[LSJ] Villein

LSJ, I heard through our playgroup that you've made a ruling on Villein... and the summary of it is: You can target a villein on a minion who doesn't have the blood for you to take "at least 2" but you are forced to take "everything"? To be honest, why did that happen? It seems to not make sense with the rest of the card (since it seems to be specifically about shutting down Minion Tap and Cap'n'Tap decks). If you can just cycle it for basically 0, by choosing an empty minion, what is the point of the "You must take 2" text... few people cycled "minion tap for 0" on a minion with blood worth taking... It just all seems to be at odds with the purpose of Villein.

On 16 fév, 01:30, Juggernaut1981 <brasscompo...@gmail.com> wrote: > LSJ, > I heard through our playgroup that you've made a ruling on Villein... > and the summary of it is: > You can target a villein on a minion who doesn't have the blood for > you to take "at least 2" but you are forced to take "everything"? I guess the answer is cardtext. There has been no ruling, merely an explanation of the cardtext, when the card was first released. http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.trading-cards.jyhad/msg/f8f7427a2b09604d http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.trading-cards.jyhad/msg/c191cc333bcf0195 > To be honest, why did that happen? Cardtext doesn't "happen". It is the way it is. > It seems to not make sense with the > rest of the card (since it seems to be specifically about shutting > down Minion Tap and Cap'n'Tap decks). I'm not sure the first intent of the card is to shut down such decks - especially because, in most of the cases, Minion Taps can be replaced by Villeins. I guess it's just another card that gives you pool for blood. > If you can just cycle it for > basically 0, by choosing an empty minion, what is the point of the > "You must take 2" text... few people cycled "minion tap for 0" on a > minion with blood worth taking... It just all seems to be at odds with > the purpose of Villein. Well, can't cycle it for 0 if all your vampires are on 1 or 2 blood..

On Feb 15, 7:30 pm, Juggernaut1981 <brasscompo...@gmail.com> wrote: > LSJ, > I heard through our playgroup that you've made a ruling on Villein... > and the summary of it is: > You can target a villein on a minion who doesn't have the blood for > you to take "at least 2" but you are forced to take "everything"? Yes. Like being able to target a 1-blood vampire with Drain Essence. > To be honest, why did that happen? Consistency. Target the card. > It seems to not make sense with the > rest of the card (since it seems to be specifically about shutting > down Minion Tap and Cap'n'Tap decks). If you can just cycle it for > basically 0, by choosing an empty minion, what is the point of the > "You must take 2" text... few people cycled "minion tap for 0" on a > minion with blood worth taking... It just all seems to be at odds with > the purpose of Villein. Not at all.

[ quoted text not captured ] And I'm not trying to sound argumentative, but wouldn't the "Put this on a vampire AND move 2 or more blood" clause exclude minions with less than 2 blood as ineligible targets? Without the ability to MOVE (not Steal) 2 blood you couldn't put the card in play... the "Put this on a vampire" sentence can't be fully completed to its conditions. Villein does say "move" and not "steal" so I also don't see how a combat card which uses the keyword "steal" is relevant. Villein Type: Master Master: trifle. Put this card on a vampire you control and move 2 or more blood from that vampire to your pool. Minion Tap cards cost an additional pool. Villein costs an additional pool to play on this vampire.

On Feb 15, 9:12 pm, Juggernaut1981 <brasscompo...@gmail.com> wrote: > Villein does say "move" and not "steal" so I also don't see how a > combat card which uses the keyword "steal" is relevant. Steal Blood. This effect moves blood counters ...

So if I may ask, what is the purpose of villein? Is it to hamstring cap and tap decks? Is it to wallpaper tap? Is it to force older players to buy new cards? A combination of the above? Just curious Sutekh_23

[ quoted text not captured ] If anything it makes cap and tap stronger. It does wallpaper minion tap and force older players to buy new cards. That doesn't matter much imo... What matters is that it's basically the 1 card that make most high-cap vampires playable. And that is very good times indeed. Regards Alex

On Feb 16, 1:51 pm, _angst_ <a...@student.chalmers.se> wrote: > > If anything it makes cap and tap stronger. How so? it costs you more if you plan to cap and tap one minion, it encourages diversity, sure. It does wallpaper minion > tap and force older players to buy new cards. That doesn't matter much > imo... Sure, except one of the greatest srengths of Vtes is to not to wallpaper old cards, but this one seems to. Forcing rotation of cards, smells like M:TG to me. > > What matters is that it's basically the 1 card that make most high-cap > vampires playable. And that is very good times indeed. > > Regards > Alex High cap decks were already playable, (via, say, cap and tap) but that is not my point. I'm asking what was the design intent behind the card was. Sutekh_23

On Feb 15, 10:34 pm, "Sutekh.23" <sutekh...@gmail.com> wrote: > So if I may ask, what is the purpose of villein? > Is it to hamstring cap and tap decks? > Is it to wallpaper tap? > Is it to force older players to buy new cards? > A combination of the above? I would guess that the intent was to create a sort of Vessel / Blood Doll type balance, where one card is not clearly better than the other, but both cards end up being less good than the older card was before the newer card was printed. The result is that an arguably too- popular card (perhaps slightly overpowered) gets taken down a notch, and a greater variety of master cards thereby become competitive options. If that was the intent, however, I think there was a mis-calculation. The new card is arguably more "above the power curve" than the older card used to be. I have also predicted that, when demand is met, Villein will end up wall-papering Minion Tap, rather than achieving a Vessel / Blood Doll type balance. (Note that this is still merely a prediction -- I have not yet been proven right). I heard a story (and I am just repeating what I heard) that nobody played Villein during play-testing, and someone suggested it would be worth playing only if were a trifle. That suggestion got implemented.

[ quoted text not captured ] But realistically people's beef with the Cap'n'Tap is the Cap for 10 blood + 2 pool and not the Tap for 5+. If it is to de-power the "Cap'n'Tap" strategy, then depowering the Cap is more likely to get the results desired. If it is to do something else... then what?

According to this explanation, you can play Villein on a vampire with 1 blood. It seems that if you play a Villein on a vampire with 1 blood, you will not be able to move the blood to your pool, since the text says you can only move 2 or more. Is that correct?

Juggernaut1981 wrote: > But realistically people's beef with the Cap'n'Tap is the Cap for 10 > blood + 2 pool and not the Tap for 5+. > If it is to de-power the "Cap'n'Tap" strategy, then depowering the Cap > is more likely to get the results desired. A look at the TWDA suggests that there are more Tap decks without Cap than Tap Decks with Cap. Apparently, Tap is a quite popular card on its own. It therefore seems plausible to me that the strategy was to depower Tap. If the Tap & Cap is a problem as a combo, then that combo may be fixed by depowering either Tap or Cap. If Cap on its own is above the power curve, then that is a whole other subject. You don't expect a single card, or expansion, to fix all problems at once, do you? > If it is to do something else... then what? I made a suggestion. It still seems logical to me.

Aaron Clark <aama...@gmail.com> writes: [ quoted text not captured ] No, it works like Theft of Vitae or Drain Essence. You have to attempt to move at least 2 blood. If the target has only 1 or 0 blood, you move what you can (1 or 0). Just like when striking with superior Theft of Vitae in combat. http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.trading-cards.jyhad/msg/f8f7427a2b09604d HG

Aaron Clark wrote: > It seems that if you play a Villein on a vampire with 1 blood, you > will not be able to move the blood to your pool, since the text says > you can only move 2 or more. > > Is that correct? The precedent cited is "Steal Blood". What happens when you try to steal 2 blood from a vampire with 1 blood?

[ quoted text not captured ] When you Steal 2 blood from a minion from a minion with 2 or less blood, you take all the blood available. The "precedent" is that Steal = move blood as a strike, therefore Villein's "move 2 blood" will move blood up to a minimum total of 2 but potentially more than 2. From John Flournoy: A look at the TWDA suggests that there are more Tap decks without Cap than Tap Decks with Cap. Apparently, Tap is a quite popular card on its own. It therefore seems plausible to me that the strategy was to depower Tap. Yes,but did you also look at the number of taps in those decks? The archetypes with a LARGE number of Minion Taps from experience are: Vote Cap'n'Tap, AAA (or similar Big Minion, Tap, Golconda/Giant's Blood, repeat), Archon-Abactor decks. There are a number of other decks that will Minion Tap each large minion once maybe twice... few of the combat deck archetypes use it (Unless you're going for a wacky Tha deck). So, Yes tap is a popular card on its own, but the requirements on Villein are there to restrict multiple taps on the same minion. The only reason to penalise multiple Villeins or repeat Minion Taps on minions is in a situation where you can get significant blood back on the minion (predominantly Abactor-Archon or Voter Cap). The "trickle" bloat where hunting is the main driver of blood-gain are almost entirely driven on Blood Dolls (and now potentially Vessels). So Villein was never going to target them. So John, to be honest, Cap looks like the card needing changes and really Tap probably didn't need changes. Even something as simple as "[pre]... up to a maximum of 2. [PRE] As above but a maximum of 6 blood." and remove the option to gain pool... OR [pre] get limited blood, [PRE] No blood gain, gain a little pool. Villen has been introduced to counteract Tap, fine. But I think that allowing Villein to be used to remove "a minimum of 2 blood unless they don't have 2+ blood when you take whatever is there"... is that it doesn't really differentiate Villein from Tap other than penalising Tap for a Trifle. By implication "move 2 or more" suggests that it shouldn't be able to be used to move "less than 2" and that's what I'm not finding so obvious about the decision that you can play Villein on a vampire with less than 2 blood.

I really don't like Villein, and I agree that it totally wallpapers Minion Tap. Accordingly, I hereby authorize all and sundry to use the Legendre Villein Fix: VILLEIN Master: trifle Put this card on a vampire you control and move 2 or more blood from that vampire to your pool. Villein costs an additional pool to play on this vampire. Minion Tap cards cost an additional pool for each Villein on the minion with the greatest number of Villeins. In other words, the effect doesn't stack unless the cards are actually stacked. Try it out in play. I think you'll find, as my playgroup did, that it works a lot better.

And as for the original question, I agree that the wording is a little ambiguous. (It almost always is, despite the relentless claims to the contrary. But this is the difficulty of trying to walk a line between a formal semantic architecture and a natural language architecture.) The "and" in the first sentence of the card text really does suggest that the ability to move two or more blood could be considered as a requirement of playing the card. After all, the truth conditions for (a^b) is that both "a" and "b" be true, which means in a modal sense that both "a" and "b" must be possible (i.e., it is necessary that "a" be possible, and it is necessary that "b" be possible). But if you think of the sentence **temporally** rather than in terms of its semantic truth conditions, the sentence has a sense of: "Put this card on a vampire you control, and THEN move 2 or more blood from that vampire...." If you read the sentence this way, the choosing of the vampire is disjoined from the moving, and the whole thing makes a lot more sense.

On Feb 15, 11:14 pm, John Whelan <jwjbwhe...@gmail.com> wrote: > I heard a story (and I am just repeating what I heard) that nobody > played Villein during play-testing, and someone suggested it would be > worth playing only if were a trifle. That suggestion got implemented. When did Villein (and KoT) get released? -Peter

[ quoted text not captured ] November 2008, if I remember correctly.

[ quoted text not captured ] I know what happens when you steal 2 blood from a vampire with one blood. The question is what happens when you move 2 or more blood from a vampire with one blood. "Move" is not a synonym of "steal", at least not in my personal understanding of English. LSJ has already ruled on this, of course, so it's not going to change anytime soon. However, I think this is a bad ruling. "Steal 2" and "move 2 or more" do not mean the same thing to most readers. To me as a casual reader, the "2 or more" clause seemed to be a way to balance Villein with Minion Tap, since Villein, being a trifle, is arguably much better than Minion Tap. It is hard to understand why the designer wrote "move 2 or more blood" when the functional effect is "move any amount of blood."

On Feb 16, 2:59 pm, Aaron Clark <aamacl...@gmail.com> wrote: > I know what happens when you steal 2 blood from a vampire with one > blood. The question is what happens when you move 2 or more blood > from a vampire with one blood. "Move" is not a synonym of "steal", at > least not in my personal understanding of English. Right. No one is suggesting that they are synonyms. But stealing is an instance of moving. Rulebook: "Steal Blood. This effect moves blood counters..." > It is hard to understand why the > designer wrote "move 2 or more blood" when the functional effect is > "move any amount of blood." That isn't the functional effect. If the target has 2 blood, you may not choose to move 0 blood, nor may not choose to move 1 blood.

On Feb 16, 10:55 am, Legendre <glav...@gmail.com> wrote: > November 2008, if I remember correctly. Hmm. Well, ok then. Thanks! -Peter

On Feb 17, 2:49 am, Legendre <glav...@gmail.com> wrote: > And as for the original question, I agree that the wording is a little > ambiguous. (It almost always is, despite the relentless claims to the > contrary. But this is the difficulty of trying to walk a line between > a formal semantic architecture and a natural language architecture.) > > The "and" in the first sentence of the card text really does suggest > that the ability to move two or more blood could be considered as a > requirement of playing the card. After all, the truth conditions for > (a^b) is that both "a" and "b" be true, which means in a modal sense > that both "a" and "b" must be possible (i.e., it is necessary that > "a" be possible, and it is necessary that "b" be possible). Discreet temporal events are usually separated into sentences in VTES. Take Rotschrek for example. (Put this card... inflicted or not. Combat ends. This vampire is tapped and sent to torpor. This vampire does not untap as normal. During this vampire's next untap phase, burn this card.) Temporal Sequence: Put the card on the vampire. End combat. Tap the Vampire AND send it to torpor. Do not untap the vampire. Burn the card in the vampire's next untap. However, conjoined effects, which utilise "and" are neutralised if either of their conditions is not met. I cannot specifically remember the names of the cards but there are at least 2 or 3 strikes that were phrased "Strike: hand strike AND [put the card somewhere/do some secondary effect like untap]". If that sort of strike is dodged, the entire effect of the strike is neutralised; damage AND secondary effect. So going on that precedent, it would seem that joining two effects with "and" in a card creates "one effect with two parts". Unholy Penance (Do X AND Y) Bonecraft (Do X. Do Y. Put the card and deal 1 damage are separated) Catatonic Fear @[PRE] (Do X AND Y. i.e. if you S:D, Catatonic deals no damage at close) Coma @ [DEM] (Do X AND Y... avoid X and you avoid Y) Conquer the Beast @[ani] (Do X AND Y) Creeping Infection (Do X AND Y) Agent of Power (Put this card on AND Choose a Discipline... I assume you can't play it and not choose a discipline...) Anima Gathering (Put this card on this minion AND choose another minion) Aye (This Laibon may burn 1 blood AND tap 3 Aye to...) Big Game (If Red List... stuff... AND untaps at the end... stuff) > > But if you think of the sentence **temporally** rather than in terms > of its semantic truth conditions, the sentence has a sense of: > > "Put this card on a vampire you control, and THEN move 2 or more blood > from that vampire...." > > If you read the sentence this way, the choosing of the vampire is > disjoined from the moving, and the whole thing makes a lot more sense. Villen still says "Put this card on a vampire AND move 2 blood..." It still implies (as is implied by the other cards above) that they are a temporally joined action, they are not meant to be separated by the card text. You need to move two blood AND be able to put the card on the vampire.

[ quoted text not captured ] But the functional effect is closer to: Move 2+ unless 2+ cannot be moved, and then you remove whatever is there. And that seems to grate against "Put this card on the vampire AND move 2 blood".

On Feb 16, 4:43 pm, Juggernaut1981 <brasscompo...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Feb 17, 2:49 am, Legendre <glav...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > And as for the original question, I agree that the wording is a little > > ambiguous. (It almost always is, despite the relentless claims to the > > contrary. But this is the difficulty of trying to walk a line between > > a formal semantic architecture and a natural language architecture.) > > > The "and" in the first sentence of the card text really does suggest > > that the ability to move two or more blood could be considered as a > > requirement of playing the card. After all, the truth conditions for > > (a^b) is that both "a" and "b" be true, which means in a modal sense > > that both "a" and "b" must be possible (i.e., it is necessary that > > "a" be possible, and it is necessary that "b" be possible). > > Discreet temporal events are usually separated into sentences in > VTES. Take Rotschrek for example. (Put this card... inflicted or not. > Combat ends. This vampire is tapped and sent to torpor. This vampire > does not untap as normal. During this vampire's next untap phase, burn > this card.) > Temporal Sequence: Put the card on the vampire. End combat. Tap the > Vampire AND send it to torpor. Do not untap the vampire. Burn the > card in the vampire's next untap. > By this logic, if the target of Rotschrek is already tapped, it will not be sent to torpor. > However, conjoined effects, which utilise "and" are neutralised if > either of their conditions is not met. I cannot specifically remember > the names of the cards but there are at least 2 or 3 strikes that were > phrased "Strike: hand strike AND [put the card somewhere/do some > secondary effect like untap]". If that sort of strike is dodged, the > entire effect of the strike is neutralised; damage AND secondary > effect. So going on that precedent, it would seem that joining two > effects with "and" in a card creates "one effect with two parts". > there is no precedent. a dodge strike "protects the dodging minion and his possessions from the effects of the opposing strike." there is no rule at all about neutralizing just the hand strike, and therefore the secondary effect fizzles. if the secondary effect was affecting the opposing minion, it is also dodged. if the secondary effect only applies to the striking minion (like Far Fatuus) then it is not affected by dodge. > Unholy Penance (Do X AND Y) > Bonecraft (Do X. Do Y. Put the card and deal 1 damage are separated) > Catatonic Fear @[PRE] (Do X AND Y. i.e. if you S:D, Catatonic deals no > damage at close) > Coma @ [DEM] (Do X AND Y... avoid X and you avoid Y) > Conquer the Beast @[ani] (Do X AND Y) > Creeping Infection (Do X AND Y) > Agent of Power (Put this card on AND Choose a Discipline... I assume > you can't play it and not choose a discipline...) > Anima Gathering (Put this card on this minion AND choose another > minion) > Aye (This Laibon may burn 1 blood AND tap 3 Aye to...) > Big Game (If Red List... stuff... AND untaps at the end... stuff) > > Aye has a cost to do something, so obviously you can't pay a partial cost. Anima Gathering requires a target, so you can't play it without a legal target. Big Game provides two effects but neither one is cancelled just because the other fails. > > > But if you think of the sentence **temporally** rather than in terms > > of its semantic truth conditions, the sentence has a sense of: > > > "Put this card on a vampire you control, and THEN move 2 or more blood > > from that vampire...." > > > If you read the sentence this way, the choosing of the vampire is > > disjoined from the moving, and the whole thing makes a lot more sense. > > Villen still says "Put this card on a vampire AND move 2 blood..." It > still implies (as is implied by the other cards above) that they are a > temporally joined action, they are not meant to be separated by the > card text. You need to move two blood AND be able to put the card on > the vampire. You may have to announce the target vampire and the amount of blood at the same time when the card is played, but there is no requirement. It doesn't say the target vampire has to have at least 2 blood. I put it on Anarch Convert & announce I am moving 10 blood. Whoops, he doesn't have 10. Then we do as much of the effect as possible. 1 blood is moved to pool. If a card requires another card in play as a target, you can't play it without a legal target. the Theft of Vitae precedent is saying that blood counters are not considered a "target", though sometimes the # of them on a target is a requirement (like for Sleep of Reason or Parity Shift). Did you know you can legally target an empty vampire with Cryptic Mission?

[ quoted text not captured ] Actually, that's exactly the effect. And the function. > And that seems to grate against "Put this card on the vampire AND move > 2 blood". But, actually, it doesn't grate against that at all. See moving two blood by stealing two blood with Drain Essence.

On Feb 17, 10:50 am, Haze <headlessr...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Feb 16, 4:43 pm, Juggernaut1981 <brasscompo...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > > > On Feb 17, 2:49 am, Legendre <glav...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > > And as for the original question, I agree that the wording is a little > > > ambiguous. (It almost always is, despite the relentless claims to the > > > contrary. But this is the difficulty of trying to walk a line between > > > a formal semantic architecture and a natural language architecture.) > > > > The "and" in the first sentence of the card text really does suggest > > > that the ability to move two or more blood could be considered as a > > > requirement of playing the card. After all, the truth conditions for > > > (a^b) is that both "a" and "b" be true, which means in a modal sense > > > that both "a" and "b" must be possible (i.e., it is necessary that > > > "a" be possible, and it is necessary that "b" be possible). > > > > However, conjoined effects, which utilise "and" are neutralised if > > either of their conditions is not met. I cannot specifically remember > > the names of the cards but there are at least 2 or 3 strikes that were > > phrased "Strike: hand strike AND [put the card somewhere/do some > > secondary effect like untap]". If that sort of strike is dodged, the > > entire effect of the strike is neutralised; damage AND secondary > > effect. So going on that precedent, it would seem that joining two > > effects with "and" in a card creates "one effect with two parts". > > there is no precedent. a dodge strike "protects the dodging minion and > his possessions from the effects of the opposing strike." there is no > rule at all about neutralizing just the hand strike, and therefore the > secondary effect fizzles. Um, if you avoid the handstrike the secondary "and" stuff is also neutralised. That's what I said. I am not talking about being incapable to harm (e.g. Ambrosius) or preventing damage also prevents the secondary effect. > if the secondary effect was affecting the > opposing minion, it is also dodged. if the secondary effect only > applies to the striking minion (like Far Fatuus) then it is not > affected by dodge. What about... > > Conquer the Beast @[ani] (Do X AND Y) What about... > > Creeping Infection (Do X AND Y) What about... > > Agent of Power (Put this card on AND Choose a Discipline... I assume > > you can't play it and not choose a discipline...) > > > But if you think of the sentence **temporally** rather than in terms > > > of its semantic truth conditions, the sentence has a sense of: > > > > "Put this card on a vampire you control, and THEN move 2 or more blood > > > from that vampire...." > > > > If you read the sentence this way, the choosing of the vampire is > > > disjoined from the moving, and the whole thing makes a lot more sense. > > > Villen still says "Put this card on a vampire AND move 2 blood..." It > > still implies (as is implied by the other cards above) that they are a > > temporally joined action, they are not meant to be separated by the > > card text. You need to move two blood AND be able to put the card on > > the vampire. > Cryptic Mission: Burn 1 blood on target... at [THA] gain from the blood bank. Of course you can burn blood that doesn't exist. And you can THEFT blood that doesn't exist. That isn't neccessarily the same as saying "move". (I know LSJ is citing that Stealing blood relies on "move" but stealing blood has previously been ruled/edited/defined to say that if there is less blood than the total of the "steal effect" then you move whatever is available). > You may have to announce the target vampire and the amount of blood at > the same time when the card is played, but there is no requirement. It > doesn't say the target vampire has to have at least 2 blood. I put it > on Anarch Convert & announce I am moving 10 blood. Whoops, he doesn't > have 10. Then we do as much of the effect as possible. 1 blood is > moved to pool. Minion Tap also couldn't be nominated for more blood than there was on the vampire (AFAI recall). If the minion has 0 blood, you can't "minion tap for 9". For Villein the target is a vampire, AND you must move 2 blood from it. With Rotshreck... > > Discreet temporal events are usually separated into sentences in > > VTES. Take Rotschrek for example. (Put this card... inflicted or not. > > Combat ends. This vampire is tapped and sent to torpor. This vampire > > does not untap as normal. During this vampire's next untap phase, burn > > this card.) > > Temporal Sequence: Put the card on the vampire. End combat. Tap the > > Vampire AND send it to torpor. Do not untap the vampire. Burn the > > card in the vampire's next untap. > > By this logic, if the target of Rotschrek is already tapped, it will > not be sent to torpor. ****** Rotschreck Type: Master Master: out-of-turn. Frenzy. Put this card on a vampire when an opposing minion attempts to inflict aggravated damage on him or her, whether the damage would be successfully inflicted or not. Combat ends. This vampire is tapped and sent to torpor. This vampire does not untap as normal. During this vampire's next untap phase, burn this card. ****** There are plenty of precedents that a tap effect on a tapped minion is eligible and results in the target being tapped. So "This vampire is tapped and sent to torpor" is still two effects joined into a single temporal event.

I'm sure that if WW wanted to limit the target of Villein to a vamp with 2 or more blood, it would say "Put this card on a vampire with 2 or more blood and....etc etc" rather than the current wording. However, I do disagree with moving any blood at all when played on a minion with less than 2 blood as "move 2 or more blood" does not include 1 blood. Finally, going by the "and" logic, Hive Mind which states "san: Untap this vampire and another ready Blood Brother of the same circle. etc etc..." would not be able to be played if the acting vamp was the only ready blood brother a methuselah controlled (although why he would play that card if he doesn't untap anyone else is beyond me but just talking abt the semantics here). The clause on Stutter-step also seems to imply that the word "and" in card printings implied non-discreet temporal events. Stutter-Step Type: Combat cel: Strike: dodge. CEL: Strike: hand strike and dodge. Only usable if both strike: hand strike and strike: dodges could be chosen (individually). Only usable at close range. Not usable as an additional strike, and this vampire cannot use any additional strikes this round.

Juggernaut1981 wrote: > On Feb 16, 5:53 pm, John Whelan <jwjbwhe...@gmail.com> wrote: > > The precedent cited is "Steal Blood". What happens when you try to > > steal 2 blood from a vampire with 1 blood? > > When you Steal 2 blood from a minion from a minion with 2 or less > blood, you take all the blood available. Yes. My apologies. The question was actually meant to be rhetorical. I assumed (maybe too carelessly) that everyone in the discussion already knew the answer. > > A look at the TWDA suggests that there are more Tap decks without Cap > > than Tap Decks with Cap. Apparently, Tap is a quite popular card on > > its own. It therefore seems plausible to me that the strategy was to > > depower Tap. > > Yes,but did you also look at the number of taps in those decks? The > archetypes with a LARGE number of Minion Taps from experience are: > Vote Cap'n'Tap, AAA (or similar Big Minion, Tap, Golconda/Giant's > Blood, repeat), Archon-Abactor decks. There are a number of other > decks that will Minion Tap each large minion once maybe twice... few > of the combat deck archetypes use it (Unless you're going for a wacky > Tha deck). I'm not sure I see the point. I concede that the Tap and Cap combo is powerful, I just questioned the assumption that you can particularly blame Cap (by which I mean Voter Cap) as distinct from Tap (by which I mean Minion Tap). You seem to concede the point by agreeing that Tap is powerful in combination with a few other things besides Cap. (Golconda, Giants Blood, Archon-Abactor, etc). But yes, to answer your question. I did look at the number of Taps in the decks without Cap. In a recent sampling of Minion Tap decks, I found 27 Taps decks without Cap, and 17 Tap decks with Cap, before I stopped looking at that aspect. The 27 no-Cap decks had 96 Taps, or around 3.7 Taps per deck. The 17 Cap decks contained 77 Taps, or around 4.5 Taps per deck. So yes, there is a statistical difference, but it is not extremely marked. There are plenty of no-Cap decks with 6 to 8 minion taps. The fact that the card can be played alone in a deck is, to my mind, merely further evidence of its power and versatility. And it remains true that there are more Taps played outside of Cap decks than played within it. This is confirmed by looking at the TWDA as a whole. In the whole Archive, I found 1,437 Minion Taps in 337 decks. By contrast, there were only 928 Voter Caps in 182 decks. Clearly, Tap is more popular than Cap, and, from the earlier sample, most Taps are played in decks without Cap. > So, Yes tap is a popular card on its own, but the requirements on > Villein are there to restrict multiple taps on the same minion. Yes. Villein hoses Minion Tap (and itself) in a particular way. There may indeed be a particular hostility to Tap & Cap style abuse. But I merely questioned that Cap, as opposed to Tap, should necessarily be regarded as the bad guy of that particular combo. > The "trickle" bloat where hunting is the main driver of blood-gain are > almost entirely driven on Blood Dolls (and now potentially Vessels). > So Villein was never going to target them. Well, Vessel already targeted Blood Doll. Thanks to Vessel, both Vessel and Blood Doll are less-good cards than Blood Doll used to be before Vessel was printed. > So John, to be honest, Cap looks like the card needing changes and > really Tap probably didn't need changes. Why??? Nothing you have said above supports that argument. Even if Cap is above the power curve, and could use some hosing, you have not shown that it needs it more than Tap. > Villen has been introduced to counteract Tap, fine. Right. Note that I agree that Villein has probably overshot its goal, and created a worse monster than Minion Tap was. > But I think that > allowing Villein to be used to remove "a minimum of 2 blood unless > they don't have 2+ blood when you take whatever is there"... is that > it doesn't really differentiate Villein from Tap other than penalising > Tap for a Trifle. No. Multiple Villein usage penalizes itself (though I suspect not enough to achieve a correct balance. > By implication "move 2 or more" suggests that it > shouldn't be able to be used to move "less than 2" and that's what I'm > not finding so obvious about the decision that you can play Villein on > a vampire with less than 2 blood. LSJ has cited consistency of usage in favor of the current ruling. Those who agree with me that the card is too good could cite power considerations in favor of a more restrictive ruling. But really, I think a restrictive ruling on this issue would hardly be enough to fix the card. People who play the card are not doing it because they hope to Slurp for 1 or 0.

[ quoted text not captured ] On an unrelated note, how long does a VTES NDA last? -- salem

On Feb 17, 7:38 am, Salem <kella...@hotmail.com> wrote: > On an unrelated note, how long does a VTES NDA last? 18 months, I think. Why do you ask? -Peter

[ quoted text not captured ] no earlier than May 19 2010 to tittle tattle about villein mate.

On Feb 17, 10:04 am, Blooded Sand <sandm...@gmail.com> wrote: > no earlier than May 19 2010 to tittle tattle about villein mate. Well then, I apologize for spreading rumors that cannot yet be refuted.

On Feb 17, 8:17 pm, John Whelan <jwjbwhe...@gmail.com> wrote: ... [snipped stuff] > But yes, to answer your question. I did look at the number of Taps in > the decks without Cap. In a recent sampling of Minion Tap decks, I > found 27 Taps decks without Cap, and 17 Tap decks with Cap, before I > stopped looking at that aspect. The 27 no-Cap decks had 96 Taps, or > around 3.7 Taps per deck. The 17 Cap decks contained 77 Taps, or > around 4.5 Taps per deck. > > So yes, there is a statistical difference, but it is not extremely > marked. There are plenty of no-Cap decks with 6 to 8 minion taps. > The fact that the card can be played alone in a deck is, to my mind, > merely further evidence of its power and versatility. And it remains > true that there are more Taps played outside of Cap decks than played > within it. > > This is confirmed by looking at the TWDA as a whole. In the whole > Archive, I found 1,437 Minion Taps in 337 decks. By contrast, there > were only 928 Voter Caps in 182 decks. Clearly, Tap is more popular > than Cap, and, from the earlier sample, most Taps are played in decks > without Cap. > > Why??? Nothing you have said above supports that argument. Even if > Cap is above the power curve, and could use some hosing, you have not > shown that it needs it more than Tap. My point about Tap is where it is used. There seem to be a very limited number of deck-archetypes that utilise Minion Tap as a key mechanic. Other decks are utilising Tap to offset costs of minions (which in effect makes Villein a "Trifle Tap" to those decks). Decks where Tap was a "key mechanic". Merely looking at "places where it turns up" is no more effective than measuring the number of people in a suburb to try determine where there will be more litter. The two MAY be connected but your statistics don't get to a motivating factor. AAA: Bringem out or Giant's blood an empty big-cap, tap 'em, then Golconda them. Also typically a giant wad of masters and bleed cards. Effect: +2x capacity of vampire. Usually 16+ pool gained. Villein is a temporary inconvenience... anyone with a Villein will get Golconda later. Turbo-Deck: Bring out [insert minion here], Tap them, Give them a soul gem or similar. This is key in things such as Cybelotron and Turbo- Great Beast type decks, but others as well. Villein doesn't really do a lot to those decks as the Villeins vanish with the "burn, soul gem replace" trick. Cap'n'Tap: We've debated this one fairly extensively. Main Mechanic is Tap in Master to basically empty. Vote (KRC usually, sometimes Pol Struggle, Ancient Influence, etc), Awe, Voter Cap for +2 pool and a refill on the acting vampire. Key trick in TGB type decks and plenty of other power-voters. Villein is an inconvenience, particularly if you haven't built in a way to burn the vamp (e.g. Golconda) While Villein has clearly been introduced to limit Tap, the only decks where it has an effect on anything else are those decks who would "Tap a Big guy for 5" to drop their effective cost. Mid-High Prince Decks; Big-Boy Superstar Decks... So if Villein is meant to truly debilitate the classic "do something and tap for lots" decks, it misses the mark. It's not overpowered, it just hit the symptoms not the disease, IMHO. > > But I think that > > allowing Villein to be used to remove "a minimum of 2 blood unless > > they don't have 2+ blood when you take whatever is there"... is that > > it doesn't really differentiate Villein from Tap other than penalising > > Tap for a Trifle. > > No. Multiple Villein usage penalizes itself (though I suspect not > enough to achieve a correct balance. Multiple villeins on the ONE vampire penalises itself. It doesn't penalise decks that want to remove half the cost of a big-cap vampire. So clearly it is intended to reduce the cost of big vampires but to work against various forms of "Tap for lots, refill vamp, tap for lots, refill vamp" which usually slow down games drastically. > LSJ has cited consistency of usage in favor of the current ruling. > Those who agree with me that the card is too good could cite power > considerations in favor of a more restrictive ruling. But really, I > think a restrictive ruling on this issue would hardly be enough to fix > the card. People who play the card are not doing it because they hope > to Slurp for 1 or 0. If it's not intended for use to "slurp 1 or 0", then where is the harm in stating that "put this card... AND move 2 blood" requires that the Meth MUST move 2+ blood, rather than just "try to move 2+... oops I can't"? I agree it's not intended for use to take off a little blood, so I see no reason for it to be allowed to work in such a way. I am not saying the card needs "fixing". It does a decent job at what it does: makes it harder for "tap-refill-repeat" tricks. I just don't agree that it should be playable for 1 or 2 blood, since its penalty to others on the table is significant in some cases.

Juggernaut1981 wrote: > On Feb 17, 8:17 pm, John Whelan <jwjbwhe...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Why??? Nothing you have said above supports that argument. Even if > > Cap is above the power curve, and could use some hosing, you have not > > shown that it needs it more than Tap. > > My point about Tap is where it is used. We've covered that. It is used in all kinds of decks. > There seem to be a very > limited number of deck-archetypes that utilise Minion Tap as a key > mechanic. I have no idea what you mean by "as a key mechanic". But once that phrase is removed, the statement is clearly false. > Other decks are utilising Tap to offset costs of minions > (which in effect makes Villein a "Trifle Tap" to those decks). Decks > where Tap was a "key mechanic". What is your definition of "key mechanic"? And how is it relevant to your claim that hosing Tap & Cap should hose Cap rather than Tap? > Merely looking at "places where it > turns up" is no more effective than measuring the number of people in > a suburb to try determine where there will be more litter. Effective for what purpose? It is effective for my purpose: showing that Tap is in fact the more popular member of the Tap & Cap combo, and therefore presumably the more "overpowered" of the two. Naturally, if we restricted our inquiries to the combo itself, their numbers would end up equal. > The two > MAY be connected but your statistics don't get to a motivating factor. What motivating factor? If we are talking about the design team's motive possibly including that of hosing Tap and Cap, then obviously that can be done by hosing either Tap or Cap. It makes sense to hose the card that is actually more prevalent. > AAA: Bringem out or Giant's blood an empty big-cap, tap 'em, then > Golconda them. Also typically a giant wad of masters and bleed > cards. Effect: +2x capacity of vampire. Usually 16+ pool gained. > Villein is a temporary inconvenience... anyone with a Villein will get > Golconda later. > Turbo-Deck: Bring out [insert minion here], Tap them, Give them a soul > gem or similar. This is key in things such as Cybelotron and Turbo- > Great Beast type decks, but others as well. Villein doesn't really do > a lot to those decks as the Villeins vanish with the "burn, soul gem > replace" trick. > Cap'n'Tap: We've debated this one fairly extensively. Main Mechanic > is Tap in Master to basically empty. Vote (KRC usually, sometimes Pol > Struggle, Ancient Influence, etc), Awe, Voter Cap for +2 pool and a > refill on the acting vampire. Key trick in TGB type decks and plenty > of other power-voters. Villein is an inconvenience, particularly if > you haven't built in a way to burn the vamp (e.g. Golconda) Fine. We have established that Villein does appear designed to particularly hurt Tap & Cap, but does not necessarily hurt some other deck archtypes. Indeed, it helps many or most of them due to the added value of trifleness. This does not explain why you believe this should have been done by hosing Cap, rather than Tap. > While Villein has clearly been introduced to limit Tap, the only decks > where it has an effect on anything else are those decks who would "Tap > a Big guy for 5" to drop their effective cost. Huh? If you only plan to tap the Big Guy once, to reduce his cost, then Villein is MORE effective. Sure, if you put 6 slurp-cards in your deck with the intent of slurping him early for 5, and for the rest of the game for 0, then Villein will not suit your purpose. > So if Villein is meant to truly debilitate > the classic "do something and tap for lots" decks, it misses the > mark. Huh? I have of course heard of decks that "tap for lots" but your reference to the classic "do something" deck has me totally lost. If "do something" stands for "refill your vampire" then only serves to remind us that there are multiple ways of doing this, so that hosing "Voter Captivation" will not necessarily hose "Tap & Refill". > It's not overpowered, it just hit the symptoms not the disease, > IMHO. Well I agree that it misses the mark. This is because I am assuming the goal was NOT to wallpaper Minion Tap by means of a clearly better card. Apart from that, I cannot follow you. > Multiple villeins on the ONE vampire penalises itself. Agreed. > It doesn't > penalise decks that want to remove half the cost of a big-cap > vampire. Agreed. > So clearly it is intended to reduce the cost of big vampires > but to work against various forms of "Tap for lots, refill vamp, tap > for lots, refill vamp" which usually slow down games drastically. I tend to agree. And to some extend it does do that. This still does not explain why you think this should have been done by hosting Voter Captivation, rather than by hosing Minion Tap.

Okay. The point of Nerfing Tap is to limit its effectiveness in the following deck strategies (and variations on them): #1 Tap for most, call vote, voter cap refill, tap minion This cycle instantly means there should be more Taps than Caps. You want to play a Tap first, Cap second, Tap third. There will probably be a ratio of something like 3 Taps for 2 Caps. #2 VampX Eats the World Tap VampX, eat minion with lots of blood, tap VampX back down, repeat. #3 Archon Abactor Tap Make (using the vote) or use an archon (Muaziz, Samat, etc). Tap for everything, Abactor, Tap, Abactor, repeat. I'd be guessing that the most prevalent of these is "Cap & Tap" and most impacted. Villein will not impact most of the other "Tap Dependent Bloat" strategies. Few people play with multi-theft, like a Celerity-Tha concept, so it's unlikely to be seen as the driving force behind those tricks. In a Zillah's-Tap-Golconda deck, Villein adds to the speed of the trick and quickly vanishes leaving no impact. So, you could have left Tap as it was printed, not created a "Minion Tap" hoser and rewritten Voter Cap. I know it's a "after the horse has bolted" concept, but it could have done the job in a more targeted sense. Removing the "gain pool" element and the ability to completely refill a vampire removes the general need to hose Tap, since Villein or any card like it won't affect most of the deck strategies that use Tap and burn their own minions (e.g. Eat The World, TurboX, AAA) Voter Captivation MK2 Action Mod 1 blood Only playable after a successful referendum. [pre] This vampire gains X blood where X is the number of votes the referendum passed by but no more than 3. [PRE] As above, but X cannot be greater than 5.

Juggernaut1981 wrote: > I'd be guessing that the most prevalent of these is "Cap & Tap" and > most impacted. I agree. Villein does seem to target Tap & Cap. > So, you could have left Tap as it was printed, not created a "Minion > Tap" hoser and rewritten Voter Cap. You could have. But why "should have"? i still don't get it. > I know it's a "after the horse > has bolted" concept, but it could have done the job in a more targeted > sense. How more targeted? Sounds to me as though your analysis is that it IS targeted pretty narrowly. > Removing the "gain pool" element and the ability to completely > refill a vampire removes the general need to hose Tap, since Villein > or any card like it won't affect most of the deck strategies that use > Tap and burn their own minions (e.g. Eat The World, TurboX, AAA) Hosing voter cap won't affect them either. What's your point? > Voter Captivation MK2 > Action Mod > 1 blood > Only playable after a successful referendum. > [pre] This vampire gains X blood where X is the number of votes the > referendum passed by but no more than 3. > [PRE] As above, but X cannot be greater than 5. Re-writing cards is an extreme measure, reserved for more-seriously overpowered cards, not for cards like Blood Doll, Minion Tap and Voter Cap. They are, admittedly, somewhat above the power curve. However, to re-write them, at this late date, when they have been in play for 15 years, would be a little much. A vessel style hoser weakens cards like blood doll, without causing confusion or requiring that a zillion copies of Blood Doll in play get reprinted. I think that was the idea here. Judging by its prevalence in the TWDA, Minion Tap is more popular than Voter Cap (judged by total number of copies) by a factor of 1.5. Thus it was apparently in the best position to survive a little hosing, though I think they overshot the mark. Presence has the best vote modifiers, and IMHO should have the best vote modifiers. Nerf voter cap and we head in a sad direction of having all disciplines do the same thing.

[ quoted text not captured ] So I can talk about Bloodlines now? and how Basilisk's Touch got over-nerfed before being released? (but was indeed too powerful as first proposed...). :D -- salem

On Feb 18, 5:37 pm, John Whelan <jwjbwhe...@gmail.com> wrote: [ quoted text not captured ] Yes, but if you want to nerf "Cap & Tap" you can nerf the Tap or the Cap. LSJ (et al) chose Tap. I would have chosen Cap. Without the plentiful refilling of blood on a vamp, Cap & Tap doesn't work, but other strategies utilise Tap do.

Juggernaut1981 wrote: > Yes, but if you want to nerf "Cap & Tap" you can nerf the Tap or the > Cap. Right. But that in itself says nothing about which one should be nerfed. > LSJ (et al) chose Tap. Indeed. > I would have chosen Cap. Right, but you have given no reason for this choice that I can understand. > Without the > plentiful refilling of blood on a vamp, Cap & Tap doesn't work, [...] Sure. By definition, the "Tap & Cap" combo requires both Tap and Cap. Otherwise it does not work. But again, that says nothing about which of the 2 should be nerfed. > but > other strategies utilise Tap do. Same goes for other strategies that utilize Cap. There are probably fewer such Cap strategies. Tap has been the more popular of the two cards. Tap appears without Cap more often than Cap appears without Tap. To my mind, this supports the idea that, of the two cards, Tap is the more worthy of nerfing.

On Feb 18, 4:59 pm, Juggernaut1981 <brasscompo...@gmail.com> wrote: > Yes, but if you want to nerf "Cap & Tap" you can nerf the Tap or the > Cap. LSJ (et al) chose Tap. I would have chosen Cap. Without the > plentiful refilling of blood on a vamp, Cap & Tap doesn't work, but > other strategies utilise Tap do. You may remember (or, may not, really) that there was a really long discussion a while back all about specifically neutering Voter Cap (I think it was right before Lords of the Night came out. When was that?). The most viable plan seemed to be "pre: If you win this vote, the acting minion gains 2 blood/PRE: If you win this vote, you may gain 2 pool." or some such version. And as Lords of the Night was about to come out, it would have been a reasonably good time to reprint them in starter decks (i.e. the Settite deck). But in the end, the designers decided against this for whatever reason (the obvious one being that reprinting cards with significant changes makes people cranky). So when there was a good opportunity to and discussion about downpowering Voter Cap, it didn't happen. So Voter Cap isn't going to be directly nerfed. So if you want to nerf Tap-N-Cap, you end up doing what they did-- nerfing Minion Tap and indirectly nerfing Voter Cap (uh, Final Loosening?). Villein is, in the end, pretty much replacing Minion Tap. There are still a few places here and there where one would want to use Minion Tap, but to be honest, not many. And most of those places will get demolished when everyone has 16 Villeins, so they show up all the time. But, well, sometimes that happens. At least now everyone has a lot of Villeins. -Peter

[ quoted text not captured ] If everyone minion taps once or twice on a main vampire (and includes multiples for early draw, which presumably would also increase their relative prevalence - this explains your 3:2 ratio of Tap:Cap in TWDA), then nerfing Tap is not really neccessary and certainly not in the way Villein has tried to do it. Both the "Cap & Tap" and usual "Minion Cost Reduction" purposes of Tap utilise comparatively early use of Tap soon after influencing a medium-to-large cap vampire (7+ capacity). Cap & Tap will always want Taps in hand before Caps (no point playing Cap on a full vampire), therefore Taps will be more prevalent than Caps. Prevalence does not indicate function or value of the card within a deck. TGBs are a tactically important card, but there may be 6 or less in a deck of up to 90 cards. Similarly for other "key" enabling cards. Popularity may also be a function of varied uses. Tap works in many decks, Cap only works in voting strategy decks. This again helps to explain why Cap is statistically less prevalent. The statistics you repeatedly quote and the method you are using to justify those statistics becomes less useful for determining the power-value of a card with the greater number of potential uses. Using your method, I could easily argue that Ivory Bow is significantly less powerful than WWEF because I'm sure there are many many more copies of WWEF in TWDA than there are Ivory Bows. Similarly for Ivory Bow vs Cloak the Gathering or any other card which is always used in significant multiples. Frequency of a card appearing in the TWDA is not a measure of it's relative power OR relative function. There are OTHER factors which determine the frequency of a card within decks. The widespread use of non-currency transactions (Electronic Transfers, Credit Cards, etc) does not mean that money is now valueless and irrelevant, it just means we have new ways of using the concept of money. It also doesn't mean that EFT are safer, more reliable or more powerful than tangible currency; if anything it just means that our banks want to maximise their profits by not having to employ people to put currency into locations where it is easy for us to access it and instead provide us with alternatives to currency which cost the bank less in time, labour and offer. Without the Cap, there is little reason to use Tap for any other purpose than recouping the cost of large minions (which is ostensibly the secondary purpose of Villein) and wouldn't appear to be something generally thought of as a "delaying the game" issue, which I have heard is another reason for limiting blood-to-pool tactics. There are few strategies for Cap that don't either have a) significant blood cost for the actions they perform (DoC Anarch Vote, Laibon-Vote- Kill, etc) or b) utilise Tap. As I've said above, the frequency of Taps may not be about their "required value" but be ensuring an early draw of a Tap. 6 - 8 copies of a card in a deck is generally thought to be good in ensuring you draw at least one fairly early game copy. Since Caps are not needed so early, they are not required in such large numbers and their value (in Cap & Tap tactics) ensures that they will be retained until used.

Juggernaut1981 wrote: > If everyone minion taps once or twice on a main vampire (...) Everyone does not do that. > then nerfing Tap is not really neccessary and certainly not in > the way Villein has tried to do it. You start with a false premise, then follow it by a non-sequitur. Your arguments just are not coming together for me. > Cap & Tap will always want Taps in hand before Caps (no > point playing Cap on a full vampire), therefore Taps will be more > prevalent than Caps. I have no idea how this fits into your argument. But as a factual claim, it is simply not true. Tap & Cap decks do NOT usually have more Taps than Caps. > Prevalence does not indicate function or value > of the card within a deck. Maybe not, but so what? All you are doing is questioning the reasons I gave that it was reasonable to hose Tap before Cap. You have yet to give a single coherent reason for your own position -- that Cap SHOULD have been hosed instead of Tap. > Popularity may also be a function of varied uses. I have taken the liberty of assuming that, in the TWDA, popularity is a reasonable measure of the power of the card, as compared to competing choices, in terms of helping that player win. > Using your method, I > could easily argue that Ivory Bow is significantly less powerful than > WWEF Not as easily. You are comparing a unique to a non-unique. A better test in this case would be the number of decks containing one or more copies of the card. But Tap wins that test against Cap as well, and by a wider margin. > As I've said above, the frequency of > Taps may not be about their "required value" but be ensuring an early > draw of a Tap. 6 - 8 copies of a card in a deck is generally thought > to be good in ensuring you draw at least one fairly early game copy. You are making this too hard. If very large numbers of players are putting multiples in the deck, instead of competing master slots, and still winning tournaments, then there can be only one explanation: ITS A VERY GOOD CARD! Yes, even in multiples. If a player puts 6 Minion Taps in a deck, that usually means 6 other Master Cards were left out, because they were regarded as less competitive options. Analysis of the precise reasons, or observing that the card may be less valuable in the end-game, for this won't change the point.

> You are making this too hard. If very large numbers of players are > putting multiples in the deck, instead of competing master slots, and > still winning tournaments, then there can be only one explanation: > ITS A VERY GOOD CARD! Yes, even in multiples. If a player puts 6 > Minion Taps in a deck, that usually means 6 other Master Cards were > left out, because they were regarded as less competitive options. > Analysis of the precise reasons, or observing that the card may be > less valuable in the end-game, for this won't change the point. John> Whatever, it would appear that blinkers are so firmly fixed to your head that it is pointless to suggest flaws in your argument or how those flaws confirm mine. There seems to be little reason to continue. You win because I acquiesce and want to go find another brick wall to beat my head against aimlessly.

Juggernaut1981 wrote: > Whatever, it would appear that blinkers are so firmly fixed to > your head that it is pointless to suggest flaws in your argument or > how those flaws confirm mine. But that's just the problem. Any flaws in any argument of mine that nerfing Tap may have been a better option do NOT confirm your position. They merely leave us were we started, with a Tap and Cap combo to be nerfed, and nerfing either Tap or Cap appearing as equally reasonable alternatives for doing so.

On Thu, 18 Feb 2010 15:20:08 -0800 (PST), Peter D Bakija <pd...@lightlink.com> wrote: > On Feb 18, 4:59ï¿œpm, Juggernaut1981 <brasscompo...@gmail.com> wrote: >> Yes, but if you want to nerf "Cap & Tap" you can nerf the Tap or the >> Cap. ï¿œLSJ (et al) chose Tap. ï¿œI would have chosen Cap. ï¿œWithout the [ quoted text not captured ] Ok, I think that indirectly nerfing Tap (like, by introducing a card that directly increases its cost) is quite similar meddling as errating it. You don't have to change the card text for it, so the added frustration of your cards not doing what they say they do is not applicable, but the basic frustration - that you have a card that is dramatically nerfed, and you need to purchase another card to be able to do what you used to do - is the same. With hindsight, nerfing Cap might've been better, because I'm sure I'm not the only one who gets the goosebumps from cards that directly and explicitly nerf other cards (Villein, Vessel, etc.). -- Regards, Daneel

Daneel wrote > Ok, I think that indirectly nerfing Tap (like, by introducing a card > that directly increases its cost) is quite similar meddling as > errating it. Similar in some ways (after all, both are "nerfing"); different in others. > You don't have to change the card text for it, so the > added frustration of your cards not doing what they say they do is > not applicable, [...] That's why its a less-extreme measure. > [...] but the basic frustration - that you have a card > that is dramatically nerfed, and you need to purchase another card > to be able to do what you used to do - is the same. I agree that a card should not be DRAMATICALLY nerfed -- not to the extent that occurred here. But I think that was a miscalculation. I believe what was intended here was a vessel/blood doll style nerfing. Vessel and Blood Doll remain perfectly competitive. You don't need to purchase Vessel to do what Blood Doll used to do. There is no such card that does what Blood Doll used to. Neither Vessel nor Blood Doll are as good now as Blood Doll used to be. That fact that both cards remain perfectly competitive in tournaments seems to indicate to me that it was a successful experiment. > With hindsight, nerfing Cap might've been better, [...] With hindsight, they over-nerfed Tap. I'm not sure why you think that accidentally over-nerfing Cap would have been preferable. > because I'm sure > I'm not the only one who gets the goosebumps from cards that > directly and explicitly nerf other cards (Villein, Vessel, etc.). Then why make an exception for Cap? But I think that, goosebumps notwithstanding, the nerfing of blood doll by vessel was a successful experiment. I think the nerfing of Tap went too far. But since this is the second such experiment, I will, for now, give the design team the benefit of the doubt and assume this is the result of miscalculation.

On Feb 19, 5:18 am, Daneel <dan...@eposta.hu> wrote: > Ok, I think that indirectly nerfing Tap (like, by introducing a card > that directly increases its cost) is quite similar meddling as > errating it. Kind of? I mean, all the existing Minion Taps in play are still theoretically playable and still do what they say they do. Which has a lot to recommend it, from a game tweaking perspective. > You don't have to change the card text for it, so the > added frustration of your cards not doing what they say they do is > not applicable, but the basic frustration - that you have a card > that is dramatically nerfed, and you need to purchase another card > to be able to do what you used to do - is the same. Well, that is certainly true. Except that Minion Tap is just a common that most people have many, many of. And it isn't like they spent 20 bucks on them. I mean, yeah, I agree (at this point) that Villein mostly wallpapers Minion Tap, but not *that* big of a deal, given that it is just a very common common. And still technically is playable. > With hindsight, nerfing Cap might've been better, because I'm sure > I'm not the only one who gets the goosebumps from cards that > directly and explicitly nerf other cards (Villein, Vessel, etc.). Sure, but Tap-n-Cap wasn't the only thing that arguably needed hosing here. Minion Tap was super powered in may instances. It taking a hit wasn't necessarily a bad thing, overall. I think, however, that Villein *is* a bit too good, relative to the Blood Doll/Vessel pairing--Vessel is arguably just worse than Blood Doll, trifle aspect included, if you ignore the Blood Doll hosing. So that is a totally reasonable pair of cards (as Vessel doesn't wallpaper Blood Doll). Villein, on the other hand, is arguably just plain better than Minion Tap. If it weren't a trifle, however, it would be just plain worse than Minion Tap, and wouldn't get played. But that it is a trifle makes it just too good, relative to Minion Tap. I don't know what would have been a good compromise that got Villein played, got it to hose Minion Tap some, but *not* just wallpapered it. This all being said, except for the "Aw. Now all my Minion Taps are mostly useless..." aspect of Villein, is it actually that bad of a thing that Villein is what it is and does what it does? -Peter

On Feb 19, 7:21 am, John Whelan <jwjbwhe...@gmail.com> wrote: > I think the nerfing of Tap went too far. But since this is the second > such experiment, I will, for now, give the design team the benefit of > the doubt and assume this is the result of miscalculation. I think this statement is correct on all fronts. I think as a trifle, Villein ends up being too good. I think if it were not a trifle, it would be horrible (just worse than Minion Tap, except that it hoses Minion Tap. Is the Minion Tap hosing potential enough to justify playing it as not a trifle? If Vessel were not a trifle, it would also be horrible). What would have been a good way to have designed Villein such that it hosed Minion Tap some without wallpapering it, and yet was still worth playing on its own? -Peter

[ quoted text not captured ] 1) Villein could cost a pool. Much like Vessel hoses Blood Doll and is a trifle and costs a pool. Villein would still be good. 2) Reverse the restriction on Villein. Instead of 2 or more blood, make it "up to X blood". I think as high as "up to 4" would be fine and balanced. 3) Villein not a trifle. In this case, you're pretty much right, the 2 or more restriction is probably enough to keep it from being played, because most people don't care that much about hosing Minion Tap, so I would probably add something like "if you moved at least 2 blood with this card, you gain an additional pool". Theoretically, you could make it "Gain 1 pool, then put this card on a vampire you control and move 2 or more blood from him to your pool", but I think that too directly pisses on Ascendance.

[ quoted text not captured ] Cap did get nerfed. Final Loosening Type: Reaction Requires: anarch Auspex/Dementation/Fortitude Requires an anarch. [aus] Play when the acting vampire would gain 1 or more blood. The acting vampire and this reacting anarch each gain 1 blood instead. [dem] Gain 4 votes. [for] Only usable when an ally is acting. The action fails and the ally takes 1 damage. Tap this reacting anarch. Rarity: TR:R Play it at aus, It completely hoses Cap.

On Feb 15, 11:30 pm, Juggernaut1981 <brasscompo...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Feb 16, 3:14 pm, John Whelan <jwjbwhe...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > > > On Feb 15, 10:34 pm, "Sutekh.23" <sutekh...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > > So if I may ask, what is the purpose of villein? > > > Is it to hamstring cap and tap decks? > > > Is it to wallpaper tap? > > > Is it to force older players to buy new cards? > > > A combination of the above? > > > I would guess that the intent was to create a sort of Vessel / Blood > > Doll type balance, where one card is not clearly better than the > > other, but both cards end up being less good than the older card was > > before the newer card was printed. The result is that an arguably too- > > popular card (perhaps slightly overpowered) gets taken down a notch, > > and a greater variety of master cards thereby become competitive > > options. > > > If that was the intent, however, I think there was a mis-calculation. > > The new card is arguably more "above the power curve" than the older > > card used to be. I have also predicted that, when demand is met, > > Villein will end up wall-papering Minion Tap, rather than achieving a > > Vessel / Blood Doll type balance. (Note that this is still merely a > > prediction -- I have not yet been proven right). > > > I heard a story (and I am just repeating what I heard) that nobody > > played Villein during play-testing, and someone suggested it would be > > worth playing only if were a trifle. That suggestion got implemented. > > But realistically people's beef with the Cap'n'Tap is the Cap for 10 > blood + 2 pool and not the Tap for 5+. > If it is to de-power the "Cap'n'Tap" strategy, then depowering the Cap > is more likely to get the results desired. > If it is to do something else... then what? [ quoted text not captured ]

On Feb 19, 8:59 am, Peter D Bakija <p...@lightlink.com> wrote: > If it weren't a trifle, however, it would be just plain worse than Minion Tap, > and wouldn't get played. I'm not sure that's true. Let me give just one example -- which is the very first deck that I found when searching for "Minion Tap" in the TWDA. Take a look at this deck, and tell me why you would not prefer Villein to Minion Tap in this deck, even if Villein were not a trifle: Wake with Evening's Freshness Columbus, Ohio November 15, 2009 18 players 2R + F Cory Busch-Kendall's Tournament Winning Deck Deck Name : Guns + CEL + THA Author : Cory Busch-Kendall Description : Crypt (12 vampires) Capacity min: 4 max: 10 average: 8.16667 ------------------------------------------------------------ 4x Lucas Halton 10 AUS CEL DOM THA qui prince Tremere:3 3x Anastasz di Zagreb 8 AUS THA ani cel dom justicar Tremere:3 2x Erichtho 8 AUS DOM THA cel obf Tremere:3 1x Fleurdumal 8 AUS DEM PRE cel tha prince Toreador:3 1x Father Juan Carlos 6 PRE aus cel pot tha !Brujah:4 1x Lin Jun 4 aus cel pre tha Toreador:4 Library (90 cards) ------------------------------------------------------------ Action (15) 2x Ambush 1x Bum's Rush 5x Govern the Unaligned 3x Harass 1x Magic of the Smith 1x Nose of the Hound 2x Rutor's Hand Combat (45) 5x Blur 5x Concealed Weapon 3x Flash 7x Psyche! 11x Pursuit 14x Theft of Vitae Equipment (6) 5x .44 Magnum 1x Bowl of Convergence Master (10) 4x Blood Doll 2x Celerity 1x Golconda: Inner Peace 1x Minion Tap 2x Thaumaturgy Reaction (14) 4x On the Qui Vive 6x Redirection 4x Second Tradition: Domain

On Feb 19, 2:36 pm, John Whelan <jwjbwhe...@gmail.com> wrote: > I'm not sure that's true. Let me give just one example -- which is > the very first deck that I found when searching for "Minion Tap" in > the TWDA. Take a look at this deck, and tell me why you would not > prefer Villein to Minion Tap in this deck, even if Villein were not a > trifle: Well, yes, it is true that in a deck where you would use only 1x Minion Tap, you might as well play 1x Villein, even if it were not a trifle. But that is a pretty serious outlier (i.e. decks that contain exactly a single Minion Tap). Let me adjust my original statement. If Villein were not a trifle, it would get played very rarely. -Peter

[ quoted text not captured ] If Villein were not a trifle, you still have the corner case of, all your vamps are at 1 or 2 blood and you don't want to empty them. It's corner case, but unless you're *really* afraid of other people Minion Tapping, you might as well play the one without the restriction.

On Feb 19, 3:52 pm, Chris Berger <ark...@ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote: > If Villein were not a trifle, you still have the corner case of, all > your vamps are at 1 or 2 blood and you don't want to empty them. It's > corner case, but unless you're *really* afraid of other people Minion > Tapping, you might as well play the one without the restriction. Pretty much. -Peter

On Feb 19, 2:36 pm, John Whelan <jwjbwhe...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Feb 19, 8:59 am, Peter D Bakija <p...@lightlink.com> wrote: > > > If it weren't a trifle, however, it would be just plain worse than Minion Tap, > > and wouldn't get played. > > I'm not sure that's true. Let me give just one example -- which is > the very first deck that I found when searching for "Minion Tap" in > the TWDA. Take a look at this deck, and tell me why you would not > prefer Villein to Minion Tap in this deck, even if Villein were not a > trifle: But in the current usage, "just plain worse" is being used with an implicit "except in some cases". Minion Tap is "just plain worse" than as-printed Villein (except in some already-acknowledged cases). Non-trifle Villein is "just plain worse" than Minion Tap (except in some cases).

On Fri, 19 Feb 2010 04:21:46 -0800 (PST), John Whelan <jwjbw...@gmail.com> wrote: > Vessel and Blood Doll remain perfectly competitive. You don't need to > purchase Vessel to do what Blood Doll used to do. There is no such > card that does what Blood Doll used to. Neither Vessel nor Blood Doll > are as good now as Blood Doll used to be. That fact that both cards > remain perfectly competitive in tournaments seems to indicate to me > that it was a successful experiment. That's certainly a point of view. >> With hindsight, nerfing Cap might've been better, [...] > > With hindsight, they over-nerfed Tap. I'm not sure why you think that > accidentally over-nerfing Cap would have been preferable. I'm not sure why you think that I think that. I think, that with hindsight, nerfing Cap (with errata to card text, e.g. the aforementioned 2 blood / 2 pool change) might've been better than printing a Vessel-style specific hoser / replacer to Minion Tap. By principle I don't like these card-specific hoser / replacer cards e.g. Vessel, Villein. I'm not saying Cap & Tap needed a nerf. But if it was deemed necessary, direct errata to Cap - although a bad thing - would've been still preferable to me. >> because I'm sure >> I'm not the only one who gets the goosebumps from cards that >> directly and explicitly nerf other cards (Villein, Vessel, etc.). > > Then why make an exception for Cap? What kind of exception? Which post are you replying to? > But I think that, goosebumps notwithstanding, the nerfing of blood > doll by vessel was a successful experiment. That is certainly an opinion. > I think the nerfing of Tap went too far. But since this is the second > such experiment, I will, for now, give the design team the benefit of > the doubt and assume this is the result of miscalculation. Good for them that you do that. -- Regards, Daneel

LSJ wrote: > On Feb 19, 2:36 pm, John Whelan <jwjbwhe...@gmail.com> wrote: > > On Feb 19, 8:59 am, Peter D Bakija <p...@lightlink.com> wrote: > > > > > If it weren't a trifle, however, it would be just plain worse than Minion Tap, > > > and wouldn't get played. > > > > I'm not sure that's true. Let me give just one example -- which is > > the very first deck that I found when searching for "Minion Tap" in > > the TWDA. Take a look at this deck, and tell me why you would not > > prefer Villein to Minion Tap in this deck, even if Villein were not a > > trifle: > > But in the current usage, "just plain worse" is being used with an > implicit "except in some cases". I understood the context to be that of competitive and justifiable use in tournament play, and responded accordingly. Hence, I did not respond with any example, but with one drawn from the TWDA. And I could have come up with many many more such examples. Construed too broadly, this "just plain worse except sometimes" formulation becomes virtually meaningless. Zoo Hunting Ground is "just plain worse" than Slum Hunting Ground. Except Sometimes. Like those times when Gangrel in your crypt are not outnumbered by Nosferatu. > Minion Tap is "just plain worse" than as-printed Villein (except in > some already-acknowledged cases). > Non-trifle Villein is "just plain worse" than Minion Tap (except in > some cases). I was not comparing them. I was merely responding to the suggestion (as I understood it) that non-Trifle Villein would not see justifiable use in competitive tournament play. But since you do compare them, let me point out some distinctions: There appears to be little question that a non-Trifle Villein would have made at least occasional appearances in the TWDA. It remains to be seen if this will be true of Minion Tap, once demand for Villein is met. (Sure, there will probably be deck designs in which Minion Tap is a better choice than Villein, but will such designs remain competitive?) Minion Tap was marketed as a common; Villein as an uncommon. One normally expects uncommon cards to see play less often. Villein being usually better than Minion Tap (except sometimes) is the result of power escalation, where the original card (Minion Tap) had already been somewhat high on the power curve. This is not true of Minion Tap being usually better than non-trifle Villein (except sometimes); instead, both options become marginally more restricted than they had been.

On Fri, 19 Feb 2010 05:59:51 -0800 (PST), Peter D Bakija <pd...@lightlink.com> wrote: > On Feb 19, 5:18ￜam, Daneel <dan...@eposta.hu> wrote: >> Ok, I think that indirectly nerfing Tap (like, by introducing a card >> ￜ that directly increases its cost) is quite similar meddling as >> ￜ errating it. > > Kind of? I mean, all the existing Minion Taps in play are still > theoretically playable and still do what they say they do. Which has a > lot to recommend it, from a game tweaking perspective. Yes they are playable; but there is another similar card out there that can directly increase the cost of MT. So if other players play Villein, then Minion Tap is essentially costing X pool where X is more or less a random factor. (Not entirely, but let's assume now that it is.) This change is far too specific to fall into the category of generic shift in the balance of V:tES (e.g. how walls became more prevalent when the GW was introduced without any specific card being altered). >> You don't have to change the card text for it, so the >> ￜ added frustration of your cards not doing what they say they do is >> ￜ not applicable, but the basic frustration - that you have a card >> ￜ that is dramatically nerfed, and you need to purchase another card >> ￜ to be able to do what you used to do - is the same. > > Well, that is certainly true. Except that Minion Tap is just a common > that most people have many, many of. And it isn't like they spent 20 > bucks on them. I mean, yeah, I agree (at this point) that Villein > mostly wallpapers Minion Tap, but not *that* big of a deal, given that > it is just a very common common. And still technically is playable. I'm not sure I'd spend a lot on the cost / abundance argument. It's a pretty theoreical question - is it better to nerf / change a card many people have many copies of (and thus has a low market value), or a card only a few people have, or people generally have few copies of? I'm not arguing either way, I just don't think the distinction is really worthwhile to make. (Although, I *might* be inclined to say nerfing common cards is worse - if War Ghoul gets nerfed - there would be no impact on the majority of players, because most of them only own 1 or 2 from the Third Edition Tzimisce starter; it would only really affect hoarders with the 11+ copies; but changing a basic common impacts mostly every single player.) >> With hindsight, nerfing Cap might've been better, because I'm sure >> ￜ I'm not the only one who gets the goosebumps from cards that >> ￜ directly and explicitly nerf other cards (Villein, Vessel, etc.). > > Sure, but Tap-n-Cap wasn't the only thing that arguably needed hosing > here. Minion Tap was super powered in may instances. It taking a hit > wasn't necessarily a bad thing, overall. I'm not sure I agree with this; I guess I never saw an issue with even Tap & Cap, not to mention plain regular Tap & keep on living uses. That said, if Tap & Cap needed hosing, then errating Cap might've been the lesser of two evils. I'm not entirely convinced, but I cannot say with certainty that wallpapering a common is better than nerfing (but still keeping useful) an UC. (Although by now I'd say Cap is pretty common thanks to its many reprints, it's still not as abundant as Tap.) > I think, however, that Villein *is* a bit too good, relative to the > Blood Doll/Vessel pairing--Vessel is arguably just worse than Blood > Doll, trifle aspect included, if you ignore the Blood Doll hosing. So > that is a totally reasonable pair of cards (as Vessel doesn't > wallpaper Blood Doll). Villein, on the other hand, is arguably just > plain better than Minion Tap. If it weren't a trifle, however, it > would be just plain worse than Minion Tap, and wouldn't get played. > But that it is a trifle makes it just too good, relative to Minion > Tap. I don't know what would have been a good compromise that got > Villein played, got it to hose Minion Tap some, but *not* just > wallpapered it. > > This all being said, except for the "Aw. Now all my Minion Taps are > mostly useless..." aspect of Villein, is it actually that bad of a > thing that Villein is what it is and does what it does? On one hand, Villein makes sure that you either play it, and then you hose yourself if you want to repetitively tap the same guy, but you are otherwise safe, or you play Tap, and you either have no change in what it does, or you get randomly hosed regardless of whether you want to repetitively tap the same guy or just Tap your incoming guys for a little reduced cost. Hosing repetitive uses (in general) might be considered good. On the other hand, however, I'm not happy about the principle of its operation (I'm also not happy about Vessel, by the way). I'm mostly convinced Tap wasn't broken; I'm fully convinced Blood Doll wasn't. I'm also pretty sure Vessel and Villein, even if they solved some issues (that I'm not convinced were there to begin with by the way), created new issues that may outweigh their benefits (if any). On a tangential note, I'm the least unhappy with DI2 in theory. Because I think DI was broken and because DI2 doesn't specifically refer to DI (but also includes a whole set of cards) it is probably a good card to having been printed. That said, in practice I'm a bit upset that DI2 is so friggin' rare... Even the best of the recent rebalancing cards evokes mixed feelings in me because of its availability. --- Regards, Daneel

[ quoted text not captured ] Well, I agree that Villein, if not a trifle, would get played much less often than Minion Tap. But I do not think that a fair assessment of the success of a perfectly playable Uncommon would involve comparing its prevalence of an arguably-overpowered staple Common. I am also not sure I agree that non-trifle Villein’s usability would be restricted to 1 copy per deck. That is merely a clear example where its superiority is most obvious. I think 2 copies per deck is a more reasonable limit, for the advantages of non-Trifle Villein outweighing the relative advantages of Minion Tap, especially in mid- Cap decks that contain a mix of Blood Dolls (Blood Dolls in play tend to negate the disadvantage of being unable to Slurp for zero in the end-game). The TWDA contains 38 decks containing only a single Minion Tap. (I don’t know how many contain recursion, but I checked enough of them to guess that the vast majority do not). An additional 55 decks contain 2 copies of Minion Tap. (Total 148 copies in 93 decks). Moreover, that may not fairly represent the possibilities for non- trifle Villein. New cards result in decks being designed with its advantages and disadvantages in mind, and if there is a reason to avoid multiples, a player will obey this. It is not as though he does not have countless other master cards competing for the resulting empty slots. A player whose mid-cap deck contains 3 blood dolls and 3 minion taps is not forced to substitute in 3 non-trifle villeins. He can instead do 4 blood dolls and 2 non-trifle villeins (or 3 blood dolls, 3 non-trifle villeins and a grooming the protégé).. So the actual viability of the card may be higher than counting the number of 1-2 Minion Cap decks in the TWDA would suggest I cannot agree that only 1-2 copies per deck, for an Uncommon master card, is a serious restriction on a card’s viability, by any normal or reasonable standards. Compare to some other non-clan/sect-specific Uncommon Master Cards that were reprinted in KoT, in terms of number of decks featuring these cards in the TWDA: Vast Wealth: 18 decks (40 copies) Major Boon: 42 decks Metro Underground: 41 decks. Powerbase: Chicago: 27 decks The Rack: 51 decks. Except in the case of Vast Wealth, the vast majority of such decks feature only one copy each of the card in question.

On Feb 20, 4:36 pm, John Whelan <jwjbwhe...@gmail.com> wrote: > I understood the context to be that of competitive and justifiable use > in tournament play, and responded accordingly. Hence, I did not > respond with any example, but with one drawn from the TWDA. And I > could have come up with many many more such examples. Ok. Given how I was the one who said "Villein, if it was not a trifle, would be just plain worse than Minion Tap", here is what I mean: If Villein in not a trifle, you end up with a card that is exactly the same as Minion Tap, except that it has limits on its use (i.e. you can't cycle it easily for zero), punishes you for using multiples of them, and you can't recurse it, but on the upside, also hoses Minion Tap. The downsides (you can't cycle for 0, you can't recycle it, and you are punished for playing multiples) vastly outweigh the benefit (might hose someone else playing Minion Tap). Such that if it is not also a trifle, the *only* advantage to the Villein over the Minion Tap is that it might hose someone. In the example you came up with from the TWDA (a deck that had exactly 1 Minion Tap), you have a situation where if you replaced the single Minion Tap with a single (non trifle) Villein, you probably aren't much worse off, true. But even with only one of them, that you can't play the Villein for 0 is enough of a disadvantage to make using the Minion Tap still a better idea. > I was not comparing them. I was merely responding to the suggestion > (as I understood it) that non-Trifle Villein would not see justifiable > use in competitive tournament play. I don't think it would. As I think that a non trifle Villein would be, in the vast majority of situations, just plain worse than Minion Tap. Which is why, presumably, Villein was made a trifle. Except that as a trifle, the balance tilts in the other direction--Villein is, in the vast majority of the cases, just plain better than minion tap. And my original point was "how could it have been made not just plain better than Minion Tap while not being just plain worse". -Peter

Peter D Bakija wrote: > If Villein in not a trifle, you end up with a card that is exactly the > same as Minion Tap, except that it has limits on its use (i.e. you > can't cycle it easily for zero), punishes you for using multiples of > them, and you can't recurse it, but on the upside, also hoses Minion > Tap. The downsides (you can't cycle for 0, you can't recycle it, and > you are punished for playing multiples) vastly outweigh the benefit > (might hose someone else playing Minion Tap). The problem with this analysis is that it ignores the fact that the "downsides" are entirely under the deck-designers control. He can choose, with the greatest of ease, to eliminate them, and when he does, he is left with a card that is "just plain better" than Minion Tap, even without the Trifle benefit. A player is not forced to play with Minion Tap at all. There only about 15-20 master slots in many decks, there are 400-plus other master cards to choose from, and many tournament-winning players do indeed choose to play with those other cards instead, even when playing mid-caps and up. If he can choose to play with "0" Minion Taps, he can choose to play with "1" Minion Tap; and if he can choose to play with "1" Minion Tap, he can choose to play with 1 copy of a card that is even better than 1 Minion Tap. The first downside you mention is COMPLETELY eliminated by playing 1 copy. The second downside you mention is greatly mitigated. The need to play Minion Tap for "1" or "0" is most likely to arise after you've already tapped your minions as much as you want, and then an additional copy comes up. If that is not enough, you can further eliminate the disadvantages by playing it in a deck that contains Blood Dolls. Now, either you will draw the non-Trifle Villein early, in which case your minions will have blood to pull off, or you will draw it late, in which case there will likely be Blood Dolls already in play. You can play your Villein on a minion with one blood, push a blood back with the blood doll, and it is just as though you Minion Tapped for "0". The TWDA contains 1400+ copies of Minion Tap in 1300+ decks. That's more than 1 Minion Tap per deck, creating reasonable odds that you will cause pool damage to an opponent. It is not an enormous benefit, but it easily outweighs any risk, in a 1-copy deck, that you will end up in a situation where you want to draw off less than 2 blood from a minion, but do not have the option of playing it for zero on a minion with no blood, or playing it on a minion with a blood doll, and have no better master card you want to play that turn. > Such that if it is not > also a trifle, the *only* advantage to the Villein over the Minion Tap > is that it might hose someone. And, in an appropriate deck, that advantage makes it "just plain better" than Minion Tap, since the disadvanages, in such cases, will be even more insignificant than the advantages. > In the example you came up with from the TWDA (a deck that had exactly > 1 Minion Tap), you have a situation where if you replaced the single > Minion Tap with a single (non trifle) Villein, you probably aren't > much worse off, true. But even with only one of them, that you can't > play the Villein for 0 is enough of a disadvantage to make using the > Minion Tap still a better idea. Considering that that example also contained 4 blood dolls, I cannot bring myself to agree. > > I was not comparing them. I was merely responding to the suggestion > > (as I understood it) that non-Trifle Villein would not see justifiable > > use in competitive tournament play. > > I don't think it would. As I think that a non trifle Villein would be, > in the vast majority of situations, just plain worse than Minion Tap. It is to be expected that Common cards are useful more often, and in more decks, than Uncommons.

On Feb 20, 11:49 pm, John Whelan <jwjbwhe...@gmail.com> wrote: > The problem with this analysis is that it ignores the fact that the > "downsides" are entirely under the deck-designers control. He can > choose, with the greatest of ease, to eliminate them, and when he > does, he is left with a card that is "just plain better" than Minion > Tap, even without the Trifle benefit. Not so much. Minion Tap is "Take X blood from a minion to your pool." Villein (were it not a trifle would be "Take X blood from a minion to your pool. Where X is at least 2. And it costs you a pool to do the same thing again to the same minion. And The card stays in play so you can't recycle it even if you wanted to. Oh, and if someone else plays a Minion Tap, they get hosed some." The deck designer does not completely control when they want to cycle a card for nothing, just to cycle it (which Villein can't do). They do not completely control the situations where they might want to get a card back out of their ash heap to their hand (as someone else often plays Anthelios). They have absolutely zero control over whether or not someone else plays Minion Tap. Best case scenario for a Villein that isn't a trifle is that you have a card that is, in a narrow band of situations, about the same as Minion Tap. And in a large number of situations, something that is hindering you more than Minion Tap would be, regardless of your design intentions. > The first downside you mention is COMPLETELY eliminated by playing 1 > copy. Yes. At which point it isn't any better than Minion Tap. And still more often worse than not. > The second downside you mention is greatly mitigated. The need to > play Minion Tap for "1" or "0" is most likely to arise after you've > already tapped your minions as much as you want, and then an > additional copy comes up. And yet it still often comes up even if you have never removed blood from your minions intentionally. Your single non trifle Villein comes up late in the game when you have 1 blood on each of your minions, as it is late in the game. You want all your minions to take actions other than hunting this turn. You also want to move the Villein out of your hand. That is a sub-optimal situation for Villein (trifle or no). Not so much the Minion Tap. The third downside (not being able to pull it out of your ash heap) is always present, even if you have no intention of recycling cards on your own. As people play Anthelios. A lot. > And, in an appropriate deck, that advantage makes it "just plain > better" than Minion Tap, since the disadvanages, in such cases, will > be even more insignificant than the advantages. The only situation where a non trifle Villein is better than a Minion Tap (as opposed to "about as good 'cause the problems have been mitigated through design") is when it is hosing other player's Minion Taps. Which is something that is completely random and you have zero control over. So you are gambling on "Will I get an advantage out of this card" (small, random chance) over "will this card be more hindersome than another similar card" (reasonable chance). > It is to be expected that Common cards are useful more often, and in > more decks, than Uncommons. I have no idea what this statement is responding to. -Peter

Peter D Bakija wrote: > The deck designer does not completely control when they want to cycle > a card for nothing, just to cycle it (which Villein can't do). They do > not completely control the situations where they might want to get a > card back out of their ash heap to their hand (as someone else often > plays Anthelios). They have absolutely zero control over whether or > not someone else plays Minion Tap. Seems to me that these final considerations, left over after all the factors you control are controlled in non-trifle Villein's favor, militate in favor of non-trifle Villein. A player does not expect to play his one non-Trifle Villein (or Minion Tap) for 1 pool or for zero pool just to cycle it. If these were his intentions, he would take it out, and put a Blood Doll in instead. Of course, he may end up wanting to do this regardless of his intentions, but the risks of this hindering him significantly (in the proper deck) are far smaller than you seem to think. We have all seen Minion Tap players do this, but one factor that causes this to occur is multiple Minion Taps to begin with. Another factor is that they do it because they can; if they could not, how often would it effect them negatively? "Oops, I can't Villein Saulot for zero cause he has 2 blood, I guess I'll just Villein this torpored guy for zero instead." or "... I guess I'll just Villein this guy with 1 blood for 1 blood, and then push a blood back on with the blood doll." Someone else playing Anthelios? Even if that eventuality arises, why assume I find myself wanting to fish for a Minion Tap? If playing Minion Tap multiple times were so important to my deck strategy, this would be a different deck than it obviously is. Perhaps I'd prefer to fish for a burnt or discarded Blood Doll instead. Compared to both of the above, the prospect of hosing an opponent's Minion Tap is relatively high. The advantage goes to non-trifle Villein, in my estimation. > Best case scenario for a Villein that isn't a trifle is that you have > a card that is, in a narrow band of situations, about the same as > Minion Tap. And in a large number of situations, something that is > hindering you more than Minion Tap would be, regardless of your design > intentions. Personally, I would swap your reference to a "narrow band of situations" with your reference to "a large number of situations." Sure, in theory, the situations where you COULD have Tapped a minion with 2+ blood for 1 or zero, and are techinically being deprived of this option by Villein, are very common. But I do not consider a restriction meanginful unless it affects the things you actually want to do. But the situations where you would have actually wanted to do this (and where it actually matters - ie no minion with zero blood to slurp) are very rare, especially in a deck that contains 1 non-Trifle villein and 4 blood dolls. > > The first downside you mention is COMPLETELY eliminated by playing 1 > > copy. > > Yes. At which point it isn't any better than Minion Tap. And still > more often worse than not. We are, at this point, left with a very remote chance of being prevented from cycling one card, versus a less-remote chance of causing pool damage to your opponents. Seems to me that Non-Trifle Villein wins, after the deck designer adjusts for its disadvantages. > > The second downside you mention is greatly mitigated. The need to > > play Minion Tap for "1" or "0" is most likely to arise after you've > > already tapped your minions as much as you want, and then an > > additional copy comes up. > > And yet it still often comes up even if you have never removed blood > from your minions intentionally. Your single non trifle Villein comes > up late in the game when you have 1 blood on each of your minions, as > it is late in the game. You want all your minions to take actions > other than hunting this turn. You also want to move the Villein out of > your hand. That is a sub-optimal situation for Villein (trifle or no). And how often is that going to happen ??? It is late in the game. Someone (a combat deck?) has been knocking blood off my minions without my consent. Yet none of my minions are at zero blood or in torpor. Everyone is at exactly one or two blood. I am not planning to bring out a new minion. And I am not so desperate for pool that I am willing to hunt at zero blood in exchange for one or two pool. I do not have a master card in my hand, other than non-trifle Villein, that I am willing to play this turn. Folks have argued that the prospect of hosing someone's Minion Tap is remote. But it is not THAT remote. > The third downside (not being able to pull it out of your ash heap) is > always present, even if you have no intention of recycling cards on > your own. As people play Anthelios. A lot. Alot of those people tend to play Minion Tap as well. > > And, in an appropriate deck, that advantage makes it "just plain > > better" than Minion Tap, since the disadvanages, in such cases, will > > be even more insignificant than the advantages. > > The only situation where a non trifle Villein is better than a Minion > Tap (as opposed to "about as good 'cause the problems have been > mitigated through design") is when it is hosing other player's Minion > Taps. Which is something that is completely random and you have zero > control over. None of the factors that DISFAVOR Villein, to the extent that they cannot be readily eliminated, are under your control either. Once you eliminate the factors under your control, you are left weighing the factors NOT under your control. The advantages not under your control outweigh the disadvantages not under your control. > > It is to be expected that Common cards are useful more often, and in > > more decks, than Uncommons. > > I have no idea what this statement is responding to. You had said that MT was better than non-trifle Villein the vast majority of the time. Depending on what you meant by this, I was more or less agreeing. I would expect about 10 copies of Minion Tap to see competitive play for every single non-trifle Villein that saw play. And I don't consider this an unacceptable result for an Uncommon card.

On Feb 21, 2:20 pm, John Whelan <jwjbwhe...@gmail.com> wrote: > A player does not expect to play his one non-Trifle Villein (or Minion > Tap) for 1 pool or for zero pool just to cycle it. This is true. But that you *can't* isn't an insignificant issue. As you can't control when you draw the card, and if you draw it late (not that unlikely, with only 1 of them), and you don't have blood to pull off, and want to cycle it, you are holding it in your hand and saying "Boy, I wish this was a Minion Tap instead". Given a discussion where: A) Villein is not a trifle. and B) You only have a single Villein in the deck. I would *still* say that I'd rather use a Minion Tap. The advantage to be gained from the single, non trifle Villein (you might hose some Minion Taps a tiny little bit once or twice) seems to not outweigh the disadvantages (you can't cycle for 0 and can't recycle it out of the ash heap, however unlikely it is to occur). Going back to my initial point (that non trifle Villein would be just worse than Minion Tap in the vast majority of situations it could be used in), there are probably ways that Villein could have been a trifle and not be just better than Minion Tap--maybe keep it a trifle and have it be "Put this on a vampire you control. Move up to 3 blood from that vampire to your pool. Any Minion Tap played costs 1 extra pool." That probably would have been fine and would not have wallpapered Minion Tap as much as the current version. > You had said that MT was better than non-trifle Villein the vast > majority of the time. Depending on what you meant by this, I was more > or less agreeing. I would expect about 10 copies of Minion Tap to see > competitive play for every single non-trifle Villein that saw play. > And I don't consider this an unacceptable result for an Uncommon card. Oh, ok. I don't consider that unacceptable either. But I also don't think that printing such a card would have been a good idea. It would have been viewed as just another bad card. And would not have been an effective Minion Tap hoser, if that was the intention. Detractors be damned, Vessel is a good balance with Blood Doll and isn't viewed by most folks as just another bad card. So it sees play and has an interesting back and forth with Blood Doll. The current Villein doesn't so much. A non trifle (but otherwise identical) Villein also wouldn't so much. There are probably plenty of ways to have made a balance point Villein, but it probably would have had to have been pretty different. -Peter

Peter D Bakija wrote: > Given a discussion where: > A) Villein is not a trifle. > and > B) You only have a single Villein in the deck. > I would *still* say that I'd rather use a Minion Tap. The advantage to > be gained from the single, non trifle Villein (you might hose some > Minion Taps a tiny little bit once or twice) seems to not outweigh the > disadvantages (you can't cycle for 0 and can't recycle it out of the > ash heap, however unlikely it is to occur). We may just have to agree to disagree. We are comparing remote and contingent advantages to remote and contingent disadvantages. It will be hard for either of us to prove our case. But hosing minion taps "once or twice" seems more impactful than a lost opportunity to cycle a card ONCE, and the likelihood of the former seems to me greater than the likelihood of the latter. > But I also don't > think that printing such a card would have been a good idea. It would > have been viewed as just another bad card. And would not have been an > effective Minion Tap hoser, if that was the intention. I'll go with that. Its effect on deterring use of Minion Tap would have been extremely minimal at best. And it would have been a BORING card, far too similar to Minion Tap, except that one would only put one or two in a deck, with other advantages and disadvantages that are far too remote and speculative to provoke much in the way of excitement. But my point was, I think, that however Boring of Bad it may have been in other respects, it was, for all that, in fact reasonably balanced with an already-powerful card. Hence, when the "trifle" advantage was thrown in, it pushed it way over the top. > There are probably plenty of ways to have made a > balance point Villein, but it probably would have had to have been > pretty different. Agreed

On Feb 21, 7:31 pm, John Whelan <jwjbwhe...@gmail.com> wrote: > But my point was, I think, that however Boring of Bad it may have been > in other respects, it was, for all that, in fact reasonably balanced > with an already-powerful card. Ah, ok. Yeah, see, as noted, I think without it being a trifle, and all other things being the same, it would have been (arguably) not worth playing most of the time, and consequently (arguably) a bad card to print. > Hence, when the "trifle" advantage was thrown in, it pushed it way over the top. That turns out to have been the case, I agree. Although they (arguably) needed to do something to the card to make it worth printing (as something other than the identical card that wasn't a trifle). I'm sure at the time, making it a trifle seemed a reasonable thing to do. It turns out to have been a significant over adjustment. But it did (arguably) need *something* added to it, if not being made a trifle. -Peter

John & Peter, This is the kind of advice, from another thread, that convinces me that it is probably not Tap that was ever the problem. The below advice was given regarding a new crypt for what is essentially Ventrue Law Firm 2.0. The typical problem with dealing with these decks is: you can't bin the minions (Pre + For) and if the actions aren't blocked, you can't vote them down (static votes + push). Pullen >Mirko Marinkovic > Hi > Swap: > 4 Effective Management for 4 Minion Taps > Rumors of Gehenna for Parity Shift > 4 Second Tradition: Domain, The for 4 OtQV (You don't wanna block > Brujah bleeding You) Yes he does, he has fort and he should have a lot of minions, blocking is not a problem. The rest of your switches have no reasoning to them so I won't comment on them. Asfor what i would do with this deck, IMO Armor of Vitality is inferior to Skin of Steel, so i would switch that and the Soak out. Also Staredown, 1Majesty 1 Rolling and 1 Effective for the 4 Voter Caps, you should be able to weather a combat heavy table with that and decent blood gain, so I would turn HG for Dominate Kine for 2 4ths. I would also turn 1 of the vessels into another Minion Tap. And finally, you allready have a lot of pool gain with Mary's spec and gov down, so the 4 con boons could be more aggressive vote's, something like 1 Banishment 1 Reins of Power 1 Ancient Influence, and another KRC. Also why Redirection over Deflection?

Juggernaut1981 wrote: > This is the kind of advice, from another thread, that convinces me > that it is probably not Tap that was ever the problem. I'm not thinking of it in such terms. Minion Tap was a popular card. It got played alot. Historically, it appears in the TWDA at a rate averaging slightly over 1 copy per deck. Most of these copies appear outside of Tap & Cap decks. Clearly alot of people who played it were being rewarded for their choice. No single example of someones advice can argue with such statistics. There are 469 master cards to choose from, 119 of which are commons. If one out of every 10-20 master cards played is a minion tap, it generally means that other cards are getting pushed out and not getting considered at all. Hosing overpowered cards helps promote variety. Similarly, the overpopularity of Voter Cap helps ensure that competing choices (for instance, among available Presence cards) get overlooked. As far as I am concerned, the design team can hose Tap, or Cap, or both. Both are "the problem". It is not an either/or situation, and I have no particular hostility to the tap & cap combo.

On Feb 21, 10:36 pm, Juggernaut1981 <brasscompo...@gmail.com> > This is the kind of advice, from another thread, that convinces me > that it is probably not Tap that was ever the problem. I don't think that there is any question that Voter Cap is an absurdly powerful card, Minion Tap or no. The problem is that you can't really nerf Voter Cap effectively without errataing the card (something that people seem to really want to avoid these days), as oblique Voter Cap hosing isn't going to be really effective (has anyone really ever had a Voter Cap get hosed by a Final Loosening? More than once? Ever?). Villein is an effective Minion Tap hoser as it is completely utilitarian (as opposed to, say, Final Loosening), benefits you significantly even if it *isn't* hosing Minion Tap, and is good enough to see a lot of play. That it virtually wallpapers Minion Tap is, I suspect, an unfortunate accident. That, and Minion Tap probably needed hosing in some way if Blood Doll needed hosing in some way (which is certainly debateable in either direction, but if one needed a tweak then they both did), regardless of Voter Cap. Was Minion Tap a *problem*? Probably not. It was probably, just like Blood Doll, an overly effective, overly utilitarian card that the designers felt needed a bit of shaking up, so that they (both BD and/ or MT) weren't automatic inclusions in every deck (which they pretty much were). The Blood Doll/Villein experiment worked (arguably) nicely. The Minion Tap/Villein mission, not as much. Likely by accident. -Peter

On Feb 22, 7:22 am, Peter D Bakija <p...@lightlink.com> wrote: > On Feb 21, 10:36 pm, Juggernaut1981 <brasscompo...@gmail.com> > This > is the kind of advice, from another thread, that convinces me > > > that it is probably not Tap that was ever the problem. > > I don't think that there is any question that Voter Cap is an absurdly > powerful card, Minion Tap or no. The problem is that you can't really > nerf Voter Cap effectively without errataing the card (something that > people seem to really want to avoid these days), as oblique Voter Cap > hosing isn't going to be really effective (has anyone really ever had > a Voter Cap get hosed by a Final Loosening? More than once? Ever?). > Yes. I think I've gotten spiked by Final Loosening twice, and by Denial of Aphrodite's favor 2 or 3 times. I haven't had it happen more than once in a single game, but just one Cap spiked can sometimes be enough if you were really counting on it. Considering how ridiculously powerful Voter Cap is, and the fact that FL can be cycled for a blood gain fairly often, it seems worthwhile to put 2 or more of them in any deck that can play the aus level of it. The problem being that that doesn't really include that many decks. An easier to play VC hoser might see play more often. Maybe even something like "Reaction/Action Modifier - Play this card when a referendum passes. You gain 1 pool and put this card into play. While this card is in play, Voter Captivation costs an additional pool. Only 1 Voter Cap Screwer can be played each action." It wouldn't see all that much play, but would be useful in non-Presence voters (which exist, but are pretty rare because Voter Cap is so damned good that playing votes without it is painful), and might even see use in a deck that has no other vote defense, in the right environment. > Villein is an effective Minion Tap hoser as it is completely > utilitarian (as opposed to, say, Final Loosening), benefits you > significantly even if it *isn't* hosing Minion Tap, and is good enough > to see a lot of play. That it virtually wallpapers Minion Tap is, I > suspect, an unfortunate accident. > Villein is an effective Minion Tap hoser in that it makes Minion Tap obsolete and fills the exact same niche at a lower cost. I.e. more of a replacement than a hoser. The one thing that it really hoses is the decks where you intend to Minion Tap the same minion over and over again. In that capacity, Minion Tap is still better than Villein, but less good than it once was. If that was the only intention, then I guess mission accomplished. But it would have been nice if Villein had actually been playtested as a trifle...

On Feb 22, 5:15 pm, Chris Berger <ark...@ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote: > Villein is an effective Minion Tap hoser in that it makes Minion Tap > obsolete and fills the exact same niche at a lower cost. I.e. more of > a replacement than a hoser. The one thing that it really hoses is the > decks where you intend to Minion Tap the same minion over and over > again. In that capacity, Minion Tap is still better than Villein, but > less good than it once was. If that was the only intention, then I > guess mission accomplished. But it would have been nice if Villein > had actually been playtested as a trifle... I have a serious question here. What decks, if any, became overpowered as a result of Villein being a Trifle? Because the main effect I've seen is that decks that weren't very good, like midcap rush decks, became more playable. Kevin Walsh

Kevin Walsh wrote: > I have a serious question here. What decks, if any, became overpowered > as a result of Villein being a Trifle? None. Because Villein is a card that can be played, and probably will be played, in almost any deck. It is the card itself that is overpowered. It will be very popular. Historically, Minion Tap appeared in the TWDA at a rate averaging slightly over one copy per deck. Villein will appear more frequently. Because it will appear so frequently, other cards will get played less frequently and deck variety may suffer. > Because the main effect I've > seen is that decks that weren't very good, like midcap rush decks, > became more playable. Well, yes. I agree that Villein will not disproportionately help the "wrong decks". And while it does not exactly hurt cheesy bloat strategies, it probably helps them less than some other options.

Salem wrote: > Peter D Bakija wrote: >> Salem wrote: >>> On an unrelated note, how long does a VTES NDA last? >> >> 18 months, I think. Why do you ask? > > So I can talk about Bloodlines now? and how Basilisk's Touch > got over-nerfed before being released? (but was indeed > too powerful as first proposed...). You signed an NDA without having read it? Kevin M., Prince of Las Vegas "Know your enemy and know yourself; in one-thousand battles you shall never be in peril." -- Sun Tzu, *The Art of War* "Contentment...Complacency...Catastrophe!" -- Joseph Chevalier Please visit VTESville daily! http://vtesville.myminicity.com/ Please buy my cards! http://shop.ebay.com/kjmergen/m.html

Peter D Bakija wrote: > At least now everyone has a lot of Villeins. I don't think this is the case, nor does any evidence show this. I also think that Minion Cap is not as dead as everyone seems to think it is, at least not until CCP reprints HTTB starters or re-reprints Villein, so playing an appropriate quantity of MT in a deck that still prefers Minion Tap is completely fine right now. [ quoted text not captured ]

Chris Berger wrote: > But it would have been nice if Villein had actually > been playtested as a trifle... I must have missed it, but did someone somewhere discuss the playtesting of Villein? If so, could someone provide a link? [ quoted text not captured ]

On Feb 17, 9:50 am, John Whelan <jwjbwhe...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Feb 17, 10:04 am, Blooded Sand <sandm...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > no earlier than May 19 2010 to tittle tattle about villein mate. > > Well then, I apologize for spreading rumors that cannot yet be refuted. The NDAs in the past have been 18 months, but that's 18 months from the date of signing the NDA, not from the release date of the set. My own NDA for that set expired last October. Accordingly, I can refute the rumor you cited: > I heard a story (and I am just repeating what I heard) that nobody > played Villein during play-testing, and someone suggested it would be > worth playing only if were a trifle. That suggestion got implemented. Villein was actively tested by at least some playtesters, and at least some of the feedback LSJ got specifically did not say "we won't play this, maybe it should be a trifle" but rather "this card is very playable as is" in earlier, non-trifle iterations. I can't say whether or not other playtesters behaved in the fashion your rumor suggests, but it certainly was not the case across the board. -John Flournoy

You know, if Villein does really become a problem, they could always print a Villein-hoser that shifts the favor a little more towards Minion Tap. How about something like: Villein-Hoser Master. Trifle. Burn all Villeins in play. Each Methuselah burns 2 pool for each Villein burned in this manner. There! Now Minion Tap lovers have a card that can make sure they pay 0 for their Minion Tap. And which hoses the Villein players back. (And it's no good to Villein players since they'll lose pool for playing it in their decks). Minion Tap still gets watered down since they need to dilute their deck with Villein-Hosers. And people are a little more leery of relying just on Villeins for pool gain.

On Feb 23, 4:42 pm, "echiang...@yahoo.com" <echiang...@yahoo.com> wrote: [ quoted text not captured ] Except that hoses them so effectively that no-one would every play villeins.. a costless trifle dishing out 2 pool damage?

Kevin M. wrote: > I also think that Minion Cap is not as dead as everyone seems > to think it is, at least not until CCP reprints HTTB starters or > re-reprints Villein, so playing an appropriate quantity of MT in > a deck that still prefers Minion Tap is completely fine right now. I agree that demand for Villein probably remains high, and probably won't be met for some time. Still, we can see the writing on the wall. Minion Tap has not been seen in the TWDA since mid-November. Since then, 39 decks have won tournaments without containing a single Minion Tap; though 29 copies of Villein have appeared in 6 decks. Obviously, things will not get better for Minion Tap when HTTB becomes legal early next month.

John Flournoy wrote: > Villein was actively tested by at least some playtesters, and at least > some of the feedback LSJ got specifically did not say "we won't play > this, maybe it should be a trifle" but rather "this card is very > playable as is" in earlier, non-trifle iterations. > > I can't say whether or not other playtesters behaved in the fashion > your rumor suggests, but it certainly was not the case across the > board. Thanks for the clarification. Please understand that this was a vaguely-overheard conversation, from many months ago, that I can only claim to remember the basic gist of. That basic gist was that the card was originally playtested as a non-trifle, and was judged by playtesters to be not good enough. You have confirmed at least a key element of this -- that the card was originally designed as a non-trifle. That at least some of the feedback was negative, I suppose can now be inferred.

Kevin M. wrote: > Chris Berger wrote: > > But it would have been nice if Villein had actually > > been playtested as a trifle... > > I must have missed it, but did someone somewhere discuss > the playtesting of Villein? If so, could someone provide a link? John Fluorney just confirmed, in this thread, that Villein was play- tested as a non-trifle. He did not confirm (and might not be in a position to know) whether it was ever play-tested as a trifle.

On Feb 23, 12:02 am, "Kevin M." <youw...@imaspammer.org> wrote: > I don't think this is the case, nor does any evidence show this. That people have a lot of Villeins now? How is this not the case? I used to have 4 Villeins. In one fell swoop, I got 12 more Villeins. And I didn't even spend that much on new cards. I think that there are now plenty of Villeins in circulation. Everyone in my group now has 10+ Villeins when, previously, everyone had 3 or 4. And we didn't even try that hard. -Peter

On Feb 23, 12:13 am, "Kevin M." <youw...@imaspammer.org> wrote: > I must have missed it, but did someone somewhere discuss > the playtesting of Villein? If so, could someone provide a link? I can't imagine that anyone has done such a thing, as 18 months has not yet passed since the release of the set. -Peter

[ quoted text not captured ] I will confirm that neither John nor myself were in a position to *know* that it was not playtested as a trifle. Because it may have been playtested that way by some groups but not by others. I, personally, was referring to the rumor quoted in other parts of this thread that it was never playtested as a trifle, and my own personal belief that that is true. FWIW, I am positive that there were some who said that it was underpowered and would never be played as a non-trifle. I am not in a position to know if that was a majority opinion.

[ quoted text not captured ] There's also the assumption that "trifle or not" was the only change to the card via playtesting, which also isn't accurate; it was also playtested with "move one or more blood" and got changed/weakened to "two or more" as a result of playtesting. So changes were made in both directions (make it easier to play, make it harder to play), rather than strictly stronger or weaker after feedback was given. "Negative feedback" is frequently not just "we wouldn't play this card, it's too useless" after all, but also "this card is way too good/ cheap/powerful/easy to play" etc. Cards get adjusted in lots of different ways from the original versions. -John Flournoy

[ quoted text not captured ] John, As a thought, if the "move one" was changed to "move two" that seems to suggest that the play-clarification by LSJ has undone the effects of the changes from playtesting. I am wondering, how are the playtesters chosen? Does the pool of playtesters include players from each of the major VTES Regions? (e,g. NthAmerica, SthAmerica, Europe, AU/NZ/SE Asia)? Even playing with people from Newcastle NSW, I notice there are really obvious changes in playstyle and loopholes/tricks/exploitations that are used at my playgroup (and considered obvious) are not recognised by players from other playgroups. Is there a "Playtester Registration"? I understand there would be NDAs and similar...

[ quoted text not captured ] As stated by John, his NDA said 18 months "after the signing of his NDA", not 18 months after the release of the set. [ quoted text not captured ]

[ quoted text not captured ] I see that, but Chris wrote his post half a day before John write his, so that wasn't the post that I had 'missed'. But, thanks Chris, for your reply below. [ quoted text not captured ]

Peter D Bakija wrote: > "Kevin M." wrote: >> I don't think this is the case, nor does any evidence show this. > > That people have a lot of Villeins now? How is this not the case? You haven't seen everyone complaining about how they didn't get any HTTB starters? [ quoted text not captured ]

Juggernaut1981 wrote: > I am wondering, how are the playtesters chosen? [snip] > Is there a "Playtester Registration"? I understand > there would be NDAs and similar... No one other than LSJ can answer this for you, and I'm pretty sure it's one of those things that he is disinclined to answer publicly. If you want to be a playtester, email LSJ. [ quoted text not captured ]

[ quoted text not captured ] KJM, Thanks, I didn't know how "transparent" or "secretive" the process is/ was. (Beyond the 'protecting corporate secrets' kind of secrecy)

> I am wondering, how are the playtesters chosen? Does the pool of > playtesters include players from each of the major VTES Regions? (e,g. > NthAmerica, SthAmerica, Europe, AU/NZ/SE Asia)? Even playing with > people from Newcastle NSW, I notice there are really obvious changes > in playstyle and loopholes/tricks/exploitations that are used at my > playgroup (and considered obvious) are not recognised by players from > other playgroups. Is there a "Playtester Registration"? I understand > there would be NDAs and similar... I can't say if this is accurate any longer or not, but here's a general synopsis I was given years and years ago as to why my set of playtesters was invited into the process: Doing things like posting frequently (and accurately) to rules discussions on the newsgroup (and/or other commonly visited forums), writing 'clan newsletters' and other similar articles for players to access, decklists with strategy notions, etc are all things that LSJ does notice, and makes it more likely that he will solicit your help in playtesting when a need arises for more playtesters. (Even more so if you're part of a playgroup that has multiple people that do this.) Which makes sense, really. If you demonstrate over time a general understanding of things like the rules, game balance, strategies, etc as well as demonstrating that you actively participate in (and even initiate) these sorts of discussions within the community, you're proving that your opinion is worth listening to. Which isn't to say that doing this is any sort of guarantee of participation, and I'd imagine (purely a guess here) that contacting LSJ and volunteering also helps. Polite inquiries certainly don't hurt. -John

On Feb 23, 6:29 am, John Whelan <jwjbwhe...@gmail.com> wrote: > John Fluorney just confirmed, in this thread, that Villein was play- > tested as a non-trifle. He did not confirm (and might not be in a > position to know) whether it was ever play-tested as a trifle. You're correct - I'm not in a position to know that. Playtesters generally don't know the totality of who all of the playtest groups are or what they're testing or when, even after the fact. Although they can often make educated guesses as to some of that info. Or at least, I've never known the totality; I could be the one exception being left in the dark. :) -John Flournoy

On Feb 23, 4:39 pm, "Kevin M." <youw...@imaspammer.org> wrote: > As stated by John, his NDA said 18 months "after the signing > of his NDA", not 18 months after the release of the set. Well, there you go then. -Peter

On Feb 16, 2:59 pm, Aaron Clark <aamacl...@gmail.com> wrote: > You haven't seen everyone complaining about how they didn't > get any HTTB starters? Sure. Which means all the ones that were printed were purchased by someone. Which means all the Villeins that were in those starters are out in the hands of players somewhere. All the HTTB starters aren't hidden in a cave somewhere. Right this second on e-bay, there are plenty of Villeins. Including 10+ for sale as buy-it-now for the relatively reasonable (compared to the days of yore) price of $2.50 a pop. Yes. Some people didn't get HTTB starters. But a lot of people did. And that means a lot of Villeins have just flooded the play environment. Does *everyone* have all the Villeins they want? Probably not. But it isn't remotely unreasonable to state that there are a lot more Villeins in circulation right now, and many people probably have plenty of them. -Peter

On Feb 23, 4:30 pm, Juggernaut1981 <brasscompo...@gmail.com> wrote: > As a thought, if the "move one" was changed to "move two" that seems > to suggest that the play-clarification by LSJ has undone the effects > of the changes from playtesting. Not really. The playtesters commenting on that issue seemed to have had a grasp of the way moving blood works.

[ quoted text not captured ] LSJ, The sarcasm is more endearing in RL I'm sure.

[ quoted text not captured ] I don't think he was being particularly sarcastic, actually - it was discussed during playtesting as to how the wording of moving one or more blood would function, with regards to 'move what you can' vs. 'must be able to move the minimum or can't do it.' I took LSJ's comment as "the playtesters clearly understood how that rules question would be answered while playtesting" rather than sarcasm. One of the things the playtesters are typically asked to do is to comment on any rules questions that they find during playtesting by providing their own answers/analysis with examples and citations etc. Occasionally we've ended up producing examples of how a card would function in an unintended way based on prior rulings and existing card precedents, and thus wording/functions get changed to fix that. -John Flournoy

On Feb 23, 4:44 pm, Peter D Bakija <p...@lightlink.com> wrote: > Yes. Some people didn't get HTTB starters. But a lot of people did. > And that means a lot of Villeins have just flooded the play > environment. Does *everyone* have all the Villeins they want? Probably > not. But it isn't remotely unreasonable to state that there are a lot > more Villeins in circulation right now, and many people probably have > plenty of them. To me, the much more interesting question is "what can I do with my decks to take advantage of other people playing too many Villeins just because they own them?" So I'm already scheming about ways to effectively punish decks that keep proactively emptying their vampires and including a lot of master cards. > -Peter -John Flournoy

Peter D Bakija wrote: > KevinM wrote: >> You haven't seen everyone complaining about how they didn't >> get any HTTB starters? > > Sure. Which means all the ones that were printed were purchased by > someone. Which means all the Villeins that were in those starters > are out in the hands of players somewhere. All the HTTB starters > aren't hidden in a cave somewhere. > > Right this second on e-bay, there are plenty of Villeins. Including > 10+ for sale as buy-it-now for the relatively reasonable (compared > to the days of yore) price of $2.50 a pop. > > Yes. Some people didn't get HTTB starters. But a lot of people did. > And that means a lot of Villeins have just flooded the play > environment. Does *everyone* have all the Villeins they want? > Probably not. You said "At least now everyone has a lot of Villeins." I'm glad to see you agree with me that your statement was false. Kevin M., Prince of Las Vegas "Know your enemy and know yourself; in one-thousand battles you shall never be in peril." -- Sun Tzu, *The Art of War* "Contentment...Complacency...Catastrophe!" -- Joseph Chevalier Please visit VTESville daily! http://vtesville.myminicity.com/ Please buy my cards! http://shop.ebay.com/kjmergen/m.html

On Feb 23, 7:28 pm, "Kevin M." <youw...@imaspammer.org> wrote: > You said "At least now everyone has a lot of Villeins." > > I'm glad to see you agree with me that your statement was false. Jesus Christ, Kevin. You had a long, exciting weekend. Go have a drink and get some sleep. -Peter

Peter D Bakija wrote: > "Kevin M." wrote: >> You said "At least now everyone has a lot of Villeins." >> >> I'm glad to see you agree with me that your statement was false. > > Jesus Christ, Kevin. You had a long, exciting weekend. > Go have a drink and get some sleep. I've had plenty of sleep. I just wanted to clarify for you. ;) [ quoted text not captured ]

Kevin M. wrote: > Salem wrote: >> Peter D Bakija wrote: >>> Salem wrote: >>>> On an unrelated note, how long does a VTES NDA last? >>> >>> 18 months, I think. Why do you ask? >> >> So I can talk about Bloodlines now? and how Basilisk's Touch >> got over-nerfed before being released? (but was indeed >> too powerful as first proposed...). > > You signed an NDA without having read it? No. I signed it about 9 years ago and was trying to make a joke. But to be honest, I don't recall what the exact text of that NDA was, or where I may have stashed my hard copy. Ohnoes! What if it said 10 years?!?!!? I'm-a gunna be sued! -- salem

Juggernaut1981 wrote: > I am wondering, how are the playtesters chosen? Does the pool of > playtesters include players from each of the major VTES Regions? (e,g. > NthAmerica, SthAmerica, Europe, AU/NZ/SE Asia)? Even playing with > people from Newcastle NSW, I notice there are really obvious changes > in playstyle and loopholes/tricks/exploitations that are used at my > playgroup (and considered obvious) are not recognised by players from > other playgroups. Is there a "Playtester Registration"? I understand > there would be NDAs and similar... We used to playtest here in Canberra, before our playgroup imploded. So I'd say we can be fairly confident it's not just NthAmerican groups in the playtesting. We've since gotten our group back together, but I don't feel like I have enough time to be able to adequately invest our group in playtesting again, so I haven't asked LSJ if we can get back in the club. -- salem

On Feb 23, 10:41 pm, "Kevin M." <youw...@imaspammer.org> wrote: > I've had plenty of sleep. I just wanted to clarify for you. ;) Oh, Kevin. There are a lot more Villeins in circulation than there used to be. A lot a lot more. People have a lot more of them. They will show up a lot more often in actual play than they used to. You can quibble over the exact meaning of "everyone has a lot of Villeins now" (or whatever I said) all you want, but you know perfectly well what I meant. -Peter

On Tue, 23 Feb 2010 00:42:59 -0800 (PST), echia...@yahoo.com <echia...@yahoo.com> wrote: > You know, if Villein does really become a problem, they could always > print a Villein-hoser that shifts the favor a little more towards > Minion Tap. > > How about something like: > > Villein-Hoser > Master. Trifle. > Burn all Villeins in play. Each Methuselah burns 2 pool for each > Villein burned in this manner. > > There! Now Minion Tap lovers have a card that can make sure they pay 0 > for their Minion Tap. And which hoses the Villein players back. (And > it's no good to Villein players since they'll lose pool for playing it > in their decks). > > Minion Tap still gets watered down since they need to dilute their > deck with Villein-Hosers. And people are a little more leery of > relying just on Villeins for pool gain. On the other hand, this might mean that Minion Tap again becomes prevalent. So to keep the balance, additional intervention might be required. Like: Minion Tap-Hoser-Hoser-Hoser (a.k.a. Villein-Hoser-Hoser) Master. Each Methuselah burns 3 pool for each Villein-Hoser in their Ash Heaps. On the other hand, if this hoses Villein-Hoser too much, we might need... -- Regards, Daneel

On Feb 24, 2:17 pm, Daneel <dan...@eposta.hu> wrote: > On the other hand, if this hoses Villein-Hoser too much, we might need... I second this. We've got more than enough AntiSpecificCardByName cards in the card pool as it is. John Eno

Peter D Bakija wrote: > "Kevin M." wrote: >> I've had plenty of sleep. I just wanted to clarify for you. ;) > > Oh, Kevin. There are a lot more Villeins in circulation than there > used to be. A lot a lot more. People have a lot more of them. They > will show up a lot more often in actual play than they used to. You > can quibble over the exact meaning of "everyone has a lot of Villeins > now" (or whatever I said) all you want, but you know perfectly well > what I meant. Actually no, I didn't. Given your ability to say one thing in an incredibly vague way and using non-committal language, I wanted to pin down what you had said, since we can't have a discussion if we don't understand what one of us is saying. The fact that it's bothering you suggests to me that you COULD use clear, precise language and you COULD take a clear stance, but you choose not to for some reason. :( [ quoted text not captured ]

On Feb 24, 5:39 pm, "Kevin M." <youw...@imaspammer.org> wrote: > Actually no, I didn't. Given your ability to say one thing in an > incredibly vague way and using non-committal language, I wanted > to pin down what you had said, since we can't have a discussion > if we don't understand what one of us is saying. Kevin, you are currently crossing the line from "lovably pedantic" to "bat-shit". I said (to which you responded): "At least now everyone has a lot of Villeins." You could have very easily taken this to mean "There are now a lot of Villeins in circulation" (as there are). You speak English as a primary language. You are smart. You read discussion a lot. Instead of taking in the way it was easily interpreted to be taken, you took it in the most mind numbingly literal sense possible. It was not a clever turn of phrase, or non-committal language, or even vague. It was a statement about how there are a lot of Villeins in circulation now, as there are. Even if some people didn't get all the starters they wanted. > The fact that it's bothering you suggests to me that you COULD use > clear, precise language and you COULD take a clear stance, but > you choose not to for some reason. :( There was no need for any other language than I used. If you did not read "at least now everyone has a lot of Villeins" and think "Ah ha! But no! There is some guy in Kazakhstan who didn't get any starters! He does *not* have a lot of Villeins! That statement is not correct!" and feel the need to jump on it (which initially seemed to be some snarky comment about lack of adequate starter circulation, but now again has turned into you ardently defending your want to take every possible statement as literally as possible in every instance), this wouldn't even be an issue. I don't think anyone else read "at least now everyone has a lot of Villeins" and question its literal validity. -Peter

Peter D Bakija wrote: > "Kevin M." wrote: >> Actually no, I didn't. Given your ability to say one thing in an >> incredibly vague way and using non-committal language, I wanted >> to pin down what you had said, since we can't have a discussion >> if we don't understand what one of us is saying. > > Kevin, you are currently crossing the line from "lovably pedantic" > to "bat-shit". > > I said (to which you responded): > "At least now everyone has a lot of Villeins." > > You could have very easily taken this to mean "There are now > a lot of Villeins in circulation" (as there are). Then why didn't you say that? Why use language which DOESN'T mean that when language is our only means of communication here? I'll tell you why. It's because you want to be deliberately vague and misleading, that's why. It's your method of communication, nigh-useless as it is in a text-based medium. You COULD be clear and precise, but you choose not to, for reasons which are your own. Then, when you encounter an individual who asks you what you mean and you reclarify and reverse your prior position -- which does not always happen, but happens sometimes -- and the individual continues the conversation given your new position, you complain and start throwing personal attacks instead of addressing the topic at-hand. Perhaps you can explain to me, without discussing me, since I have nothing to do with your method of communication, how that method of debate furthers the discussion? Start saying what you mean instead of beating around the bush and then calling me names when I point out how you said something COMPLETELY different, especially given the recent newsgroup discussion regarding starters. [ quoted text not captured ]

On Feb 24, 7:29 pm, "Kevin M." <youw...@imaspammer.org> wrote: > Then why didn't you say that? Because it was unnecessary. There was no part of "at least now everyone has a lot of Villeins" that is indicating anything other than what I meant. 'Could I be meaning, literally, "there is not a single person in the world who does not have a lot of Villeins"? I suppose it is possible that that was what I was talking about. But that is incredibly unlikely. And none one, other than apparently you, is going to read it and think that. > I'll tell you why. It's because you want to be deliberately vague > and misleading, that's why. Kevin, I don't even know how to respond to this level of madness. -Peter

Peter D Bakija wrote: > "Kevin M." wrote: >> Then why didn't you say that? > > Because it was unnecessary. There was no part of "at least now > everyone has a lot of Villeins" that is indicating anything other > than what I meant. 'Could I be meaning, literally, "there is not > a single person in the world who does not have a lot of Villeins"? > I suppose it is possible that that was what I was talking about. > But that is incredibly unlikely. Wait...you JUST SAID it's POSSIBLE it could have meant that, but this is MY issue for asking you for a clarification? So I'm supposed to be a mind-reader? Seriously, this is your defense? "But Kevin, you should have KNOWN that it was incredibly unlikely and not said what you said about my position reversal." Seriously, this is your defense? Instead of just continuing the discussion, you chose to get all pissed off that I -- or anyone -- didn't "get it"? There had been a very recent ongoing discussion about how HTTB starter boxes sold-out fast and seemed to have been printed in limited quantities given the demand, and several players posted how they hadn't gotten any, and you feel that your statement of "At least now everyone has a lot of Villeins" is remotely reasonable? > And no one, other than apparently you, is going > to read it and think that. I would think the fact that you KNOW me wouldn't interfere with your ability to rationally discuss issues on the newsgroup. If it IS then I'd consider that rude and insulting of you. Is it your belief that my asking you what you meant and then calling you on your reversal was rude of me and therefore you were entitled to respond in kind? If so, I'd suggest to you that half the discussion on this newsgroup is people making statements about something and then reversing their position when other players discuss in the thread issue showing how the original position isn't correct. Almost never do I see the original poster hurling insults and acting rudely to the people who show how the original position wasn't correct. Why do you? And if only ONE person misunderstands, then why not continue the discussion with that ONE person, instead of telling that person they are the only one that took it that way, as if "no one other than you" is some sort of defense? >> I'll tell you why. It's because you want to be deliberately vague >> and misleading, that's why. > > Kevin, I don't even know how to respond to this level of madness. I'd ask you -- beg you, even -- to become aware of your bad habit of stating absolutes and then becoming incredibly offended and throwing personal attacks when someone -- even if it is only one person, even if it's only ME -- says they don't understand or calls you on your position reversal, or whatever. It gets in the way of furthering rational discussion. As for me, I'm forever done with explaining this to you on the newsgroup. I'll probably have to stop responding to most of your posts, too, since you'll just keep blaming me for your position reversals instead of simply explaining your position and continuing the enjoyable discussion. Which is really a shame, and outright rude for that matter, but that seems to be the way in which your thinking is stuck. [ quoted text not captured ]

On Feb 24, 8:47 pm, "Kevin M." <youw...@imaspammer.org> wrote: > Wait...you JUST SAID it's POSSIBLE it could have meant that, but > this is MY issue for asking you for a clarification? So I'm supposed > to be a mind-reader? Seriously, this is your defense? There was no need for clarification. You are claiming you were confused as you like to do that sort of thing, not 'cause there was any actual ambiguity in the discussion. The context of the discussion, which you are ignoring, was "there are a lot more Villeins in circulation now, so they'll show up more". As there are. A lot more Villeins in circulation . Even if some people didn't get all the starter decks they wanted. > There had been a very recent ongoing discussion about how HTTB > starter boxes sold-out fast and seemed to have been printed in > limited quantities given the demand, and several players posted how > they hadn't gotten any, and you feel that your statement of "At least > now everyone has a lot of Villeins" is remotely reasonable? I feel that the essence of the statement (that there are now a lot of Villeins in circulation) is completely reasonable, yes. The discussion was not about the availability of starter decks (if I had said in a discussion about the availability of starter decks "No one didn't get any starter decks!", then I both be incorrect and reasonably called on that statement) . It was about the increased likelihood of Villein showing up. 'Cause there are a lot more in circulation. Which there are. That you decided to get "at least now everyone has a lot of Villeins" stuck in your craw is totally your thing here. > I would think the fact that you KNOW me wouldn't interfere with your > ability to rationally discuss issues on the newsgroup. If it IS then > I'd consider that rude and insulting of you. Is it your belief that > my asking you what you meant and then calling you on your reversal > was rude of me and therefore you were entitled to respond in kind? No, I think your asking me what I meant was you making some sort of point, rather than you actually being confused as to what I meant. And I think your pursuing of the point was you continuing to make some sort of point, rather than actually being confused as to what I meant. I don't think any part at all of this discussion is based in you, Kevin, being confused as to what I meant when I said "at least now everyone has a lot of Villeins". I think it has to do with you wanting to connect that statement to the previous, unconnected conversation about the shortage of starter decks, and then wanting to continue to make some sort of point. That had absolutely nothing at all to do with you not actually understanding me. I mean, I could be wrong. But I suspect not. > Almost never do I see the > original poster hurling insults and acting rudely to the people who > show how the original position wasn't correct. Why do you? My original position was not not correct. My original position was clearly "There are a lot more Villeins in circulation, so they'll show up more". I was not making an argument about how many specific people have Villeins. And this was clear from the context of the discussion (which was about Villeins showing up more often, not about who has all the Villeins). You picked a statement out of context, attacked it for being false, and then continued to attack it after it had been explained. By the 3rd or 4th message in a discussion based in absurdity, people get testy. > And if only ONE person misunderstands, then why not continue the > discussion with that ONE person, instead of telling that person they > are the only one that took it that way, as if "no one other than you" > is some sort of defense? Please drop the pretext of misunderstanding what I was talking about. I'm totally ok with you wanting someone to acknowledge that there is a shortage of starters, and that not everyone got the starters they wanted. But the line of discussion that is "All I wanted was for you to clarify your statement!" is just completely preposterous. -Peter

Peter D Bakija wrote: > "Kevin M." <youw...@imaspammer.org> wrote: >> Wait...you JUST SAID it's POSSIBLE it could have meant that, but >> this is MY issue for asking you for a clarification? So I'm supposed >> to be a mind-reader? Seriously, this is your defense? > > There was no need for clarification. You are claiming you were > confused as you like to do that sort of thing, not 'cause there was > any actual ambiguity in the discussion. It's sad that, even after you yourself declared your own initial statement ambiguous, agreeing with what I said to you, it is still somehow MY fault that YOU were ambiguous. Sick, really. What's even MORE sad is that you think this is something I LIKE to do. Your own intransigence is so blinding you that you have to create disgusting fiction to heap upon those who might have once called you friend. [rest of It's-Kevin's-fault!!! thread snipped] [ quoted text not captured ]

Kevin M. wrote: > It's sad that, even after you yourself declared your own initial > statement ambiguous, agreeing with what I said to you, it is still > somehow MY fault that YOU were ambiguous. Seems to me that, if there ever were any ambiguity, it has long since been clarified. There is no substantive disagreement. All that remains is an argument about who was to blame for a momentary misunderstanding.

On Feb 24, 11:24 pm, "Kevin M." <youw...@imaspammer.org> wrote: > Peter D Bakija wrote: > > "Kevin M." <youw...@imaspammer.org> wrote: > >> Wait...you JUST SAID it's POSSIBLE it could have meant that, but > >> this is MY issue for asking you for a clarification? So I'm supposed > >> to be a mind-reader? Seriously, this is your defense? > > > There was no need for clarification. You are claiming you were > > confused as you like to do that sort of thing, not 'cause there was > > any actual ambiguity in the discussion. > > It's sad that, even after you yourself declared your own initial > statement ambiguous, agreeing with what I said to you, it is still > somehow MY fault that YOU were ambiguous. Sick, really. > > What's even MORE sad is that you think this is something > I LIKE to do. Your own intransigence is so blinding you > that you have to create disgusting fiction to heap upon those > who might have once called you friend. > "Disgusting fiction"? Seriously? You don't think that's a tad over- dramatic?

On Feb 25, 12:24 am, "Kevin M." <youw...@imaspammer.org> wrote: > It's sad that, even after you yourself declared your own initial > statement ambiguous, agreeing with what I said to you, it is still > somehow MY fault that YOU were ambiguous. Sick, really. Kevin, let's reel this back a bit here. Again, I don't for one second think that you actually misunderstood what I was saying. I think that you just wanted to make a point about the shortage of starter decks, which is fine. And for the first 3 or 4 messages in this particular discussion, that was exactly what went on. Some point in the middle, you decided to turn this into a "you are being vague and deliberately difficult to understand!" (probably after I referred to your activities as "bat-shit"). Was it worth making a point about the shortage of starter decks? Sure. Whatever. But I'd like to think that we can both can see that: A) That wasn't what I was talking about in the first place. and B) There was nothing purposefully vague or misleading about my original statement in the context in which it stood. > What's even MORE sad is that you think this is something > I LIKE to do. Your own intransigence is so blinding you > that you have to create disgusting fiction to heap upon those > who might have once called you friend. Oh, Kevin. Listen. I apologize for referring to your activity as "bat- shit" (which you then followed up with by accusing me of being deliberately vague and misleading, which isn't true, and just as rude as calling someone bat-shit). How about we dial down the indignant outrage meter, call it even, and go on about our respective days without being cranky about this? -Peter