Cards we think are broken (was Pot/Pro critique)

Jasper Phillips wrote: "I'm curious what cards you think are busted? Off the top of my head I feel that Thought's Betrayed, Tomb of Ramses III, and Return to Innocence are, although I vaguely remember others." Those are the top three around here, and Mind Rape is added to the list as well. Among our local play group, we play with RTI and Mind Rape banned, and Tomb and TB turned into cards that still are sort of the same, but much less busted (our local ToRIII requires the use of transfers to gain blood, and TB just prevents strikes for a round). The other card that offends most of our sensibillities is Banishment, and we play that it can only be called on a younger vampire (so you cant build a weenie vote push deck that Banishes your Justicar with a Caitif...), and suffice to say, we don't use Clan Hosers either. Another pretty wrong card is Dreams of the Sphinx, as it falls into the realm of "cards that are really good, and every deck can benefit from, but you don't have any, cause they are rare", but it really isn't that game affecting, so we don't worry about it. For all intents and purposes, it is just like Short Term Investment, but exactly a _billion_ times better. Sure, it is unique, but as it only lasts 3 uses, you can pack multiples in your deck, and it seems highly unlikely that anyone will ever contest it with you, as they will just wait till yours is gone and then play theirs (just like the Tomb). Peter D Bakija PD...@aol.com "What's his number? Oh yeah. 1-800-I'm Dating a Skanky Ho." -Willow

On 3 Mar 1998, PDB6 wrote: > Among our local play group, we play with RTI and Mind Rape banned, and > Tomb and TB turned into cards that still are sort of the same, but much less > busted (our local ToRIII requires the use of transfers to gain blood, and TB > just prevents strikes for a round). My preferred fix for TB is: "...Not usable against older vampires." It allows the card to remain extremely powerful (as it should, IMO, considering its reputation and blood cost), but adds a "catch" that makes it dangerous to rely on completely. One of the things that bothers me about TB is that it is more dangerous against big vampires than small. If I design a combat deck around Wynn of Lucretia, using plenty of combat cards with their particular disciplines, I face the danger that I will be completely hosed and burnt by someone with superior dominate who makes all their combat cards unusable. However if I have a weenie combat deck, we can overwhelm a TB deck by sheer multitud. Using 2 blood to hose weenies is not necessarily going to be cost effective. This seems to me to be the reverse of what the true situation should be. It should be easier to dominate one's inferiors than one's superiors, who have presumably stronger minds. Lupus Australis ____ ____ \ \----/ / |()__()| __\ __ /__ / __\()/__ \ |/ \==/ \| | || |

In article <Pine.SUN.3.96.980303023450.520A-100000@amanda>, Lupus Australis <jbwh...@dorsai.org> wrote: [stuff about Thoughts Betrayed snipped] >My preferred fix for TB is: "...Not usable against older vampires." It >allows the card to remain extremely powerful (as it should, IMO, >considering its reputation and blood cost), but adds a "catch" that makes >it dangerous to rely on completely. Not a bad idea, although I think I'd make it "... only usable on younger vampires." -- /\ Jasper Phillips /VVVVVVVVVVVVVV|~"~"~"~"~"~"----------........____ jaz j^^^^^^^^^^^^^\/"~"~"~"~-----------........._____ ~"~--. * http://www.engr.orst.edu/~philljas/ "~"~'--`

On 3 Mar 1998, Jasper Phillips wrote: > Lupus Australis <jbwh...@dorsai.org> wrote: > >My preferred fix for TB is: "...Not usable against older vampires." It > >allows the card to remain extremely powerful (as it should, IMO, > >considering its reputation and blood cost), but adds a "catch" that makes > >it dangerous to rely on completely. > > Not a bad idea, although I think I'd make it "... only usable on younger > vampires." Fine, but you realize that this does more than merely exclude vampires of the same age. This wording also excludes allies. [ quoted text not captured ]

Lupus Australius wrote: "My preferred fix for TB is: "...Not usable against older vampires." It allows the card to remain extremely powerful (as it should, IMO, considering its reputation and blood cost), but adds a "catch" that makes it dangerous to rely on completely." That is a good house rule, and fairly balancing. Our group finds the card completely offensive in every aspect of its existance, so we neutered it to a far greater extent, but yours is a good fix if you don't mind the concept of the card as much as we do. "One of the things that bothers me about TB is that it is more dangerous against big vampires than small." While this is a completely valid point about TB, it is also the sad truth about the game in general: Large vampires are, in most cases, more a hinderance than a benefit. Weenie decks are almost always more effective than decks based on big guys, which I always found to be a distasteful aspect of the game. Why should a deck built around Caitif and 2 point vampires be more effective than a deck build around Justicars? In theory, it shouldn't be, but in general, such decks usually are. Sadly, the two cards that made large vampires into a stronger deck component, Return to Innocence and Tomb of Ramses III, are pretty much universally regarded as two of the most busted cards in the game. [ quoted text not captured ]

its nice to know people are thinking of ways to fix cards for their personal play groups Anyways most of these things can be faix with cards already in print not by making a house rule against them. If you are having problems with TB play with more direct interventions if the tomb is causeing you problems play with more suddens or you could try playing with one of the many ways to steal the tomb and use it for yourself and alter the meta game as it has been discused here before. Because as nice as house rules are if you go to a scantioned tourney you have to worry about them all over again Da Catiff

In article <19980303232...@ladder03.news.aol.com>, PDB6 <pd...@aol.com> wrote: >Lupus Australius wrote: >"One of the things that bothers me about TB is that it is more dangerous >against big vampires than small." > >While this is a completely valid point about TB,it is also the sad truth about >the game in general: Large vampires are, in most cases,more a hinderance than >a benefit. Weenie decks are almost always more effective than decks based on >big guys, which I always found to be a distasteful aspect of the game. Why >should a deck built around Caitifand 2 point vampires be more effective than a >deck build around Justicars? In theory, it shouldn't be, but in general, such >decks usually are. > >Sadly, the two cards that made large vampires into a stronger deck component, >Return to Innocence and Tomb of Ramses III, are pretty much universally >regarded as two of the most busted cards in the game. > >Peter D Bakija Yah, I've been thinking about this. Perhaps Tomb of Ramses isn't really so bad, maybe with the stipulation that it can only go on a vampire of capacity 7+? It would end up going in any deck with big vampes, and might be swinging too far in the favor of big vamps, but I too find weenies a bit too good. There'd probably have to be another limitation to make it work well. On this note, another thing I've found to help with this is to simply play with more pool -- we generally use 40 (one of the reasons I'm not so keen on duplicate vamps in the crypt). This gives players with big vamps a bit of a chance to catch up, since the weenie deck has to spend transfers and a bit of pool to flip more vampires from the crypt. Something else might be good too, allowing them to pay less for equipment, or perhaps allowing 7+ capacity vamps (6 seems to be the point where you reach diminishing returns on disciplines) to be brought in a point or two short of their full capacity. [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <34fc3f0...@news.lakes.com>, [ quoted text not captured ] Sure you can do these things, but frankly the game is more fun if the whole thing doesn't revolve around Tomb of Ramses, Thoughts Betrayed, Mind Rape, and the Return to Innocence. I like a little more to my "meta game" than seeing who can play the most power cards. Oh, and do you really think Direct Intervention is going to save your ass? Right, _if_ your opponent doesn't have sudden reversal, or another TB. What are the odds of that? A tight deck is going to laugh at your once per time round the table, pool losing cancel. Might work if your opponent has limited access to rare cards, but card rarity is _never_ a good game balancer. Furthermore, once you've stacked your deck with these rather narrow defenses (even if they did work!), what do you do when your opponent doesn't play those cards? Weep. Also your arguments about the Tomb apply equally as well by analogy to the Freak Drive decks that were the vogue before repeat actions were banned, or weenie vote push back in the day. Just because something can be stopped _does not_ mean it isn't broken. I remember hearing that back when magic was the only game: "Oh, untapping your time vault with enchantments isn't broken, since you could always disenchant it, or just counterspell it when it comes out!". Wrong. Anyway, You are entitled to your opinion, and can play how you want. Personally I would like it if the rules team would figure out play balance because tournament play would be interesting, but not in a broken game. [ quoted text not captured ]

> "One of the things that bothers me about TB is that it is more dangerous > against big vampires than small." > > While this is a completely valid point about TB, it is also the sad truth about > the game in general: Large vampires are, in most cases, more a hinderance than > a benefit. Weenie decks are almost always more effective than decks based on > big guys, which I always found to be a distasteful aspect of the game. Why > should a deck built around Caitif and 2 point vampires be more effective than a > deck build around Justicars? In theory, it shouldn't be, but in general, such > decks usually are. Isn't this because the card game is derived from the RPG, where the spotty adolescent newly-embraced vamps still somehow manage to make undead hay of their respected elders? If you want a justification, it's that newly-embraced vamps are stupid and don't care so much about unlife, and thus make MUCH better pawns for all of us ol' evil schemers. > > Sadly, the two cards that made large vampires into a stronger deck component, > Return to Innocence and Tomb of Ramses III, are pretty much universally > regarded as two of the most busted cards in the game. > Pretty much universally, but not by me, despite having been killed twice in Ryde by RTI. And I don't agree about TB being bad either - it's certainly no worse in principle than IG, HL or FR. Multiple copies of all these fabby cards DO spoil the fun of the game, that's true, but actually ANY kind of really serious competitive play spoils ANY game - look at football where most of you guys live, or, come to think of it, football where the rest of us live, too. I'm all for fun games and that is why we play with a communal Jyhad collection from which we make decks that aren't boring and do have role-playing integrity. We may not win any tournaments but frankly we couldn't give a stuff! Finally can I just put in a plug for Sabbat as a stand-alone game? We have moved over to this almost entirely for our fun sessions, because it actually works quite well as a two player game for those nights where someone just HAS to be out on the pull instead of staying in with a nice cup of cocoa and the prospect of draining the blood from their friends' still-living bodies. Moreover [and again in contradiction to what a lot of people say] I think the Sabbat expansion is better thought out in terms of rarities and card values than Jyhad was.

>Jasper Phillips wrote: >"I'm curious what cards you think are busted? Off the top of my head I feel >that Thought's Betrayed, Tomb of Ramses III, and Return to Innocence are, >although I vaguely remember others." > I'm amazed no one has mentioned Kiss of Ra. In my opinion, this is far worse that Thoughts Betrayed. Basically, if you don't have a vampire with fortitude, you can't block. Ah well, I guess fortitude just wasn't powerful enough before, eh?

In article <6dmohs$ln0$1...@news.interlog.com>, Dallas Card <ec...@interlog.com> wrote: >>Jasper Phillips wrote: >>"I'm curious what cards you think are busted? Off the top of my head I feel >>that Thought's Betrayed, Tomb of Ramses III, and Return to Innocence are, >>although I vaguely remember others." > >I'm amazed no one has mentioned Kiss of Ra. IMO, this is far worse that >Thoughts Betrayed. Basically, if you don't have a vampire with fortitude, >you can't >block. > >Ah well, I guess fortitude just wasn't powerful enough before, eh? First, use less columns in your post people! Standard nettiquette for usenet. Now, this is pulled off the WotC site: Card Title: Kiss of Ra, The Blood: 3 blood Clan/Discip.: Fortitude Card Type: Action Modifier Card Text: Only usable when a vampire who does not have Fortitude attempts to block this acting minion. The blocking vampire burns 2 blood and the action is now blocked. (S) As above, and the blocking vampire goes into torpor. Ummm, this doesn't seem to do what you said, since the action is in fact automatically blocked. [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <6dmsqn$k18$1...@news.NERO.NET>, [ quoted text not captured ] Aw c'mon don't tell me Kiss of Ra is not sick and cheap. If you don't have fortitude(5 out of 21 clans have the skill)attempt to block and go to torpor. For _attempting_ to block. Take these 4 cards out of tournament play, and the game becomes much more balanced and richer for that reason. Leave them in and that's all you're going to see, nothing else. I guarantee it. I apologize for being so harsh, I just feel so strongly about Kiss of Ra being so cheap - destroyed me in 1 tournament. Thanks > > -- > /\ Jasper Phillips > /VVVVVVVVVVVVVV|~"~"~"~"~"~"----------........____ jaz > j^^^^^^^^^^^^^\/"~"~"~"~-----------........._____ ~"~--. > * http://www.engr.orst.edu/~philljas/ "~"~'--` > -----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==----- http://www.dejanews.com/ Now offering spam-free web-based newsreading

[ quoted text not captured ] Whoa! You don't consider RtI and the Tomb busted? First, RtI... It costs 4 blood. This is it's only limiting factor. So, you can't use it if your vamp has burned too much blood. But the fact that your vampire is burned is not a problem, since it's a sure ousting. No single card should allow you to oust an opponent from a secure position. Especially when the card has no risk. Hell... if you somehow get blocked (not enough Day Ops...), your vamp isn't burned, and doesn't even spend the blood. It would be better if the vampire were burned whether or not the action was successful, but still broken. As for the Tomb, compare it to Art Museum and Eco Terrorists. AM and ET each require a clan, and give you up to 1 pool a turn (to a specific type of vampire), at a cost of 2 pool. It takes 2 turns for you to break even (although 1 extra transfer may arguably be worth the extra pool). The Tomb costs 3 pool and can give you 4 pool on the turn it comes out. It doesn't require any clan and doesn't have any restrictions to which vampires you can put blood on. Someone said that with the Tomb, you don't contest, because it'll be going away soon. Why would it ever go away? Say you draw a 4 capacity and a 10 capacity in your starting crypt. You bring out the 4 cap, and then leave the 10 capacity in your uncontrolled region for the rest of the game. Any time he starts to get too much blood, transfer it off. If you can get an Information Highway, there is a preposterous potential for blood gain. The Tomb is just far too strong. There are a good number of ways to fix it, but the tournament solution is to ignore it and let anyone who doesn't have a Tomb lose. > And I don't agree about TB being bad either - it's > certainly no worse in principle than IG, HL or FR. Well... TB isn't as bad as most broken cards, but it's still much nastier than IG, HL, or FR. Immortal Grapple is very strong, and in fact is probably the only thing that keeps Potence as a viable discipline. But it is really only an offensive card. You can stop Thaumaturgists and Assamites, but mainly IG just makes them stop running away so you can hit them. Plus, it requires close range, which Potence can't assure on its own. HL and FR both have a huge added stipulation. If you never block or get blocked, you can't use them, and your vampire still has to survive the first combat. Thoughts Betrayed is offensive *and* defensive, has no requirements. The only thing that makes it almost balanced is the blood cost. It's a bit pricey to hit Anarchs with it. If it were only usable against younger vampires, and/or cost 3 blood instead of 2, it would be okay. > Multiple copies of all > these fabby cards DO spoil the fun of the game, that's true, but actually > ANY kind of really serious competitive play spoils ANY game - look at > football where most of you guys live, or, come to think of it, football > where the rest of us live, too. I'm all for fun games and that is why we > play with a communal Jyhad collection from which we make decks that aren't > boring and do have role-playing integrity. We may not win any tournaments > but frankly we couldn't give a stuff! > Well... My play group had lots of trouble getting Ancient Hearts. We have a good quantity of all the other sets, but AH was never easy to find in our area. As a result, there is 1 Tomb and 1 RtI in our collective collection. So... when they turn up in a game, they have a *very* unbalancing effect. At the same time, I don't want each deck to have 8 of each. Then it's just a race to see who gets one first. Banning them is a much easier solution. Fixing them is viable, but it's difficult to agree on house rules, and when you go to tournaments, you're going to have to deal with the real rules. The best solution would have been to never print them in the first place. But we can't ask WotC to think, can we? > Finally can I just put in a plug for Sabbat as a stand-alone game? We have > moved over to this almost entirely for our fun sessions, because it > actually works quite well as a two player game for those nights where > someone just HAS to be out on the pull instead of staying in with a nice > cup of cocoa and the prospect of draining the blood from their friends' > still-living bodies. Moreover [and again in contradiction to what a lot of > people say] I think the Sabbat expansion is better thought out in terms of > rarities and card values than Jyhad was. > Well, you're just full of controversial opinions. How then, do you explain Caitlin and Monique (that is her name, right? The other 6 cap GanAT...)? Caitlin is so obviously superior it's barely funny. And there are a lot of other examples of this in the Sabbat set. I'm against any card being flat out *better* than another. And Sabbat blatantly ignores that. As for rarities... well, rarity is never a good fix for broken cards. In fact, making a broken card rare just makes it more broken, since then only rich players will have them. The one really good thing about Sabbat is that Immortal Grapple is uncommon instead of rare. That was a major problem for Potence combat in original Jyhad. -Chris [ quoted text not captured ]

Dallas Card wrote: "I'm amazed no one has mentioned Kiss of Ra. In my opinion, this is far worse that Thoughts Betrayed. Basically, if you don't have a vampire with fortitude, you can't block. Ah well, I guess fortitude just wasn't powerful enough before, eh?" Yah, I agree that Kiss of Ra is pretty wack, but around here, blocking isn't all that important, so it being risky to block a vampire with superior Fortitude is a price we are willing to pay (that, and no one around here has any Kiss of Ra, but me, and I never think they are worth it to use them). The only decks that ever try to block anything are base line intercept decks, and there aren't that many of them. Playing very focused decks reduces the need to intercept as a matter of course. Rush decks are always tapped out cause they kill a vampire with every minion with every action, and they don't have Wakes, as they muck up combat. Bleed/Vote decks tend to have Deflection/Telepepathic Misdirection/Counter to stop bleeds and they generally don't need to block votes due to anti-vote reaction or speed. The only decks that ever consistently block are dedicated intercept decks, like the local Tzimisczzeesk intercept deck. If a non intercept deck discovers the hard way that his predator is packing Kiss of Ra, he will just stop blocking vampires with superior Fortitude. The issue of Kiss of Ra is very similar to the issues brought up by a recent Dawn Opps/Drawing out the Beast thread--yes, it is potent, but blocking, unless you are a dedicated intercept deck, is generally not important enough to worry about Kiss of Ra that much, and no one can force you to block them. If it is more important to keep your vampire alive than intercept a potential Kiss of Ra user, don't intercept them. Kiss of Ra hoses a dedicated intercept deck pretty hard (much like Deflection hoses a S+B deck, or Majesty hoses a non Immortal Grapple combat deck), but other than that, it doesn't have much effect on the game as a whole. I have a couple, and I keep making all Fortitude stealthless bleed decks, and I never manage to convince myself that Kiss of Ra is necessary. I prefer Dawn Opps, so I can cycle my hand (and possibly burn someone...), and it doesn't cost 2 blood to use. All in all, again, Kiss of Ra doesn't strike me as that game affecting, as it only really hoses dedicated Intercept decks, and only if they chose to volunteer for the Kiss of Ra abuse. I suppose if you live in an enviornment where all decks pack light intercept and wakes and try to block stuff all the time, it would suck more, but that is not the situation around here. Peter D Bakija PD...@aol.com "They come at night. Mostly." -Newt

In article <6dng98$1cl$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, <daves...@hotmail.com> wrote: >In article <6dmsqn$k18$1...@news.NERO.NET>, > phil...@nd.ENGR.ORST.EDU (Jasper Phillips) wrote: > >Aw c'mon don't tell me Kiss of Ra is not sick and cheap. If you don't have >fortitude(5 out of 21 clans have the skill)attempt to block and go to >torpor. For _attempting_ to block. >Take these 4 cards out of tournament play, and the game becomes much more >balanced and richer for that reason. Leave them in and that's all you're >going to see, nothing else. I guarantee it. >I apologize for being so harsh, I just feel so strongly about Kiss of Ra >being so cheap - destroyed me in 1 tournament. >Thanks I guess what it comes down to is that I like to restrict as little as possible, and try to stick to only those cards that are clearly over the top. I honestly don't think Kiss of Ra is that effective, and have a hard time thinking a card is broken that doesn't make the cut when I build decks. In general I think it's rarely effective, clogs your hand when it isn't. Hell, as you point out 5/21 clans have fortitude, and it's a fairly common out of clan discipline too. [ quoted text not captured ]

ber...@cco.caltech.edu writes: > Whoa! You don't consider RtI and the Tomb busted? First, RtI... It costs 4 > blood. This is it's only limiting factor. So, you can't use it if your vamp > has burned too much blood. But the fact that your vampire is burned is not a > problem, since it's a sure ousting. No single card should allow you to oust > an opponent from a secure position. Especially when the card has no risk. > Hell... if you somehow get blocked (not enough Day Ops...), your vamp isn't > burned, and doesn't even spend the blood. It would be better if the vampire > were burned whether or not the action was successful, but still broken. Yesterday evening, we were playing a 3-player game (Jyhad nights are no longer what they used to be around here...), and a Return to Innocence was launched, by my prey. First thing that happened was, my prey redirected to me, which is one pretty common way of dealing with RtI. Second thing that happened was, I Archon Investigated the thing, which is another (though not so generally effective) way of dealing with it. In the course of that evening, the same player had 2 vampires burned by Archon Investigation: first, Regina Giovanni doing a Govern the Unaligned while the prey had Vasilis, the Traitor of Don Cruez out (he'd forgotten about Vasilis and decided to Govern with Regina instead of Arika...), then Gitane St-Clair while Returning to Innocence. And _I_ was playing the bleed deck... > > As for the Tomb, compare it to Art Museum and Eco Terrorists. AM and ET each > require a clan, and give you up to 1 pool a turn (to a specific type of > vampire), at a cost of 2 pool. It takes 2 turns for you to break even > (although 1 extra transfer may arguably be worth the extra pool). The Tomb > costs 3 pool and can give you 4 pool on the turn it comes out. It doesn't > require any clan and doesn't have any restrictions to which vampires you can > put blood on. Someone said that with the Tomb, you don't contest, because > it'll be going away soon. Why would it ever go away? Say you draw a 4 > capacity and a 10 capacity in your starting crypt. You bring out the 4 cap, > and then leave the 10 capacity in your uncontrolled region for the rest of > the game. Any time he starts to get too much blood, transfer it off. If you > can get an Information Highway, there is a preposterous potential for blood > gain. The Tomb is just far too strong. There are a good number of ways to > fix it, but the tournament solution is to ignore it and let anyone who > doesn't have a Tomb lose. I agree that the Tomb is overly powerful, and usually destroying it will be too late to make the player regret playing it. The only "good" solution is to steal it, IMHO, which tends to be easier in Vote decks - you may even get some support in getting the vote to pass if you're promising not to keep it for too long... > > > And I don't agree about TB being bad either - it's > > certainly no worse in principle than IG, HL or FR. > Well... TB isn't as bad as most broken cards, but it's still much nastier > than IG, HL, or FR. Immortal Grapple is very strong, and in fact is probably > the only thing that keeps Potence as a viable discipline. But it is really > only an offensive card. You can stop Thaumaturgists and Assamites, but > mainly IG just makes them stop running away so you can hit them. Plus, it > requires close range, which Potence can't assure on its own. HL and FR both > have a huge added stipulation. If you never block or get blocked, you can't > use them, and your vampire still has to survive the first combat. Thoughts > Betrayed is offensive *and* defensive, has no requirements. The only thing > that makes it almost balanced is the blood cost. It's a bit pricey to hit > Anarchs with it. If it were only usable against younger vampires, and/or > cost 3 blood instead of 2, it would be okay. Hmmm... I can't figure what HL or FR stand for, but I'll comment on the Thoughts Betrayed (TB) vs Immortal Grapple (IG) issue. Immortal Grapple is certainly a staple in Potence-based decks, at least in mine; either using Celerity to keep at close, or Fortitude, or Animalism. I've done much more damage using Immortal Grapple than Thoughts Betrayed, even though TB is often much more radical. The reason is that TB requires DOM to be of any use, and DOM is not easily obtained in combat decks (using TB in a defensive way is usually a waste of 2 blood), whereas IG just requires pot to generate its most devastating effect - the press at superior is nice, but it's _not_ the reason why I include IG in my decks. > > > Multiple copies of all > > these fabby cards DO spoil the fun of the game, that's true, but actually > > ANY kind of really serious competitive play spoils ANY game - look at > > football where most of you guys live, or, come to think of it, football > > where the rest of us live, too. I'm all for fun games and that is why we > > play with a communal Jyhad collection from which we make decks that aren't > > boring and do have role-playing integrity. We may not win any tournaments > > but frankly we couldn't give a stuff! > The only things that spoils the fun of the game for me is when the game turns out to be totally one-sided because one of the decks happens to be an archetype that the others have no way of dealing with. I put together a silly stealth+bleed yesterday evening while my friends were finishing a game of Magic; I used remnants of three 3-card-limit decks from last year, and put together a total no-brainer Obf/Dom deck. Well, that wasn't any fun, because there was no fight; my prey managed to get out one big vampire using Information Highway, and Minion Tapped her, but still, one or two turns later he was dead. Then I got my good ol' losing Giovanni deck, and it was much more interesting... > Well... My play group had lots of trouble getting Ancient Hearts. We have a > good quantity of all the other sets, but AH was never easy to find in our > area. As a result, there is 1 Tomb and 1 RtI in our collective collection. > So... when they turn up in a game, they have a *very* unbalancing effect. At > the same time, I don't want each deck to have 8 of each. Then it's just a > race to see who gets one first. Banning them is a much easier solution. > Fixing them is viable, but it's difficult to agree on house rules, and when > you go to tournaments, you're going to have to deal with the real rules. The > best solution would have been to never print them in the first place. But we > can't ask WotC to think, can we? No offense meant here, but I still can't figure how people can find it interesting to play in Jyhad _tournaments_. IMHO, Jyhad is _the_ archetype of a CCG that _shouldn't_ be played in a competitive way, because the metagame component is so important. -- Philippe Duchon (duc...@labri.u-bordeaux.fr)

>Whoa! You don't consider RtI and the Tomb busted? First, RtI... It costs 4 >blood. This is it's only limiting factor. So, you can't use it if your vamp >has burned too much blood. But the fact that your vampire is burned is not a >problem, since it's a sure ousting. No single card should allow you to oust >an opponent from a secure position. Especially when the card has no risk. >Hell... if you somehow get blocked (not enough Day Ops...), your vamp isn't >burned, and doesn't even spend the blood. It would be better if the vampire >were burned whether or not the action was successful, but still broken. I don't see RTI broken at all. First lets look at the efectiveness of the card compared with Govern the Unaligned: RTI costs 4 and a vampire bleed at +x GTU cost 1 bleed at +2 Let us use a geneeric mid sized vampire, let's say Ozmo. Over a sequence of turns Ozmo will bleed using RTI or GTU I am usuming that he gets through each time, just for a point. On any turn Ozmo has the following choice : Ozmo uses RTI bleeds for 8 Ozmo uses GTU bleeds for 4 If he RTI, he dies, if he GTU he can perform another action next turn. This leaves us with the following: Turn:1 2 3 4 RTI=8 GTU+RTI=12 GTU+GTU+RTI=16 GTU+GTU+GTU+RTI=20 This goes on. As you can see it never pays to RTI, since it will be the last action Ozmo can take. Ozmo is more useful continually bleeding, then blowing his load in one shot. The only time it becomes effective, is when it will end the game, since ozmo doesn't need to take any more actions. By then, you have already cleared out the table, and so your deck is effective _without_ RTI. Second Point: It is sooo easy to stop. Even if it's unblockable, which is often the case. You can deflect it with either AUS or dom. 55% of the clans have this as in clan discaplines. Or if your not in that group (like me who is an avid Gangrel fan, and even they have 5 vamps with Dominate) you can use the ever effective Archon Investigation. It works every time. Jason

PDB6 wrote: > The issue of Kiss of Ra is very similar to the issues brought up by a recent > Dawn Opps/Drawing out the Beast thread--yes, it is potent, but blocking, unless > you are a dedicated intercept deck, is generally not important enough to worry > about Kiss of Ra that much, and no one can force you to block them. If it is > more important to keep your vampire alive than intercept a potential Kiss of Ra > user, don't intercept them. What about a Ravnos Sensory Deprivation/Kiss of Ra deck . You are really going to want to block that one. Your case that no actions NEED to be blocked is misleeding as some actions are too dangerous to ignore.

In article <6dnktq$t88$1...@news.NERO.NET>, phil...@nd.ENGR.ORST.EDU (Jasper Phillips) wrote: > > In article <6dng98$1cl$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, <daves...@hotmail.com> wrote: > >In article <6dmsqn$k18$1...@news.NERO.NET>, > > phil...@nd.ENGR.ORST.EDU (Jasper Phillips) wrote: > > > >Aw c'mon don't tell me Kiss of Ra is not sick and cheap. If you don't have > >fortitude(5 out of 21 clans have the skill)attempt to block and go to > >torpor. For _attempting_ to block. > >Take these 4 cards out of tournament play, and the game becomes much more > >balanced and richer for that reason. Leave them in and that's all you're > >going to see, nothing else. I guarantee it. > >I apologize for being so harsh, I just feel so strongly about Kiss of Ra > >being so cheap - destroyed me in 1 tournament. > >Thanks > > I guess what it comes down to is that I like to restrict as little as > possible, and try to stick to only those cards that are clearly over > the top. I honestly don't think Kiss of Ra is that effective, and have > a hard time thinking a card is broken that doesn't make the cut > when I build decks. > > In general I think it's rarely effective, clogs your hand > when it isn't. Hell, as you point out 5/21 clans have > fortitude, and it's a fairly common out of clan discipline too. > I agree that it's a fairly common out of clan discipline. Take this deck idea. Ventrue is your predator, you are playing anything without fortitude. One Ventrue bleeds. You Attempt to block, KoR is played, your vampire goes to torpor. Next Ventrue Graverobs, you Attempt to block, your next vampire attempts to block and goes to torpor, and so on and so on. It's not like Thoughts Betrayed(which is sick) where you can play Legacy of Power, tap Mariel, or the Elysium - you just go straight to torpor. Thanks for your time Dave Stevers [ quoted text not captured ]

On Sat, 7 Mar 1998, David Naseby wrote: > Philippe DUCHON wrote: > > No offense meant here, but I still can't figure how people can find it > > interesting to play in Jyhad _tournaments_. IMHO, Jyhad is _the_ > > archetype of a CCG that _shouldn't_ be played in a competitive way, > > because the metagame component is so important. > > I agree with this entirely. This is a thoroughly inane post, I agree, > but I like this point. A lot. I'm not sure I agree. Jyhad is competitive. I'm not at all sure that the importance of the metagame eliminates this. Sure, the outcome is unpredictable, and the person who is declared the winner is not necessarily the most skillful, but.... Tournaments are great. When else do you get to play Jyhad for hours and hours on end? Who cares who wins? Who cares if the winner is a newbie who got lucky to have just the right deck? One bad thing about tournaments is the 2 hour time limit per round, allowing only for fast deck strategies. [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <35005FE4...@lmco.com>, Quicksilver <michae...@lmco.com> wrote: >PDB6 wrote: [Argument that Kiss of Ra is ok snipped. Btw Peter, if you'd write about one less word per line, following up your posts would be easier] >What about a Ravnos Sensory Deprivation/Kiss of Ra deck . You are really going >to want to block that one. Your case that no actions NEED to be blocked >is misleeding as some actions are too dangerous to ignore. This costs 5 blood, and is pretty well totally hosed by a deck with any vampires with "for" in play. It often won't work, and when it does you're pretty much paying 5 blood and an action to make your opponent lose 5 blood and an action. This doesn't seem unbalanced to me. Especially since you need "FOR" and "CHI" to make it work, while any sappy minion can block you. If you could make it require only small vamps and work against big ones, it'd be tough. In practice, I see it requiring big vamps, and getting blocked by weenies. [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <19980306151...@ladder02.news.aol.com>, SirTemple <sirt...@aol.com> wrote: [argument comparing RTI and normal bleed over several turns snipped] >This goes on. IMHO the problem with this logic is that if you're comparing two people doing this, the one taking your prefered long term route is going to be ousted before it ever gets that far; If you're playing vs. a rush deck, you're very unlikely to get more than 1 action with Ozmo, etc. Furthermore, if your RTI with a bigger vamp (who's going to use Ozmo?), the difference is even more dramatic. Often enough that _one_ succesfull bleed ousts your prey. In effect letting you oust your prey for 4 pool (assuming minion tap): pretty brutal in my book. >It is sooo easy to stop. >Even if it's unblockable, which is often the case. You can deflect it with >either AUS or dom. 55% of the clans have this as in clan discaplines. Or if >your not in that group (like me who is an avid Gangrel fan, and even they have >5 vamps with Dominate) you can use the ever effective Archon Investigation. >It works every time. > >Jason Bleed bounce is the _only_ thing that stops this from being WAY over the top. Still, every deck shouldn't have to be built around bleed bounce simply out of the fear or RTI. [ quoted text not captured ]

daves...@hotmail.com wrote: > <big snip> > I agree that it's a fairly common out of clan discipline. Take this > deck > idea. Ventrue is your predator, you are playing anything without > fortitude. > One Ventrue bleeds. You Attempt to block, KoR is played, your vampire > goes > to torpor. Next Ventrue Graverobs, you Attempt to block, your next > vampire > attempts to block and goes to torpor, and so on and so on. This is a great idea! Beautiful! I gotta try it with my next JOL deck! It's not exactly a tourney winnig deck, methinks.. KoR costs a lot of blood and you can't do much with it unless you can graverob or diablerize. I don't even own the card, but its been used on me. I think its a tough card, but a bit expensive too be useful in a deck not specifically designed for it. And any card that you can design a deck around is fun... except RtI, Day Op, Fame.... These are not fun.. David Naseby

Quicksilver wrote: > PDB6 wrote: > > > The issue of Kiss of Ra is very similar to the issues brought up by > a recent > > Dawn Opps/Drawing out the Beast thread--yes, it is potent, but > blocking, unless > > you are a dedicated intercept deck, is generally not important > enough to worry > > about Kiss of Ra that much, and no one can force you to block them. > If it is > > more important to keep your vampire alive than intercept a potential > Kiss of Ra > > user, don't intercept them. > > What about a Ravnos Sensory Deprivation/Kiss of Ra deck . You are > really going > to want to block that one. Your case that no actions NEED to be > blocked > is misleeding as some actions are too dangerous to ignore. Costs an insane amount of blood to pull together, and it is combo dependant. Not overpowered... David Naseby.

Philippe DUCHON wrote: > <big ol snip> > No offense meant here, but I still can't figure how people can find it > > interesting to play in Jyhad _tournaments_. IMHO, Jyhad is _the_ > archetype of a CCG that _shouldn't_ be played in a competitive way, > because the metagame component is so important. I agree with this entirely. This is a thoroughly inane post, I agree, but I like this point. A lot. David Naseby

On 7 Mar 1998, Jasper Phillips wrote: > >What about a Ravnos Sensory Deprivation/Kiss of Ra deck . You are > >really going to want to block that one. Your case that no actions NEED > >to be blocked is misleeding as some actions are too dangerous to > >ignore. > > This costs 5 blood, No it doesn't. It only costs 3 blood (if someone tries to block and you play Kiss of Ra), or 2 blood (if no one attempts to block and your action is successful). The cost of action cards is only played when they succeed. > and is pretty well totally hosed by a deck with any > vampires with "for" in play. I think this is what saves the card from being badly overpowered. Almost a third (29%) of vampires printed have "for". When dealing with big vamps, who would be the most vulnerable targets of Sensory Deprivation, the proportion is even higher. One also has the option of blocking with allies. If you play Sensory Deprivation, and a Hell Hound blocks, you can't play Kiss of Ra. > It often won't work, and when it does you're > pretty much paying 5 blood and an action to make your opponent lose > 5 blood and an action. This doesn't seem unbalanced to me. Especially > since you need "FOR" and "CHI" to make it work, while any sappy minion > can block you. If you could make it require only small vamps and work > against big ones, it'd be tough. In practice, I see it requiring big > vamps, and getting blocked by weenies. This makes sense. In practice, the card is not all that awesome. If it became a problem, you could protect yourself with Fortitude Skill cards. Still, I see how it can be a very offensive unpleasant surprise, in which a big vamp is instantly torporized just for trying to block, with no way of preventing it unless you were expecting Kiss of Ra. [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <Pine.SUN.3.96.980306230049.29556A-100000@amanda>, Lupus Australis <jbwh...@dorsai.org> wrote: >On 7 Mar 1998, Jasper Phillips wrote: >> >What about a Ravnos Sensory Deprivation/Kiss of Ra deck . You are [snip] >> This costs 5 blood, > >No it doesn't. It only costs 3 blood (if someone tries to block and you >play Kiss of Ra), or 2 blood (if no one attempts to block and your action >is successful). The cost of action cards is only played when they >succeed. Oh... and I thought I knew the rules. D'oh! I'd thought this only applied for equipment, retainers, and allies somehow; guess it makes sense to have it be actions in general. [snipped: me saying it's not so bad practice] >This makes sense. In practice, the card is not all that awesome. If it >became a problem, you could protect yourself with Fortitude Skill cards. Well, If it forced everyone to include Fortitude cards to have a chance to compete, I'd think that was bad, but I don't think that's the case. >Still, I see how it can be a very offensive unpleasant surprise, in which >a big vamp is instantly torporized just for trying to block, with no way >of preventing it unless you were expecting Kiss of Ra. > >Lupus Australis I'll second that. I don't think KoR is particularily overpowered, but it is a pretty lame card idea. At least the concept for cards like Thoughts Betrayed, Tomb of Ramses, and Return to Innocence is good. [ quoted text not captured ]

On 7 Mar 1998, Jasper Phillips wrote: > Lupus Australis <jbwh...@dorsai.org> wrote: > >This makes sense. In practice, the card is not all that awesome. If it > >became a problem, you could protect yourself with Fortitude Skill cards. > > Well, If it forced everyone to include Fortitude cards to have a chance > to compete, I'd think that was bad, but I don't think that's the case. No, there are several ways to deal with it. - block with expendable weenies with under 2 blood left - block with vamps with fortitude naturally - block with vamps who burn vials of elder vitae to give them fortitude - block with vamps with fortitude skill cards on them - block with allies - have enough votes or 6th tradition when your torpored vamp is diablerized - don't block I should point out that when AH was issued, fully one third (33%) of all vampires then printed had fortitude (for some reason the discipline was underrepresented among the Sabbat, and the overall percentage was brought down to 29%). The threat of diablerie is what makes this dangerous--and the bloodhunt is not very likely to fail unless your fellow players see the Kiss of Ra player as less of a threat than you. Otherwise, the cost of leaving torpor is what makes this more costly to the victem. However, there are a number of rarely played cards designed to counter diablerie, or to help one leave torpor. If your clan doesn't have fortitude, maybe they have Chantry. > >Still, I see how it can be a very offensive unpleasant surprise, in which > >a big vamp is instantly torporized just for trying to block, with no way > >of preventing it unless you were expecting Kiss of Ra. > > I'll second that. I don't think KoR is particularily overpowered, but > it is a pretty lame card idea. At least the concept for cards like > Thoughts Betrayed, Tomb of Ramses, and Return to Innocence is good. One thing I *do* like about the card is that it makes the disciplines of my vampires relevant even if I don't include cards for that discipline. It always bothered me some that, if I did not include fortitude cards in my Nossie deck, that the fortitude symbol was completely useless on Selma and Sheldon and Nick Vermeulen et al. I always thought that cards of this nature (though not necessarily this one) would add dimension to the game. They could address the 6 main disciplines. Stealth cards that are nullified if your blocker has Auspex; Intercept that only works on minions without Obfuscate; Additional damage cards that only work on minions without fortitude; etc. [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <Pine.SUN.3.96.980306231827.29556B-100000@amanda>, Lupus Australis <jbwh...@dorsai.org> wrote: Actually the rounds are hours minimum. Heres the text from the madnessnetworks DCI rules: VI. ROUNDS 1. Vampire: The Eternal Struggle tournaments shall consist of a minimum of three (3) rounds. Each round must have a time limit declared by the Judge, with a minimum time limit of two (2) hours. The tournament coordinator must announce and advertise this time limit prior to the tournament. When only 5 (five) minutes remain in the allotted tournament time, the Judge should issue a five-minute warning. > > One bad thing about tournaments is the 2 hour time limit per round, > allowing only for fast deck strategies. > > Lupus Australis > ____ ____ > \ \----/ / > |()__()| > __\ __ /__ > / __\()/__ \ > |/ \==/ \| > | || | > > [ quoted text not captured ]

Quicksilver wrote: "What about a Ravnos Sensory Deprivation/Kiss of Ra deck . You are really going to want to block that one. Your case that no actions NEED to be blocked is misleeding as some actions are too dangerous to ignore." Yes, some actions are too dangerous to ignore, but in a Ravanos deck, for instance, pulling a Sensory Deprivation on you, how is Kiss of Ra (the focus of this discussion) any more powerful than Drawing out the Beast and Dawn Opps? The DotB and DO combo is far scarrier than Kiss of Ra as it costs no blood and has the possibility of burning the blocker. Kiss of Ra costs 2 blood and isn't buring anyone. Yes it is effective, but not overly so. My point about no blocking in general comes from the idea that many deck designs don't ever try to block or simly can't block. If your deck has zero intecept in it, why leave minions untapped to try and block? You are much better off using all of your actions doing whatever it is that your deck does best, rather than wasting actions so you can try to block with zero intercept. Sensory Deprivation is indeed heinous, but it is likely that the Ravanos will be able to muster up +1 stealth if they are packing enough SD in their deck to be worried about, so it will succeed anyway. Again, if you are a dedicated intecept deck, and that is all you do, yes, you will be screwed by someone with heavy Kiss of Ra inclusion. Other than that, Kiss of Ra is fairy potent, but hardly a game breaker, as getting abused by Kiss of Ra is completely voluntary, you get to chose who gets whacked by the Kiss of Ra, you can see it coming from 10 miles away, it is expensive, and if you never block it just clogs up their hand pretty bad. [ quoted text not captured ]

SirTemple wrote: "I don't see RTI broken at all. First lets look at the efectiveness of the card compared with Govern the Unaligned: RTI costs 4 and a vampire bleed at +x GTU cost 1 bleed at +2" While your extensive analysis is a fairly accurate representation of the situation you describe, it is not a really valid description of RTI. RTI is not used on Ozmo to bleed you for 6. RTI is played on Inner Circle Members (that got out for free with the Tomb or were Mind Raped away from an opponent...) who come to bleed you unblockably for 15 and oust you in one action. RTI is a card that any vampire can use (a big one, preferably), you can't see it coming (as no Discipline is required), and if it is coming for you and you don't have a Deflection (or AI), you are ousted. One action, very little in the way of defense. You are just gone. The inclusion of RTI in the set makes it necessary to be playing Bleed Bounce in _every_ deck, or you will just be killed with no warning or ability to defend yourself by RTI on a regular basis. Cards that have that large an effect on the game (i.e. oust someone in a single action while thay are at 12 pool), and will kill you unless you are holding a specific card in your hand at the time it is played, are just wrong. "Even if it's unblockable, which is often the case. You can deflect it with either AUS or dom. 55% of the clans have this as in clan discaplines. Or if your not in that group (like me who is an avid Gangrel fan, and even they have 5 vamps with Dominate) you can use the ever effective Archon Investigation. It works every time." Again, yes, you can Deflect it, however, if you are not playing a deck that uses bleed bounce, and before RTI, decks without bleed bounce were perfectly viable, you will be ousted every time. Thus you need to play bleed bounce to be competetive. So everyone will be playing bleed bounce, and the last guy to be bleed bounced to will be ousted, and as the original targer was the first one to bounce, it is likely that he will be the last one bounced to, and thus killed anyway. Archon Investigation is not an acceptable answer either. Jyhad is a game of strategies competeing against strategies, not hoser cards competeing against hoser cards. With the RTI/AI war, the game boils down to little more than who happens to be holding the particular "I Win" card at any particular time, rather than who has built a better deck and knows how to use it more effectively. Both cards are lame and should not have been included in the set, although due to the inclusion of RTI, AI is now completely necessary (when without RTI, it was not). [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <Pine.SUN.3.96.980307050505.2504A-100000@amanda>, Lupus Australis <jbwh...@dorsai.org> wrote: >On 7 Mar 1998, Jasper Phillips wrote: > >> Lupus Australis <jbwh...@dorsai.org> wrote: >> >This makes sense. In practice, the card is not all that awesome. If it >> >became a problem, you could protect yourself with Fortitude Skill cards. >> >> Well, If it forced everyone to include Fortitude cards to have a chance >> to compete, I'd think that was bad, but I don't think that's the case. > >No, there are several ways to deal with it. [arguments snipped] I didn't state my opinion well. I meant to say if that skill card was the only defense, it'd be bad -- but it's not. >One thing I *do* like about the card is that it makes the disciplines of >my vampires relevant even if I don't include cards for that discipline. >It always bothered me some that, if I did not include fortitude cards in >my Nossie deck, that the fortitude symbol was completely useless on Selma >and Sheldon and Nick Vermeulen et al. > >I always thought that cards of this nature (though not necessarily this >one) would add dimension to the game. They could address the 6 main >disciplines. Stealth cards that are nullified if your blocker has Auspex; >Intercept that only works on minions without Obfuscate; Additional damage >cards that only work on minions without fortitude; etc. I agree, more cards like this that depend on what they're targeting would be good. It's a good mechanic, especially because someone doesn't have to put cards in his deck to worry about it specifically; it feels more natural. >Lupus Australis [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <6dsfhq$i89$1...@news.NERO.NET>, Jasper Phillips wrote: > >I didn't state my opinion well. I meant to say if that skill card was >the only defense, it'd be bad -- but it's not. I understood you actually. I was agreeing with your point and chose to elaborate. Sorry if it did not sound that way. [ quoted text not captured ]

Legbiter wrote: <snip> > And I don't agree about TB being bad either - it's certainly no > worse in principle than IG, HL or FR. <snip> TB is WAY WAY WAY worse than IG, HL and FR. The most important difference: the latter three prevent yor opponent from striking (and IG doesn't even do THAT perfectly...) while TB prevents your opponent from doing ANYTHING AT ALL. HL stops you from fighting back, but you can still defend yourself with fortitude, sideslip, or manuevers. With TB, you can't hit back OR defend yourself. IG changes combat. TB breaks it. IG can be avoided with manuevers. TB can't be avoided in any way. Unlike IG, HL, and FR, which are all conditional, TB can be played in ANY combat... oh, wait, there is one case when you can't; if you're opponent beats you to it. -- Steve "I Bled Someone for 14 Pool in One Turn Because of a Misdirection" Wampler, creator of the "Spend 29 Pool on Vampires and Get Bled for One and Die™" deck sjwa...@hotmail.com (ignore the above adress, its plain brown wrong)

Quicksilver wrote: > > PDB6 wrote: > > > The issue of Kiss of Ra is very similar to the issues brought up > > by a recent Dawn Opps/Drawing out the Beast thread--yes, it is > > potent, but blocking, unless you are a dedicated intercept deck, > > is generally not important enough to worry about Kiss of Ra that > > much, and no one can force you to block them. If it is more > > important to keep your vampire alive than intercept a potential > > Kiss of Ra user, don't intercept them. > > What about a Ravnos Sensory Deprivation/Kiss of Ra deck . You are > really going to want to block that one. Your case that no actions > NEED to be blocked is misleeding as some actions are too dangerous > to ignore. In this case, you just have to consider which alternative you prefer: getting SDed or KoRed. If an action really is too heinous not to block, then KoR won't stop you from blocking (remember, after KoR the action is considered blocked). This is not really different than an archetypical brujah bruise/bleed deck. Is blocking a nasty bleed worth possibly losing a vampire? This is a fundamental part of the game. [ quoted text not captured ]

Lupus Australis wrote: <snip> > Still, I see how it can be a very offensive unpleasant surprise, in > which a big vamp is instantly torporized just for trying to block, > with no way of preventing it unless you were expecting Kiss of Ra. I don't think that this is a valid argument. You SHOULD have to anticipate which cards your opponent(s) will play. If you know that there is a possibility that your opponent has KoR then you really shouldn't be too surprised when s/he plays it. KoR is no different than any other card in that you have to build a deck and play the game with the knowledge that it exists and that you might have to deal with it. And there are plenty of ways to deal with it: use vamps with fortitude(not an uncommon discipline), play skill cards, don't block, etc. [ quoted text not captured ]

SirTemple wrote: > > >Whoa! You don't consider RtI and the Tomb busted? First, RtI... It costs 4 > >blood. This is it's only limiting factor. So, you can't use it if your vamp > >has burned too much blood. But the fact that your vampire is burned is not a > >problem, since it's a sure ousting. No single card should allow you to oust > >an opponent from a secure position. Especially when the card has no risk. > >Hell... if you somehow get blocked (not enough Day Ops...), your vamp isn't > >burned, and doesn't even spend the blood. It would be better if the vampire > >were burned whether or not the action was successful, but still broken. > > I don't see RTI broken at all. First lets look at the efectiveness of the card > compared with Govern the Unaligned: > RTI costs 4 and a vampire bleed at +x > GTU cost 1 bleed at +2 > > Let us use a geneeric mid sized vampire, let's say Ozmo. > > Over a sequence of turns Ozmo will bleed using RTI or GTU I am usuming that he > gets through each time, just for a point. > > On any turn Ozmo has the following choice : > Ozmo uses RTI bleeds for 8 > Ozmo uses GTU bleeds for 4 > > If he RTI, he dies, if he GTU he can perform another action next turn. This > leaves us with the following: > > Turn:1 2 3 4 > RTI=8 > GTU+RTI=12 > GTU+GTU+RTI=16 > GTU+GTU+GTU+RTI=20 > > This goes on. > > As you can see it never pays to RTI, since it will be the last action Ozmo can > take. Ozmo is more useful continually bleeding, then blowing his load in one > shot. The only time it becomes effective, is when it will end the game, since > ozmo doesn't need to take any more actions. By then, you have already cleared > out the table, and so your deck is effective _without_ RTI. > > Second Point: > It is sooo easy to stop. > Even if it's unblockable, which is often the case. You can deflect it with > either AUS or dom. 55% of the clans have this as in clan discaplines. Or if > your not in that group (like me who is an avid Gangrel fan, and even they have > 5 vamps with Dominate) you can use the ever effective Archon Investigation. It > works every time. > > Jason Your argument is flawed in two very fundamental way: nobody will ever RtI Ozmo, and nobody will ever survive a RtI. You claim that a vamp will be more effective bleeding repeatedly than RtIing for a ton. This is not true. In actual play, an unblockable (by way of any of a billion cards) will follow an IC member being minion tapped for 7 or so. Then your prey will take 14+ and die. Your IC (who may or may not have lived to bleed again anyway) explodes, and you use your 13 pool profit to bring out another. Repeat until you have swept the table. [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <6dntjn$hv8$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, ber...@cco.caltech.edu wrote: > > > Sadly, the two cards that made large vampires into a stronger deck > component, > > > Return to Innocence and Tomb of Ramses III, are pretty much universally > > > regarded as two of the most busted cards in the game. > > > > > Pretty much universally, but not by me, despite having been killed twice > > in Ryde by RTI. > Whoa! You don't consider RtI and the Tomb busted? First, RtI... It costs 4 > blood. This is it's only limiting factor. So, you can't use it if your vamp > has burned too much blood. But the fact that your vampire is burned is not a > problem, since it's a sure ousting. No single card should allow you to oust > an opponent from a secure position. Especially when the card has no risk. > Hell... if you somehow get blocked (not enough Day Ops...), your vamp isn't > burned, and doesn't even spend the blood. It would be better if the vampire > were burned whether or not the action was successful, but still broken. o, there's lots of ways to avoid RtI. (1) Intercept; (2) rush combat to kill your predator's big vamps first; (3) Direct Intervention; (4) Misdirection or Redirection to your prey; (4) Major Boon it to your prey: (5) Pack a Life Boon or two to stop it ousting someone you love .... I'm sure you can think of others! > As for the Tomb, compare it to Art Museum and Eco Terrorists. AM and ET each > require a clan, and give you up to 1 pool a turn (to a specific type of > vampire), at a cost of 2 pool. It takes 2 turns for you to break even > (although 1 extra transfer may arguably be worth the extra pool). The Tomb > costs 3 pool and can give you 4 pool on the turn it comes out. It doesn't > require any clan and doesn't have any restrictions to which vampires you can > put blood on. Someone said that with the Tomb, you don't contest, because > it'll be going away soon. Why would it ever go away? Say you draw a 4 > capacity and a 10 capacity in your starting crypt. You bring out the 4 cap, > and then leave the 10 capacity in your uncontrolled region for the rest of > the game. Any time he starts to get too much blood, transfer it off. If you > can get an Information Highway, there is a preposterous potential for blood > gain. The Tomb is just far too strong. There are a good number of ways to > fix it, but the tournament solution is to ignore it and let anyone who > doesn't have a Tomb lose. It's also unique, and a location. So it can be contested, or burned by any of the host of anti-location cards. > > > And I don't agree about TB being bad either - it's > > certainly no worse in principle than IG, HL or FR. > Well... TB isn't as bad as most broken cards, but it's still much nastier > than IG, HL, or FR. Immortal Grapple is very strong, and in fact is probably > the only thing that keeps Potence as a viable discipline. But it is really > only an offensive card. You can stop Thaumaturgists and Assamites, but > mainly IG just makes them stop running away so you can hit them. Plus, it > requires close range, which Potence can't assure on its own. HL and FR both > have a huge added stipulation. If you never block or get blocked, you can't > use them, and your vampire still has to survive the first combat. Thoughts > Betrayed is offensive *and* defensive, has no requirements. The only thing > that makes it almost balanced is the blood cost. It's a bit pricey to hit > Anarchs with it. If it were only usable against younger vampires, and/or > cost 3 blood instead of 2, it would be okay. All true, but my slant on it is that apart from this card Dominate has no combat dimension at all. My only concern about TB is that it's not a rare, whereas IG is. I think it should be the other way around. > > > Multiple copies of all > > these fabby cards DO spoil the fun of the game, that's true, but actually > > ANY kind of really serious competitive play spoils ANY game - look at > > football where most of you guys live, or, come to think of it, football > > where the rest of us live, too. I'm all for fun games and that is why we > > play with a communal Jyhad collection from which we make decks that aren't > > boring and do have role-playing integrity. We may not win any tournaments > > but frankly we couldn't give a stuff! > > > Well... My play group had lots of trouble getting Ancient Hearts. We have a > good quantity of all the other sets, but AH was never easy to find in our > area. As a result, there is 1 Tomb and 1 RtI in our collective collection. > So... when they turn up in a game, they have a *very* unbalancing effect. At > the same time, I don't want each deck to have 8 of each. Then it's just a > race to see who gets one first. Banning them is a much easier solution. > Fixing them is viable, but it's difficult to agree on house rules, and when > you go to tournaments, you're going to have to deal with the real rules. The > best solution would have been to never print them in the first place. But we > can't ask WotC to think, can we? Hehehe .... now don't you go getting all bitter and twisted ol' undead matey. Wizards have families to feed and girlfriends to buy flowers and chocolate for too, y'know, and there just ain't enough smart people out there to pay those kinds of bills .... > > > Finally can I just put in a plug for Sabbat as a stand-alone game? We have > > moved over to this almost entirely for our fun sessions, because it > > actually works quite well as a two player game for those nights where > > someone just HAS to be out on the pull instead of staying in with a nice > > cup of cocoa and the prospect of draining the blood from their friends' > > still-living bodies. Moreover [and again in contradiction to what a lot of > > people say] I think the Sabbat expansion is better thought out in terms of > > rarities and card values than Jyhad was. > > > Well, you're just full of controversial opinions. *snicker* as in, "uh-oh, the controversial opinions' about to hit the fan ..." How then, do you explain > Caitlin and Monique (that is her name, right? The other 6 cap GanAT...)? > Caitlin is so obviously superior it's barely funny. And there are a lot of > other examples of this in the Sabbat set. I'm against any card being flat > out *better* than another. And Sabbat blatantly ignores that. As for > rarities... well, rarity is never a good fix for broken cards. In fact, > making a broken card rare just makes it more broken, since then only rich > players will have them. The one really good thing about Sabbat is that > Immortal Grapple is uncommon instead of rare. That was a major problem for > Potence combat in original Jyhad. > Ah, now that's a different matter. It's certainly true that some of the Sabbat vamps are WAY tougher than their near-equivalents in jyhad - I wouldn't dispute that for a moment. But I think I can prove my point about sabbat being balanced. Still, after all these years, we periodically have a moan about how crap the gangrels are, and how super-duper overpowered the Malks are, from original Jyhad. But when do you hear that kind of complaint about the Sabbat clans? Aren't they much better balanced, and aren't the disciplines better matched, than in Jyhad? REALLY abusive cards like Misdirection and Majesty were left out of the Sabbat set, and wake-up is severely curtailed as an option ... I could go on, but i think i made my point ... we all know what happened, and I think it was to the good!

In article <james.mcclellan-...@sm1-132.hs.port.ac.uk>, Legbiter <james.m...@port.ac.uk> wrote: >In article <6dntjn$hv8$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, ber...@cco.caltech.edu wrote: > >o, there's lots of ways to avoid RtI. (1) Intercept; (2) rush combat to >kill your predator's big vamps first; (3) Direct Intervention; (4) >Misdirection or Redirection to your prey; (4) Major Boon it to your prey: >(5) Pack a Life Boon or two to stop it ousting someone you love .... I'm >sure you can think of others! 1) Intercept isn't going to work since the action will be unblockable. 2) If rush combat were that good than it would be the only effective thing to play. It's not. 3) Will be either Sudden Reversaled, or another RtI will be played. 4.1) This is the _only_ viable option. 4.2) Right, _if_ you get that off. Marginal Defense, especially considering a RtI deck will likely have sudden reversals. 5) You're honostly going to pay a 14+ pool loss for someone else? Please. [ quoted text not captured ]

On Sun, 8 Mar 1998, Steve Wampler wrote: > Lupus Australis wrote: > > Still, I see how it can be a very offensive unpleasant surprise, in > > which a big vamp is instantly torporized just for trying to block, > > with no way of preventing it unless you were expecting Kiss of Ra. > > I don't think that this is a valid argument. It wasn't really an argument, merely an observation. My arguments have supported the idea that the card is far from broken. [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <19980306151...@ladder02.news.aol.com>, sirt...@aol.com (SirTemple) wrote: > >Whoa! You don't consider RtI and the Tomb busted? First, RtI... It costs 4 > >blood. This is it's only limiting factor. So, you can't use it if your vamp > >has burned too much blood. But the fact that your vampire is burned is not a > >problem, since it's a sure ousting. No single card should allow you to oust > >an opponent from a secure position. Especially when the card has no risk. > >Hell... if you somehow get blocked (not enough Day Ops...), your vamp isn't > >burned, and doesn't even spend the blood. It would be better if the vampire > >were burned whether or not the action was successful, but still broken. > > I don't see RTI broken at all. <snip excellent defense of RtI as a jolly decent card with no vices worthy of mention> > Cor, and there was me thinking I was a lone voice in the wilderness!!! Good on ya mate! But you missed the third, and most important point .... the Girl with the Green Wellies is a BAAAAABE!!!!!

[ quoted text not captured ] I've only played in two Jyhad tournaments and I enjoyed them, even though I agree with the point Phillipe is making. Why did I do it? So as to see other people's ideas about deck construction and how cards might work together, and so as to help build the Worldwide Web of Darkness. O, and to meet Gothic babes with unfeasibly large breasts, 'course.

Jasper Phillips wrote: > In article <35005FE4...@lmco.com>, > Quicksilver <michae...@lmco.com> wrote: > >PDB6 wrote: > [Argument that Kiss of Ra is ok snipped. Btw Peter, if you'd write about > one less word per line, following up your posts would be easier] > > >What about a Ravnos Sensory Deprivation/Kiss of Ra deck . You are really going > >to want to block that one. Your case that no actions NEED to be blocked > >is misleeding as some actions are too dangerous to ignore. > > This costs 5 blood, and is pretty well totally hosed by a deck with any > vampires with "for" in play. It often won't work, and when it does you're > pretty much paying 5 blood and an action to make your opponent lose > 5 blood and an action. This doesn't seem unbalanced to me. Especially > since you need "FOR" and "CHI" to make it work, while any sappy minion > can block you. If you could make it require only small vamps and work > against big ones, it'd be tough. In practice, I see it requiring big > vamps, and getting blocked by weenies. > > -- > /\ Jasper Phillips > /VVVVVVVVVVVVVV|~"~"~"~"~"~"----------........____ jaz > j^^^^^^^^^^^^^\/"~"~"~"~-----------........._____ ~"~--. > * http://www.engr.orst.edu/~philljas/ "~"~'--` I am not arguing that Kiss of Ra is broken, nor am I arguing that KoR and SD is a broken combination. I am ONLY arguing against the idea that you can just ignore the decks actions as a defense. And as an example I used SD as an action you REALLY can not afford to ignore. And it would not cost 5 blood as you pay for either the KoR or the SD, not both. In fact, I find KoR to be an O.K. card because of two crucial facts. First, it is damn expensive, which makes its cost/power ratio in the reasonable range. Second, fortitude is extremely popular. It is the best single discipline for combat defense. Many decks actually go to a lot of bother in adding the discipline to a clan that does not otherwise have it, such as Tremere and Nosferatu, to make it more combat effective. In one game I just played, I had to wait through 2 oustings to get a chance to play my KoR. It was fortunate I was not so simple-minded as to rely on the card, nor would I recomend such a tactic to anyone.

In article <james.mcclellan-...@sm1-132.hs.port.ac.uk>, Legbiter <james.m...@port.ac.uk> wrote: >o, there's lots of ways to avoid RtI. >(1) Intercept; Never happen. There are trivial ways to render actions unblockable, taking intercept out of the loop. >(2) rush combat to >kill your predator's big vamps first; Not reliable enough. Largely hosed by Obedience, and Dominate is common enough among big vamps. It only takes one successful RtI to oust; I'd like to see the Rush deck than can reliably take down every 8+ vampire its predator puts out before their predator's next minion phase (hint: no such animal). >(3) Direct Intervention At which point your predator's *next* 10pointer takes the action. Whee. >(4) Misdirection or Redirection to your prey This is pretty much the only sure defense, and forcing everyone to play Auspex and/or Dominate is far too calamitous of a game effect. >(4) Major Boon it to your prey: Ya, that'll happen in this lifetime. Highly conditional and tricky to get into play, compared to aconditional and trivial to play RtI. >(5) Pack a Life Boon or two to stop it ousting someone you love .... I'm >sure you can think of others! Barring Madness Network, you're not easily going to Lifeboon your prey -- as with Major boon, the conditionality and overall trickiness makes this a spotty defense at best. >It's also unique, and a location. So it can be contested, or burned by any >of the host of anti-location cards. This is a non-answer. To quote Alan Kwan, does the existence of Dodge justify this (theoretical) card? Elastic Red-Hot Iron Arms Potence Cost 0 blood INF: 4R, aggravated SUP: 8R, aggravated Hey, you can Dodge it. Or Majesty out of combat. Or Mariel. Or Elysium. If you can seriously claim that the existence of these avoidant cards would justify ER-HIA as balanced, I'm afraid we don't have much left to discuss. By parallel, I'm sure you can see that the existence of Arson, Bomb, Unnatural Disaster, &c. in no way apply to the discussion of Tomb of Ramses as balanced or unbalanced. You derive automatic benefit from the card, from which (and this is the kicker) *no means currently exist to prevent you*. Sudden Reversal cost the Reverser hir next Master Phase; you've lost a Master Phase Action. You're ahead. UnReversed, your next transfer phase immediately recoups the cost of the Tomb, with a 1pool, 4transfer profit. Any further use after that is just gravy. >All true, but my slant on it is that apart from this card Dominate has no >combat dimension at all. My only concern about TB is that it's not a rare, >whereas IG is. I think it should be the other way around. Rarity is not an appropriate correlate to power. It slants the advantage to the monied and reduces the game to a San Francisco duel (for those unversed in the practice, challenged and challenger meet at a pier and take turns throwing $50 gold coins into the Bay; the first to stop loses the duel. Not dissimilar to contesting). I'm okay with Dominate having no combat dimension. That's what the other two in-clan disciplines are for. And if those aren't particularly fighting Disciplines, then maybe you should pick a different clan for your heavy combat deck. >> How then, do you explain >> Caitlin and Monique (that is her name, right? The other 6 cap GanAT...)? >> Caitlin is so obviously superior it's barely funny. And there are a lot of >> other examples of this in the Sabbat set. I'm against any card being flat >> out *better* than another. And Sabbat blatantly ignores that. As for >> rarities... well, rarity is never a good fix for broken cards. In fact, >> making a broken card rare just makes it more broken, since then only rich >> players will have them. The one really good thing about Sabbat is that >> Immortal Grapple is uncommon instead of rare. That was a major problem for >> Potence combat in original Jyhad. >Ah, now that's a different matter. It's certainly true that some of the >Sabbat vamps are WAY tougher than their near-equivalents in jyhad - I >wouldn't dispute that for a moment. Actually, he meant two Sabbat (Gangrel-Antitribu, not found outside Sabbat) vampires, of equal capacities, one of which is categorically superior to the other, to wit: Monique 5 Gangrel Antitribu Sabbat ani aus for pro Compared to Caitlin 5 Gangrel Antitribu Sabbat Bishop ANI aus dom PRO These are not equally good investments of 5 pool, and they're both from Sabbat. The immediately apparent conclusion is that Sabbat has serious balance issues. >REALLY abusive cards >like Misdirection and Majesty were left out of the Sabbat set, and wake-up >is severely curtailed as an option Could you please explain to me why you consider Misdirection and Majesty abusive, specifically more abusive than RtI or TB? I ask in the purest spirit of inquiry. gomi poncey bastard -- kono sora wo daite kagayaku, shounen yo shinwa ni nare.

In article <6e0k32$sf2$1...@news.NERO.NET>, phil...@nd.ENGR.ORST.EDU (Jasper Phillips) wrote: > In article <james.mcclellan-...@sm1-132.hs.port.ac.uk>, > Legbiter <james.m...@port.ac.uk> wrote: Hey! Someone read my post and is actually ARGUING with me!!! Thanks, dude, and mucho respects! I feel a sorta warm fuzzy in-touch-with-the-electronic oneness coming over me .... > >In article <6dntjn$hv8$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, ber...@cco.caltech.edu wrote: > > > >o, there's lots of ways to avoid RtI. (1) Intercept; (2) rush combat to > >kill your predator's big vamps first; (3) Direct Intervention; (4) > >Misdirection or Redirection to your prey; (4) Major Boon it to your prey: > >(5) Pack a Life Boon or two to stop it ousting someone you love .... I'm > >sure you can think of others! > > 1) Intercept isn't going to work since the action will be unblockable. That's a combo. So I combo you right back with Direct Intervention. Now you have to have 3 cards to hit me, and that's becoming unlikely. But really, I don't think we should argue that a card is bad because we can foresee [or even have experienced] a devastating combo that involves it. Combo decks are either horribly slow or else so predictable that they are easy to whack. > 2) If rush combat were that good than it would be the only effective > thing to play. It's not. If you are playing a rush combat deck with small-to-medium vamps then you ALWAYS have a free shot at hurting the big guy before he can RtI you to death - that's what I should have done in Ryde. It's true that rush combat is not game dominating [nor is any other deck type, really] and that's a good thing .... but it's not because of its marked inability to deal with RtI - the downside of rush decks is that they don't always work against weenie hordes, and stealthy votes are a problem for them as well. > 3) Will be either Sudden Reversaled, No, you can't SR when it's your turn. or another RtI will be played. WHOAHH!!! Paranoia!!!! Well, if that does happen console yourself with the thougth that the money your power-freaking git of a predator spent on RtIs you KEPT and used on FLOWERS and CHOCOLATE for REAL babes. > 4.1) This is the _only_ viable option. > 4.2) Right, _if_ you get that off. Marginal Defense, especially considering > a RtI deck will likely have sudden reversals. No, you can't SR when it's your turn. There's only one master out-of-turn you can play when it is your turn - Absolution of the diabolist - and that is stated clearly on the card. > 5) You're honostly going to pay a 14+ pool loss for someone else? Please. > Well, maybe if the alternative is no sex for a week .... no, seriously, absolutely not, but usually I would only be paying a blood or two. If someone is down to 4-ish pool then RtI is a bit of a sledghammer and nut thing, doncha think??? Hey, if it comes to that Lextalionis is another defense against RtIs, at least those that hit someone else, and of course there's good ol' Archon Investigation as my esteemed prey from story3 wisely pointed out.

In article <james.mcclellan-...@sm1-132.hs.port.ac.uk>, Legbiter <james.m...@port.ac.uk> wrote: >In article <6e0k32$sf2$1...@news.NERO.NET>, phil...@nd.ENGR.ORST.EDU (Jasper >Phillips) wrote: > >> In article <james.mcclellan-...@sm1-132.hs.port.ac.uk>, >> Legbiter <james.m...@port.ac.uk> wrote: > >Hey! Someone read my post and is actually ARGUING with me!!! Thanks, dude, >and mucho respects! I feel a sorta warm fuzzy in-touch-with-the-electronic >oneness coming over me .... No sweat. :-) I like to argue, and generally can't resist (although I tend to come off more aggresively than I normally mean). >> 1) Intercept isn't going to work since the action will be unblockable. > >That's a combo. So I combo you right back with Direct Intervention. Now >you have to have 3 cards to hit me, and that's becoming unlikely. But >really, I don't think we should argue that a card is bad because we can >foresee [or even have experienced] a devastating combo that involves it. >Combo decks are either horribly slow or else so predictable that they are >easy to whack. In my experience the way your hand flows a deck built around this will have _no_ problem doing it. >> 2) If rush combat were that good than it would be the only effective >> thing to play. It's not. > >If you are playing a rush combat deck with small-to-medium vamps then you >ALWAYS have a free shot at hurting the big guy before he can RtI you to >death - that's what I should have done in Ryde. It's true that rush combat >is not game dominating [nor is any other deck type, really] and that's a >good thing .... but it's not because of its marked inability to deal with >RtI - the downside of rush decks is that they don't always work against >weenie hordes, and stealthy votes are a problem for them as well. Right. I believe that you shouldn't be ousted for failling to instantly kill every large vampire your opponent brings out. That's silly. >> 3) Will be either Sudden Reversaled, > >No, you can't SR when it's your turn. ummm, oops. :-) I still don't think you should be required to play Direct Intervention to have a chance to live. Similar things can be said in defense of the effectiveness of Weenie Vote Push and Freak Driven Bleed back in the day. To quote Gomi no Sensei (quoting Alan Kwan "This is a non-answer. To quote Alan Kwan, does the existence of Dodge justify this (theoretical) card? Elastic Red-Hot Iron Arms Potence Cost 0 blood INF: 4R, aggravated SUP: 8R, aggravated" >or another RtI will be played. > >WHOAHH!!! Paranoia!!!! Well, if that does happen console yourself with the >thougth that the money your power-freaking git of a predator spent on RtIs >you KEPT and used on FLOWERS and CHOCOLATE for REAL babes. There's a reason the card costs so much -- and if it wasn't so broken, it wouldn't. Anyway arguments about cost/rarity are irrelevent to game balance. >> 4.1) This is the _only_ viable option. >> 4.2) Right, _if_ you get that off. Marginal Defense, especially considering >> a RtI deck will likely have sudden reversals. > >No, you can't SR when it's your turn. There's only one master out-of-turn >you can play when it is your turn - Absolution of the diabolist - and that >is stated clearly on the card. It's still marginal defense even though Sudden Reversal doesn't work that way. >> 5) You're honostly going to pay a 14+ pool loss for someone else? Please. >> >Well, maybe if the alternative is no sex for a week .... no, seriously, >absolutely not, but usually I would only be paying a blood or two. If >someone is down to 4-ish pool then RtI is a bit of a sledghammer and nut >thing, doncha think??? Hey, if it comes to that Lextalionis is another >defense against RtIs, at least those that hit someone else, and of course >there's good ol' Archon Investigation as my esteemed prey from story3 >wisely pointed out. If the person is done that low, RtI isn't going to be used, and isn't an issue! As I said, this is _not_ a defense against RtI -- period. [ quoted text not captured ]

WAYHAY!!! BIG argument time. But no ear-biting, k? > In article <james.mcclellan-...@sm1-132.hs.port.ac.uk>, > Legbiter <james.m...@port.ac.uk> wrote: > > >o, there's lots of ways to avoid RtI. > > >(1) Intercept; > > Never happen. There are trivial ways to render actions unblockable, taking > intercept out of the loop. And they involve playing cards. So you can Direct Intervention them. > >(2) rush combat to > >kill your predator's big vamps first; > > Not reliable enough. Largely hosed by Obedience, and Dominate is common > enough among big vamps. It only takes one successful RtI to oust; I'd > like to see the Rush deck than can reliably take down every 8+ vampire > its predator puts out before their predator's next minion phase (hint: > no such animal). No indeed, and a good thing too. But surely you'd agree that probability favours a weenie-to-mid rush deck in a situation like this? Especially a stealthy one with a few HLs? > > >(3) Direct Intervention > > At which point your predator's *next* 10pointer takes the action. Whee. Well, sure. If s/he has a way of bringing out lotsa 10-pointers, good luck to 'em. Specially when the weenie bleed horde comes a-knockin' .... > >(4) Misdirection or Redirection to your prey > > This is pretty much the only sure defense, and forcing everyone to play > Auspex and/or Dominate is far too calamitous of a game effect. Archon Investigation, then. Disciplineless, and pretty much a super-bleed hosing card all by its little self. > > >(4) Major Boon it to your prey: > > Ya, that'll happen in this lifetime. Highly conditional and tricky to > get into play, compared to aconditional and trivial to play RtI. Yeah, I agree it's tricky to get it on your prey directly. But grand-prey is a different matter. That is usually easy. Predator is easier still. > > >(5) Pack a Life Boon or two to stop it ousting someone you love .... I'm > >sure you can think of others! > > Barring Madness Network, you're not easily going to Lifeboon your prey -- > as with Major boon, the conditionality and overall trickiness makes this > a spotty defense at best. Yeah, I concede that. > > >It's also unique, and a location. So it can be contested, or burned by any > >of the host of anti-location cards. > > This is a non-answer. To quote Alan Kwan, does the existence of Dodge > justify this (theoretical) card? > > Elastic Red-Hot Iron Arms > Potence > Cost 0 blood > INF: 4R, aggravated > SUP: 8R, aggravated > > Hey, you can Dodge it. Or Majesty out of combat. Or Mariel. Or > Elysium. If you can seriously claim that the existence of these avoidant > cards would justify ER-HIA as balanced, I'm afraid we don't have much > left to discuss. Well, er, no .... but I don't think Tomb is anything like as unbalanced as that. One thing I will grant though is that most of the other super locations [Pere Lachaise, Grand Temple of Set] have a text to the effect that they can be burned by anyone as a direct action. > > By parallel, I'm sure you can see that the existence of Arson, Bomb, > Unnatural Disaster, &c. in no way apply to the discussion of Tomb of > Ramses as balanced or unbalanced. You derive automatic benefit from > the card, from which (and this is the kicker) *no means currently exist > to prevent you*. Sudden Reversal cost the Reverser hir next Master > Phase; you've lost a Master Phase Action. You're ahead. UnReversed, > your next transfer phase immediately recoups the cost of the Tomb, with a > 1pool, 4transfer profit. Any further use after that is just gravy. Hmmm ... all I can say to that is, every game that I've played in where someone has wopped out their tomb, it has either been burned or contested PDQ. Maybe my problem is that I've never actually SEEN it stomp a table. Perhaps if i had i would feel as strongly about this as the rest of you! > > >All true, but my slant on it is that apart from this card Dominate has no > >combat dimension at all. My only concern about TB is that it's not a rare, > >whereas IG is. I think it should be the other way around. > > Rarity is not an appropriate correlate to power. It slants the advantage > to the monied and reduces the game to a San Francisco duel (for those > unversed in the practice, challenged and challenger meet at a pier and > take turns throwing $50 gold coins into the Bay; the first to stop loses > the duel. Not dissimilar to contesting). Hehehe .... > > I'm okay with Dominate having no combat dimension. That's what the other > two in-clan disciplines are for. And if those aren't particularly fighting > Disciplines, then maybe you should pick a different clan for your heavy > combat deck. But then it's IMMEDIATELY obvious to my opponents that I'm playing combat. Isn't there a certain satisfaction in revelaing that your apparent sneak-and-creep deck is actually a combat monster in disguise? > > >> How then, do you explain > >> Caitlin and Monique (that is her name, right? The other 6 cap GanAT...)? > >> Caitlin is so obviously superior it's barely funny. And there are a lot of > >> other examples of this in the Sabbat set. I'm against any card being flat > >> out *better* than another. And Sabbat blatantly ignores that. As for > >> rarities... well, rarity is never a good fix for broken cards. In fact, > >> making a broken card rare just makes it more broken, since then only rich > >> players will have them. The one really good thing about Sabbat is that > >> Immortal Grapple is uncommon instead of rare. That was a major problem for > >> Potence combat in original Jyhad. > > >Ah, now that's a different matter. It's certainly true that some of the > >Sabbat vamps are WAY tougher than their near-equivalents in jyhad - I > >wouldn't dispute that for a moment. > > Actually, he meant two Sabbat (Gangrel-Antitribu, not found outside Sabbat) > vampires, of equal capacities, one of which is categorically superior to > the other, to wit: > > Monique > 5 Gangrel Antitribu > Sabbat > ani aus for pro > > Compared to > > Caitlin > 5 Gangrel Antitribu > Sabbat Bishop > ANI aus dom PRO > > These are not equally good investments of 5 pool, and they're both from > Sabbat. The immediately apparent conclusion is that Sabbat has serious > balance issues. Well, that's fair enough. Actually there can't be any serious argument about Caitlin vs Monique EXCEPT that Caitlin lacks fortitude, which is the core Gangrel discipline IMO. So hiring Caitlin is like an ordinary company hiring a secretary who can speak Greek, act as a professional model and solve simultaneous equations but can't actually type. And I think the reason for her being ther is that the overall discipline mix for the gangrel is on the wek side, especially in the bleed department. Partly for this reason and taken in toto, I believe the Gangrel antis are a better investment than the gangrels - and therfore more nearly comparable to the other clans. > > >REALLY abusive cards > >like Misdirection and Majesty were left out of the Sabbat set, and wake-up > >is severely curtailed as an option > > Could you please explain to me why you consider Misdirection and Majesty > abusive, specifically more abusive than RtI or TB? I ask in the purest > spirit of inquiry. Well, I don't, actually. I don't think any card is really abusive. I think we have to be careful to state what we mean by abuse. For me, it is a technical term that covers a range of unprincipled acts taken without regard for the victim's wishes. In this sense, because no-one can FORCE you to take part in a game, no card is abusive. However, I suspect that you have a different definition, something along the lines of feeling that another player is getting something WAAY too cheap. And the only times I personally have felt like that in Jyhad is when being SR'd, repeatedly majestied, or Misdirected and over-run when I thought i was doing just great. However [key difference] my response to this kind of reverse has NOT been to think, o how can i get this card banned, but instead, how can i create a grand alliance of Jyhad players to STOMP this evil unprincipled guy/gal next time around ... > gomi > poncey bastard Surely not! > kono sora wo daite kagayaku, > shounen yo shinwa ni nare. Hey, I like these little Japanese thingies. Are they Haiku? What do they mean?

In article <james.mcclellan-...@sm1-132.hs.port.ac.uk>, Legbiter <james.m...@port.ac.uk> wrote: >WAYHAY!!! BIG argument time. But no ear-biting, k? Damn. Just a nibble? ;-) >> >(2) rush combat to >> >kill your predator's big vamps first; >> >> Not reliable enough. Largely hosed by Obedience, and Dominate is common >> enough among big vamps. It only takes one successful RtI to oust; I'd >> like to see the Rush deck than can reliably take down every 8+ vampire >> its predator puts out before their predator's next minion phase (hint: >> no such animal). > >No indeed, and a good thing too. But surely you'd agree that probability >favours a weenie-to-mid rush deck in a situation like this? Especially a >stealthy one with a few HLs? Actually, as Peter points out, Obedience completely hoses weeny-to-mid rush. I'd say in fact that such a deck would have almost no chance (you'd have to pray for no obedience). >> >(4) Misdirection or Redirection to your prey >> >> This is pretty much the only sure defense, and forcing everyone to play >> Auspex and/or Dominate is far too calamitous of a game effect. > >Archon Investigation, then. Disciplineless, and pretty much a super-bleed >hosing card all by its little self. Which you shouldn't be forced to play. It's very limited in scope, and is effectively like a clan hoser. >> >(4) Major Boon it to your prey: >> >> Ya, that'll happen in this lifetime. Highly conditional and tricky to >> get into play, compared to aconditional and trivial to play RtI. > >Yeah, I agree it's tricky to get it on your prey directly. But grand-prey >is a different matter. That is usually easy. Predator is easier still. The problem here is that you're giving someone else victory points. ["ER-HIA" snipped] >Well, er, no .... but I don't think Tomb is anything like as unbalanced as >that. One thing I will grant though is that most of the other super >locations [Pere Lachaise, Grand Temple of Set] have a text to the effect >that they can be burned by anyone as a direct action. Even this limitation wouldn't cut it for the Tomb, since you're recouped your losses as soon as you've played it. In my opinion the Tomb and RtI both are on par with "ER-HIA", since they're far more difficult to deal with. >Hmmm ... all I can say to that is, every game that I've played in where >someone has wopped out their tomb, it has either been burned or contested >PDQ. Maybe my problem is that I've never actually SEEN it stomp a table. >Perhaps if i had i would feel as strongly about this as the rest of you! It being contestable doesn't make it balanced. It has the potential to easily almost double your pool, and double your transfers early in the game. I find this quite brutal, geometric effect. >> Rarity is not an appropriate correlate to power. It slants the advantage >> to the monied and reduces the game to a San Francisco duel (for those >> unversed in the practice, challenged and challenger meet at a pier and >> take turns throwing $50 gold coins into the Bay; the first to stop loses >> the duel. Not dissimilar to contesting). People actually did that? Damn. >But then it's IMMEDIATELY obvious to my opponents that I'm playing combat. >Isn't there a certain satisfaction in revelaing that your apparent >sneak-and-creep deck is actually a combat monster in disguise? Yes, there is, but this doesn't justify busted cards to pump up a discipline that is already one of the most powerfull (although not in combat). [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <6e5rv3$pr5$1...@news.NERO.NET>, Jasper Phillips wrote: > >Actually, as Peter points out, Obedience completely hoses weeny-to-mid >rush. I'd say in fact that such a deck would have almost no chance (you'd >have to pray for no obedience). Actually, this is not so simple if you rush his tapped vampires. For that he needs a WWEF/Obedience combo. [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <slrn6gcv9u....@amanda.dorsai.org>, John Whelan <jbwh...@dorsai.org> wrote: >In article <6e5rv3$pr5$1...@news.NERO.NET>, Jasper Phillips wrote: >> >>Actually, as Peter points out, Obedience completely hoses weeny-to-mid >>rush. I'd say in fact that such a deck would have almost no chance (you'd >>have to pray for no obedience). > >Actually, this is not so simple if you rush his tapped vampires. For that >he needs a WWEF/Obedience combo. In this context it is, since the only time his vampires are going to tap is when they unblockably RTI you, at which point rushing them is too late. The large vamps only needs to survive one turn. [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <james.mcclellan-...@sm1-132.hs.port.ac.uk>, Legbiter <james.m...@port.ac.uk> wrote: >WAYHAY!!! BIG argument time. But no ear-biting, k? Well, all right then. *pout* >> In article <james.mcclellan-...@sm1-132.hs.port.ac.uk>, >> Legbiter <james.m...@port.ac.uk> wrote: [rti easily made unblockable] >And they involve playing cards. So you can Direct Intervention them. DI is way expensive (pool, a master phase) and can only be done once. You can't, practically speaking, stuff enough DIs into a deck to reliably keep them in-hand without also having them clog your hand. [rush rti-size vamps] >But surely you'd agree that probability >favours a weenie-to-mid rush deck in a situation like this? Especially a >stealthy one with a few HLs? Actually, stealth works *against* Hidden Lurker, since you kind of have to be blocked to use it. The problem is that the predator only needs to succesfully RtI *once*. This means any defense to RtI must leave no margin for error, and only bleed bounce comes close to sufficing. [Direct Intervention] See my comment on DI above. >> >(4) Misdirection or Redirection to your prey >> This is pretty much the only sure defense, and forcing everyone to play >> Auspex and/or Dominate is far too calamitous of a game effect. >Archon Investigation, then. Disciplineless, and pretty much a super-bleed >hosing card all by its little self. AI's a master-out-of-turn as well, which gives it a lot of the same problems as DI as far as keeping it reliably in-hand goes. Remember, no margin for error. Other folks on this thread have detailed the other problems with AI elsewhere. >Well, er, no .... but I don't think Tomb is anything like as unbalanced as >that. One thing I will grant though is that most of the other super >locations [Pere Lachaise, Grand Temple of Set] have a text to the effect >that they can be burned by anyone as a direct action. Hm. Ya, we seem to have different opinions of the Tomb's power. One of the folks here posted a 'Meet the Inner Circle' deck, which routinely got out 33 to 44 pool's worth of vampires with the Tomb. It was plenty disgusting. Even if Tomb granted an option to burn, you'd never lose pool by playing it, as it pays for itself (with a profit) the very turn you play it. >Hmmm ... all I can say to that is, every game that I've played in where >someone has wopped out their tomb, it has either been burned or contested >PDQ. Maybe my problem is that I've never actually SEEN it stomp a table. >Perhaps if i had i would feel as strongly about this as the rest of you! Ya, but the problem is that even PDQ leaves the player of the Tomb ahead by at least a pool. At its worst Tomb is a better deal than Ascendance, with potential to be ever so much better. >But then it's IMMEDIATELY obvious to my opponents that I'm playing combat. >Isn't there a certain satisfaction in revelaing that your apparent >sneak-and-creep deck is actually a combat monster in disguise? Certainly. But you can do that without TB; Malkavian Hidden Lurker/Fast Reaction/Disguised Weapon combat is an uncommon but by no means unheard-of deck trope. [caitlin v. monique snipped] [misdirection/majesty abusive] >Well, I don't, actually. I don't think any card is really abusive. I think >we have to be careful to state what we mean by abuse. For me, it is a >technical term that covers a range of unprincipled acts taken without >regard for the victim's wishes. [...] Well, heck, by this definition TB's classically abusive! It cuts out the victim's volition entirely. >However, I suspect that >you have a different definition, something along the lines of feeling that >another player is getting something WAAY too cheap. And the only times I >personally have felt like that in Jyhad is when being SR'd, repeatedly >majestied, or Misdirected and over-run when I thought i was doing just >great. I think that's essentially correct; cost/effect balance is a crucial (perhaps THE crucial) component of Jyhad/V:tES. I suspect, however, that you might also mean 'cheap' in the 'you cheap BASTARD!' sort of way, that outragedish feeling you get when your deck is essentially nullified. And I can empathize with that, certainly. I just feel Majesty (and other forms of SCE) has a place in the game -- it's reliable combat defence for non-Fortitude clans (although I'm following the proposed alterations to Strike: Round Ends with interest) Misdirection has a high cost, and there's plenty of wake-up toys in the set, but I feel it's appropriate effect for the risk and expense. >However [key difference] my response to this kind of reverse has >NOT been to think, o how can i get this card banned, but instead, how can >i create a grand alliance of Jyhad players to STOMP this evil unprincipled >guy/gal next time around ... Well, we don't necessarily want to ban cards (not that I speak for the froup; this is only my perception of the general feeling), but banning is largely considered the last resort for really rude, 'unfixable' cards. I think people are a lot more interested in balancing the cardset than in banning specific cards. >> gomi >> poncey bastard >Surely not! Naah. I just threw that in because, rereading the post, I felt it came across as a little snottier than I intended, and wanted to make it more lighthearted. >> kono sora wo daite kagayaku, >> shounen yo shinwa ni nare. >Hey, I like these little Japanese thingies. Are they Haiku? What do they mean? "Shine and hold up the sky; Boy, become a legend." It's quoted from the opening song for the excellent Anime series Evangelion: Neon Genesis. See it if you get the chance. gomi -- [ quoted text not captured ]

Legbiter wrote: "And they involve playing cards. So you can Direct Intervention them." as well as "Archon Investigation, then. Disciplineless, and pretty much a super-bleed hosing card all by its little self." Both Archon Investigation and Direct Intervention are cards that only exist is patches, and the existance of patches seems to make game designers make more broken cards, because patches exist, and so on. It is very circular logic. The original Jyhad set did not include Archon Investigation, and the game was perfectly balanced. When they reprinted the set, someone decided that Archon Investigation was a good idea (which is highly questionable), and it had a profound effect on play balance (mostly that decks that went for few but big bleeds were totally screwed, while the standard Malkavian S+B deck, which were austensibly the reason for AI in the first place, were completely unaffected). With AI in place, someone decided that it was ok to make a totally out of control card like RTI, justifying it by saying "Well, they can always play with AI...". Once RTI was in place and became a dominant card, there neded to be more safeguards against it, because AI was not sufficient. Thus DI is born. This cycle of hosers justifying hosers justifying hosers is just silly. [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <19980312004...@ladder03.news.aol.com>, PDB6 <pd...@aol.com> wrote: >This cycle of hosers justifying hosers justifying hosers is just silly. > >Peter D Bakija Amen to that. Better to fix the original card than to counterbalance, especially considering there aren't any new sets coming out. [ quoted text not captured ]

I wonder if the Tomb of Ramses was intended for use with Stites only... It would kind of make sense, and would not be as powerful as it is now (making it a new kind of Arcane Library/Art Museum/...) That's how we play it in our group, and it's OK, since we feel the Setite and Assamite decks offer too few vampires to be unbeatable. Does anybody know if the current Tomb is the result of a misprint or not? _____ / \ > T~Z < \_____/

[ quoted text not captured ] Hmmm, that would make sense wouldn't it? Maybe the Setite glyph that shouldn't be on Summon the Serpent got translocated from the Tomb .... Anyway, dam'd interesting as this discussion is, I think I've made all the points I wanted to, except one. I'd hate anyone to think I don't recognise that Tomb, TB and RtI are dam' fine cards, arguably the most powerful in the game. But the point is this; if you ban or modify them, then some other card becomes the best in the game. Then everyone starts to moan about that card, and it gets errata'd, and then someone else is best, and so on. This process actually happened to Magic, and almost killed it .. Wizards brought out the perfectly balanced and completely impotent Fallen Empires expansion [so forgettable I'd actually forgotten the name, but it was after The Dark, Artefacts and Legends, and before Ice Age ... i had to look up the name in Inquest]. And in the process of all this errata-ing you also create the highly undesirable phenomenon that the new guy or gal CANNOT figure out how to play the game by him or herself. PLEASE let's not go down that road!

In article <james.mcclellan-...@sm1-132.hs.port.ac.uk>, Legbiter <james.m...@port.ac.uk> wrote: >Hmmm, that would make sense wouldn't it? Maybe the Setite glyph that >shouldn't be on Summon the Serpent got translocated from the Tomb .... This would make the card more balanced, since the Settites aren't so tough... I still don't like the card though. >Anyway, dam'd interesting as this discussion is, I think I've made all the >points I wanted to, except one. I'd hate anyone to think I don't recognise >that Tomb, TB and RtI are dam' fine cards, arguably the most powerful in >the game. But the point is this; if you ban or modify them, then some >other card becomes the best in the game. Then everyone starts to moan I don't think this is neccesarily so. There are maybe 4 or 5 cards I think are over the top -- and that's it. There are a few others I don't like the idea of, but that's part of the game I suppose. And again, as always, your argument would cover even the most blatantly broken cards -- like Peter's "Oust Prey" card (which I agree is barely more powerfull than RtI). I simply think that it _is_ possible for cards to be too powerfull, and is _also_ possible for the game to be balanced. Jyhad is really nothing like magic. [snip] >look up the name in Inquest]. And in the process of all this errata-ing >you also create the highly undesirable phenomenon that the new guy or gal >CANNOT figure out how to play the game by him or herself. PLEASE let's not >go down that road! There is already so much errata, etc. that these few additions won't change anything, and certainly won't be guilty of creating this phenomenom. Besides, even if they did, it still wouldn't be a good reason to not issue fixes (but rather to better edit and play test). In any event, look at some of the cards that have already been changed, like Rotschreck. [ quoted text not captured ]

On 13 Mar 1998, Jasper Phillips wrote: > There is already so much errata, etc. that these few additions won't > change anything, and certainly won't be guilty of creating this > phenomenom. Besides, even if they did, it still wouldn't be a good > reason to not issue fixes (but rather to better edit and play test). I actually think that an effort should be made to keep errata and corrections to a minimum, which is why I have tried to keep any recommended fixes as short and simple as possible. The errata list and rulings list are quite long. Some of the stuff on there do not seriously need fixing. The errata on Rutor's Hand, for instance, is unnecessary, even confusing. Leave the card as is and let the damage at superior be only preventable with Blood Tears of Kephram, or some other future card. Other cards that do not need their current errata: Change of Target, Obedience, Akhenaten the Sun Pharoah, Elder Impersonation, Force of Will, Legendary Vampire, and Sacrificial Lamb. Also not needing errata are cards that say "+1 bleed if your prey has [such & such]". Why not let such cards be played with literal interpretation of card text, so that the expanding errata lists can be kept to a minimum. The cards will still be playable and the game as a whole will not be adversly affected (unless I have overlooked certain implications). > In any event, look at some of the cards that have already been changed, > like Rotschreck. That is actually the sort of fix that I'd rather see avoided. The fix is quite wordy, and essentially rewrites the entire card. We don't want too many fixes like this. [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <Pine.SUN.3.96.980314000434.10280B-100000@amanda>, Lupus Australis <jbwh...@dorsai.org> wrote: > >I actually think that an effort should be made to keep errata and >corrections to a minimum, which is why I have tried to keep any >recommended fixes as short and simple as possible. The errata list and >rulings list are quite long. Some of the stuff on there do not seriously >need fixing. The errata on Rutor's Hand, for instance, is unnecessary, >even confusing. Leave the card as is and let the damage at superior be >only preventable with Blood Tears of Kephram, or some other future card. >Other cards that do not need their current errata: Change of Target, >Obedience, Akhenaten the Sun Pharoah, Elder Impersonation, Force of Will, >Legendary Vampire, and Sacrificial Lamb. Also not needing errata are >cards that say "+1 bleed if your prey has [such & such]". Why not let >such cards be played with literal interpretation of card text, so that the >expanding errata lists can be kept to a minimum. The cards will still be >playable and the game as a whole will not be adversly affected (unless I >have overlooked certain implications). > >> In any event, look at some of the cards that have already been changed, >> like Rotschreck. > >That is actually the sort of fix that I'd rather see avoided. The fix is >quite wordy, and essentially rewrites the entire card. We don't want too >many fixes like this. I agree. Which is why it strikes me as odd that the people that make the official rules don't fix the really bad ones -- especially considering how many (often frivilous) rulings have been made. I don't think the excess baggage obviates the need to fix cards that really are broken however, and would like to see about 4 cards changed, combined with a smaller overall list of errata. [ quoted text not captured ]

> > >Anyway, dam'd interesting as this discussion is, I think I've made all the > >points I wanted to, except one. I'd hate anyone to think I don't recognise > >that Tomb, TB and RtI are dam' fine cards, arguably the most powerful in > >the game. But the point is this; if you ban or modify them, then some > >other card becomes the best in the game. Then everyone starts to moan > > I don't think this is neccesarily so. Of course you're right, it isn't necessarily so. Nevertheless I'll lay a small bet that if TB ever DOES get errata'd into impotence, an AWFUL lot more people are going to start packing Mind of a Child in a stealth/dementation/intercept deck. Only costs one more blood, but stops them taking discipline related actions and reactions, too!!! And then, my blood-red crystal ball tells me, angry postings on the list will tell us that stopping people playing cards is Just So Wrong [except for IG, Fast Reaction, HL, Strike: Combat Ends and obedience].... There are maybe 4 or 5 cards I > think are over the top -- and that's it. There are a few others I > don't like the idea of, but that's part of the game I suppose. > And again, as always, your argument would cover even the most blatantly > broken cards -- like Peter's "Oust Prey" card (which I agree is barely > more powerfull than RtI). Well, back when I did debating theory they called Peter's card the Straw Man .... oops, there I go again making more points ..... > > I simply think that it _is_ possible for cards to be too powerfull, Trying to agree more, but I can't! and > is _also_ possible for the game to be balanced. I also agree with this. And I really think it is balanced enough, already. Curiously, no-one so far has mentioned Protected Resources as an RtI hoser, which it surely is ..... just the thing for a voters/army of rats/blood-gain-and-anarchs type deck. Jyhad is really nothing > like magic. > Whoops, sorry, I disagree. Jyhad is much BETTER than Magic, but the basic game mechanic is the same .. [Jyhad is multi-player Magic where you pay lives to bring out lands and there are an AWFUL lot of colours compared to Magic] ..... and so is Netrunner's and so is Battletech.. And all are dam' fine games. Why is Jyhad best? Because it is complex and smart and connected to the real world, because it was designed SPECIFICALLY to fix the problems that Garfield could see in Magic, but above all because of its social dimension, proof of the strength of which is the fact we're having this discussion. And it seems to me that the social dimension is the real protection against overpowerful cards. > > >look up the name in Inquest]. And in the process of all this errata-ing > >you also create the highly undesirable phenomenon that the new guy or gal > >CANNOT figure out how to play the game by him or herself. PLEASE let's not > >go down that road! > > There is already so much errata, etc. that these few additions won't > change anything, and certainly won't be guilty of creating this > phenomenom. Besides, even if they did, it still wouldn't be a good > reason to not issue fixes (but rather to better edit and play test). > > In any event, look at some of the cards that have already been changed, > like Rotschreck. > Well, exactly my point good buddy ... not to mention Rutor's hand .... allowing cross-table bleeds ..... relieving Dragos with CEL of the power to pay no blood and do infinitely many strikes using Lightning Reflexes [alright, maybe that one was a good fix]..... the past doesn't give one an awful lot of confidence that card-fixes make things better, does it??? Personally I think we should go back to the literal text on absolutely everything, except for the obvious screw-ups like extra or missing glyphs. And at the risk of REALLY annoying you [cos I know you're not a Wizards fan] I'd like to suggest that we are doing something that Magic players can get away with [because there are so many of them, they have Portal and the game is relatively easy anyway], but we can't. This game of ours is HARD, and ANY extra barrier that we put in the way of new players is another tightening of the screw that will eventually kill us. Tell you what. Once all the oiks have got bored of Magic and turned to Jyhad, I'll stop objecting to card-fixes, 'k?

I agree completely, I do not belevie that any card is so inherently powerful that its exclusion from the game is either nessecary or desireable. Chris Cac...@earthlink.net Legbiter wrote: > In article <3507E593...@aol.com>, Tadeusz <ga...@aol.com> wrote: > > > I wonder if the Tomb of Ramses was intended for use with Stites > > only... It would kind of make sense, and would not be as powerful as it > > is now (making it a new kind of Arcane Library/Art Museum/...) That's > > how we play it in our group, and it's OK, since we feel the Setite and > > Assamite decks offer too few vampires to be unbeatable. > > Does anybody know if the current Tomb is the result of a misprint or > > not? > > _____ > > / \ > > > T~Z < > > \_____/ > > Hmmm, that would make sense wouldn't it? Maybe the Setite glyph that > shouldn't be on Summon the Serpent got translocated from the Tomb .... > > Anyway, dam'd interesting as this discussion is, I think I've made all the > points I wanted to, except one. I'd hate anyone to think I don't recognise > that Tomb, TB and RtI are dam' fine cards, arguably the most powerful in > the game. But the point is this; if you ban or modify them, then some > other card becomes the best in the game. Then everyone starts to moan > about that card, and it gets errata'd, and then someone else is best, and > so on. This process actually happened to Magic, and almost killed it .. > Wizards brought out the perfectly balanced and completely impotent Fallen > Empires expansion [so forgettable I'd actually forgotten the name, but it > was after The Dark, Artefacts and Legends, and before Ice Age ... i had to [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <not.available-1...@sm1-132.hs.port.ac.uk>, Legbiter <not.av...@your.security.clearance> wrote: > >> I don't think this is neccesarily so. > >Of course you're right, it isn't necessarily so. Nevertheless I'll lay a >small bet that if TB ever DOES get errata'd into impotence, an AWFUL lot >more people are going to start packing Mind of a Child in a >stealth/dementation/intercept deck. Only costs one more blood, but stops >them taking discipline related actions and reactions, too!!! And then, my >blood-red crystal ball tells me, angry postings on the list will tell us >that stopping people playing cards is Just So Wrong [except for IG, Fast >Reaction, HL, Strike: Combat Ends and obedience].... It's interesting how you're judgind my future opinions without knowing me. Quite frankly the other cards you mention don't compare with Thoughts Betrayed, in general since there _are_ defenses against them, they _have_ limitations, and in particular they _don't_ stop you from playing any cards at all. >There are maybe 4 or 5 cards I >> think are over the top -- and that's it. There are a few others I >> don't like the idea of, but that's part of the game I suppose. >> And again, as always, your argument would cover even the most blatantly >> broken cards -- like Peter's "Oust Prey" card (which I agree is barely >> more powerfull than RtI). > >Well, back when I did debating theory they called Peter's card the Straw >Man .... oops, there I go again making more points ..... No, I don't believe you are right. IMHO "Oust Prey" and RtI (assumed unblockable) are about equal in power, the analagy holds, and this is _not_ a straw man. You'll note in fact that I'm not even really arguing about RtI here, but the inherent weakness of the "oh we can get along because it's multiplayer argument/it can be countered" argument, which is trivially true in a multiplayer game where you can choose to play with the same cards as your opponent. Kinda like if I ask for a graph of x/pi accurate to several decimals, and you tell me 0/pi is 0. In other words, I'd say you're chasing a red herring (assuming I'm attacking "Oust Prey" instead of RtI), to use your "debating theory", and you don't get points. Simply put, just because something can be countered, _in no way_ means it's balanced. >> I simply think that it _is_ possible for cards to be too powerfull, > >Trying to agree more, but I can't! You can't imagine a card that's too powerfull? It seems you are a fundamentally biased, and there is little point in continuing this. >and >> is _also_ possible for the game to be balanced. > >I also agree with this. And I really think it is balanced enough, already. >Curiously, no-one so far has mentioned Protected Resources as an RtI >hoser, which it surely is ..... just the thing for a voters/army of >rats/blood-gain-and-anarchs type deck. Hmmm, another one of those cards added in VTES that I missed. Anyone have a list of the additions? Anyway, this card is a losing proposition, and while it will hose RtI, is in general worthless. A very good example of why, even though something is counterable, it still can be broken. Thank you. >Jyhad is really nothing >> like magic. >> >Whoops, sorry, I disagree. Jyhad is much BETTER than Magic, but the basic >game mechanic is the same .. [Jyhad is multi-player Magic where you pay >lives to bring out lands and there are an AWFUL lot of colours compared to >Magic] ..... and so is Netrunner's and so is Battletech.. And all are dam' >fine games. Why is Jyhad best? Because it is complex and smart and >connected to the real world, because it was designed SPECIFICALLY to fix >the problems that Garfield could see in Magic, but above all because of >its social dimension, proof of the strength of which is the fact we're >having this discussion. And it seems to me that the social dimension is >the real protection against overpowerful cards. The social aspect you mention holds in practically _any_ multiplayer game. Less so in Jyhad than most in fact, since you only really benefit from ousting your prey, as opposed to any of the other players. You analgy of bringing vampires into play and magic's land is very thin, and I would say the only comparison is that it's a constructed deck card game, where you tap cards for effect. The rest is different -- it plays nothing like magic, and the mechanics are barely even superficially similar, and often qualitatively different. [snip: some marginal fixes] >[alright, maybe that one was a good fix]..... the past doesn't give one an >awful lot of confidence that card-fixes make things better, does it??? >Personally I think we should go back to the literal text on absolutely >everything, except for the obvious screw-ups like extra or missing glyphs. Just because bad cards have been made, and bad fixes to card in no way means that cards can't be fixed. This is simply reactionary traditionalism. [snip: comments saying we shouldn't add errata] You'll note that I said I in fact wanted to get rid of most of the errata. [ quoted text not captured ]

Legbiter wrote: > > > > >Anyway, dam'd interesting as this discussion is, I think I've made > all the > > >points I wanted to, except one. I'd hate anyone to think I don't > recognise > > >that Tomb, TB and RtI are dam' fine cards, arguably the most > powerful in > > >the game. But the point is this; if you ban or modify them, then > some > > >other card becomes the best in the game. Then everyone starts to > moan > > > > I don't think this is neccesarily so. > > Of course you're right, it isn't necessarily so. Nevertheless I'll lay > a > small bet that if TB ever DOES get errata'd into impotence, an AWFUL > lot > more people are going to start packing Mind of a Child in a > stealth/dementation/intercept deck. Only costs one more blood, but > stops > them taking discipline related actions and reactions, too!!! And then, > my > blood-red crystal ball tells me, angry postings on the list will tell > us > that stopping people playing cards is Just So Wrong [except for IG, > Fast > Reaction, HL, Strike: Combat Ends and obedience].... > The Tomb is used regulary because of its usefulness when you want to play a deck with big boys & girls. When you have it for too long, people tend to steal or destroy it. The last time Thought's Betrayed was used in my playgroup was about 2 months ago (and before then even less). This is perhaps because combat decks with Dominate are pretty rare in my playgroup (our local Tremere fetishist prefers the intercept combat tactic and usually has no space in his deck for this card. But: he was the last one using it in a Rush/Drain & put to the flame deck. POT DOM is seldom played.) The last time RTI was played is LONG ago. (In Crusade: Berlin, to be exactly. That was last year in September). We did made attempts to ban those above cards in our playgroup - and failed. But most of our players prefer to PLAY this game. When you just slaughter your preys in record times, you have no time to see them suffer and play the age-old cat & mouse game ;) It is just more fun to strangle him slowly, your paw at his neck, than to blow him to hell with a nuclear bomb (like RTI). Michael Beer

On Mon, 16 Mar 1998, Christopher Chew wrote: > I agree completely, I do not belevie that any card is so inherently powerful > that its exclusion from the game is either nessecary or desireable. Who are all you folks arguing against? As I recall, most on this NG have been arguing for fixes, not bans. There are some cards which I think should be banned if they cannot be fixed, but RTI is the only card I am even remotely considering for this. Still, I suspect the fix I have recommended balances the card reasonably well without turning it into wallpaper. Lupus A.

In article <6ejva6$5cb$1...@news.NERO.NET>, phil...@nd.ENGR.ORST.EDU (Jasper Phillips) wrote: > In article <not.available-1...@sm1-132.hs.port.ac.uk>, > Legbiter <not.av...@your.security.clearance> wrote: > > > >> I don't think this is neccesarily so. > > > >Of course you're right, it isn't necessarily so. Nevertheless I'll lay a > >small bet that if TB ever DOES get errata'd into impotence, an AWFUL lot > >more people are going to start packing Mind of a Child in a > >stealth/dementation/intercept deck. Only costs one more blood, but stops > >them taking discipline related actions and reactions, too!!! And then, my > >blood-red crystal ball tells me, angry postings on the list will tell us > >that stopping people playing cards is Just So Wrong [except for IG, Fast > >Reaction, HL, Strike: Combat Ends and obedience].... > > It's interesting how you're judgind my future opinions without knowing > me. ?Sorry brother, you've lost me here. Why am i judging you? Quite frankly the other cards you mention don't compare with > Thoughts Betrayed, in general since there _are_ defenses against them, > they _have_ limitations, and in particular they _don't_ stop > you from playing any cards at all. Sigh .. now we're going round the houses a little. ALL the cards we're talking about have limitations. TB costs 2 blood, and requires some other combat cards to be deadly. RtI kills your vampire, and it'll be a big one if you're really going to oust your prey. And there ARE defenses against all of them. We all agree about all that, but we disagree about whether the defenses are good enough or not. > > >There are maybe 4 or 5 cards I > >> think are over the top -- and that's it. There are a few others I > >> don't like the idea of, but that's part of the game I suppose. > >> And again, as always, your argument would cover even the most blatantly > >> broken cards -- like Peter's "Oust Prey" card (which I agree is barely > >> more powerfull than RtI). > > > >Well, back when I did debating theory they called Peter's card the Straw > >Man .... oops, there I go again making more points ..... > > No, I don't believe you are right. IMHO "Oust Prey" and RtI (assumed > unblockable) are about equal in power, the analagy holds, and this > is _not_ a straw man. You'll note in fact that I'm not even really > arguing about RtI here, but the inherent weakness of the "oh we > can get along because it's multiplayer argument/it can be countered" > argument, which is trivially true in a multiplayer game where you > can choose to play with the same cards as your opponent. > Kinda like if I ask for a graph of x/pi accurate to several decimals, > and you tell me 0/pi is 0. > > In other words, I'd say you're chasing a red herring (assuming I'm > attacking "Oust Prey" instead of RtI), to use your "debating theory", > and you don't get points. Well, I do acknowledge that I'm a Methuselah of Very Little Brain. I have a lot of problems with Subjunctive moods, metaphors, allegories and analogies of all kinds. Where should i post the graph of x/pi to, BTW? > > Simply put, just because something can be countered, _in no way_ > means it's balanced. AGREED. I just don't think the cards we are talking about ARE that powerful. That's my opinion. > > >> I simply think that it _is_ possible for cards to be too powerfull, > > > >Trying to agree more, but I can't! > > You can't imagine a card that's too powerfull? It seems you are > a fundamentally biased, and there is little point in continuing this. Sigh, two peoples divided by a common language .. what I mean is i AGREE!!! MASSIVELY!!! ABSOLUTELY!!! It IS possible for a card to be too powerful, of course it is!!!! And of course, I AM fundamentally biassed. So are YOU. That doesn't mean we can't argue and perhaps even change each other's minds. Or if not, maybe at least influence the undecided. > > >and > >> is _also_ possible for the game to be balanced. > > > >I also agree with this. And I really think it is balanced enough, already. > >Curiously, no-one so far has mentioned Protected Resources as an RtI > >hoser, which it surely is ..... just the thing for a voters/army of > >rats/blood-gain-and-anarchs type deck. > > Hmmm, another one of those cards added in VTES that I missed. Anyone > have a list of the additions? Yeah, I'll dig it out for ya and post it privately. > > Anyway, this card is a losing proposition, and while it will hose RtI, > is in general worthless. A very good example of why, even though > something is counterable, it still can be broken. Thank you. WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY A LOSING PROPOSITION? Oops. Sorry for shouting - dam' caps key. It's a card that provides BIG protection from all kind of big bleed decks, but at a cost: You yourself cannot bleed. But you can still vote, play armies of Rats, Rush combat and stuff, do blood gains and play Anarch revolts and Antediluvian Awakenings. Why does this mean you lose? [If that's what you mean ... > > >Jyhad is really nothing > >> like magic. > >> > >Whoops, sorry, I disagree. Jyhad is much BETTER than Magic, but the basic > >game mechanic is the same .. [Jyhad is multi-player Magic where you pay > >lives to bring out lands and there are an AWFUL lot of colours compared to > >Magic] ..... and so is Netrunner's and so is Battletech.. And all are dam' > >fine games. Why is Jyhad best? Because it is complex and smart and > >connected to the real world, because it was designed SPECIFICALLY to fix > >the problems that Garfield could see in Magic, but above all because of > >its social dimension, proof of the strength of which is the fact we're > >having this discussion. And it seems to me that the social dimension is > >the real protection against overpowerful cards. > > The social aspect you mention holds in practically _any_ multiplayer > game. Less so in Jyhad than most in fact, since you only really benefit > from ousting your prey, as opposed to any of the other players. Well, doesn't that make it better? Because you really DO have common interest with some of the other players, some of the time. > > You analgy of bringing vampires into play and magic's land is very thin, > and I would say the only comparison is that it's a constructed deck > card game, where you tap cards for effect. The rest is different -- > it plays nothing like magic, and the mechanics are barely even superficially > similar, and often qualitatively different. > Hey, I got all that stuff from an interview I read with Richard Garfield. Didn't he have something to do with developing the game? > > >[alright, maybe that one was a good fix]..... the past doesn't give one an > >awful lot of confidence that card-fixes make things better, does it??? > >Personally I think we should go back to the literal text on absolutely > >everything, except for the obvious screw-ups like extra or missing glyphs. > > Just because bad cards have been made, and bad fixes to card in no way > means that cards can't be fixed. This is simply reactionary traditionalism. Alright, but as Mao pointed out, change for change's sake is naive leftism. I am for good change, that adds to the game. That's why I voted for changing CW to a discipline-less card. > > [snip: comments saying we shouldn't add errata] > > You'll note that I said I in fact wanted to get rid of most of the errata. > Yes indeed, good for you!

In article <not.available-1...@sm1-132.hs.port.ac.uk>, Legbiter <not.av...@your.security.clearance> wrote: >> It's interesting how you're judgind my future opinions without knowing >> me. >?Sorry brother, you've lost me here. Why am i judging you? I was refering to your statement that there would be an endless cycle of people wanting to ban/errata the (incrementally) most powerfull cards if you banned/erratad a few. I find that's a complete non-sequitor, and in my case at least, wrong. >> Quite frankly the other cards you mention don't compare with >> Thoughts Betrayed, in general since there _are_ defenses against them, >> they _have_ limitations, and in particular they _don't_ stop >> you from playing any cards at all. > >Sigh .. now we're going round the houses a little. ALL the cards we're >talking about have limitations. TB costs 2 blood, and requires some other >combat cards to be deadly. RtI kills your vampire, and it'll be a big one >if you're really going to oust your prey. And there ARE defenses against >all of them. We all agree about all that, but we disagree about whether >the defenses are good enough or not. Couple of points. First, saying there are weaknesses to TB and RtI still doesn't address my point -- that you analgy was bad since the cards you mention aren't anywhere near TB and RtI in brokeness. Your argument that was based on this analgy was therefore inherently weak. Also, your statement that there is a defense against TB is patently false. I believe there is _one_ master card that will counter it, and that's stopped simply by playing another (now truly) unstopable TB. Pretty meager defense. >> >There are maybe 4 or 5 cards I >> >> think are over the top -- and that's it. There are a few others I >> >> don't like the idea of, but that's part of the game I suppose. >> >> And again, as always, your argument would cover even the most blatantly >> >> broken cards -- like Peter's "Oust Prey" card (which I agree is barely >> >> more powerfull than RtI). >> > >> >Well, back when I did debating theory they called Peter's card the Straw >> >Man .... oops, there I go again making more points ..... >> >> No, I don't believe you are right. IMHO "Oust Prey" and RtI (assumed >> unblockable) are about equal in power, the analagy holds, and this >> is _not_ a straw man. You'll note in fact that I'm not even really >> arguing about RtI here, but the inherent weakness of the "oh we >> can get along because it's multiplayer argument/it can be countered" >> argument, which is trivially true in a multiplayer game where you >> can choose to play with the same cards as your opponent. >> Kinda like if I ask for a graph of x/pi accurate to several decimals, >> and you tell me 0/pi is 0. >> >> In other words, I'd say you're chasing a red herring (assuming I'm >> attacking "Oust Prey" instead of RtI), to use your "debating theory", >> and you don't get points. > >Well, I do acknowledge that I'm a Methuselah of Very Little Brain. I have >a lot of problems with Subjunctive moods, metaphors, allegories and >analogies of all kinds. Where should i post the graph of x/pi to, BTW? It's an (apparently obscure :-/) analgy. I was trying to point out that your arguments saying the game is balanced simply because it's multiplayer are trivial, obvious, true of multplayer games in general, and don't automatically balance any multiplayer game. >> Simply put, just because something can be countered, _in no way_ >> means it's balanced. > >AGREED. I just don't think the cards we are talking about ARE that >powerful. That's my opinion. Well, you said the opposite just below, so perhaps you can see why I thought you wouldn't agree... >> >> I simply think that it _is_ possible for cards to be too powerfull, >> > >> >Trying to agree more, but I can't! >> >> You can't imagine a card that's too powerfull? It seems you are >> a fundamentally biased, and there is little point in continuing this. > >Sigh, two peoples divided by a common language .. what I mean is i >AGREE!!! MASSIVELY!!! ABSOLUTELY!!! It IS possible for a card to be too >powerful, of course it is!!!! What would it take in your mind for a card to be unbalanced? Is a card which effectively ousts your prey (netting you more pool than the capacity of the vampire you lost) ok if there are cards that can stop it some of the time, but will ussually fail? IMHO this is exactly what RtI does. [stuff about Protected Resources snipped] >> Anyway, this card is a losing proposition, and while it will hose RtI, >> is in general worthless. A very good example of why, even though >> something is counterable, it still can be broken. Thank you. > >WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY A LOSING PROPOSITION? Oops. Sorry for shouting - dam' >caps key. It's a card that provides BIG protection from all kind of big >bleed decks, but at a cost: You yourself cannot bleed. But you can still >vote, play armies of Rats, Rush combat and stuff, do blood gains and play >Anarch revolts and Antediluvian Awakenings. Why does this mean you lose? It doesn't mean you lose, just that there are in general better things to do with a card slot. You do prevent big bleeds, but at a cost of 2 pool even if your prey does nothing, and it only works against a narrow selection of decks. In other words, it's marginal protection, and takes up much needed deck space against most decks. Also, one shouldn't have to include specific hosers to have an effective deck. >> The social aspect you mention holds in practically _any_ multiplayer >> game. Less so in Jyhad than most in fact, since you only really benefit >> from ousting your prey, as opposed to any of the other players. > >Well, doesn't that make it better? Because you really DO have common >interest with some of the other players, some of the time. Yes, it is a balancing factor. Not an ultimatly balancing factor however. And anyway, my point just there was that it's less of a balancing factor than it is in most multiplayer games, and not really much of one. Many decks have a hard time hurting anyone other than their prey, or possibly their predator; even if you can hurt someone other than your prey, it's helping someone else more than you. >> You analgy of bringing vampires into play and magic's land is very thin, >> and I would say the only comparison is that it's a constructed deck >> card game, where you tap cards for effect. The rest is different -- >> it plays nothing like magic, and the mechanics are barely even superficially >> similar, and often qualitatively different. >> >Hey, I got all that stuff from an interview I read with Richard Garfield. >Didn't he have something to do with developing the game? So? To reiterate: It plays nothing like magic, and the mechanics are barely even superfiecially similar. Bleeding, Combat, and Voting are completely different, or non-existant in magic. You pool is a better analgy with land than your vampires by far, and it doesn't regenerate every turn, nor does it grow constantly. Card advantage means nothing. Jyhad is inherently multiplayer, you get a benefit out of ousting, theres a definite topology to the game, etc. >> >[alright, maybe that one was a good fix]..... the past doesn't give one an >> >awful lot of confidence that card-fixes make things better, does it??? >> >Personally I think we should go back to the literal text on absolutely >> >everything, except for the obvious screw-ups like extra or missing glyphs. >> >> Just because bad cards have been made, and bad fixes to card in no way >> means that cards can't be fixed. This is simply reactionary traditionalism. > >Alright, but as Mao pointed out, change for change's sake is naive >leftism. I am for good change, that adds to the game. That's why I voted >for changing CW to a discipline-less card. Non sequitor: Nobody posts change for changes sake, and I think everyone is for "good" change (with the possible exception of WotC). My point, which you didn't address, still stands: Past bad card fixes have nothing to do with the quality of current ones. Stay on target (said in best Biggs impersonation ;-) ). >> [snip: comments saying we shouldn't add errata] >> >> You'll note that I said I in fact wanted to get rid of most of the errata. >> >Yes indeed, good for you! I pointed this out because you were arguing a point I had explicitly agreed to in the post you were quoting. [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <Pine.SUN.3.96.980316225723.22768B-100000@amanda>, Lupus Australis <jbwh...@dorsai.org> wrote: > On Mon, 16 Mar 1998, Christopher Chew wrote: > > > I agree completely, I do not belevie that any card is so inherently powerful > > that its exclusion from the game is either nessecary or desireable. > > Who are all you folks arguing against? As I recall, most on this NG have > been arguing for fixes, not bans. Well, despite the personal way some people are taking this, we are not AGAINST anyone. We love you all, because you all love the best game in the world and care enough about it to argue over its future. However, we're not convinced that banning and fixing are THAT different. A fixed card is a different card, and implies the exclusion of the original from the game, and its replacement by something new. Sometimes this is good, because it adds to the game and is obviously right [concealed weapon, and Kudos to you over this one!]. Mostly, in our view, it is questionable and risky. > > There are some cards which I think should be banned if they cannot be > fixed, but RTI is the only card I am even remotely considering for this. > Still, I suspect the fix I have recommended balances the card reasonably > well without turning it into wallpaper. > We aren't convinced even that a fix is necessary. Not even for RtI, though I must admit I quite liked Tadeusz' idea for the Tomb. That's the argument. We think the existing mechanisms and card-mix provide sufficient counterbalances to all the cards under discussion. Clearly, this is a minority view on this newsgroup. But I don't think we've been out-argued, and I also think it may not be a minority view in the wider Jyhad community.

In article <not.available-1...@sm1-132.hs.port.ac.uk>, Legbiter <not.av...@your.security.clearance> wrote: >In article <6ejva6$5cb$1...@news.NERO.NET>, phil...@nd.ENGR.ORST.EDU (Jasper >Phillips) wrote: >> >> Anyway, this card is a losing proposition, and while it will hose RtI, >> is in general worthless. A very good example of why, even though >> something is counterable, it still can be broken. Thank you. > >WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY A LOSING PROPOSITION? Oops. Sorry for shouting - dam' >caps key. It's a card that provides BIG protection from all kind of big >bleed decks, but at a cost: You yourself cannot bleed. But you can still >vote, play armies of Rats, Rush combat and stuff, do blood gains and play >Anarch revolts and Antediluvian Awakenings. Why does this mean you lose? Well, I was just wrong, and had read the card wrong. :-( I'd assumed it was a one shot master, in which case I think it would be fairly worthless since you'd have to play many, you'd have to pay 2 pool each time, and your opponent would realize it was in play before he attacked. This is actually a pretty good card, general enough to actually include in a deck, and since it continues, you don't need many. It's probably good enough to drive Bleed decks to include Sudden Reversal actually. Certainly a much better defense than Archon Investigation, for many reasons. I _still_ think Return to Innocence is busted, but this goes a long way towards ameliorating the situation. [ quoted text not captured ]

[ quoted text not captured ] Well... just look at the Tomb, for one... It requires no clan, no discipline and immediately pays back your investment with no risk. Even if you're using Toreador, why use Art Museum over the Tomb? There's no reason to. The Tomb can stay in play as long as you like, as long as you transfer pool off the vamp with the Tomb, and it can give you more than 1 pool per influence phase. So, in all respects, the Tomb is better than many other cards. This breaks a fundamental tenet of Jyhad... that being that no card is basically *better* than another. There shouldn't be any reason to use one card over another in every possible situation. So, the Tomb is just plain wrong. Does anyone have a valid argument that it is *not* better than Art Museum, Ecoterrorists, Arcane Library, etc.? Unfortunately, the issue is not quite so black-and-white with RtI. I personally feel that common sense says that RtI is way overpowered. But that's still an opinion. The main point is that the card basically gives you a victory point at no risk. If the action is unsuccessful, you don't pay any blood *or* lose a vampire. If the action *is* successful, you get a victory point and 6 pool in return for a vampire. You can ignore the loss of your vampire, as you've been able to use it for a few turns and have gotten some benefit out of it. Either that, or you've minion tapped it so it only costs 4 pool (cost of RtI). So, basically, it's an action to gain a victory point and 2 pool. Sure, it can be blocked, but so can Computer Hacking. And Computer Hacking is far from assured to give you a victory point. Neither has any risk. Even Dominate and Presence, two bleeding disciplines don't have nearly as much power as RtI, which is disciplineless. RtI has no requirement except that the vampire have 4 blood. Lots of vampires have 4 blood. This is not a large requirement. So it becomes: Played by a vampire with at least 4 blood, if your prey does not block, he is ousted and this vampire is burned. Let me reiterate that there is *no risk.* If you don't succeeed, your vampire stays alive and doesn't even lose 4 blood. I feel that a card with this much power must have some sort of risk. I would even be happy with a fix that said "this vampire is burned even if the action is unsuccessful." This wouldn't stop Gangrel's from being able to unblockably bleed like super-Malks, but it would at least keep this from being put indiscriminately into every deck. Other cards I think are less in need of fixing. It makes sense for Thoughts Betrayed to only be usable against allies and younger vampires, or for it to cost 3 blood instead of 2. As it is, it's too strong, but I could live without fixing it. Same for Mind Rape. Direct Intervention is just a disgusting card that's not in the spirit of the game and should be banned. (Of course, I feel the same way about Sudden Reversal...). And... as I said before, fixing Zip Gun is just silly. -Chris -----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==----- http://www.dejanews.com/ Now offering spam-free web-based newsreading

In article <6enb83$28$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, <ber...@cco.caltech.edu> wrote: [le snip] >Other cards I think are less in need of fixing. [le snip, deux] >(Of course, I feel the same way about Sudden Reversal...). And... as I said >before, fixing Zip Gun is just silly. I must say, I'm curious as to why you don't consider ZipGun in need of a no-ammo fix. Consider: 12 distinct 1-capacity Caitiff (2cap random vamps for staying power) 30% Bum's Rush 30% Zip Gun 30% Dragonsbreath Rounds 10% Effective Management This deck will be able to routinely deal 2agg+1 damage, at range, 4+ times a turn, every turn. At that rate, even the prepared begin to run out of S:CE and Damage Prevention. Minions are wholly disposable, there are no equip actions to block, and it's fast fast fast. I'm of the opinion that there's something wrong with disciplineless, in-combat 2Ragg+1R for 1 blood, compared to 1agg for 1 blood (Protean). DBR/Zip Gun is just too good an effect for the cost -- hence, the proposed no-ammo fix. Comments? [ quoted text not captured ]

>I'm of the opinion that there's something wrong with disciplineless, >in-combat 2Ragg+1R for 1 blood, compared to 1agg for 1 blood (Protean). > >DBR/Zip Gun is just too good an effect for the cost -- hence, the proposed >no-ammo fix. Yes. That or reversing the ruling/clarification that ammo does not deal it's extra damage to the minion using the zip gun. Reversing the ruling seems a bit more elegant than introducing a new fix and it leaves the zip gun a little more powerful. For example, you could still use zip/DBR effectively with fortitude, and I wouldn't have a problem with that. It also makes a little more sense to me from the role-playing perspective. There's nothing really restraining you from putting weird ammo in the thing, it's just that it's going to blow up real good if you do. -Dave Gausebeck

>Well... just look at the Tomb, for one... It requires no clan, no discipline >and immediately pays back your investment with no risk. Even if you're using >Toreador, why use Art Museum over the Tomb? There's no reason to. The Tomb >can stay in play as long as you like, as long as you transfer pool off the >vamp with the Tomb, and it can give you more than 1 pool per influence >phase. So, in all respects, the Tomb is better than many other cards. This >breaks a fundamental tenet of Jyhad... that being that no card is basically >*better* than another. There shouldn't be any reason to use one card over >another in every possible situation. So, the Tomb is just plain wrong. Does >anyone have a valid argument that it is *not* better than Art Museum, >Ecoterrorists, Arcane Library, etc.? I agree wholeheartedly. Tomb makes any deck that regularly has available a 4+ capacity vampire better. Any deck. This is wrong. If there's a card that should go into every deck, it has violated the game balance. Things start to degenerate then into who can spend the most on a deck. Admittedly $15 for a tomb doesn't compare to $200 or whatever it is now for a black lotus, but the idea is the same. I feel somewhat the same about cards that are just outright better than other cards, but that's a weaker point. Tomb meets that requirement, too, as described above, but so do some less offensive cards like Dreams of the Sphinx (better than STI) and whoever those 2 Sabbat vamps are who are just like each other except that one's much better. These bug me but I don't propose a fix. The main problem is with cards that are so good that they should go into every deck. Yes, there are decks that wouldn't benefit from Tomb, but I don't think that couple percent is material to my point. >Unfortunately, the issue is not quite so black-and-white with RtI. I >personally feel that common sense says that RtI is way overpowered. But >that's still an opinion. The main point is that the card basically gives you >a victory point at no risk. If the action is unsuccessful, you don't pay any >blood *or* lose a vampire. If the action *is* successful, you get a victory >point and 6 pool in return for a vampire. You can ignore the loss of your >vampire, as you've been able to use it for a few turns and have gotten some >benefit out of it. Either that, or you've minion tapped it so it only costs 4 >pool (cost of RtI). So, basically, it's an action to gain a victory point and >2 pool. Sure, it can be blocked, but so can Computer Hacking. And Computer >Hacking is far from assured to give you a victory point. Neither has any >risk. Even Dominate and Presence, two bleeding disciplines don't have nearly >as much power as RtI, which is disciplineless. RtI has no requirement except >that the vampire have 4 blood. Lots of vampires have 4 blood. This is not a >large requirement. So it becomes: Played by a vampire with at least 4 blood, >if your prey does not block, he is ousted and this vampire is burned. Let me >reiterate that there is *no risk.* If you don't succeeed, your vampire stays >alive and doesn't even lose 4 blood. I feel that a card with this much power >must have some sort of risk. I would even be happy with a fix that said "this >vampire is burned even if the action is unsuccessful." This wouldn't stop >Gangrel's from being able to unblockably bleed like super-Malks, but it would >at least keep this from being put indiscriminately into every deck. RTI is very powerful. I think they made a mistake when they printed it. But I don't think that it necessarily needs a fix. It's vastly overpowered but not essentially broken in the same way that Tomb is. I'd like it if an official errata was issued, but I can live without it. >Other cards I think are less in need of fixing. It makes sense for Thoughts >Betrayed to only be usable against allies and younger vampires, or for it to >cost 3 blood instead of 2. As it is, it's too strong, but I could live >without fixing it. Same for Mind Rape. Direct Intervention is just a >disgusting card that's not in the spirit of the game and should be banned. >(Of course, I feel the same way about Sudden Reversal...). And... as I said >before, fixing Zip Gun is just silly. Again, I'd welcome fixes for other cards that are too powerful just because they level the playing field and encourage diversity in strategies, but I don't feel that they're absolutely necessary. Direct Intervention isn't even necessarily overpowered. If a card goes counter to the spirit of the game as you see it, then don't use it. And sneer at the people who do :) -Dave Gausebeck

In article <6enm3k$geg$1...@shell3.ba.best.com>, Gomi no Sensei <go...@shell3.ba.best.com> wrote: [arguments for limiting Zip Gun snipped] >DBR/Zip Gun is just too good an effect for the cost -- hence, the proposed >no-ammo fix. > >Comments? I tend to agree, but think it's not heinous enough to be worth errata. I would consider a house rule, but even then probably wouldn't worry about it. I certainly think there are other cards that are far more broken (as I'm sure everyone is aware by now ;-) ). [ quoted text not captured ]

ber...@cco.caltech.edu wrote: > > Other cards I think are less in need of fixing. It makes sense for Thoughts > Betrayed to only be usable against allies and younger vampires, or for it to > cost 3 blood instead of 2. My 'fix' on Thoughts Betrayed would be something along the lines of: "the *acting* minion can play no cards". I originally thought of it as a great defensive card, kinda of a Malkavian "not in the face! NOT IN THE FACE!!" It would be a great counter to a rush deck but not usable for rush itself. Although I haven't seen it come up too much in tournament play. If you want to put in the cards that assure a burn using Thoughts Betrayed, your probably asking for about a 4-card-combo. It isn't so hard in fun play, but in tournament play you generally have to be a little more efficient than that. Has anybody seen it used effectively in a tournament?

>12 distinct 1-capacity Caitiff (2cap random vamps for staying power) > >30% Bum's Rush >30% Zip Gun >30% Dragonsbreath Rounds >10% Effective Management > >This deck will be able to routinely deal 2agg+1 damage, at range, 4+ >times a turn, every turn. At that rate, even the prepared begin to run >out of S:CE and Damage Prevention. Minions are wholly disposable, there >are no equip actions to block, and it's fast fast fast. > > This deck would fail. It would easily shoot four vamps the second round, then only 1 each round, because you can only play 1 Effective management a round. Not nearly enough force to win a game. It has no way of quickly killing it's prey. No bleed defense. I have worked on a similar deck for a while. I am playing one of the better incarnations of it in JOL62, but without the heavy blood gain, I would have died already. It is not that easy. This is juat a general failing. Specific decks would rip it apart. examples: A deck relying on Obedience as combat defense A thoughts betrayed deck An immortal graple deck.(granted this needs manuvers, but what IG deck doesn't pack these?) A protean or presence S:CE deck Any fortitude heavy deck like my Skin of steel/pulled fangs deck (even if combat is at long range the gun will kill the caitiffs) Every deck should be designed with some sort of combat defense. I am tired of people whinning that this deck is too powerful, Deal With It! S:CE is too powerful! TB is too powerful! Zip Gun/DBR is too powerful! Puled fangs is too powerful! IG is too powerful. Celerity and the discaplineless version of CW will be too powerful! Is there any form of combat that people haven't complained about. All of this stuff has been around since the conception of the game. It is a vital part of the game, and CANNOT be changed. People just don't liketo see their vampires killed. So instead of trying to change the rules into 'carebear' jyhad, build a deck that can survive a combat. Jason "Now that I got that out of my system..."

David Gausebeck wrote: > I feel somewhat the same about cards that are just outright better > than other cards, but that's a weaker point. Tomb meets that > requirement, too, as described above, but so do some less offensive > cards like Dreams of the Sphinx (better than STI) Dreams is not outright better than Short Term. Short Term can be used to gain pool even near the end of the game when you have neither the Edge nor any uncontrolled vampires. Dreams cannot. -- L. Scott Johnson (vte...@wizards.com) Official VtES Net.Rep for Wizards of the Coast. (*) - Subject to review by Rules Team

> > > Well... just look at the Tomb, for one... It requires no clan, no discipline > and immediately pays back your investment with no risk. Even if you're using > Toreador, why use Art Museum over the Tomb? There's no reason to. The Tomb > can stay in play as long as you like, as long as you transfer pool off the > vamp with the Tomb, and it can give you more than 1 pool per influence > phase. So, in all respects, the Tomb is better than many other cards. This > breaks a fundamental tenet of Jyhad... that being that no card is basically > *better* than another. I find the egalitarian sentiment here charming, but I'm afraid I don't see why this is a fundamantal tenet of Jyhad, or why it should be a fundamental tenet of any game. In Chess, queens are better than any other piece, and pawns are worse than any other piece. Surely any game worth playing has powerful elements that you need to guard against, and weak elements that you need to foster or replace? There shouldn't be any reason to use one card over > another in every possible situation. So, the Tomb is just plain wrong. Does > anyone have a valid argument that it is *not* better than Art Museum, > Ecoterrorists, Arcane Library, etc.? But hang on, Tomb costs 1 more pool than those other cards. And the fact it is useable in all decks means that the chance it will be contested by at least one other player at the table is high ... in fact it is virtually 1. So, it is a risky card to include in your deck ... because if it is contested you are probably going to end up losing out. So Art Museum is safer, because naively there is roughly a (1-x/21) chance that you will be the only guy playing toreadors at a table of x+1 players. So, while i think it's clear that Tomb is better IF YOU CAN GET IT OUT FIRST, it's not necessarily better to put this card in your deck. Classic prisoner's dilemma! > > Unfortunately, the issue is not quite so black-and-white with RtI. I > personally feel that common sense says that RtI is way overpowered. But > that's still an opinion. The main point is that the card basically gives you > a victory point at no risk. If the action is unsuccessful, you don't pay any > blood *or* lose a vampire. If the action *is* successful, you get a victory > point and 6 pool in return for a vampire. You can ignore the loss of your > vampire, as you've been able to use it for a few turns and have gotten some > benefit out of it. Either that, or you've minion tapped it so it only costs 4 > pool (cost of RtI). So, basically, it's an action to gain a victory point and > 2 pool. Sure, it can be blocked, but so can Computer Hacking. And Computer > Hacking is far from assured to give you a victory point. Neither has any > risk. Even Dominate and Presence, two bleeding disciplines don't have nearly > as much power as RtI, which is disciplineless. RtI has no requirement except > that the vampire have 4 blood. Lots of vampires have 4 blood. This is not a > large requirement. So it becomes: Played by a vampire with at least 4 blood, > if your prey does not block, he is ousted and this vampire is burned. Let me > reiterate that there is *no risk.* If you don't succeeed, your vampire stays > alive and doesn't even lose 4 blood. I feel that a card with this much power > must have some sort of risk. I would even be happy with a fix that said "this > vampire is burned even if the action is unsuccessful." This wouldn't stop > Gangrel's from being able to unblockably bleed like super-Malks, but it would > at least keep this from being put indiscriminately into every deck. Again, I think there are three big risks: [1] Archon Investigation [2] Protected Resources [3] Misdirection and Deflection Each is serious, since you will either end up losing a powerful vampire for a paltry bleed, or actually HELPING your prey by ousting your grandprey AND losing a tough vampire in the process. > > Other cards I think are less in need of fixing. It makes sense for Thoughts > Betrayed to only be usable against allies and younger vampires, or for it to > cost 3 blood instead of 2. As it is, it's too strong, but I could live > without fixing it. Same for Mind Rape. Direct Intervention is just a > disgusting card that's not in the spirit of the game and should be banned. > (Of course, I feel the same way about Sudden Reversal...). And... as I said > before, fixing Zip Gun is just silly. > Well, I absolutely agree about Zip Gun.

In article <6elmo5$ohk$1...@news.NERO.NET>, phil...@tx.ENGR.ORST.EDU (Jasper Phillips) wrote: > In article <not.available-1...@sm1-132.hs.port.ac.uk>, > Legbiter <not.av...@your.security.clearance> wrote: > >> It's interesting how you're judgind my future opinions without knowing > >> me. > >?Sorry brother, you've lost me here. Why am i judging you? > > I was refering to your statement that there would be an endless cycle > of people wanting to ban/errata the (incrementally) most powerfull cards if > you banned/erratad a few. I find that's a complete non-sequitor, and in > my case at least, wrong. Fair enough. In that case I would lose my hypothetical bet. > > >> Quite frankly the other cards you mention don't compare with > >> Thoughts Betrayed, in general since there _are_ defenses against them, > >> they _have_ limitations, and in particular they _don't_ stop > >> you from playing any cards at all. > > > >Sigh .. now we're going round the houses a little. ALL the cards we're > >talking about have limitations. TB costs 2 blood, and requires some other > >combat cards to be deadly. RtI kills your vampire, and it'll be a big one > >if you're really going to oust your prey. And there ARE defenses against > >all of them. We all agree about all that, but we disagree about whether > >the defenses are good enough or not. > > Couple of points. First, saying there are weaknesses to TB and RtI still > doesn't address my point -- that you analgy was bad since the cards you > mention aren't anywhere near TB and RtI in brokeness. Your argument > that was based on this analgy was therefore inherently weak. OK, perhaps I was being uneccessarily elliptical there. I just think it isn't a fair argument against TB that it stops you playing cards. Lots of other cards do that, and we more or less all agree that they are good cards. This doesn't mean there aren't other, fair arguments against TB. For example [at the risk of giving y'all ammunition here] I think a major underused argument against it is that the illo is crap. > Also, your statement that there is a defense against TB is patently > false. I believe there is _one_ master card that will counter it, and that's > stopped simply by playing another (now truly) unstopable TB. Pretty meager > defense. Two other defenses spring immediately to mind: having allies and retainers, and equipping lots. One of the reasons I'm so keen on TB is that it seems to me it adds lots of value to these under-used cards. [ quoted text not captured ] Well, multiplayer games in general aren't necessarily balanced, I certainly grant that. It's the uniqueness rules and the predator-prey relationships that give Jyhad its edge there. > <snip weird bit> > > What would it take in your mind for a card to be unbalanced? Hehehe .. see the adjoining post about one-word changes to cards. Is a > card which effectively ousts your prey (netting you more pool than > the capacity of the vampire you lost) ok if there are cards that > can stop it some of the time, but will ussually fail? IMHO this > is exactly what RtI does. Alright, again this is something I tried to answer in another post. Briefly, if RtI works you probably win. If it fails you almost certainly lose. It's for high-stakes players and there are decks which make it basically wallpaper. <snip stuff about how to make these decks, which Jasper and I now agree about but are keeping secret from all the rest of you ... hehehe ...> > > >> The social aspect you mention holds in practically _any_ multiplayer > >> game. Less so in Jyhad than most in fact, since you only really benefit > >> from ousting your prey, as opposed to any of the other players. > > > >Well, doesn't that make it better? Because you really DO have common > >interest with some of the other players, some of the time. > > Yes, it is a balancing factor. Not an ultimatly balancing factor however. > And anyway, my point just there was that it's less of a balancing > factor than it is in most multiplayer games, and not really much > of one. Many decks have a hard time hurting anyone other than their > prey, or possibly their predator; even if you can hurt someone > other than your prey, it's helping someone else more than you. > > >> You analgy of bringing vampires into play and magic's land is very thin, > >> and I would say the only comparison is that it's a constructed deck > >> card game, where you tap cards for effect. The rest is different -- > >> it plays nothing like magic, and the mechanics are barely even superficially > >> similar, and often qualitatively different. > >> > >Hey, I got all that stuff from an interview I read with Richard Garfield. > >Didn't he have something to do with developing the game? > > So? To reiterate: It plays nothing like magic, Agreed. and the mechanics are barely > even superfiecially similar. Bleeding, Combat, and Voting are completely > different, or non-existant in magic. You pool is a better analgy with > land than your vampires by far, and it doesn't regenerate every turn, > nor does it grow constantly. Vampires untap every turn, like lands. They have symbols on them for clan and disciplines [like the mana colour glyphs on the new magic lands], and you tap them in order to play cards from your hand with matching symbols - think of them like multi-lands in Magic, and the analogy perhaps becomes clearer. Pool is like Life, and the biggest and best difference about Jyhad's mechanics is that by and large you pay with your life for your power-sources. Card advantage means nothing. Jyhad is > inherently multiplayer, you get a benefit out of ousting, theres > a definite topology to the game, etc. Sure, it is a much better game. > > >> >[alright, maybe that one was a good fix]..... the past doesn't give one an > >> >awful lot of confidence that card-fixes make things better, does it??? > >> >Personally I think we should go back to the literal text on absolutely > >> >everything, except for the obvious screw-ups like extra or missing glyphs. > >> > >> Just because bad cards have been made, and bad fixes to card in no way > >> means that cards can't be fixed. This is simply reactionary traditionalism. > > > >Alright, but as Mao pointed out, change for change's sake is naive > >leftism. I am for good change, that adds to the game. That's why I voted > >for changing CW to a discipline-less card. > > Non sequitor: Nobody posts change for changes sake, and I think > everyone is for "good" change (with the possible exception of WotC). > > My point, which you didn't address, still stands: Past bad card fixes have > nothing to do with the quality of current ones. But don't they at least suggest the desirability of a certain humility, a certain caution? That's the point, isn't it? Stay on target (said in > best Biggs impersonation ;-) ). Hehehe ... I have you now [said in best Darth Vadar impersonation ... <8@ ... this is meant to be a Darth Vadar smiley, just in case it looks weird]

In article <6enm3k$geg$1...@shell3.ba.best.com>, go...@shell3.ba.best.com (Gomi no Sensei) wrote: > In article <6enb83$28$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, <ber...@cco.caltech.edu> wrote: > > [le snip] > > >Other cards I think are less in need of fixing. > > [le snip, deux] > > >(Of course, I feel the same way about Sudden Reversal...). And... as I said > >before, fixing Zip Gun is just silly. > > I must say, I'm curious as to why you don't consider ZipGun in need of > a no-ammo fix. Consider: > > 12 distinct 1-capacity Caitiff (2cap random vamps for staying power) > > 30% Bum's Rush > 30% Zip Gun > 30% Dragonsbreath Rounds > 10% Effective Management > > This deck will be able to routinely deal 2agg+1 damage, at range, 4+ > times a turn, every turn. At that rate, even the prepared begin to run > out of S:CE and Damage Prevention. Minions are wholly disposable, there > are no equip actions to block, and it's fast fast fast. > > I'm of the opinion that there's something wrong with disciplineless, > in-combat 2Ragg+1R for 1 blood, compared to 1agg for 1 blood (Protean). > > DBR/Zip Gun is just too good an effect for the cost -- hence, the proposed > no-ammo fix. > > Comments? > > gomi > Good deck. I just ousted one like this in jyhad on-line 64.

In article <35103...@bcpress.com>, daniel frey <daniel_fr...@bcpress.com> wrote: > >My 'fix' on Thoughts Betrayed would be something along the lines of: >"the *acting* minion can play no cards". I originally thought of it as a >great defensive card, kinda of a Malkavian "not in the face! NOT IN THE >FACE!!" It would be a great counter to a rush deck but not usable for >rush itself. > >Although I haven't seen it come up too much in tournament play. If you >want to put in the cards that assure a burn using Thoughts Betrayed, >your probably asking for about a 4-card-combo. It isn't so hard in fun >play, but in tournament play you generally have to be a little more >efficient than that. Has anybody seen it used effectively in a >tournament? I'm working on a few decks right now that I think abuse TB. What they have in common is that they completely hose any combat deck that doesn't have TB, and are at least as effective as other combat decks against non-combat decks. Well, that's my opinion at least, I'll post 'em in a bit and see what you guys think. I'm also working on a Mind Rape/RtI deck to illustrate why I think those are so broken. [ quoted text not captured ]

>Dreams is not outright better than Short Term. >Short Term can be used to gain pool even near the end of >the game when you have neither the Edge nor any uncontrolled >vampires. Dreams cannot. Well, no, it's not outright better. It's also unique and inferior in that sense. The same is true of Tomb not being outright better than Art Museum et al, as described in Legbiter's post right near here. Here's how I'd look at it tho... advantages of dreams: - takes 1 master phase for full benefit instead of 4 - get full benefits one turn faster because you don't have to wait for a master phase to start using it - usually gets you 3 free transfers in the process - can be used for extra cards in your hand if you really need it advantages of STI: - not unique - can be used if you have neither the edge nor an uncontrolled vamp The uniqueness typically isn't a problem since you wait for the one that's out to go away before you play yours. And I've never run into a case where I couldn't use it at the end of a game. Worst case you can transfer a new vamp to uncontrolled and still gain one pool out of the deal 2 turns later. Plus you have a new uncontrolled vamp. It's enough better that I'd always use it over STI, which is enough better for it to bother me.

not.av...@your.security.clearance (Legbiter) writes: > > I find the egalitarian sentiment here charming, but I'm afraid I don't see > why this is a fundamantal tenet of Jyhad, or why it should be a > fundamental tenet of any game. In Chess, queens are better than any other > piece, and pawns are worse than any other piece. Surely any game worth > playing has powerful elements that you need to guard against, and weak > elements that you need to foster or replace? Such a comparison makes no sense. If you could play Chess with only Queens, you'd do so. In basic, no-limits Jyhad there is _no_ reason to play with a card that is, in all situations, completely inferior to another. _That_ is the situation with Concealed/Disguised Weapon. It is the _only_ pair of such cards that I know of. In a deck where all Vampires have Potence (and you have no allies and no way of stealing or creating new Vampires), would you ever use Arson ? No, because Rampage is _slightly_ better, but _strictly_ better. You wouldn't use Lucky Blow either. In a deck where all Vampires have Celerity, and you cannot steal/create others, would you ever use Dodge ? No. > > There shouldn't be any reason to use one card over > > another in every possible situation. So, the Tomb is just plain wrong. Does > > anyone have a valid argument that it is *not* better than Art Museum, > > Ecoterrorists, Arcane Library, etc.? > Tomb is not _always_ better than Art Museum-like cards. It costs one more pool, it's lost if the vampires under it is lost, and it's easier to use if stolen. So this argument is not as strong against the Tomb. -- Philippe Duchon (duc...@labri.u-bordeaux.fr)

In article <not.available-1...@sm1-132.hs.port.ac.uk>, Legbiter <not.av...@your.security.clearance> wrote: >In article <6elmo5$ohk$1...@news.NERO.NET>, phil...@tx.ENGR.ORST.EDU (Jasper >Phillips) wrote: >> Couple of points. First, saying there are weaknesses to TB and RtI still >> doesn't address my point -- that you analgy was bad since the cards you >> mention aren't anywhere near TB and RtI in brokeness. Your argument >> that was based on this analgy was therefore inherently weak. > >OK, perhaps I was being uneccessarily elliptical there. I just think it >isn't a fair argument against TB that it stops you playing cards. Lots of >other cards do that, and we more or less all agree that they are good >cards. This doesn't mean there aren't other, fair arguments against TB. >For example [at the risk of giving y'all ammunition here] I think a major >underused argument against it is that the illo is crap. Ahh, I think you're subtely mistaking the argument of those against TB. It's not that TB prevents playing a few cards, but that it prevents playing _any_ cards at all. If it just prevented strike cards for example, I could live with it. Also, I'm sure you're just being silly, but I certainly think the arguments against TB are far more potent than "the illo is crap". >> Also, your statement that there is a defense against TB is patently >> false. I believe there is _one_ master card that will counter it, and that's >> stopped simply by playing another (now truly) unstopable TB. Pretty meager >> defense. > >Two other defenses spring immediately to mind: having allies and >retainers, and equipping lots. One of the reasons I'm so keen on TB is >that it seems to me it adds lots of value to these under-used cards. The things is that these are not general strategies, and in fact pattently suck. The ways to fix TB have to be viable in deck that does well against most types of decks, not one that does well against a very narrow kind. For example a TB combat deck will also deal with decks that relly on S:CE for defense for the same number of deck slots. Decks that relly on allies, retainers, or weapons will not. >Well, multiplayer games in general aren't necessarily balanced, I >certainly grant that. It's the uniqueness rules and the predator-prey >relationships that give Jyhad its edge there. Um, this is a seperate issue, but I think the predator-prey relationship actually dampens the general leveling affect of multiplayer, since it's difficult to attack those other than your prey, and even if you can you cannot directly benefit (while someone else will). >> ><snip weird bit> >> >> What would it take in your mind for a card to be unbalanced? > >Hehehe .. see the adjoining post about one-word changes to cards. > >Is a >> card which effectively ousts your prey (netting you more pool than >> the capacity of the vampire you lost) ok if there are cards that >> can stop it some of the time, but will ussually fail? IMHO this >> is exactly what RtI does. > >Alright, again this is something I tried to answer in another post. >Briefly, if RtI works you probably win. If it fails you almost certainly >lose. It's for high-stakes players and there are decks which make it >basically wallpaper. You mean if it's countered by Archon Investigation? The same is true of a deck that makes large, but not RtI bleeds. The RtI deck is more powerfull, and discipliness, and considering that bleed decks are already effective, seems overpowered. All of the others ways to stop RtI don't make you lose at all. There is also the problem that against most decks Archon Investigation is wallpaper -- and you shouldn't be forced to include such a narrow hoser in your deck to survive (IMHO if you are, that's a clear symptom of a broken card). >> So? To reiterate: It plays nothing like magic, > >Agreed. > >and the mechanics are barely >> even superfiecially similar. Bleeding, Combat, and Voting are completely >> different, or non-existant in magic. You pool is a better analgy with >> land than your vampires by far, and it doesn't regenerate every turn, >> nor does it grow constantly. > >Vampires untap every turn, like lands. They have symbols on them for clan There are quite a few games that give you one action with each of your "units". Most of them predate Magic; this is hardly a telling commonality -- kind of like saying games are similar because they use dice. >and disciplines [like the mana colour glyphs on the new magic lands], and >you tap them in order to play cards from your hand with matching symbols - >think of them like multi-lands in Magic, and the analogy perhaps becomes You often don't tap them to use their effects, and the analgy is completely wrong as often as it fits. [damn, snipped this line by accident. it compared pool to life] >Jyhad's mechanics is that by and large you pay with your life for your >power-sources. This is the closes analagy with magic, and even then you don't pay life for your land in magic. > >> Card advantage means nothing. Jyhad is >> inherently multiplayer, you get a benefit out of ousting, theres >> a definite topology to the game, etc. > >Sure, it is a much better game. Yes, but these are major differences in the game, things vastly affecting it's play that magic in no way contains. Anyway, this is really off topic, and I'll go no further. >> >Alright, but as Mao pointed out, change for change's sake is naive >> >leftism. I am for good change, that adds to the game. That's why I voted >> >for changing CW to a discipline-less card. >> >> Non sequitor: Nobody posts change for changes sake, and I think >> everyone is for "good" change (with the possible exception of WotC). >> >> My point, which you didn't address, still stands: Past bad card fixes have >> nothing to do with the quality of current ones. > >But don't they at least suggest the desirability of a certain humility, a >certain caution? That's the point, isn't it? Considering the extreme... error of some of the fixes, and some of the problems that should never have existed, it doesn't really mean much to me. Kind of like taking the fact that people get run over by trains as meaning you should be carefull crossing the tracks. I do certainly agree you should be cautious, but of course believe I am, or else I wouldn't be so andamant. I think in particular the changes that I suggest are as minimal as possible, considering the circumstances -- there are certainly a lot of other balance considerations that have been made that I think are arbitrary and bad, but they don't quite have enough of an effect to worry about. The 4 cards I mention I think have a widely disporportionate effect. >Stay on target (said in >> best Biggs impersonation ;-) ). > >Hehehe ... I have you now [said in best Darth Vadar impersonation ... <8@ >... this is meant to be a Darth Vadar smiley, just in case it looks weird] Which it certainly does. ;-) [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <not.available-1...@sm1-132.hs.port.ac.uk>, Legbiter <not.av...@your.security.clearance> wrote: >In article <6enm3k$geg$1...@shell3.ba.best.com>, go...@shell3.ba.best.com >(Gomi no Sensei) wrote: > >> a no-ammo fix. Consider: >> >> 12 distinct 1-capacity Caitiff (2cap random vamps for staying power) >> >> 30% Bum's Rush >> 30% Zip Gun >> 30% Dragonsbreath Rounds >> 10% Effective Management >> >> Comments? > >Good deck. I just ousted one like this in jyhad on-line 64. One has to understand that this is obviously a weak example, and that the principle is not neccesarily void because this "toy" example doesn't hold. Surely you can imagine how it would work better if properly filled out? On the other hand I don't think Zip/DBR decks are that effective, certainly not enough to warrant errata. Most combat decks will simply laugh at them. [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <35110f4f...@news.cso.uiuc.edu>, David Gausebeck <gaus...@uiuc.edu> wrote: > >It's enough better that I'd always use it over STI, which is enough >better for it to bother me. This is the key point. It doesn't actually have to be catagorically better for it to be bad, it just has to totally preempt an already usefull card. Of course I never really thought short term investments were usefull in the first place, and even if it is broken, it's only very marginally so at worst. [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <not.available-1...@sm1-132.hs.port.ac.uk>, Legbiter <not.av...@your.security.clearance> wrote: > >> > >>Well... just look at the Tomb, for one... It requires no clan, no discipline >>and immediately pays back your investment with no risk. Even if you're using >>Toreador, why use Art Museum over the Tomb? There's no reason to. The Tomb >> can stay in play as long as you like, as long as you transfer pool off the >> vamp with the Tomb, and it can give you more than 1 pool per influence >> phase. So, in all respects, the Tomb is better than many other cards. This >> breaks a fundamental tenet of Jyhad... that being that no card is basically >> *better* than another. > >I find the egalitarian sentiment here charming, but I'm afraid I don't see >why this is a fundamantal tenet of Jyhad, or why it should be a >fundamental tenet of any game. In Chess, queens are better than any other >piece, and pawns are worse than any other piece. Surely any game worth >playing has powerful elements that you need to guard against, and weak >elements that you need to foster or replace? That's a horrible analagy! In chess you don't have the option of replacing your pawns with queens from the start. If you could do that on a one for one basis, clearly anyone not playing with 15 Queens and a King would be a sucker. What kind of game is that? In chess even if you could just replace your minor pieces with rooks this would be "broken". > >There shouldn't be any reason to use one card over >> another in every possible situation. So, the Tomb is just plain wrong. Does >> anyone have a valid argument that it is *not* better than Art Museum, >> Ecoterrorists, Arcane Library, etc.? > >But hang on, Tomb costs 1 more pool than those other cards. And the fact >it is useable in all decks means that the chance it will be contested by >at least one other player at the table is high ... in fact it is virtually >1. So, it is a risky card to include in your deck ... because if it is >contested you are probably going to end up losing out. So Art Museum is >safer, because naively there is roughly a (1-x/21) chance that you will be >the only guy playing toreadors at a table of x+1 players. So, while i >think it's clear that Tomb is better IF YOU CAN GET IT OUT FIRST, it's not >necessarily better to put this card in your deck. Classic prisoner's >dilemma! Hardly. By your logic no matter how powerfull a unique card is it will be compensated for by the fact it's so good everyone plays it, and it will be contested. Clearly this is a contradiction and not true, and hence your logic false. Also the solution you describe, it being balanced because everyone plays it, is not a desireable outcome at all, and is in fact the main argument against cards so broken. [snip. Now people, keep the length of the lines in your posts about a word shorter. Two people in a row aught to be able to respons without forcing the lines to wrap! ] >Again, I think there are three big risks: >[1] Archon Investigation >[2] Protected Resources >[3] Misdirection and Deflection > >Each is serious, since you will either end up losing a powerful vampire >for a paltry bleed, or actually HELPING your prey by ousting your >grandprey AND losing a tough vampire in the process. Suddenly you end up forcing all decks to include these for fear of a lone RtI in a bleed deck. This, IMHO, is completely undesireable. Archon Investigation isn't even a good defense against a RtI deck that used Mind Rape, which I suspect most would. In my mind the _only_ thing that prevents RtI from being _completely_ over the top is Protected Resources (Major Boon helps a bit too, I admit). Unfortunatly these end up being required for defense in any non-bleed deck, and forces bleed decks to use bleed deflection. This is restricts deck building too much for my tastes, and hence aught to be changed. [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <ysysooe...@guillaume.labri.u-bordeaux.fr>, Philippe DUCHON <duc...@labri.u-bordeaux.fr> wrote: >Tomb is not _always_ better than Art Museum-like cards. It costs one >more pool, it's lost if the vampires under it is lost, and it's easier >to use if stolen. So this argument is not as strong against the Tomb. True, it's not categorical. Still, where it's weaker it's marginally weaker, and where it's stronger it's considerably stronger. I would always rather include the Tomb than the Art Museum, especially when combined with cards like Minion Tap. The argument about it being contestable doesn't fly IMHO since in order for that to work most decks have to include, at which point it's clearly broken in my mind. If you don't play it, and your opponent does you allowing them way to much of an advantage. Can you build me a deck (well, one that isn't pure weenies) that wouldn't benefit from the inclusion of the Tomb? IMHO it isn't possible. [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <6erggc$qa5$1...@news.NERO.NET>, phil...@tx.ENGR.ORST.EDU (Jasper Phillips) wrote: > In article <not.available-1...@sm1-132.hs.port.ac.uk>, > Legbiter <not.av...@your.security.clearance> wrote: > >In article <6enm3k$geg$1...@shell3.ba.best.com>, go...@shell3.ba.best.com > >(Gomi no Sensei) wrote: > > > >> a no-ammo fix. Consider: > >> > >> 12 distinct 1-capacity Caitiff (2cap random vamps for staying power) > >> > >> 30% Bum's Rush > >> 30% Zip Gun > >> 30% Dragonsbreath Rounds > >> 10% Effective Management > >> > >> Comments? > > > >Good deck. I just ousted one like this in jyhad on-line 64. > > One has to understand that this is obviously a weak example, and > that the principle is not neccesarily void because this "toy" > example doesn't hold. Surely you can imagine how it would work > better if properly filled out? I'm quite serious, I think it IS a good deck. Jedi Mike played it - actually his version was a Weenie Presence Bleed deck with ZGs and DBRs. I had to take him out with a KRC followed by a cross-table bleed for 7. But not before he'd snaffled two VPs [Mad One and Quicksilver]. AND he was up against a good combat deck from Sorrow. Good on you for reinventing it! > > On the other hand I don't think Zip/DBR decks are that effective, > certainly not enough to warrant errata. Most combat decks will > simply laugh at them. > Agreed. I like the combo because it introduces an enjoyable frisson into the Beast/Delilah Easton encounter .....

In article <6erg99$q9k$1...@news.NERO.NET>, phil...@tx.ENGR.ORST.EDU (Jasper Phillips) wrote: > In article <not.available-1...@sm1-132.hs.port.ac.uk>, > Legbiter <not.av...@your.security.clearance> wrote: > >In article <6elmo5$ohk$1...@news.NERO.NET>, phil...@tx.ENGR.ORST.EDU (Jasper > >Phillips) wrote: > >> Couple of points. First, saying there are weaknesses to TB and RtI still > >> doesn't address my point -- that you analgy was bad since the cards you > >> mention aren't anywhere near TB and RtI in brokeness. Your argument > >> that was based on this analgy was therefore inherently weak. > > > >OK, perhaps I was being uneccessarily elliptical there. I just think it > >isn't a fair argument against TB that it stops you playing cards. Lots of > >other cards do that, and we more or less all agree that they are good > >cards. This doesn't mean there aren't other, fair arguments against TB. > >For example [at the risk of giving y'all ammunition here] I think a major > >underused argument against it is that the illo is crap. > > Ahh, I think you're subtely mistaking the argument of those against TB. > It's not that TB prevents playing a few cards, but that it prevents playing > _any_ cards at all. If it just prevented strike cards for example, > I could live with it. Yeah, that's a reasonable argument. > >> Also, your statement that there is a defense against TB is patently > >> false. I believe there is _one_ master card that will counter it, and that's > >> stopped simply by playing another (now truly) unstopable TB. Pretty meager > >> defense. > > > >Two other defenses spring immediately to mind: having allies and > >retainers, and equipping lots. One of the reasons I'm so keen on TB is > >that it seems to me it adds lots of value to these under-used cards. > > The things is that these are not general strategies, and in fact > pattently suck. The ways to fix TB have to be viable in deck that does > well against most types of decks, not one that does well against a very > narrow kind. For example a TB combat deck will also deal with decks > that relly on S:CE for defense for the same number of deck slots. > Decks that relly on allies, retainers, or weapons will not. No indeed, but it would be REALLY disturbing if there were such a thing as an unbeatable general strategy. A TB combat deck is going to struggle against weenie guns and computers [which someone wittily nicknamed the US Army deck]. And of course there are decks that are gonna hose allies/retainers or weenie chips 'n' guns. But that's the metagame! > > >Well, multiplayer games in general aren't necessarily balanced, I > >certainly grant that. It's the uniqueness rules and the predator-prey > >relationships that give Jyhad its edge there. > > Um, this is a seperate issue, but I think the predator-prey relationship > actually dampens the general leveling affect of multiplayer, since > it's difficult to attack those other than your prey, and even if you > can you cannot directly benefit (while someone else will). > > >> > ><snip weird bit> > >> > >> What would it take in your mind for a card to be unbalanced? > > > >Hehehe .. see the adjoining post about one-word changes to cards. > > > >Is a > >> card which effectively ousts your prey (netting you more pool than > >> the capacity of the vampire you lost) ok if there are cards that > >> can stop it some of the time, but will ussually fail? IMHO this > >> is exactly what RtI does. > > > >Alright, again this is something I tried to answer in another post. > >Briefly, if RtI works you probably win. If it fails you almost certainly > >lose. It's for high-stakes players and there are decks which make it > >basically wallpaper. > > You mean if it's countered by Archon Investigation? The same is true > of a deck that makes large, but not RtI bleeds. The RtI deck is > more powerfull, and discipliness, and considering that bleed decks > are already effective, seems overpowered. > > All of the others ways to stop RtI don't make you lose at all. Actually, I was thinking about Misdirection/Redirection [which makes RtI a VERY risky proposition - "You want to oust my prey by combining your two 15 dollar rares with my 5 cent common? Why, how very decent of you, esteemed predator!] or Protected Resources [which neutralizes it completely ... "O NOOO!!!! I'm playing with a 6-card hand for the rest of the game, and it cost me 225 dollars to build the sucker!!!!]. > > There is also the problem that against most decks Archon Investigation > is wallpaper -- and you shouldn't be forced to include such a narrow > hoser in your deck to survive (IMHO if you are, that's a clear > symptom of a broken card). A lot of the science of deck-building is trying to figure out what the likely threats in your environment will be. So the first choice you make is, will I win by bleeding my prey to death, or by doing something else. If you decide on something else, then you probably need to put a Protected Resources or two in your deck to keep the Big Bleeders of all kinds off your case. If you decide on bleeding, then as Jason pointed out you are better off with a shed-load of li'l dom guys, or a FOR/PRO gangrel Fame deck, than with RtI. And if you fear that you will be playing with other bleeders, you put AI in there, too. And if you're wrong, you lose out .. but again, that's the meta-game, and I absolutely agree that bleeding is powerful enough already! Actually, what RtI IS good for [IMO] is giving a sudden HORRIBLY unexpected bleed dimension to a nice cuddly Nosferatu deck [nice ratty! Good ratty! Go bite prey, but not too hard, while I sneak through the night and write naughty words on his coffin ...]. Incidentally, one of the things that has always bothered me is WHAT ON EARTH RtI is supposed to mean! Then last night in a dream it came to me .... I think it is an attempt to bring the mechanic of the variant rules in Appendix A of the new booklet [vampires bleed for roughly 4 less than their capacity] into the main game, but at a price. So it is a sop to all those hordes of people who flocked to the game after Wizards' far-sighted decision to change the backs and **** those of us who played already. I'm still a bit vague about the story-telling interpretation of it, tho ..... is this another version of Golconda? > <snip increasingly esoteric disagreement about whether Jyhad is, or is not, like Magic, before Bleu comes round and feeds on my liver> > > >> >Alright, but as Mao pointed out, change for change's sake is naive > >> >leftism. I am for good change, that adds to the game. That's why I voted > >> >for changing CW to a discipline-less card. > >> > >> Non sequitor: Nobody posts change for changes sake, and I think > >> everyone is for "good" change (with the possible exception of WotC). > >> > >> My point, which you didn't address, still stands: Past bad card fixes have > >> nothing to do with the quality of current ones. > > > >But don't they at least suggest the desirability of a certain humility, a > >certain caution? That's the point, isn't it? > > Considering the extreme... error of some of the fixes, and some of the > problems that should never have existed, it doesn't really mean much > to me. Kind of like taking the fact that people get run over by > trains as meaning you should be carefull crossing the tracks. > > I do certainly agree you should be cautious, but of course believe I > am, or else I wouldn't be so andamant. I think in particular the changes > that I suggest are as minimal as possible, considering the circumstances -- > there are certainly a lot of other balance considerations that have been > made that I think are arbitrary and bad, but they don't quite have > enough of an effect to worry about. The 4 cards I mention I think have > a widely disporportionate effect. Alright, so we agree about the need for caution, which is good.

>>and the mechanics are barely >>> even superfiecially similar. Bleeding, Combat, and Voting are completely >>> different, or non-existant in magic. You pool is a better analgy with >>> land than your vampires by far, and it doesn't regenerate every turn, >>> nor does it grow constantly. >> >>Vampires untap every turn, like lands. They have symbols on them for clan > >There are quite a few games that give you one action with each of your >"units". Most of them predate Magic; this is hardly a telling >commonality -- kind of like saying games are similar because they use dice. > >>and disciplines [like the mana colour glyphs on the new magic lands], and >>you tap them in order to play cards from your hand with matching symbols - >>think of them like multi-lands in Magic, and the analogy perhaps becomes > >You often don't tap them to use their effects, and the analgy is completely >wrong as often as it fits. Magic and Jyhad are the same basic type of game and have the same basic premise. Within that structure they're pretty different, but that structure does make them pretty similar as compared to other games in general... Both are card games where you build a deck from a set of cards of differing rarities, etc., etc., etc. Deck design, skill within the game, and luck are all important factors in both. In both games you play some powerful controlling being who has some health meter (life or pool) and when you run out of health you're out of the game. Your goal is to make everyone else run out of health before you do (in a certain order for Jyhad). You have minions that you summon to do your dirty work for you. You send them to go attack the other players and reduce their health. The other players use their minions to try to stop that. If they run into each other, they fight about it. Everyone takes turns and in a turn you replenish all your resources (untap), take whatever actions you're going to, etc. On other people's turns you can block or play cards from a limited subset of the card set. You can do things to make your minions cooler, or you can do some direct effects (masters). The games put different emphases on different parts and implement it all rather differently, but the basic idea is about the same. Jyhad has a lot more depth to it, I think, but (at the risk of blaspheming) Magic isn't that bad a game either. If the cards were at the same prices as Jyhad cards, I might still play it some. As it is, I sold off my deck and a few other cards for several hundred dollars a few years ago and ended up making some money on the whole deal. Jyhad is a good game if you want interesting multiplayer dynamics and a thoughtful game. It requires a lot more planning and diplomacy and less brute force of powerful cards and combos. That's somewhat less true of combat decks, which is why I don't really like them. Magic is fun if you don't have anything to do for half an hour, and I actually think it involves more intricate work in doing a good job playing the cards you have. And all the editions have the same backs :) Jyhad is strategic and Magic is tactical, if you will. Of course, Magic is tactical only if you've spent about as much on your deck as your opponent.

SirTemple wrote: > > >12 distinct 1-capacity Caitiff (2cap random vamps for staying power) > > > >30% Bum's Rush > >30% Zip Gun > >30% Dragonsbreath Rounds > >10% Effective Management > > > >This deck will be able to routinely deal 2agg+1 damage, at range, 4+ > >times a turn, every turn. At that rate, even the prepared begin to run > >out of S:CE and Damage Prevention. Minions are wholly disposable, there > >are no equip actions to block, and it's fast fast fast. > > > > > > This deck would fail. It would easily shoot four vamps the second round, then > only 1 each round, because you can only play 1 Effective management a round. > Not nearly enough force to win a game. It has no way of quickly killing it's > prey. No bleed defense. I have worked on a similar deck for a while. I am > playing one of the better incarnations of it in JOL62, but without the heavy > blood gain, I would have died already. It is not that easy. > No, you are wrong. Against certain types of combat decks it might fail, but as written it is pretty strong. You would hit four vamps in the 2nd round, FOUR IN THE 2nd Round!!! Assuming that people have combat defense, 1/2 would be S:CE or dodge. Assuming (and this is a big assumption!) that someone is playing a ranged combat deck they might take out one (never to return) vamp each round. Let's do the math. Assuming no handjam. And this is totally hypothetical. 2nd round 4vamps attack. 2 hit and score, 1 dies. (It is highly unlikely that this would occur. It is doubtful there will be four vamps between predator and prey) 3rd round 2 new vamps attack. 1 attacks and scores, 1 fails. There is a 50/50 chance one dies. 3 other vamps hunt, one fails the hunt, dies but scores 1 hit. 4th round, 3 vamps attack. Can we now assume that someone is running thin on majesty? I still have at least four vamps on the table. It isn't invincible, but it is pretty nasty.

daniel frey wrote: [ quoted text not captured ] Well I'll go with the actual tested deck everytime before I take stock in hypothetical mental inventions. I find it hard to conscience people saying "no you are wrong" when all you have to support your claim is hypythetical data. The person you are contradicting however has empirical data gathered through actual play. Perhaps you should create this "monstrously broken" deck an sweep a few tables before you make such claims. Karl

[ quoted text not captured ] Actually, this deck was someone else's creation. I've never said it was "monstrously broken" (although I would never play this against a friend). Most importantly, I was responding (perhaps over-elaborately) to the person who claimed that four vamps would attack the second round, and only one every turn thereafter - somehow under the opinion that the zip guns would send one blood caitiff to torpor after use. And excuse me for taking slight offense at the tone of your message, but, we do hopefully have enough creativity to predict how a deck might work. I don't need the "empirical data" to know that my Ravnos conditioning deck may not be the best idea after all.

In article <not.available-1...@sm1-132.hs.port.ac.uk>, Legbiter <not.av...@your.security.clearance> wrote: >In article <6erg99$q9k$1...@news.NERO.NET>, phil...@tx.ENGR.ORST.EDU (Jasper >Phillips) wrote: >> >> The things is that these are not general strategies, and in fact >> pattently suck. The ways to fix TB have to be viable in deck that does >> well against most types of decks, not one that does well against a very >> narrow kind. For example a TB combat deck will also deal with decks >> that relly on S:CE for defense for the same number of deck slots. >> Decks that relly on allies, retainers, or weapons will not. > >No indeed, but it would be REALLY disturbing if there were such a thing as >an unbeatable general strategy. A TB combat deck is going to struggle >against weenie guns and computers [which someone wittily nicknamed the US >Army deck]. And of course there are decks that are gonna hose >allies/retainers or weenie chips 'n' guns. But that's the metagame! My problem with this is that a TB will "struggle" only against a weenie horde deck gun/DBR deck -- and even then it's possible to sprinkle in a little bit of fortitude and be completely safe, and blood gain to cover up the cost of TB. In any event a deck doesn't have to be unbeatable to be unreasonably dominate (I think the TB decks that don't deal well with weenie gun hordes are in general nastier for example). >> All of the others ways to stop RtI don't make you lose at all. > >Actually, I was thinking about Misdirection/Redirection [which makes RtI a >VERY risky proposition - "You want to oust my prey by combining your two >15 dollar rares with my 5 cent common? Why, how very decent of you, >esteemed predator!] or Protected Resources [which neutralizes it >completely ... "O NOOO!!!! I'm playing with a 6-card hand for the rest of >the game, and it cost me 225 dollars to build the sucker!!!!]. Yes, this is what I've been trying to argue all along. With RtI available you are effectively forced to use one of these two things. This IMHO is a bad thing. Also, cost comparisons are not relavent, and only water down your argument. [snip] >your case. If you decide on bleeding, then as Jason pointed out you are >better off with a shed-load of li'l dom guys, or a FOR/PRO gangrel Fame >deck, than with RtI. And if you fear that you will be playing with other [snip] I disagree with you here. I think that RtI is more powerfull, especially in combination with things like Mind Rape, and the Tomb. >Actually, what RtI IS good for [IMO] is giving a sudden HORRIBLY >unexpected bleed dimension to a nice cuddly Nosferatu deck [nice ratty! >Good ratty! Go bite prey, but not too hard, while I sneak through the >night and write naughty words on his coffin ...]. Yes, this is one of the reasons RtI is better than bleeding with a horde of dom's or Fame decks -- You can slip it in with very little oppurtunity cost, and great benefit to _any_ deck with relatively large vampires. >Incidentally, one of the things that has always bothered me is WHAT ON >EARTH RtI is supposed to mean! Then last night in a dream it came to me >.... I think it is an attempt to bring the mechanic of the variant rules >in Appendix A of the new booklet [vampires bleed for roughly 4 less than >their capacity] into the main game, but at a price. So it is a sop to all >those hordes of people who flocked to the game after Wizards' far-sighted >decision to change the backs and **** those of us who played already. I'm >still a bit vague about the story-telling interpretation of it, tho ..... >is this another version of Golconda? Pretty straightforward really I thought, kinda like Day Op. Your vampire decides they want to die, but that they're going to take their enemies out with them. They proceed to willfully break the masquerade, attack interests just before dawn, etc. [snip] >Alright, so we agree about the need for caution, which is good. Of course. My interests are pretty narrowly targeted to things that I think are only marginally less broken than repeat bleed or weenie vote push. [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <351186...@bcpress.com>, daniel frey <daniel_fr...@bcpress.com> wrote: >Karl and Sam wrote: > >Actually, this deck was someone else's creation. I've never said it was >"monstrously broken" (although I would never play this against a >friend). Most importantly, I was responding (perhaps over-elaborately) >to the person who claimed that four vamps would attack the second round, >and only one every turn thereafter - somehow under the opinion that the >zip guns would send one blood caitiff to torpor after use. >And excuse me for taking slight offense at the tone of your message, >but, we do hopefully have enough creativity to predict how a deck might >work. I don't need the "empirical data" to know that my Ravnos >conditioning deck may not be the best idea after all. For reference I don't think the weenie DBR deck is broken. I have to agree with Daniel here. Hypothetical argument is meaningfull, although not as much as a good statistical study. However, the "empirical data" that was presented is _not_ a good statistical study, and is essentially meaningless -- leaving nothing more than hypothetical argument. [ quoted text not captured ]

> > > > I find the egalitarian sentiment here charming, but I'm afraid I don't see > > why this is a fundamantal tenet of Jyhad, or why it should be a > > fundamental tenet of any game. In Chess, queens are better than any other > > piece, and pawns are worse than any other piece. Surely any game worth > > playing has powerful elements that you need to guard against, and weak > > elements that you need to foster or replace? > > Such a comparison makes no sense. If you could play Chess with only > Queens, you'd do so. In basic, no-limits Jyhad there is _no_ reason to > play with a card that is, in all situations, completely inferior to > another. _That_ is the situation with Concealed/Disguised Weapon. It > is the _only_ pair of such cards that I know of. > > In a deck where all Vampires have Potence (and you have no allies and > no way of stealing or creating new Vampires), would you ever use Arson > ? No, because Rampage is _slightly_ better, but _strictly_ better. You > wouldn't use Lucky Blow either. In a deck where all Vampires have > Celerity, and you cannot steal/create others, would you ever use > Dodge ? No. > > > > > There shouldn't be any reason to use one card over > > > another in every possible situation. So, the Tomb is just plain wrong. Does > > > anyone have a valid argument that it is *not* better than Art Museum, > > > Ecoterrorists, Arcane Library, etc.? > > > > Tomb is not _always_ better than Art Museum-like cards. It costs one > more pool, it's lost if the vampires under it is lost, and it's easier > to use if stolen. So this argument is not as strong against the Tomb. > It does not cost one more pool. If you put it out, transfer 2 pool and then take 1 to your pool, you've effectively paid the same pool cost, *and* gotten a pool on your vampire. Plus, it's disciplineless and clanless, which is the true cause of my hatred for it. Someone else's argument that it's more likely to be contested is like proposing a vampire with 1 capicity and all disciplines. You can say, "he's balanced, but everyone will use him and he'll always be contested." That's a ridiculous argument. Similarly for the Tomb. Any risk of losing it is moot, because it cannot be lost until after it has paid for itself. If it's SR'ed you don't pay the pool. Art Museum *can* be lost before it's paid for itself. -Chris -----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==----- http://www.dejanews.com/ Now offering spam-free web-based newsreading

In article <6eri0o$qhu$1...@news.NERO.NET>, phil...@tx.ENGR.ORST.EDU (Jasper Phillips) wrote: > In article <not.available-1...@sm1-132.hs.port.ac.uk>, > Legbiter <not.av...@your.security.clearance> wrote: > > > >> > > >>Well... just look at the Tomb, for one... It requires no clan, no discipline > >>and immediately pays back your investment with no risk. Even if you're using > >>Toreador, why use Art Museum over the Tomb? There's no reason to. The Tomb > >> can stay in play as long as you like, as long as you transfer pool off the > >> vamp with the Tomb, and it can give you more than 1 pool per influence > >> phase. So, in all respects, the Tomb is better than many other cards. This > >> breaks a fundamental tenet of Jyhad... that being that no card is basically > >> *better* than another. > > > >I find the egalitarian sentiment here charming, but I'm afraid I don't see > >why this is a fundamantal tenet of Jyhad, or why it should be a > >fundamental tenet of any game. In Chess, queens are better than any other > >piece, and pawns are worse than any other piece. Surely any game worth > >playing has powerful elements that you need to guard against, and weak > >elements that you need to foster or replace? > > That's a horrible analagy! In chess you don't have the option of replacing > your pawns with queens from the start. If you could do that on a one > for one basis, clearly anyone not playing with 15 Queens and a King > would be a sucker. What kind of game is that? > > In chess even if you could just replace your minor pieces with rooks > this would be "broken". > Yeah, you're right, and so is Phillipe Duchon .... it was my Evil Twin Toesucker who wrote that bit. Still, despite the fact that he doesn't have my deft turn with the ol' analogies, I agree with Toesucker that there's no reason why every card in a TCG has to be equally good. > > > >There shouldn't be any reason to use one card over > >> another in every possible situation. So, the Tomb is just plain wrong. Does > >> anyone have a valid argument that it is *not* better than Art Museum, > >> Ecoterrorists, Arcane Library, etc.? > > > >But hang on, Tomb costs 1 more pool than those other cards. And the fact > >it is useable in all decks means that the chance it will be contested by > >at least one other player at the table is high ... in fact it is virtually > >1. So, it is a risky card to include in your deck ... because if it is > >contested you are probably going to end up losing out. So Art Museum is > >safer, because naively there is roughly a (1-x/21) chance that you will be > >the only guy playing toreadors at a table of x+1 players. So, while i > >think it's clear that Tomb is better IF YOU CAN GET IT OUT FIRST, it's not > >necessarily better to put this card in your deck. Classic prisoner's > >dilemma! > > Hardly. By your logic no matter how powerfull a unique card is it will > be compensated for by the fact it's so good everyone plays it, and it > will be contested. Clearly this is a contradiction and not true, and > hence your logic false. No, I have to differ with you there brother - you mustn't put words into my mouth. A really REALLY powerful card, perhaps the legendary "You Lose!" from Jo-kan-po, would have to go in every deck and in the end it would all come down to who got it out first. With Tomb, it isn't really in question that IF you get yours out first, you are in a good position. If you don't, you are more or less going to have to contest it. This means both players lose, and the guys and gals who left Tomb out of their decks laugh satirically and get on with beating the crap out of you. > > Also the solution you describe, it being balanced because everyone plays > it, is not a desireable outcome at all, and is in fact the main argument > against cards so broken. In my opinion this is the crux of the argument against banning or fixing anything at all in Jyhad. Suppose someone DID come up with the ultimate winning deck. Everyone clones it. Suddenly, because of the fact that all its key cards end up being regularly contested, this is no longer the ultimate deck. In fact, ANYTHING that is NOT this deck is superior to it. This is such a powerful and elegant mechanism and I think it almost completely obviates the need for the kind of fixes you want. > > [snip. Now people, keep the length of the lines in your posts about > a word shorter. Two people in a row aught to be able to respons without > forcing the lines to wrap! ] > > >Again, I think there are three big risks: > >[1] Archon Investigation > >[2] Protected Resources > >[3] Misdirection and Deflection > > > >Each is serious, since you will either end up losing a powerful vampire > >for a paltry bleed, or actually HELPING your prey by ousting your > >grandprey AND losing a tough vampire in the process. > > Suddenly you end up forcing all decks to include these for fear of a lone > RtI in a bleed deck. This, IMHO, is completely undesireable. > Archon Investigation isn't even a good defense against a RtI > deck that used Mind Rape, which I suspect most would. I don't think you necessarily force anyone to do anything. It's all about judgement. As I said before, it all come down to the question of how big a risk is Tomb/RtI in your environment? As Michael Beer pointed out in another post, we in Europe at least are finding it rarer and rarer to see RtI or Tomb in play. That's partly because of the emergence of decks that whack these cards or turn them into wallpaper, and partly becaue of the general fear they generate ... so that people mount suicidal cross-table bleeds and votes to take out decks that use them. > > In my mind the _only_ thing that prevents RtI from being _completely_ > over the top is Protected Resources (Major Boon helps a bit too, I admit). > Unfortunatly these end up being required for defense in any non-bleed > deck, and forces bleed decks to use bleed deflection. > This is restricts deck building too much for my tastes, and hence > aught to be changed. > Ah well, there is no disputing tastes. My own view is that Fear is a great thing in Jyhad, and I like these cards because they add to it.

>In my opinion this is the crux of the argument against banning or fixing >anything at all in Jyhad. Suppose someone DID come up with the ultimate >winning deck. Everyone clones it. Suddenly, because of the fact that all >its key cards end up being regularly contested, this is no longer the >ultimate deck. In fact, ANYTHING that is NOT this deck is superior to it. >This is such a powerful and elegant mechanism and I think it almost >completely obviates the need for the kind of fixes you want. Assuming that the deck only works with a certain set of vampires (unique) or otherwise depends on unique cards, yes. That's not too big of an assumption. And (and this one is a lot more important) assuming that everyone has the cards available to clone the deck. If someone builds a god deck, I don't think it's a good regulating mechanism to force everyone else to go and buy the cards needed to clone it and make it not work due to contesting. I'm sure WotC wouldn't mind it, though :) -Dave

In article <not.available-2...@sm1-132.hs.port.ac.uk>, Legbiter <not.av...@your.security.clearance> wrote: >No, I have to differ with you there brother - you mustn't put words into >my mouth. A really REALLY powerful card, perhaps the legendary "You Lose!" >from Jo-kan-po, would have to go in every deck and in the end it would all >come down to who got it out first. With Tomb, it isn't really in question >that IF you get yours out first, you are in a good position. If you don't, >you are more or less going to have to contest it. This means both players >lose, and the guys and gals who left Tomb out of their decks laugh >satirically and get on with beating the crap out of you. Not IMHO; it's not what I'd do anyway. I'd wait until his tomb was used, and then play mine. We'd both proceed to laugh at all the players that left them out of their deck. >> Also the solution you describe, it being balanced because everyone plays >> it, is not a desireable outcome at all, and is in fact the main argument >> against cards so broken. > >In my opinion this is the crux of the argument against banning or fixing >anything at all in Jyhad. Suppose someone DID come up with the ultimate >winning deck. Everyone clones it. Suddenly, because of the fact that all >its key cards end up being regularly contested, this is no longer the >ultimate deck. In fact, ANYTHING that is NOT this deck is superior to it. >This is such a powerful and elegant mechanism and I think it almost >completely obviates the need for the kind of fixes you want. This is a desireable outcome!? Personally I like a little more variety, and this is one of the clear signs of brokeness IMHO. Not to mention that by this argument repeat bleed and weenie vote push decks are ok, since they can be dealt with if everyone plays an appropiate counter deck; clearly this kind of balance is not enough. >> [snip. Now people, keep the length of the lines in your posts about >> a word shorter. Two people in a row aught to be able to respons without >> forcing the lines to wrap!] I'm keeping this in so hopefully people will pick up on it. >> Suddenly you end up forcing all decks to include these for fear of a lone >> RtI in a bleed deck. This, IMHO, is completely undesireable. >> Archon Investigation isn't even a good defense against a RtI >> deck that used Mind Rape, which I suspect most would. > >I don't think you necessarily force anyone to do anything. It's all about >judgement. As I said before, it all come down to the question of how big a [snip] Let me reiterate my logic. A card that is so good will be used, at which point you are forced to play with the counter for threat of it being used, or else lose. At best this leads to a kind of see-saw hoser war rather reminiscent of paper scissors rock. >general fear they generate ... so that people mount suicidal cross-table >bleeds and votes to take out decks that use them. This is and of itself is not a good solution IMHO. If a card is so good that it _always_ puts you in enough of a lead that all the other players need to collaborate and "suicidally bleed" to stop it, it is IMHO clearly broken. Even the defense you suggest isn't reliable, since A smart player will just bide his time, and then break out said broken card without warning when the game is near resolution to give them an unstoppable edge (well, I guess you could also argue that everyone would start playing cards to be able to see their opponents hand, and counter this too). >> In my mind the _only_ thing that prevents RtI from being _completely_ >> over the top is Protected Resources (Major Boon helps a bit too, I admit). >> Unfortunatly these end up being required for defense in any non-bleed >> deck, and forces bleed decks to use bleed deflection. >> This is restricts deck building too much for my tastes, and hence >> aught to be changed. >> >Ah well, there is no disputing tastes. My own view is that Fear is a great >thing in Jyhad, and I like these cards because they add to it. Wow. So you _like_ the resulting decrease in deck variety? Reminds me of when I used to play L5R, and if you wanted to win you had to essentially either play Crane, Lion, or Phoenix. [ quoted text not captured ]