yeah, you'll get to second round against a non-fortitude S:CE deck, but do you want to include enough Glimmer and ToV to make it useful? Like 4+ of each? Not me. Xian

>> Especially with Taste of Vitae. When you're playing a non-fortitude deck >(and >> possibly used Thoughts Betrayed vs. Dodge or S:CE decks), you can use the >> Glimmer to do say, 9 damage, and taste the blood back. > >Ugh. The cost of including both of those cards in a deck, though are >prohibitive. Yeah, you'll get to second round against a non-fortitude S:CE >deck, but do you want to include enough Glimmer and ToV to make it useful? >Like 4+ of each? Not me. Ah! But that's where the !Tremere really shine vs. the Tremere! =P With Spirit Summoning Chamber, you don't need to wait to draw the Glimmer. Once you have the ToV, all you need to do is go fetch the Glimmer (or Cauldron or Bond with the Mountain or...cough...Machine Blitz) at your own convenience! Halcyan 2