LSJ Vote Qusetion

LSJ: This is a dumd question but the 7/7 RTR says No vote pushing: Each Methuselah can only play no more than one Political Action card to gain a vote during a political action, including the Political Action card used to call the vote, if any. Dose this meen if I play a Conservative Agitation I can or can't play another one the get another vote? Thank you Droz

[ quoted text not captured ] That is correct. -- L. Scott Johnson (vte...@wizards.com) VTES Net.Rep for Wizards of the Coast. Links to revised rulebook, rulings, errata, and DCI (tournament) rules: http://www.wizards.com/VTES/VTES_Rules.html

In article <3642F0...@wizards.com>, LSJ <vte...@wizards.com> wrote: > pittboo wrote: > > LSJ: > > This is a dumd question but the 7/7 RTR says > > No vote pushing: Each Methuselah can only play no more than one Political > > Action card to gain a vote during a political action, including the > > Political Action card used to call the vote, if any. > > > > Dose this meen if I play a Conservative Agitation I can or can't play > > another one the get another vote? > > That is correct. In case you're not psychic enough to tell what LSJ means by this, it is correct that you are not allowed to play another Con Ag card (or any other political action card) to gain an additional vote when one of your vampires has called a vote using Con Ag (or any other political action card). (ie, "can't" is correct.) ^_^ This is because you (the Methuselah) have already gained one vote from calling the vote with a card, and may therefore not gain any more votes from tossed PA cards in this referendum. Josh LSJ - you seem to be having a little clarity trouble today - I think you also misused the word 'Not' in your answer on Carrion Crows. ^_- -----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==---------- http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own

> This is a dumd question but the 7/7 RTR says > No vote pushing: Each Methuselah can only play no more than one Political > Action card to gain a vote during a political action, including the > Political Action card used to call the vote, if any. > Dose this meen if I play a Conservative Agitation I can or can't play > another one the get another vote? Cannot. Even after extensive play using this ruling, I still feel that it is very retarded and only serves to severely restrict all vote decks. a0 [ quoted text not captured ]

agentzero wrote: > > This is a dumd question but the 7/7 RTR says > > No vote pushing: Each Methuselah can only play no more than one Political > > Action card to gain a vote during a political action, including the > > Political Action card used to call the vote, if any. > > Dose this meen if I play a Conservative Agitation I can or can't play > > another one the get another vote? > > Cannot. > Even after extensive play using this ruling, I still feel that it is > very retarded and only serves to severely restrict all vote decks. I have to agree with agentzero on this one. Presence already has a huge advantage in political actions. In fact, the only consistently viable voting deck is one that uses Presence. One might make a case for a Malkavian deck using Anarch Revolt and Malkavian Rider Clause, but that's a rather specialized way to do it. The reasoning that weenie political decks are unusually powerful with the previous errata (you can vote-push with any and all PA cards in your hand, but could not replace them until the end of your turn) is incredibly naive. For example: 1) A weenie deck that depends on the 8 votes (replace the action card but not the ones spent to vote pushed) will only be able to get one political action to pass. 2) It is incredibly easy to intercept weenie voters. You can get +1 intercept so easily, it's sick. 3) They have no combat defense whatsoever. Rush decks will rip them apart like tissue. 4) They have no bleed defense. A good stealth bleed deck will oust them in no time flat. 5) A "real" voting deck will shut them down. Even with the previous errta, Awe, Bewitching Oration and Dread Gaze control the political arena. A weenie political deck at least made another political deck have to work harder. There were several things that I thought were huge blunders that came out of 7/7. This was one of the biggest. Noal McDonald Anarch Troublemaker of Westland, MI -- "DISCUSSION, n. A method of confirming others in their errors." -Ambrose Bierce. [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <71vj2l$j4q$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, Dhar...@yahoo.com wrote: > agentzero wrote: > > Cannot. > > Even after extensive play using this ruling, I still feel that it is > > very retarded and only serves to severely restrict all vote decks. > > I have to agree with agentzero on this one. Presence already has > a huge advantage in political actions. In fact, the only consistently > viable voting deck is one that uses Presence. It's strange (to me) that you feel this way, since this is one of the oldest rules that was 'officialized' with the 7/7 rulings. In the ancient Sensible Player's Tournament Rules (SPTR), the two basic principles were (1) No Limits (no per-card limit on anything) and (2) Golden Tenets (no repeat actions, no vote push). Many playgroups have been using the no-vote-push rule for years. It does give Presence-using vote decks a significant advantage over non-Presence using vote decks. However, the feeling among SPTR-using players has always been that Presence ought to be a benefit for vote decks just as Obfuscate is a benefit for stealth-bleed decks. It is not possible for a deck to gain any significant amount of stealth without using disciplined cards - why should it be possible for a deck to gain substantial votes without using a discipline? Furthermore, note that Bribes is disciplineless but helps pass votes - analogous to Computer Hacking. > One might make a case for a Malkavian deck using Anarch Revolt > and Malkavian Rider Clause, but that's a rather specialized way > to do it. Funny, though. ^_^ (I assume that you're referring to playing AR, and when someone calls a vote to burn it, let it pass and then Malk Rider Clause it... hilarious!) > The reasoning that weenie political decks are unusually powerful > with the previous errata (you can vote-push with any and all PA > cards in your hand, but could not replace them until the end of > your turn) is incredibly naive. For example: Actually, it was based on tournament experience, to the best of my knowledge. > 1) A weenie deck that depends on the 8 votes (replace the > action card but not the ones spent to vote pushed) will only be > able to get one political action to pass. If the first one is a Praxis Seizure, you can start passing a great many votes with your second turn. > 2) It is incredibly easy to intercept weenie voters. You can get +1 > intercept so easily, it's sick. Sick? Shouldn't this shut down presence voters even better since they don't have as many vamps available to call votes? Also, intercept decks seem to perform poorly enough in tournament settings that you can rely on not seeing very many of them in actual tourneys. > 3) They have no combat defense whatsoever. Rush decks > will rip them apart like tissue. Only Immortal Grapple decks. Dodge is disciplineless. And weenie decks can be difficult for rush decks, just because they can get out so many vampires. > 4) They have no bleed defense. A good stealth bleed deck will oust > them in no time flat. A good weenie vote-push deck will oust its prey rather faster than a good standard Malk-type stealth bleed deck will oust it. You don't need bleed defense if you can sweep the table fast enough. > 5) A "real" voting deck will shut them down. Even with the previous > errta, Awe, Bewitching Oration and Dread Gaze control the political > arena. A weenie political deck at least made another political deck > have to work harder. In my experience, anti-vote reactions, especially the vote-gaining ones, are not very widely used. This is because there are almost always more productive things to put in the card slots, which don't rely on your opponents playing vote decks. Bewitching Oration and especially Awe will help a presence voter to pass its votes (Awe is a bit on the Just Wrong side in my estimation), sure, but they won't do much toward keeping the weenie from passing his votes unless you're also calling lots of Praxis Seizures. And if the weenie has gotten a quick enough start on the PS action, they may be able to outvote you from the outset. Even if not, dumping a hand of political actions can often stop even a Bewitching Oration-ed vote, unless the Presence player already has titles on the table. > There were several things that I thought were huge blunders that came > out of 7/7. This was one of the biggest. This was one of the most widely used before 7/7... In many groups, this rule is considered the very essence of balance. Josh try a deck like this: 20 Praxis Seizure, 40 Kine Resources Contested, 20 Dodge. Crypt of all the 1-cap Camarilla vamps plus the nonCams if you want, possibly also some 2-caps. This is a very simplistic outline of a weenie vote push deck, but it's absurdly effective considering it has only two kinds of cards in it. Weenie decks can inherently be fast and brutal just due to the minimal size of their vampires, but votes tend to magnify the problem. Consider an alternate deck of 10 Misdirection, 10 Effective Management, 40 Computer Hacking, 20 Dodge - it wouldn't be as fast. [ quoted text not captured ]

On Fri, 6 Nov 1998 Dhar...@yahoo.com wrote: > agentzero wrote: > > Even after extensive play using this ruling, I still feel that it is > > very retarded and only serves to severely restrict all vote decks. > > I have to agree with agentzero on this one. Presence already has > a huge advantage in political actions. In fact, the only consistently > viable voting deck is one that uses Presence. Their has been debate on this before, but since it has come up again, I shall post some thoughts I had on the subject from an earlier private E-mail discussion, where I argued against the idea that the old way made voting less predictable: ---------------------------- I like "no vote push". I have a strong bias towards in favor of following the official rules. But I have other reasons for liking some sort of "no vote push" rule: One is the versatility and variety it promotes. Jyhad is full of interesting vote modifiers and vote reactions. Many rarely saw play under the old way, because it was so easy just to stuff your hand with Political Action cards and play them with total versatility either as 1) vote action cards, 2) vote modifiers gaining votes for votes you cast, 3) vote reaction cards gaining votes in other peoples votes. With the old system, there is no need to agonize about how many PA cards to play as opposed to vote modifiers, or vote reactions. You can simply throw in all PA cards and use them for all 3 purposes. With vote push eliminated, one must compensate with other strategies, like: Presence Voting (Charming Lobby, Bewitching Oration, Dread Gaze, Business Pressure) Having large titled vampires Hosing large titled vampires (Command of Harpies, eg) Having the Edge when voting Surprise Influence Having vote Locations (Ventrue HQ, Elesium PV, etc.) Hosing vote locations (Arson, Disputed Territory, Unnatural Disaster, Kine Dominance.) Regaining the Upper Hand (built-in "cryptic rider" of one extra vote on your next vote this turn--the only real point the card ever had, but it is pointless if you can just use the card for a vote push anyway.) Bribes (Surprisingly Effective) Cryptic Rider Delaying Tactics Elder Kindred Network Pulling Strings Kindred Coercion Scorn of Adonis Telepathic Vote Counting Votes that can enlist support from other Methuselahs, (like Ancient Influence, Parity Shift, Rumors of Gehenna) Justicar siezure PAs (followed by Cryptic Riders, perhaps) Closed Session Conflict of Interests Of Noble Blood (vote-free Primogen siezure) Malkavian Rider Clause Many of the above will never see play because they are just not effective alternatives to a hand full of PAs. Now you might say that "Surprise Influence" is a better card than a PA because it gives you 2 votes instead of 1, but consider the following. -- You can get rid of the PA any time you want. A handful of PAs will not cause hand jam. -- You do not need an untapped minion (or any minion at all) to play the PA -- A PA can be played as an action card to call a vote -- A PA can be used to add modify your own vote action, like an action modifier All in all, you'd be almost crazy to put in Surprise Influence when you could put in a couple of PA's instead. A similar analysis would apply to most vote modifiers and reactions. These cards become wallpaper, with PA's serving both functions as well as their primary one. Only the best vote modifiers (the presence vote modifiers) ever see play, because a handful of PAs is so much more versatile. Under "vote push" PAs are broken cards that invalidate 2 whole other classes of cards. Arguably, the "no-vote push" situation is what was originally intended by the Jyhad rulebook. See page 39. "A political card always provides one vote for the Methuselah playing it. This card is immediately replaced after being played. Additional political cards can also be used by any of the other Methuselahs for votes. The actual effects of these cards are ignored. Cards used in this way are discarded to the ash heap and not replaced until the voting is finished." This passage seems to be saying that burning additional cards for additional votes is something *other* Methuselahs can do, not the one calling the vote. At the time, though, the RT ruled otherwise. Nonetheless, many argued for years that that was what it should have been. I tend to agree. If you want to make things unpredictable, why not allow unlimited PA vote playing by the *other* Methuselahs, as seems consistent with the above text. This would also make it even harder for Weenies to become Princes, which, one might argue, is a more faithful representation of the WOD universe. (I am not convinced, though, that this is demonstrably better than the current official way.) But there is no reason to allow vote pushing by acting Methuselahs, if you want to promote unpredictability. There is nothing unpredictable about weenies pushing praxis siezures with a handful of PAs on their first turn. It is boring, and makes weenie vote much too powerful. On the net, some people argued against the new rule, saying that "Presence Voting" would now be the only viable voter deck type. Experienced players who have using the "no vote push" rule for years, however, say that promotes greater variety in vote deck types. It only hurts weenie vote decks, which needed to be curbed and remain powerful nonetheless. Lupus Australis ____ ____ \ \----/ / |()__()| __\ __ /__ / __\()/__ \ |/ \==/ \| | || |

On Fri, 6 Nov 1998 Dhar...@yahoo.com wrote: > > Even after extensive play using this ruling, I still feel that it is > > very retarded and only serves to severely restrict all vote decks. > I have to agree with agentzero on this one. No offense to agentzero, but I would translate his statement as "it only serves to severely retard all severely retarded vote decks". It does not take alot of brains, skill, creativity or strategy to pack your deck with PAs and use them willy nilly as vote actions, vote reactions that don't require ready minions, or as discipline-free vote modifiers. Unfortunately, under "vote push" this is so effective that any other cards or strategies become counter productive (except for the most effective, such as Presence modifiers). > Presence already has > a huge advantage in political actions. In fact, the only consistently > viable voting deck is one that uses Presence. Under "vote push" only the best vote modifiers and vote reactions have a chance of competing with a hand packed full of PAs. Presence Modifiers such as Bewitching Oration are among the few that qualify. At the risk of oversimplifying slightly, one can say that under "Vote Push", there are only 2 viable strategies: Presence voting and Vote Pushing. This has caused many thoughtless people to carelessly assume that, once you eliminate Vote Push, there will be only one strategy left: Presence voting. Actually, eliminating vote push creates a power vacuum that allows alternative vote strategies a chance to compete. Even Presence voting is cut down to size, as in the past the power of Presence votes could be inhanced by vote pushing. Imagine, for instance, that I want to Sieze a Praxis, and have 3 weenie minions out: Nik, Franciscus, and Deiter Kleist. Problem: playing the Praxis will give you only one vote, and you suspect you will need more than that, as there is already a Biship on the table who has no reason to vote for your becoming Prince, and there are plenty of others that probably have vote cards in their hands. Also, your predator has the edge, and he's not going to vote for you either. So the first thing you do is play Cat Burglary with Nik, gaining the edge. Then you play Praxis Siezure, tossing in the edge for a vote. The Biship votes against you and 2 other people play PA cards, so you play Telepathic Vote counting and take the card back into your hand. Finally Deiter gives it a shot, and modifies it with Bribes and Scorn of Adonis. This time the Bishop abstains, one person throws a vote in your favor to benefit from the Bribes, and only one of your opponents throws down a PA card against you, losing a pool in the process. Your vote passes 2 - 1. This interesting scenario would be completely ludicrous under "PA vote push", because it would make absolutely no sense for you to have Cat Burglary, Telepathic Vote Counting, Bribes, and Scorn of Adonis in your hand, when you could throw these out of your deck, replace them with 4 PA cards, and just push the vote though that way. > One might make a case for a Malkavian deck using Anarch Revolt > and Malkavian Rider Clause, but that's a rather specialized way > to do it. That is a nice creative notion. Better than 50% PAs in the deck. > The reasoning that weenie political decks are unusually powerful > with the previous errata (you can vote-push with any and all PA > cards in your hand, but could not replace them until the end of > your turn) is incredibly naive. For example: I don't know if weenie vote push is incredibly powerful, but it is certainly incredibly dull. > 1) A weenie deck that depends on the 8 votes (replace the > action card but not the ones spent to vote pushed) will only be > able to get one political action to pass. In my experience, a weenie deck never needs 8 votes to pass a Praxis Siezure on its first minion phase. > 2) It is incredibly easy to intercept weenie voters. You can get +1 > intercept so easily, it's sick. Unless they are my fast replicating Weenie Nossie Obfuscators. Alternatively, you might have to deal with four 1 capacity caitiff all trying to call praxis Siezure on their first minion phase. How many of them are you going to be able to intercept? > 3) They have no combat defense whatsoever. Rush decks > will rip them apart like tissue. No one ever said such decks were unbeatable. Still, weenie decks, including weenie vote decks, tend to win a disproportionate amount ot the time. Of course, my weenie Nossie obfuscators like to whip out assault rifles with disguised weapon when they are rushed, with Behind You for additional maneuver if necessary. They pay for these with consanguinous Boons, of course. > 4) They have no bleed defense. A good stealth bleed deck will oust > them in no time flat. Unless they oust their own prey first. > 5) A "real" voting deck will shut them down. Even with the previous > errta, Awe, Bewitching Oration and Dread Gaze control the political > arena. A weenie political deck at least made another political deck > have to work harder. Dread Gaze is rarely played, because "vote push" is more versatile and reliable. Bewitching oration will have no effect on *your* votes. > There were several things that I thought were huge blunders that came > out of 7/7. This was one of the biggest. I could not disagree more. [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <71vj2l$j4q$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, Dhar...@yahoo.com writes >I have to agree with agentzero on this one. Presence already has >a huge advantage in political actions. Now it does, perhaps. Before, it didn't. Prior to 7/7, the most effective vote deck on show was weenie vote push. So, stopping brainless decks and requiring thought is a bad thing? > In fact, the only consistently >viable voting deck is one that uses Presence. The Lasombra do a good job of it too, you know. Steal your votes, Power Structure and the like. Lyndhurst Estate is also a viable card for decks. Bribes works a lot of the time. Autarkis followed by Cryptic is all too possible. How about bringing out titles, too? There are still a couple of locations which will help too. -- James Coupe (Prince of Mercia, England) Vampire: Elder Kindred Network http://madnessnetwork.hexagon.net

In article <Pine.SUN.3.96.981106184142.27962C-100000@amanda>, Lupus Australis <jbwh...@dorsai.org> writes > Regaining the Upper Hand (built-in "cryptic rider" of one > extra vote on your next vote this turn--the only real > point the card ever had, but it is pointless if you can > just use the card for a vote push anyway.) Actually, if you have a Methuselah who tries to gain pool (or who is just gaining pool as an act of serendipity) by keeping the edge, Regaining the Upper Hand can be good - a bleed for 0 which is at +1 stealth and can't be got rid of using Telepathic Counter and so forth. > > -- You can get rid of the PA any time you want. A handful of PAs > will not cause hand jam. > -- You do not need an untapped minion (or any minion at all) to > play the PA > -- A PA can be played as an action card to call a vote > -- A PA can be used to add modify your own vote action, like an > action modifier > >All in all, you'd be almost crazy to put in Surprise Influence when you >could put in a couple of PA's instead. Not necessarily. Many people *do* leave a vampire untapped and ready at the end of their minion phase as a blocker (or whatever they intend to react with). Also, card space. A random Consanguineous Boon in your deck gives you 1 vote of vote defence. A Surprise Influence gives you 2 votes of vote defence for the same card slottage. Granted, the PA could be got rid of in other ways, but for simple vote defence, it's not as good. OTOH, though, Delaying Tactics may be better still for simply getting rid of votes. Is vote defence simply about stopping votes going through though? Well, that may be one way in which you can use it, but it doesn't have to be. Rather than vote defence, decks should contain vote influence - the ability to have your say in a vote. If someone is calling a vote which I *want* to pass, but they're a little edgy for the majority needed, my Delaying Tactics is useless. My Surprise Influence gives me more votes to aid them than my Consanguineous Boon would, but like you say, my Consanguineous Boon gives me more flexibility. Ah, swings and roundabouts. Don't you just love them? ;) [ quoted text not captured ]

Noal wrote: "I have to agree with agentzero on this one. Presence already has a huge advantage in political actions. In fact, the only consistently viable voting deck is one that uses Presence." And decks that use Obfuscate are the only reliable Stealth and Bleed decks. Now, Presence vote decks are usually stronger at pure vote domination than non presence vote decks, but for what possible reason should this not be the case? Again, it is like complaining that you can't make a good S+B deck without Obfuscate--a kind of pointless argument. "One might make a case for a Malkavian deck using Anarch Revolt and Malkavian Rider Clause, but that's a rather specialized way to do it." Or, make a deck out of princes. Or make an Auspex deck (probably a Malk Stealth/Vote deck) that uses Telepathic Vote Counting (a pretty strong vote card). Or use Bribes. Or convince your allies across the table to vote for you. Politics are not meant to be completely one sided. Before the offical no vote push rules, voting tended to be completely one sided--politicking had no effect, cause _any_ vote deck could push their vote through by tossing votes away. Now, only a Presence deck (or a deck with titled vampires) can do this, and other political decks have to be, well, political. I fail to see how this is a bad thing. If you want to make a vote superiority/lock down deck, use either Presence or large, titled vampires (probably backed by rampant pool gain). If you are not happy with these options for whatever reason (like you wan't stealth), you trade a less certain vote lock for increased abilities elsewhere, like stealth. "The reasoning that weenie political decks are unusually powerful with the previous errata (you can vote-push with any and all PA cards in your hand, but could not replace them until the end of your turn) is incredibly naive. For example:" No, this is not naive at all. As has been shown for years at many, many tournaments, the weenie vote push deck was too powerful. This last year at Origins, the WVP deck was highly successful, losing the finals due to table position. WVP was such a well recognized problem that it directly resulted in the poorly designed original Card Limit tourney rules, the second wave "limited vote push rules", the superior "Sensible Persons Tournament Rules", and finally the official "no vote push" rules. There is so much evidence that points to the fact that unrestricted vote cycling is too powerful that some sort of fix was inevitable, and the current one works fine. "There were several things that I thought were huge blunders that came out of 7/7. This was one of the biggest." The No Vote Push rules did not come out of the 7/7 rules. They are arguably how the rules were inteded to work in the first place, and were one of the original common house rules fixes. My group has been playing with the very same rules for years now, as have many other groups, and as such, a great deal of "playtesting" of the No Vote Push rules have been done for a very long time. Please don't take this as a jab, as it is in no way meant to be, but as your group regularly uses 6CL, it seems unlikely that you have had all that much experience with Tourney designed WVP decks (I could be completely wrong, and you could go to sanctioned tourneys every week, however...). A WVP deck with only 6 KRC and 6 ConAG is going to be _much_ less effective than a WVP deck with 15 of each, and as such, I can see why you wouldn't think it was a problem. Peter D Bakija PD...@aol.com "No other object has been misidentified as a flying saucer more often than the planet Venus." -Jesse "The Governor" Ventura

On Sat, 7 Nov 1998, James Coupe wrote: > >All in all, you'd be almost crazy to put in Surprise Influence when you > >could put in a couple of PA's instead. > > Not necessarily. Many people *do* leave a vampire untapped and ready at > the end of their minion phase as a blocker (or whatever they intend to > react with). Also, card space. I think you are overestimating the inportance of the "card space" issue as it applies to this situation. There are very few decks that use all their "card space" in the course of a game. In practice, especially under old vote push rules, a surprise influence takes up far more space in your *hand* than will an equivalent or greater number of PAs because you cannot burn through the Surprise Influences as quickly and easily as the PAs. The card has a high opportunity cost, which will slow down your deck and game, and in the end result in your casting fewer votes and having less influence. Having twice as many votes in your deck will not help you if you move through the deck only half as fast. Imagine I have a 90 card deck with 20 PA cards in it. If I want, I can replace those 20 cards with 10 Surprise influences. The result is a smaller deck (80 cards) with the same number of votes. However, the 90 card deck will be far more fluid, and burn through a greater number of cards, and votes, in the course of the game. In neither case will running out of cards be likely to be an issue. Of course, I could replace my 20 PA cards with 20 Surprise Influences, making full use of available "deck space". This, however, will only compound my troubles. My deck will be slower than ever, with most SIs being played during the discard phase. The deck with the PAs will still end up casting more votes and having more influence. Now you may argue that this is a bad hypothetical example because no-one would devise a strategy solely out of SI. Fair enough, but the argument is still valid no matter what combination of high opportunity vote modifiers and vote reactions I put in my deck to replace double their number of PAs. I've played a Toreador deck with lots of political action modifiers in them, and believe me, it can be a real bummer when you have a bunch of modifiers in your hand and no actions to modify -- or a bunch of reaction cards in your hand and no-one playing votes. A handful of PAs simply does not give you this problem (unless "no vote push" is played). > A random Consanguineous Boon in your > deck gives you 1 vote of vote defence. A Surprise Influence gives you 2 > votes of vote defence for the same card slottage. Granted, the PA could > be got rid of in other ways, but for simple vote defence, it's not as > good. No, it's better. If I have 4 Consanguinous Boons in my hand, I can play them all on my minion phase, replace them, and still have yet more Consanguinous Boons to play for "Vote reactions" on other people's minion phases. Being able to play these cards causes other cards to come up, including perhaps that Minion Tap I've been hoping for. If I have 2 Surprise Influences in my hand, however, I cannot use them on my minion phase at all. I have to wait for others to cast votes on *their* turn, and if no-one obliges I am stuck with discarding. It may be a while before that Minion Tap I need comes up. Even if someone does cast a vote, I can only play one SI per untapped minion. With double the number of PAs, I could have played as many as I wanted, even with *no* untapped minions. Under old vote push rules, a few SIs will jam your hand far more easily than double, triple, or even quadruple the number of PAs. > OTOH, though, Delaying Tactics may be better still for simply > getting rid of votes. A good card, made even better due to NRA. Note that under "no vote push" its disadvantage -- that it allows your opponent to get back his PA card, is more significant, because your opponent is likely to have a more limitted number of PA cards in his deck. Under "vote push" this was often an advantage, because it prevented your opponent from being able to cycle cards. > Is vote defence simply about stopping votes going through though? Well, > that may be one way in which you can use it, but it doesn't have to be. > Rather than vote defence, decks should contain vote influence - the > ability to have your say in a vote. If someone is calling a vote which > I *want* to pass, but they're a little edgy for the majority needed, my > Delaying Tactics is useless. My Surprise Influence gives me more votes > to aid them than my Consanguineous Boon would, but like you say, my > Consanguineous Boon gives me more flexibility. Again, I disagree. The Consanguinous Boons would gain you more votes because you would get to play more of them. [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <Pine.SUN.3.96.981107145616.11863A-100000@amanda>, Lupus Australis <jbwh...@dorsai.org> writes >Of course, I could replace my 20 PA cards with 20 Surprise Influences, >making full use of available "deck space". This is what reveals we are talking at cross-purposes. I am talking about vote defence, not the significant voting power that 20 votes would give me. I am talking about the sort of defence where you possibly have one card in your hand related to it at a time, because it is only a minor consideration in your deck. In that instance, you have three real options: 1) Vote card - eg Consanguineous Boon 2) Vote reaction - Surprise Influence 3) Cancel vote - Delaying Tactics The fact that you *could* throw down four Con Boons on a vote is of little consequence in a deck where I shouldn't be drawing that many. Being as, in the deck I am talking about, I only have perhaps half a dozen cards for vote defence in, I'd probably like to get a lot of votes for my space. Well, *I'd* like to get a lot of votes for my space, never mind the rest of you ;) In the decks I construct, I rarely design to tap out. In these cases, having a vampire untapped to react is not a hardship. In other people's decks, they tap out on a regular basis. Personally, I prefer to be able to have my say in a vote rather than cancel it - but other people have different opinions. So, the options above work like this: 1) 1 vote, but doesn't restrict my minions 2) 2 votes, but requires an untapped minion 3) Stops a vote, but can only stop a vote.... untapped minion IMHO, the better choice is to have votes and personally I like to have as many votes as possible for my space. If you tap out a lot, a PA card is going to be better. That is what I meant at the end of my post about swings and roundabouts. I can get benefits from one or the other. [ quoted text not captured ]

Peter (PDB6) wrote: > Noal wrote: > "I have to agree with agentzero on this one. Presence already has > a huge advantage in political actions. In fact, the only consistently > viable voting deck is one that uses Presence." > > And decks that use Obfuscate are the only reliable Stealth and Bleed decks. > Now, Presence vote decks are usually stronger at pure vote domination than non > presence vote decks, but for what possible reason should this not be the case? > Again, it is like complaining that you can't make a good S+B deck without > Obfuscate--a kind of pointless argument. Not only is it a pointless argument, it is a irrelevant one. (...and a false one. A protean-dominate deck makes a great stealth bleed) Stop arguing about apples to disprove a theory about oranges. > Please don't take this as a jab, as it is in no way meant to be, but as your > group regularly uses 6CL, it seems unlikely that you have had all that much > experience with Tourney designed WVP decks (I could be completely wrong, and > you could go to sanctioned tourneys every week, however...). We hold tournaments every month, actually. We've stopped making them sanctioned after 7/7 after a nearly unanimous statewide agreement. And I have faced weenie voting decks before...and I dismantled them very easily. It's not my fault if other players are unable to take advantage of the several weaknesses of the strategy. > A WVP deck with > only 6 KRC and 6 ConAG is going to be _much_ less effective than a WVP deck > with 15 of each, and as such, I can see why you wouldn't think it was a > problem. It can have 25 each and it wouldn't matter. They would still be as vulnerable in the ways that I mentioned....which I notice you didn't discuss. Noal McDonald -- "DISCUSSION, n. A method of confirming others in their errors." -Ambrose Bierce. -----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==---------- [ quoted text not captured ]

> > In fact, the only consistently > >viable voting deck is one that uses Presence. > > The Lasombra do a good job of it too, you know. Steal your votes, Power > Structure and the like. Not that good. You have to take 2 actions just to *try* to steal the opponents vampire's votes. That is time away from burning their pool. I like the Lasombra *alot*, but they are just somewhat unfocused. You can either make a really good combat deck, a mediocre political deck or a bad mix of both. > Bribes works a lot of the time. Autarkis followed by Cryptic is > all too possible. ahahaha. Umm, sorry, that just made me bust out laughing. I don't know about how your playgroup works, but I've found that Bribes and Cryptic Rider work very, very rarely. The first time you throw down the CR, if you don't have vote lock (titles, presense), all subsequent PAs will be voted down for the fear of a CR, even if you throw Bribes. So touting Bribes and Cryptic Rider as essential in a Political deck doesn't cut it for me. > How about bringing out titles, too? This and Presense is the only way, now. While it is not in and of itself a *horrible* thing (I still think it's not good either), it is just *very* restrictive. Elsewhere in this thread, Peter (I believe) equated this with complaing about how you had to have Obfuscate in a S&B deck. This is not entirely true. There are many, many ways you can build a S&B deck w/o Obfuscate and many ways you can build a combat deck w/o Potence. However, there is only 2 ways you can build a political deck if you want it to be in any way viable. a0 [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <726r1t$4fh$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, <Dhar...@yahoo.com> wrote: >Peter (PDB6) wrote: >>And decks that use Obfuscate are the only reliable Stealth and Bleed decks. >>Now, Presence vote decks are usually stronger at pure vote domination than non >>presence vote decks, but for what possible reason should this not be the case? >>Again, it is like complaining that you can't make a good S+B deck without >>Obfuscate--a kind of pointless argument. > >Not only is it a pointless argument, it is a irrelevant one. (...and a false >one. >A protean-dominate deck makes a great stealth bleed) >Stop arguing about apples to disprove a theory about oranges. It's an entirely apt arguement. And Protean doesn't in any way compare with Obfuscate in terms of producing Stealth. Form of Mist is nice, but far more dangerous than extra stealth. I also don't agree with your broad assertion that the only good voting deck is a presence based one. >We hold tournaments every month, actually. We've stopped making them >sanctioned after 7/7 after a nearly unanimous statewide agreement. And I >have faced weenie voting decks before...and I dismantled them very easily. >It's not my fault if other players are unable to take advantage of the >several weaknesses of the strategy. Ok, I'm curious. Exactly how do you so easily dismatle weenie vote push decks? Do you always play with lots of Delaying Tactics? >> A WVP deck with >> only 6 KRC and 6 ConAG is going to be _much_ less effective than a WVP deck >> with 15 of each, and as such, I can see why you wouldn't think it was a >> problem. > >It can have 25 each and it wouldn't matter. They would still be as vulnerable >in the ways that I mentioned....which I notice you didn't discuss. Hmmm. I at least missed those. I'll have to scan back. Whatever weakness you might have brought up, weenie vote push still easily outvotes anything else -- and can call more votes. -- /\ Jasper Phillips /VVVVVVVVVVVVVV|~"~"~"~"~"~"----------........____ jaz j^^^^^^^^^^^^^\/"~"~"~"~-----------........._____ ~"~--. * http://www.engr.orst.edu/~philljas/ "~"~'--`

In article <72727a$amm$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, agen...@my-dejanews.com wrote: > [someone else wrote] > > How about bringing out titles, too? > > This and Presense is the only way, now. While it is not in and of > itself a *horrible* thing (I still think it's not good either), it > is just *very* restrictive. Elsewhere in this thread, Peter (I believe) > equated this with complaing about how you had to have Obfuscate in > a S&B deck. This is not entirely true. There are many, many ways > you can build a S&B deck w/o Obfuscate and many ways you can build a > combat deck w/o Potence. However, there is only 2 ways you can > build a political deck if you want it to be in any way viable. I think the more relevant comparison is that you can't make a stealth and bleed deck without disciplines. Not just without Obfuscate, without *any* discipline for gaining stealth. There simply aren't any +stealth action modifiers that are disciplineless. Just like there aren't any +vote action modifiers that are disciplineless. It so happens that most of the vote-passing-useful action modifiers require Presence. That makes Presence substantially the most useful discipline for a vote deck. But it doesn't mean that vote-pushing should be allowed because otherwise it's harder to build a vote deck without Presence. To me, that's like saying Elder Intervention should be playable during any action, because otherwise it's harder to make an intercept deck without using Auspex. Without vote-pushing, to pass opposed votes you need an angle other than the rest of the vote cards in your hand. In my mind, that's a good thing. Josh do we let combat decks enter combat without a bum's rush? combat decks would be more playable if you could... [ quoted text not captured ]

Jasper Phillips wrote: > It's an entirely apt arguement. And Protean doesn't in any way compare > with Obfuscate in terms of producing Stealth. Form of Mist is nice, > but far more dangerous than extra stealth. Notice I said Protean-Dominate. Earth Control, Form of Mist, Rapid Change are Protean cards that give stealth. Dominate can give you Dominate Kine and Bonding for stealth for bleed actions. And to be honest, most decks aren't equipped for more than +2 intercept under most circumstances....which means that you don't need +17 stealth to get a bleed through. > I also don't agree with your broad assertion that the only good voting > deck is a presence based one. Notice I made special mention of a Malkavian deck using Anarch Revolt and Malkavian Rider Clause. That's the only strategy that doesn't use presence that is likely to win without cooperation from other players. Put together any voting deck that doesn't use presence or the Anarch Revolt-Malk Rider Clause combo. I'll play my Ventrue voting deck from jol76. Who do you think will win? I'm sorry if that sounds arrogant, but the reality is that a political deck that doesn't use presence or Malk Rider Clauses will only consistently win on the good graces of the other players. > Ok, I'm curious. Exactly how do you so easily dismatle weenie vote push decks? > Do you always play with lots of Delaying Tactics? No. Delaying Tactics only delays the inevitable. You intercept the votes. You beat up the vampires. You bleed them out of the game. You vote all of their PA's down. A deck that has nothing but PA cards has no defense against anything...which leaves it extremely vulnerable. Hell, pack some Anarch Uprisings. If there's a weenie deck on the table, most of the players will happily vote for it. With an Bewitching Oration and an Awe, I don't care if he's holding 7 PA cards. The vote will pass. It amazes me that a large percentage of you can't see the obvious holes in the strategy of a weenie voting deck. Noal McDonald -- "DISCUSSION, n. A method of confirming others in their errors." -Ambrose Bierce. -----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==---------- [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <72727a$amm$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, agen...@my-dejanews.com writes >This and Presense is the only way, now. While it is not in and of >itself a *horrible* thing (I still think it's not good either), it >is just *very* restrictive. More restrictive than having to play solely with weenies and a hand full of vote cards which was the only way before? [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <726r1t$4fh$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, Dhar...@yahoo.com writes >And I >have faced weenie voting decks before...and I dismantled them very easily. Please provide a deck which will reliable stop weenie vote push and allow you to have your own deck ideas going too. [ quoted text not captured ]

Joshua Duffin wrote: > I think the more relevant comparison is that you can't make a stealth > and bleed deck without disciplines. Not just without Obfuscate, without > *any* discipline for gaining stealth. There simply aren't any +stealth > action modifiers that are disciplineless. No...you're missing the track completely. You can make a consistently viable stealth bleed deck without Obfuscate as there are other disciplines that can be substituted. With one exception, you can't make a consistently viable voting deck without Presence. For a voting deck to win consistently, it has to be able to seize political control of the table. With the new errata, unless you use Presence, you cannot do that. > It so happens that most of the vote-passing-useful action modifiers require > Presence. That makes Presence substantially the most useful discipline > for a vote deck. It makes it the _only_ useful discipline. And that's the problem. The new errata has unbalanced the game in favor of Presence. > But it doesn't mean that vote-pushing should be allowed > because otherwise it's harder to build a vote deck without Presence. It's not only harder...it's almost impossible to build a consistently winning vote deck without Presence. > To > me, that's like saying Elder Intervention should be playable during any > action, because otherwise it's harder to make an intercept deck without > using Auspex. There are numerous disciplines that are competent for intercept. Chimerstry, for one. Not to mention the plethora of ways to get intercept. There are not very many useful ways to get get political control of the table without using Presence. > Without vote-pushing, to pass opposed votes you need an angle other than > the rest of the vote cards in your hand. In my mind, that's a good thing. You need either Malkavian Rider Clause, Presence or the good graces of the other players. I'm sorry...that's unbalanced in every sense of the word. A properly set up voting deck using Presence will have no viable resistance unless someone else plays Presence. > do we let combat decks enter combat without a bum's rush? combat decks > would be more playable if you could... Without Bum's Rush? There's Haven Uncovered, Ambush, Archon, Blood Hunt, War Party, Imperial Decree, Covenant of Blood...all of which do not require disciplines, which means that any vampire can use them. Sounds like combat decks are more playable. So what's your point? Noal McDonald Archbishop of Westland, MI [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <727brm$jpo$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, Dhar...@yahoo.com writes >> Ok, I'm curious. Exactly how do you so easily dismatle weenie vote push decks? >> Do you always play with lots of Delaying Tactics? > >No. Delaying Tactics only delays the inevitable. You intercept the votes. >You beat up the vampires. You bleed them out of the game. You vote all of >their PA's down. A deck that has nothing but PA cards has no defense against >anything...which leaves it extremely vulnerable. > So you defend yourself by exclusively intercepting your predator. How does this help you win? I don't ever accept any answers from anyone which say "Well, you can do this but you won't have a deck of your own left." >Hell, pack some Anarch Uprisings. If there's a weenie deck on the table, >most of the players will happily vote for it. With an Bewitching Oration and >an Awe, I don't care if he's holding 7 PA cards. The vote will pass. > Against 7PAs and quite a few weenies princes, it might pass once or twice. Not often enough. >It amazes me that a large percentage of you can't see the obvious holes in the >strategy of a weenie voting deck. There are obvious holes in every strategy. If you can't reliably defend yourself against those strategies without sacrificing the ability to oust your prey, then the strategy should be examined. [ quoted text not captured ]

James Coupe wrote: > Please provide a deck which will reliable stop weenie vote push and > allow you to have your own deck ideas going too. I can do it in two cards. Atonement and Guardian Angel. Noal [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <727fj7$n76$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, Dhar...@yahoo.com wrote: > Joshua Duffin wrote: > > I think the more relevant comparison is that you can't make a stealth > > and bleed deck without disciplines. Not just without Obfuscate, without > > *any* discipline for gaining stealth. There simply aren't any +stealth > > action modifiers that are disciplineless. > > No...you're missing the track completely. You can make a consistently viable > stealth bleed deck without Obfuscate as there are other disciplines that can > be substituted. With one exception, you can't make a consistently viable > voting deck without Presence. For a voting deck to win consistently, it has > to be able to seize political control of the table. With the new errata, > unless you use Presence, you cannot do that. Looks like our posts are shooting past each other in the ether now. Feel free to only respond to one of the recent ones. From my point of view, politics is inherently meant to be political. It *shouldn't* be that easy to get a vote lock. It can be done to some extent with Presence; under no-vote-push it is hard to do without using some sneaky tricks. Under vote-push-allowed it is unreasonably easy to do using a weenie vote push strategy. Just because there are no other discipline cards to really substitute for Presence in passing votes doesn't mean that you should be able to get by without a discipline and use PAs instead. My 'argument against' hinges on being opposed to allowing a no-discipline strategy (vote push) to be at least as useful as a discipline strategy (presence vote, obfuscate stealth, dominate +bleed, etc). > > It so happens that most of the vote-passing-useful action modifiers require > > Presence. That makes Presence substantially the most useful discipline > > for a vote deck. > > It makes it the _only_ useful discipline. And that's the problem. The new > errata has unbalanced the game in favor of Presence. But that's the way it was always supposed to be. Why were there ever Presence +vote cards if you could make a vote deck just as well without Presence? Using a discipline has always produced better effects than using no discipline. It happens that Presence is pretty much the useful discipline in vote-passing. What other disciplines would you suggest ought to be able to pass votes? The only one I would think would be reasonable is Dominate, which also doesn't need any help as a discipline. I think this is just a case of game-world logic producing a cardset that restricts certain abilities to certain clans/disciplines. I guess your real contention seems to be that there should be other disciplines that can also gain votes, besides Presence, because otherwise vote decks can only be built with Presence? That I don't really have much of a problem with; it's just hard to fix it. I don't think allowing disciplineless vote push is the right answer. > > do we let combat decks enter combat without a bum's rush? combat decks > > would be more playable if you could... > > Without Bum's Rush? > There's Haven Uncovered, Ambush, Archon, Blood Hunt, War Party, > Imperial Decree, Covenant of Blood...all of which do not require disciplines, > which means that any vampire can use them. > > Sounds like combat decks are more playable. So what's your point? No, I don't mean 'without using the specific card Bum's Rush', I mean 'without having a Rush card of any kind in hand'. Treating combat decks in the same way that vote-push treats vote decks would mean allowing a combat deck to use any combat card instead of a Bum's Rush, as an action to enter combat. Or to use every Bum's Rush to substitute for any combat card they name. [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <727brm$jpo$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, Dhar...@yahoo.com wrote: > You intercept the votes. How many times are you going to intercept? I have 1 to 4 vampires on my second turn depending on how many transfers I had on my first turn. How many intercepting weenies did you bring out? After that, I don't care if you intercept me because I'll have all the Praxis Seizures I need. > You beat up the vampires. I could care less. That's why they're weenies. Where you kill one, there are 8 others. Unless you're playing weenie rush, you won't keep up. Meanwhile, you're predator or prey is able to run free. > You bleed them out of the game. On my third turn, I am using my vampires to do ConAg and KRC to kill my prey at 3 to 4 pool an action. And I'm using 4 or more vampires. How many are you bleeding me with? Not as many as I'm using. My prey will be ousted long before you oust me. I've spent maybe 8 to 12 on vampires, leaving 18 to 22 pool remaining. > You vote all of their PA's down. How exactly do you plan on doing that unless you're playing weenie votes, too? After my second turn, I have a few Princes. After that, I have several, and I've spent 5 to 8 transfers. That means there will be at most 3 (4 if 5 players) other titled vampires out. And if you spent your pool bringing out titled vampires, you aren't going to have enough of them to intercept every one of my political actions. > A deck that has nothing but PA cards has no defense against > anything...which leaves it extremely vulnerable. It makes it vulnerable, but far from putting it in-line with other decks. My most effective WVP deck uses about this mix of cards: 20 different Praxis Seizures 20 KRC 10 ConAg 10 Autarkis Persecution 8 Effective Management 4 Gird Minions 15 different Camarilla vampires, mainly Caitiff > Hell, pack some Anarch Uprisings. If there's a weenie deck on the table, > most of the players will happily vote for it. With an Bewitching Oration and > an Awe, I don't care if he's holding 7 PA cards. The vote will pass. So you have to team up against it to defeat it? Ganging up against a deck in order to stop it is a sign of brokenness to me. And it's still not guaranteed to work. > It amazes me that a large percentage of you can't see the obvious holes in the > strategy of a weenie voting deck. And it amazes us on the other side that you apparently haven't seen a truly effective weenie vote push deck. My WVP deck above has only lost once, and that was when everyone decided they really wanted to beat it and chose either pure Intercept or Ventrue vote. My playgroup finally agreed that WVP is broken, but they still wanted other vote decks to be able to push. So I got shamed out of playing the WVP deck anymore. :) The fact of the matter is, WVP can be stopped if you specifically prepare for it. If you just prepare standard vote defense (light intercept, Delaying Tactics, titled vampires, combinations thereof), you are toast. Mike -- Mike Bohlmann, MAIP - Prince of Urbana-Champaign Rules Survey - http://www.shout.net/~mbohlman/vekn/ [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <727brm$jpo$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, Dhar...@yahoo.com wrote: > I'm sorry if that sounds arrogant, but the reality is that a political deck > that doesn't use presence or Malk Rider Clauses will only consistently win on > the good graces of the other players. The reality is that there is no deck that *consistently* wins, because if there were no one would ever play anything else. Some people like challenges in deckbuilding. These people may play non- Presence vote decks, knowing before they start that they are trying to work around a limitation they've chosen - just as someone building a non-Presence, non-Dominate, non-Dementation bleed deck does. > No. Delaying Tactics only delays the inevitable. You intercept the votes. > You beat up the vampires. You bleed them out of the game. You vote all of > their PA's down. A deck that has nothing but PA cards has no defense against > anything...which leaves it extremely vulnerable. > > Hell, pack some Anarch Uprisings. If there's a weenie deck on the table, > most of the players will happily vote for it. With an Bewitching Oration and > an Awe, I don't care if he's holding 7 PA cards. The vote will pass. > > It amazes me that a large percentage of you can't see the obvious holes in the > strategy of a weenie voting deck. Each of the 'holes' you mention in a weenie vote push deck applies equally to a Presence vote deck. You can intercept its votes - even more easily than those of a WVP deck, since it will almost certainly have fewer vamps out to call votes with. You can beat up its vampires - the only thing Presence has going for it is Majesty, and there's about 1 card that beats Dodge but not Majesty. You can bleed them out of the game - they don't even have as many vampires to try and block with. You can vote their PAs down - or just Delaying Tactics them. The only thing specific to WVP you mention is Ancilla Empowerment/Anarchist Uprising, with Bewitching Oration/Awe backup - in other words playing a Presence vote deck yourself - which would be harmful, yes. And useful if you know that everyone else at the table will be playing WVP. In the actual experience of people playing in actual tournaments with weenie decks, many groups have found that a WVP deck doesn't need to worry about being bled out because it is faster than bleed decks. It can avoid being beaten up with disciplineless Dodges if necessary. And it will not get its PAs voted down if it calls early Praxis Seizures. Furthermore, it abuses the ability to use the same card type to succeed at its main task as it does to initiate that task. This is analogous to having every +bleed card also be usable for +stealth, or every combat card also usable as a Rush action. It's simply not reasonable to allow an unlimited number of PA cards to be dumped from your hand during any vote. No other kind of card gets this kind of free cycling. If there are really lots of big holes specific to the weenie vote push deck, you're welcome to point them out. But I don't think you've done that so far. Josh 'i'll be mellow when i'm dead' [ quoted text not captured ]

> Using a discipline has always produced better effects than using no > discipline. It happens that Presence is pretty much the useful > discipline in vote-passing. What other disciplines would you suggest ought > to be able to pass votes? The only one I would think would be reasonable > is Dominate, which also doesn't need any help as a discipline. I think > this is just a case of game-world logic producing a cardset that restricts > certain abilities to certain clans/disciplines. > > I guess your real contention seems to be that there should be other > disciplines that can also gain votes, besides Presence, because otherwise > vote decks can only be built with Presence? That I don't really have much > of a problem with; it's just hard to fix it. I don't think allowing > disciplineless vote push is the right answer. I guess that does boil it down pretty fairly. If there were other disciplines that balanced Presence in the voting arena, I would feel better about the new errata. The problem remains that there aren't. In the RPG, the top clans in political power are Ventrue, Toreador and Tremere for the Camarilla and Lasombra and Tzimisce for the Sabbat. In VTES, neither Tremere, Lasombra nor the Tzimisce are very good at politics. Towards that end, I'd like to see Auspex and Dominate given more of a political edge and to a lesser extent, Animalism and Obfuscate. It would go well towards lessening the monopoly that Presence has on politics. Regards, Noal -- "DISCUSSION, n. A method of confirming others in their errors." -Ambrose Bierce. -----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==---------- [ quoted text not captured ]

> > You intercept the votes. > > How many times are you going to intercept? I have 1 to 4 vampires on my > second turn depending on how many transfers I had on my first turn. How > many intercepting weenies did you bring out? After that, I don't care if > you intercept me because I'll have all the Praxis Seizures I need. All I need is a Atonement and a Flak Jacket or Guardian Angel on a 4 or 5 cap vampire and I shut down any weenie deck flat. It's that simple. [ quoted text not captured ]

> >This and Presense is the only way, now. While it is not in and of > >itself a *horrible* thing (I still think it's not good either), it > >is just *very* restrictive. > More restrictive than having to play solely with weenies and a hand full > of vote cards which was the only way before? I can't believe how narrow minded that is. There were several, viable, ways you could have built a vote deck pre 7/7, all of which invlolve different clans. I've seen a good Nossie vote deck, a decent Gangrel vote, Malk vote (which didn't use Malk Rider Claus) just to name a few. The above were able to win their fair share of games and none were weenie decks. Now, if you want to build such a deck, you have to 'rely on the good graces of your fellow players', as Noal put it. How is this a good thing? I will grant you that the new ruling has put a major thorn in the side of WVP decks, but in doing so has made 98% of possible, viable, vote decks practically unviable. a0 [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <727fj7$n76$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, Dhar...@yahoo.com writes >> It so happens that most of the vote-passing-useful action modifiers require >> Presence. That makes Presence substantially the most useful discipline >> for a vote deck. > >It makes it the _only_ useful discipline. And that's the problem. The new >errata has unbalanced the game in favor of Presence. Prior to this, the only way to win a vote was to use WVP. If there was a fight on a table between WVP and normal vote, WVP would win. I never saw a different outcome. The errata makes Presence vote playable, and vote decks require thought. If you don't want a game that requires diplomacy, which many of the other vote deck styles exploit, why are you playing Jyhad? [ quoted text not captured ]

On Mon, 09 Nov 1998 18:21:42 GMT, Dhar...@yahoo.com wrote: >Jasper Phillips wrote: >> It's an entirely apt arguement. And Protean doesn't in any way compare >> with Obfuscate in terms of producing Stealth. Form of Mist is nice, >> but far more dangerous than extra stealth. > >Notice I said Protean-Dominate. > >Earth Control, Form of Mist, Rapid Change are Protean cards that >give stealth. Dominate can give you Dominate Kine and Bonding >for stealth for bleed actions. OK, I see only a *reliable* +2 stealth here at best, and if you use that Bonding then you only get to bleed at +1 instead of with something more entertaining. Bonding is useful and nice, but. >And to be honest, most decks aren't equipped for more than +2 >intercept under most circumstances....which means that you don't >need +17 stealth to get a bleed through. No, you just need +3 stealth. Which earth control + form of mist + bonding will get you, but at the risk of entering combat and having yourself Immortally Grappled or in some OTHER way hosed by an anti-S:CE combat deck. Not that a Protean/Dominate deck is bad at all, but it won't be as fast as the stock Malkavian S+B deck, and the stock Malkavian deck will have a lot easier time generating the +3 stealth required to get past casual intercept. >> I also don't agree with your broad assertion that the only good voting >> deck is a presence based one. > >Notice I made special mention of a Malkavian deck using Anarch Revolt >and Malkavian Rider Clause. That's the only strategy that doesn't use >presence that is likely to win without cooperation from other players. Do you commonly see a lot of titled vampires just casually hitting the table? I frequently vote in favor of some of my grand-predator's vote deck actions, if only because it'll keep my predator busy enough to allow me to tap out against my prey and get a VP myself, instead of having to waste actions defending. If the vote deck finally ends up sweeping the table when he becomes my predator then my OWN deck's vote defense wasn't very good, was it? Doesn't really matter if he's my grand-predator or immediate predator in the scheme of things; I should be prepared to deal with it. Cooperation from other players isn't all that difficult to get, you know. =) >> Ok, I'm curious. Exactly how do you so easily dismatle weenie vote push decks? >> Do you always play with lots of Delaying Tactics? > >No. Delaying Tactics only delays the inevitable. You intercept the votes. OK, so when constructing my deck, I need to be sure I have +1 intercept available at all times and a bunch of untapped vampires handy to intercept ALL the votes, or some method of untapping (S:CE untap, which means I didn't beat up a vampire when I caught the mail truck and I just wasted two of my own cards to stop one of his, barring permanent intercept.) Atonement is a great card to bash ANY weenie deck, but I don't want to have to load up every deck with 'em just on the off chance a weenie horde is around. +1 intercept is easy to get, sure. But how many vampires do you intend to leave untapped to intercept all 6-8 actions he will be able to take on his 3rd turn? If it's my prey, I had better be a dedicated hardcore intercept deck, or I won't have any untapped vampires to spare just to save my grand-prey from the Evil Weenie Nightmare. I'd rather save my grandprey by ousting the Weenie Deck first, and to do that I'm going to have to put him out faster than he puts other people out while NOT being put out by my own predator. tricky. Not to mention that dedicated hardcore intercept decks are NOT common at tournaments; the whole "difficult to aim at my prey" problem. >You beat up the vampires. You bleed them out of the game. You vote all of My Rush deck operates with, at MOST, 4 vampires, more often 3. He can get 4 out every turn and probably has a crypt of significantly more than 12. Contested vampires cannot be beat up, so he can contest his own vampires in torpor if he has to and have a BUNCH of ready weenies at the start of his next untap that I couldn't proactively Rush and clobber. And if I spend all my time Rushing my predator, i'm being a nimrod and won't ever get a VP. I may let my GRAND-predator get *two* VPs after he bleeds through my vampireless predator, and my tapped-out self with no effective combat left after annihilating weenies. As my prey, well, at least I'm pointed in the right direction, but it is gonna take me a LONG time to get rid of the weenie deck since I have to use one of my 3/4 vamps to defend against my predator. The saving grace of this is that when I run out of Rush actions I can just bleed for 1 and know that if he blocks me, he has no combat defense. Bleed them out of the game? As their prey? What??? Also tougher to do than you think as their predator unless you have a HEAVY bleed deck, since he can get 8 weenies out and still have more than 20 pool left. He can even leave some as sacrificial weenies to block. >their PA's down. A deck that has nothing but PA cards has no defense against >anything...which leaves it extremely vulnerable. Its defense is to race and spend no pool. With 4-8 weenies all calling KRC or Cons Ag every turn and pushing PAs as necessary to pass them, its prey can be ousted VERY rapidly, and there's another 6 blood worth of defense. Its defense against combat is to have too many weenies to be able to conveniently beat up, and when they all cost 1 or 2 it's not even a big pool drain to bring more out. Dead weenies are not a liability. Not to mention that if you need to cycle cards, you can just have those praxis-seizured princes abstain from the vote and use your PAs instead. >Hell, pack some Anarch Uprisings. If there's a weenie deck on the table, >most of the players will happily vote for it. With an Bewitching Oration and >an Awe, I don't care if he's holding 7 PA cards. The vote will pass. Which brings my point around finally; so the only effective defense against weenie vote push is to have your OWN Presence voting deck, packed chock full of Awe, a borderline-broken card to begin with? Besides, realize this; those Praxis Seizures are PAs also. His first few actions (probably before you even get one vampire out) are to make a bunch of princes. With 3 princes and 7 PAs, that's 13 votes you have to produce from somewhere, or 14 to pass your Anarch Uprising. Awe will do it, but I hope you have a Voter Captivation ready.. Titled table-votes won't. Dread Gaze won't, even, and that's annoying. I don't like the existence of any deck for which there is no defense but to have a superior version of its own strategy. Presence vote owned the voting arena before, according to you; it still owns the voting arena now. I can't see that the removal of weenie vote drek has changed anything. >It amazes me that a large percentage of you can't see the obvious holes in the >strategy of a weenie voting deck. -- Derek (replying by email? remove the nospam from my domain :)

In article <727ojh$vba$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, Dhar...@yahoo.com wrote: > > How many times are you going to intercept? I have 1 to 4 vampires on my > > second turn depending on how many transfers I had on my first turn. How > > many intercepting weenies did you bring out? After that, I don't care if > > you intercept me because I'll have all the Praxis Seizures I need. > > All I need is a Atonement and a Flak Jacket or Guardian Angel on a 4 or 5 cap > vampire and I shut down any weenie deck flat. It's that simple. Ok, so now everyone has to play with Atonement and .44's (I prefer this combination to FJ or GA). How many are you putting into your deck? Odds are, you won't be using enough of each to guarantee you'll have the cards you need in time. If you are putting in enough, you've diluted your deck with a bunch of cards that might not suit your strategy at all. All this just to defend against a single deck. So anyway, you get out your Atonement. That acting vampire is tapped. Are you going to have enough interceptors to block all my weenies trying to burn it at +1 stealth? Not likely. Or next time we play, I start putting in some 2nd Traditions and block your Atonement(s). Now what? Or maybe some Misdirections. Misdirections might be even more useful. Btw, does the fact that you didn't reply to any of my other counterpoints mean that you concede on them? If not, I'd like to see your counterpoints. Mike -- Mike Bohlmann, MAIP - Prince of Urbana-Champaign -----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==---------- [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <727m33$t5b$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, agen...@my-dejanews.com wrote: > > >This and Presense is the only way, now. While it is not in and of > > >itself a *horrible* thing (I still think it's not good either), it > > >is just *very* restrictive. > > More restrictive than having to play solely with weenies and a hand full > > of vote cards which was the only way before? > > I can't believe how narrow minded that is. Pot calling the kettle "black"? Seriously, people have been using the No Vote Push rules for a long time. See JOL for on-line example. > There were several, viable, ways you could have built a vote deck > pre 7/7, all of which invlolve different clans. And there still is. My group uses vote-push but I've always ignored vote push and used other methods. I've made several decks that used votes and didn't depend on Presence. And this goes for all the groups I've ever played in - Nosferatu, Brujah/Toreador combat, Tremere, and Lasombra to name a few. > good thing? I will grant you that the new ruling has put a major > thorn in the side of WVP decks, but in doing so has made 98% of > possible, viable, vote decks practically unviable. The same could be said in an environment that allowed WVP. If you aren't playing WVP, you're hosed even if you're playing a vote deck. [ quoted text not captured ]

James Coupe <ve...@nospam.demon.co.uk> wrote: >In article <727fj7$n76$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, Dhar...@yahoo.com writes >>> It so happens that most of the vote-passing-useful action modifiers require >Prior to this, the only way to win a vote was to use WVP. If there was >a fight on a table between WVP and normal vote, WVP would win. I never >saw a different outcome. So how exactly does (or did) such a WVP deck work? Are there any examples I can check out somewhere online?

In article <727k9n$ri8$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, Dhar...@yahoo.com writes > James Coupe wrote: >> Please provide a deck which will reliable stop weenie vote push and >> allow you to have your own deck ideas going too. > >I can do it in two cards. >Atonement and Guardian Angel. > Now please provide a deck which will reliably stop weenie vote push and allow you to have your own deck ideas going too. -- [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <727m33$t5b$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, agen...@my-dejanews.com writes > I've seen a good >Nossie vote deck, a decent Gangrel vote, Malk vote (which didn't >use Malk Rider Claus) just to name a few. If a weenie vote deck came to the table, could they win? I would contend no every time. [ quoted text not captured ]

Noal wrote: "Not only is it a pointless argument, it is a irrelevant one. (...and a false one. A protean-dominate deck makes a great stealth bleed) Stop arguing about apples to disprove a theory about oranges." How is it in any way irrelevant? Presence makes the best vote decks. Dom+Obf makes the best S+B decks. It is completely analagous. Sure, you can make a Dom/Pro bleed deck, but it will be less reliable if for no other reason than the poorer vampire selection. You can make a Auspex based Vote deck, that relies on Telepathic Vote Counting to get vote superiority. It won't be as effective as Presence, sure, but then a Pro/Dom deck won't be as effective a stealth bleeder as a Obf/Dom deck. "It can have 25 each and it wouldn't matter. They would still be as vulnerable in the ways that I mentioned....which I notice you didn't discuss." (actually, I wrote responses to the various "weaknessess" of the WVP deck, but my response was too long for AOSuck to post, and as most of my point by point responses were pretty much the same things that Josh said, I decided to omit them to save space) Yes, WVP decks are vulnerable to certain things-combat, being intercepted, being outvoted, whatever. However, every single point you have as a weakness of a WVP deck is just as much of a weakness for a Presence based vote deck. Presence vote decks are easily intercepted. Presence vote decks are easily beatten up. Presence vote decks can be shut down by votes. Presence vote decks are screwed by Delaying Tactics. Whatever. The Presence vote deck has all of the exact same weaknessess of the WVP deck. However, the WVP deck (without 7/7 vote rules) is infinitely superior to the Presence based vote deck. As such, your "weaknesses of the WVP" deck are not particular to the WVP deck. They are just weaknessess of a vote deck. Yes, many decks can deal with the weaknessess of the vote deck. The WVP deck, however, is so fast, so reliable, and so superior to a presence based vote deck that the only way to deal with it is to build your entire deck to deal with it, at the expense of having a deck that doesen't do anything other than beat a WVP deck. If you are required to, in a competetive situation, play either "Deck A" or "Anti Deck A", there is something deeply wrong with "Deck A". Peter D Bakija PD...@aol.com "No other object has been misidentified as a flying saucer more often than the planet Venus." -Jesse "The Governor" Ventura

In article <727lfo$sk3$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, jt...@cornell.edu (Joshua Duffin) wrote: > In article <727fj7$n76$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, > Dhar...@yahoo.com wrote: > > Joshua Duffin wrote: > > > I think the more relevant comparison is that you can't make a stealth > > > and bleed deck without disciplines. Not just without Obfuscate, without > > > *any* discipline for gaining stealth. There simply aren't any +stealth > > > action modifiers that are disciplineless. Wow...so this is what happens when I don't distract eveyone with something stupid for the day. Heh. I have to agree with Josh here. (I've read your post on the political-ness of the RPG, Noal, and I agree with you for the most part, but the following is for the game as-is...) Can *anyone* think of a good deck that does not use disciplines that does a basic strategy as good as, or better than a similar deck that uses disciplines? I sure can't. > > > > No...you're missing the track completely. You can make a consistently viable > > stealth bleed deck without Obfuscate as there are other disciplines that can > > be substituted. With one exception, you can't make a consistently viable Sorry Noal...the only suggestion I've seen that is even remotely viable is the Pro/Dom option. That's *one* discipline that can be substituted. I'm not just arguing semantics or wording here...protean is a pretty sad substitute for obfuscate...and the next best options are Obtenebration which has...what...3 stealth cards? That's about the same as protean, if not worse...after that...hmm...bonding, some necromancy card...a couple of celerity 1 point bleeds...not much... > > voting deck without Presence. For a voting deck to win consistently, it has > > to be able to seize political control of the table. With the new errata, > > unless you use Presence, you cannot do that. Agreed, though Josh's points about politics being political (i.e. requiring help/cooperation with other meths) is well-taken, I think...politics, I don't think were ever meant to be one-sided. [snip] > > It makes it the _only_ useful discipline. And that's the problem. The new > > errata has unbalanced the game in favor of Presence. Talking about action mods to pass votes...I'm not entirely sure of the ruling on Malk Madness Network, but would it be possible to do a Malk vote deck which called votes during other's turns & then used the two dominate reaction cards (Pulling Strings, Kindred somthing-or-other...) to get everything going your way? > But that's the way it was always supposed to be. Why were there ever Presence > +vote cards if you could make a vote deck just as well without Presence? Hmm...I'm not sure I can agree that "it was always supposed to be" that way, but I would agree that presence was supposed to have an advantage in politics. > Using a discipline has always produced better effects than using no > discipline. It happens that Presence is pretty much the useful Agreed. Also, the top political clans (in the Camarilla, in the RPG) the Ventrue & Toreador have presence. The only discipline the two clans have in common...anyone think this is completely a coincidence? [snip] > I guess your real contention seems to be that there should be other > disciplines that can also gain votes, besides Presence, because otherwise > vote decks can only be built with Presence? That I don't really have much > of a problem with; it's just hard to fix it. I don't think allowing > disciplineless vote push is the right answer. Agreed...as Josh mentioned, the only disciplines that would be really suited for it would be Dominate (maybe Dementation...Chimerstery questionably...hmm...playtest idea...) I was going to post thie deck anyway...it's a slow, odd concept deck that does its own thing, but should work against WVP (is it just me, or do I have some problem where I *have* to design freak decks?) but it should be interesting...I'll post under Freak City Discard Deck... Xian "You can just ignore it...and let hand jam sort them out." --Jasper Phillips [ quoted text not captured ]

> > good thing? I will grant you that the new ruling has put a major > > thorn in the side of WVP decks, but in doing so has made 98% of > > possible, viable, vote decks practically unviable. > The same could be said in an environment that allowed WVP. If you > aren't playing WVP, you're hosed even if you're playing a vote deck. You know, it seems to me that if what you say above is still true, then the 7/7 ruling has done nothing to stem WVP and only serves to restrict all the other Political deck types. a0 [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <727brm$jpo$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, <Dhar...@yahoo.com> wrote: >Jasper Phillips wrote: >> It's an entirely apt arguement. And Protean doesn't in any way compare >> with Obfuscate in terms of producing Stealth. Form of Mist is nice, >> but far more dangerous than extra stealth. > >Notice I said Protean-Dominate. > >Earth Control, Form of Mist, Rapid Change are Protean cards that >give stealth. Dominate can give you Dominate Kine and Bonding >for stealth for bleed actions. Yes, I heard you. It simply doesn't compare with Obfuscate/Dominate. In any event, as other's have pointed out, the difference is really between whether it takes a discipline or not. >And to be honest, most decks aren't equipped for more than +2 >intercept under most circumstances....which means that you don't >need +17 stealth to get a bleed through. Well, most decks don't have intercept at all. Most decks that I've played against that had intercept could easily muster more than +2 though. >> I also don't agree with your broad assertion that the only good voting >> deck is a presence based one. > >Notice I made special mention of a Malkavian deck using Anarch Revolt >and Malkavian Rider Clause. That's the only strategy that doesn't use >presence that is likely to win without cooperation from other players. Heh, weenie vote is still completely viable for one. >Put together any voting deck that doesn't use presence or the Anarch >Revolt-Malk Rider Clause combo. I'll play my Ventrue voting deck from >jol76. Who do you think will win? *shrug* Couple of points: head to head isn't a good way to judge a deck (E.g. Gangrel combat decks beat Potence combat decks. Gangrel combat decks still tend to suck). Also, even if I concede this point, how is this any worse than the case previously where Weenie vote smoked other voting decks? Also, I'd be more than willing to bet on a weenie vote deck against your Ventrue deck, if vote pushing rules are used. >I'm sorry if that sounds arrogant, but the reality is that a political deck >that doesn't use presence or Malk Rider Clauses will only consistently win on >the good graces of the other players. If all it does is attempt to bully votes through, that is true to an extent (although weenie vote still works, it just takes some thought and card variety). I can see your point (from other posts) that thematically the dominance of presence doesn't make so much sense, but it's a damn sight better than the dominance of weenie vote. >> Ok, I'm curious. Exactly how do you so easily dismatle weenie vote push decks? >> Do you always play with lots of Delaying Tactics? > >No. Delaying Tactics only delays the inevitable. You intercept the votes. >You beat up the vampires. You bleed them out of the game. You vote all of >their PA's down. A deck that has nothing but PA cards has no defense against >anything...which leaves it extremely vulnerable. I see. Several of your points are feeble. Bleed them out of the game? It's pretty damn difficult to get faster than a weenie vote push deck. Vote their PA's down? Right -- if you're playing a vote push deck as well, then maybe. Intercept them? Intercept decks suck, and you'd have to be able to intercept and untap quite a bit to get them all, as well as beat them in combat. Beat up their vampires? Yah, that's viable to extent, but not very easy: Weenie decks will get out more characters than combat decks, and enough of them you won't consistantly be able to get all of them. Even if you do, half your deck will be gone by the time you do, and they can still rescue themselves. As a WVP's biggest weakness, that's pretty damn mild. In the end Delaying Tactics is much better than any of the above strategies. >Hell, pack some Anarch Uprisings. If there's a weenie deck on the table, >most of the players will happily vote for it. With an Bewitching Oration and >an Awe, I don't care if he's holding 7 PA cards. The vote will pass. This is essentially meaningless. Any strategy is hosed by the right card. >It amazes me that a large percentage of you can't see the obvious holes in the >strategy of a weenie voting deck. And it amazes the rest of us that you've been able to play in tournaments, and think it's so easy to stop, and ineffective. Most decks can't stop a WVP deck from functioning, and will have ~2-3 turns to live. Even general purpose decks that can resist it are still in danger. The ways you mentioned of dealing with WVP were all lame. [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <727ojh$vba$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, <Dhar...@yahoo.com> wrote: > >> > You intercept the votes. >> >> How many times are you going to intercept? I have 1 to 4 vampires on my >> second turn depending on how many transfers I had on my first turn. How >> many intercepting weenies did you bring out? After that, I don't care if >> you intercept me because I'll have all the Praxis Seizures I need. > >All I need is a Atonement and a Flak Jacket or Guardian Angel on a 4 or 5 cap >vampire and I shut down any weenie deck flat. It's that simple. *Laugh* Right. How many decks use those things? Are you saying that you can build a deck specifically to stop WVP? I think you'll find that nobody is surprised. Bleed Bounce + untap also hosed the old RtI. That in no way meant it wasn't broken. Similar argument would hold that it's not possible to have a broken card, since you could always stop it with Direct Intervention or Sudden Reversal. Whatever. [ quoted text not captured ]

xi...@waste.org (Xian) wrote: > Talking about action mods to pass votes...I'm not entirely sure of the ruling > on Malk Madness Network, but would it be possible to do a Malk vote deck > which called votes during other's turns & then used the two dominate reaction > cards (Pulling Strings, Kindred somthing-or-other...) to get everything going > your way? No. You can only play reaction cards on the actions of "other Methuselah's" minions. Not your own, even when you're acting on someone else's turn (The "whose turn is it?" question is immaterial to the questions of who can play reaction cards and who can play action modifiers). [1.6.3.5] -- L. Scott Johnson (vte...@wizards.com) VTES Net.Rep for Wizards of the Coast. Links to revised rulebook, rulings, errata, and DCI (tournament) rules: http://www.wizards.com/VTES/VTES_Rules.html [ quoted text not captured ]

> So anyway, you get out your Atonement. That acting vampire is tapped. > Are you going to have enough interceptors to block all my weenies trying > to burn it at +1 stealth? Not likely. Animalism, Fortitude, Metro....don't assume that the vampire will stay tapped. So...yes, I will have all the blockers I need...one. > Or next time we play, I start putting in some 2nd Traditions and block your > Atonement(s). Now what? Or maybe some Misdirections. Misdirections might > be even more useful. So....you have to put in cards to block a strategy that's designed to block your strategy....and so the vicious downward spiral goes. That's what makes the game fun. Someone builds a way to shut down your deck and you change the deck to reflect that strategy, thereby diluting your deck. > Btw, does the fact that you didn't reply to any of my other counterpoints > mean that you concede on them? If not, I'd like to see your counterpoints. Which counterpoints? The fact that that the same vulnerabilities of a WVP exist for a voting deck that uses Presence? That can be mostly true....but not completely. I'll look at them later. Noal -- "DISCUSSION, n. A method of confirming others in their errors." -Ambrose Bierce. -----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==---------- [ quoted text not captured ]

Derek wrote: > >their PA's down. A deck that has nothing but PA cards has no defense against > >anything...which leaves it extremely vulnerable. > > Its defense is to race and spend no pool. With 4-8 weenies all > calling KRC or Cons Ag every turn and pushing PAs as necessary to pass > them, Previous to the new errata, you could not replace PA cards used to vote push until the end of your turn. So...at most he can get 8 votes (plus titles) for one vote a turn. > Which brings my point around finally; so the only effective defense > against weenie vote push is to have your OWN Presence voting deck, > packed chock full of Awe, a borderline-broken card to begin with? The only effective defense against a WVP deck is the same defense you use against _any_ weenie deck. And it is my experience that at least one weenie deck will show up to a tournament....so be prepared. I'm also concerned that you think that Awe is a borderline-broken card. I'm noticing a trend that any effective card is labeled "broken" in these parts. [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <727o5i$v4l$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, Dhar...@yahoo.com wrote: > [I wrote] > > I guess your real contention seems to be that there should be other > > disciplines that can also gain votes, besides Presence, because otherwise > > vote decks can only be built with Presence? That I don't really have much > > of a problem with; it's just hard to fix it. I don't think allowing > > disciplineless vote push is the right answer. > > I guess that does boil it down pretty fairly. If there were other disciplines > that balanced Presence in the voting arena, I would feel better about > the new errata. The problem remains that there aren't. See, this is why I should be a diplomat. -_^ > In the RPG, the top clans in political power are Ventrue, Toreador and Tremere > for the Camarilla and Lasombra and Tzimisce for the Sabbat. In VTES, neither > Tremere, Lasombra nor the Tzimisce are very good at politics. Towards that > end, I'd like to see Auspex and Dominate given more of a political edge and > to a lesser extent, Animalism and Obfuscate. It would go well towards > lessening the monopoly that Presence has on politics. I would be happy to see that. Some say the Lasombra are already pretty good at politics, but I haven't seen it enough to know myself. But definitely, I'd be completely in favor of some of the fabled new cards being +vote stuff for non-Presence (even though on the whole I think the new cards should focus mainly on the expansion clans). A broadening of the construction options for political decks would be all good as far as I'm concerned. I just can't see allowing the WVP deck to come back from its unclean grave, which as far as I can see allowing vote-pushing will inevitably do. Josh 'bela lugosi's dead dead dead dead dead undead...' [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <728k7d$mdt$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, agen...@my-dejanews.com wrote: > > > > good thing? I will grant you that the new ruling has put a major > > > thorn in the side of WVP decks, but in doing so has made 98% of > > > possible, viable, vote decks practically unviable. > > The same could be said in an environment that allowed WVP. If you > > aren't playing WVP, you're hosed even if you're playing a vote deck. > > You know, it seems to me that if what you say above is still true, then > the 7/7 ruling has done nothing to stem WVP and only serves to restrict > all the other Political deck types. I fail to follow your logic. In a WVP environment, WVP dominates other voting strategies. If another vote deck comes up against a WVP deck, I'm saying that the regular vote deck will lose. Reason being, after the WVP deck's second turn, he has 1 to 4 Princes. With that, he can push the rest of his votes through because you most likely have only one titled vampire at most plus all of your own vote cards to push. You have 2 + 7 cards to push with for 9 votes. He has 2 + 1 from original PA + 7 to push with for 10 votes. And this is only if he went first. If he didn't go first, he has even more votes and needs to push with fewer cards. If the weenie doesn't draw enough Praxis Seizures for each of his vampires, he can just dump all the non-PS cards in his first vote and second vote ad nauseum until he has the cards he needs. My feeling is that the WVP doesn't get its strength from it's ability to push to get votes to pass but from its ability to unload all the cards it wants that it doesn't need at the moment if it so desires. In a non-push environment, the weenie needs to draw the Praxis Seizures it needs in its initial hand. Also, whenever it want to do a damaging vote, it has to have it in its hand. It can't depend on swapping its hand for a new one to get the PA's it needs. So the WVP has lost that strength. It has also lost its strength of forcing its votes through. Presence vote decks generally didn't stand a chance against WVP. It took vote push to beat vote push if things actually got to a vote. With the new ruling back basically what the original Jyhad rulebook says, Presence vote has become the strongest vote type. Other vote decks are still viable just as a Pro/Dom S&B deck is viable. But when it comes to sheer output, a Presence deck can generate many more votes and a Obfuscate based Stealth deck can generate much more stealth. I've made several effective vote decks that didn't use Presence or vote push. Many other people have, too. But rather than being screwed by both WVP _AND_ Presence based votes, they only have to worry about Presence just totally hosing them. One final note. I think a lot of the naysayers are missing one big advantage that vote decks of all kinds have gained. Before the ruling, you had no idea how many votes in the form of burned PA's might come from your opponents. Now, you know that at most 1 PA will come from each person. Makes it a lot easier to decide if you have enough votes to pass. Mike -- Mike Bohlmann, MAIP - Prince of Urbana-Champaign Rules Survey - http://www.shout.net/~mbohlman/vekn/ -----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==---------- [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <729evt$bv5$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, Dhar...@yahoo.com wrote: > > > So anyway, you get out your Atonement. That acting vampire is tapped. > > Are you going to have enough interceptors to block all my weenies trying > > to burn it at +1 stealth? Not likely. > > Animalism, Fortitude, Metro....don't assume that the vampire will stay tapped. > So...yes, I will have all the blockers I need...one. So in order to beat WVP you either have to use some Ani/For combination and/or Metro Underground. Which you didn't originally mention, so now you need 3 cards to stop WVP. To reliably get them, you're going to be eating up over 10% of your deck size. And that still won't guarantee that you'll have them in time. All this just to stop one strategy. > > Or next time we play, I start putting in some 2nd Traditions and block your > > Atonement(s). Now what? Or maybe some Misdirections. Misdirections might > > be even more useful. > > So....you have to put in cards to block a strategy that's designed to block > your strategy....and so the vicious downward spiral goes. That's what > makes the game fun. Someone builds a way to shut down your deck and you > change the deck to reflect that strategy, thereby diluting your deck. There's no vicious circle. Atonement is the only thing that can stop me cold (or Justine with some permanent +1 intercept). 2nd Tradition will allow me to keep you from doing either one of those. So then you get to making sure your Atonement gets through. That means stealth or unblockable. It's shaping up as though Gangrel are best at stopping WVP. Great! So if I want to stand a chance against WVP, I have to play Gangrel. Who will have their deck so diluted with anti-WVP cards, they can't do much of anything else. Congratulations, you've made a deck strategy that specifically targets and defeats another deck strategy. WVP requires specific preparation or gang tactics from the whole table to defeat. Preparing to face vote decks is not enough. > > Btw, does the fact that you didn't reply to any of my other counterpoints > > mean that you concede on them? If not, I'd like to see your counterpoints. > > Which counterpoints? The fact that that the same vulnerabilities of a WVP > exist for a voting deck that uses Presence? That can be mostly true....but > not completely. I'll look at them later. The ones that were in the same article that you quoted above. It detailed how the other counters to WVP really weren't effective counters at all. [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <729g5e$cu6$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, Dhar...@yahoo.com wrote: > Derek wrote: > > Its defense is to race and spend no pool. With 4-8 weenies all > > calling KRC or Cons Ag every turn and pushing PAs as necessary to pass > > them, > > Previous to the new errata, you could not replace PA cards used to vote push > until the end of your turn. So...at most he can get 8 votes (plus titles) for > one vote a turn. When I have 4 Princes, I don't need all 7 of the cards in my hand to push. Maybe I need 2 or 3. If one of the votes I push is another PS, I don't need many more cards to push with. > > Which brings my point around finally; so the only effective defense > > against weenie vote push is to have your OWN Presence voting deck, > > packed chock full of Awe, a borderline-broken card to begin with? > > The only effective defense against a WVP deck is the same defense you use > against _any_ weenie deck. And it is my experience that at least one > weenie deck will show up to a tournament....so be prepared. WVP also gains power from the fact that all its actions are at +1 stealth. So defenses against weenie bleed or weenie combat might not be effective against weenie vote. In jol88, I think I'm about to be run over by the weenie hordes of hell using Night Moves. A thankfully nearly impossible deck to construct in the real world. > I'm also concerned that you think that Awe is a borderline-broken card. > I'm noticing a trend that any effective card is labeled "broken" in these > parts. When you're speaking about a large community such as this, you're bound to find people with varying opinions. Awe is an obviously powerful card. Of course some people are going to call it broken. It's pretty safe to say that not everyone or probably even a majority agree with that. Including me. :) [ quoted text not captured ]

>In jol88, I think I'm about to be > run over by the weenie hordes of hell using Night Moves. A thankfully > nearly impossible deck to construct in the real world. I don't know about impossible...but I would have to beg, borrow and steal the cards needed from everyone I know. At this point, Mike, he doesn't need Night Moves. You're tapped out with 15 pool and your predator has 11 vampires. I give you two turns max before he takes you out. Since I'm your prey, I give myself another turn or two before I get ousted...maybe one more since I'm playing an weenie and allies deck. *shrug* Either way, it's going to be a quick game both of us unless someone unleashes a Domain Challenge, Anarch Uprising, or some other weenie horde killer. Noal -- "DISCUSSION, n. A method of confirming others in their errors." -Ambrose Bierce. -----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==---------- [ quoted text not captured ]

Mike Bohlman wrote: > > Animalism, Fortitude, Metro....don't assume that the vampire will stay tapped. > > So...yes, I will have all the blockers I need...one. > > So in order to beat WVP you either have to use some Ani/For combination > and/or Metro Underground. Which you didn't originally mention, so now you > need 3 cards to stop WVP. To reliably get them, you're going to be eating > up over 10% of your deck size. And that still won't guarantee that you'll > have them in time. All this just to stop one strategy. You don't need Animalism and Fortitude....just one or the other. Either a Freak Drive or a Forced Awakening and Cats Guidance, Majesty, or Earth Meld. So Fortitude, Presence, Animalism or Protean. You're point that the Gangrel are the best equipped to pull it off is true on the surface. However, Ventrue could easily pull it off with Freak Drive and Majesty, both of which are staples of that clan. Nosferatu can do it with enough stealth to get it out and Wakes and Cats to keep it in play....which of course kills your Misdirection theory. I think you're focusing on the idea that it will only stop _one_ strategy. This is false. It will stop any weenie horde deck that doesn't use a lot of stealth. And since a lot of tournament decks use smaller vampires, it's a good idea to have at least one blocker to deal with them. It's a generally sound defense that works well with several clans I don't understand why you think that having a competent defense will necesserily dilute a deck. However, we are straying from my original point that Presence has a near monopoly in the political arena. If we see cards in the future that give political power to other disciplines, I will be somewhat mollified. [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <729rk7$njh$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, Dhar...@yahoo.com wrote: > You don't need Animalism and Fortitude....just one or the other. > Either a Freak Drive or a Forced Awakening and Cats Guidance, > Majesty, or Earth Meld. So Fortitude, Presence, Animalism or Protean. Ok, so every clan except Ravnos, Tzimisce, Gangrel, Ventrue, Brujah, Toreador, and Setites is hosed. > You're point that the Gangrel are the best equipped to pull it off is > true on the surface. However, Ventrue could easily pull it off with > Freak Drive and Majesty, both of which are staples of that clan. But Freak Drive isn't a staple of everyone's collection. > Nosferatu can do it with enough stealth to get it out and Wakes > and Cats to keep it in play....which of course kills your Misdirection > theory. Against the Nosferatu. If I get that worried about not being able to burn an Atonement, I include as many vamps with Fortitude that I can and add Day Operation, Daring the Dawn, and/or Sunrise Service. And these are equally useful if no one ever uses an Atonement. > I think you're focusing on the idea that it will only stop _one_ strategy. > This is false. It will stop any weenie horde deck that doesn't use a lot > of stealth. And since a lot of tournament decks use smaller vampires, > it's a good idea to have at least one blocker to deal with them. It's > a generally sound defense that works well with several clans How many Atonements and support cards are you putting into your decks? Your last sentence basically sums it up as to why WVP is a problem: not every deck has a sound defense against it. Isn't more deck variety in tournament play a good thing? > I don't understand why you think that having a competent defense > will necesserily dilute a deck. It will if none of your opponents is playing weenies. If weenies are prevalent, they're going to be contesting each other to some extent and you'll have an easier time keeping up with them. > However, we are straying from my original point that Presence has > a near monopoly in the political arena. Yes, Presence based votes are generally the best. But I consider that far better than WVP decks from being the best hands down. And other vote decks are far from unviable. And they don't have to depend on the good-heartedness of the other players as you proposed earlier. > If we see cards in the future > that give political power to other disciplines, I will be somewhat > mollified. Dominate has some political power, but purely on a defensive level. Auspex has a little political power with Telepathic Vote counting. I'd love to see a Dominate card that cancels other votes during your PA, but my gut tells me the Ventrue would be become nearly unstoppable at politics (assuming they could get to the referendum stage). What other disciplines should have vote aiding action modifiers? Corrupt Assembly Action Modifier - 1 blood Only usable during a political action. ser: After a minion controlled by another player has cast its votes, you may change how it voted to how you wish. SER: As above, but this vampire may burn X blood to change the votes of X minions. Threatening Lobby Action Modifier - Nosferatu Only usable during a political action. Choose a minion controlled by another player. If that minion votes against you, put Threatening Lobby on that minion. Until that minion is burned or goes to Torpor, this acting minion may enter combat with the target minion at +1 stealth and will have +1 hand damage for the duration of combat. Burn Threatening Lobby if the target vampire is burned or goes to torpor. Aren't you dead? Action Modifier - 1 blood Only usable during a political aciton. nec: This vampire gains votes equal to those of a chosen vampire that is in Torpor or has been burned. NEC: As above, but may choose 2 vampires. "In many elections, the voter turnout among the dead or missing is quite surprising." - Carlotta Giovanni These are just off the top of my head. Quite frankly, where do you draw the line? Do you give every clan or discipline a card that gains votes? How do you decide which ones get such cards? Mike -- Mike Bohlmann, MAIP - Prince of Urbana-Champaign Rules Survey - http://www.shout.net/~mbohlman/vekn/ -----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==---------- [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <364709de...@news.rotterdam.luna.net>, S.P.War...@student.hro.nl (Sao lee) wrote: > James Coupe <ve...@nospam.demon.co.uk> wrote: > >Prior to this, the only way to win a vote was to use WVP. If there was > >a fight on a table between WVP and normal vote, WVP would win. I never > >saw a different outcome. > > So how exactly does (or did) such a WVP deck work? Are there any > examples I can check out somewhere online? There's probably something in one of the deck archives, but it really isn't necessary. You can make quite an effective WVP deck by taking as many different Praxis Seizures you have (20 is good), all the Caitiff you have plus some other Camarilla 2-capacity vampires (about 15 to 20 total), as many Conservative Agitations and Kine Resources Contested as you can muster, about 6 or so Effective Managements, and about 6 or 8 Autarkis Persecutions for in case you get really low on pool. You can add any other kinds of interesting vote cards you want to reach 60 cards. It takes about 15 minutes to build (hardest part is going through your collection finding the cards) and without any tuning whatsoever, you will win a majority of the games unless people specifically prepare for it. In just ordinary play among friends, you'll probably win 9 out of 10 games. Not bad for a 15 minute investment. If you tune it, you might add some Dodges and defenses for Atonement. Btw, if anyone thinks I'm being facetious, I'm not. I literally spent about 15 minutes making a WVP deck to prove a point, and it wins about 9 out of 10. This is in a group that commonly has +1 intercept. [ quoted text not captured ]

> What other disciplines should have vote aiding action modifiers? As I said before, beef up Dominate and Auspex and to a lesser extent, Animalism and Obfuscate. That would cover the majority of the clans in the game (if not all of them). As far as Ventrue superiority goes, they pretty much have that now....and that makes sense. > Corrupt Assembly > Threatening Lobby > Aren't you dead? *rofl* Noal McDonald Archbishop of Westland, MI -- "DISCUSSION, n. A method of confirming others in their errors." -Ambrose Bierce. -----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==---------- [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <364709de...@news.rotterdam.luna.net>, Sao lee <S.P.War...@student.hro.nl> writes >So how exactly does (or did) such a WVP deck work? Are there any >examples I can check out somewhere online? Get a few small vampires out very quickly. Call a few Praxis Seizures with these vampires. Only a weenie intercept deck could block them all. You can then use as many votes from your hand to make sure they pass. Then you have, say, 4 to 6 votes from the first round. Now you can continue to call damaging votes (Kine Resources Contested being my personal favourite) very often, using very small expendable vampires. Excess Praxis Seizures can be thrown away in a vote, if needed. You have so many vampires that, due to your VERY quick start, it's very difficult to block everything all the time. [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <729rk7$njh$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, Dhar...@yahoo.com writes >However, we are straying from my original point that Presence has >a near monopoly in the political arena. If we see cards in the future >that give political power to other disciplines, I will be somewhat >mollified. Why is this any better or worse to WVP? I would contend that, though Presence now has a much better footing than it did before (it's *supposed* to be the best vote disciplines), middle of the road vote decks still stand a chance - they just need to be diplomatic about it. And anyway, even if the 7/7 ruling does make Presence vote too powerful, I'd rather see that - with a deck that requires some thought, can't have 90 votes in it because it needs modifiers and so forth - than a WVP deck any day. [ quoted text not captured ]

On Tue, 10 Nov 1998 13:47:26 GMT, Dhar...@yahoo.com wrote: >Derek wrote: >> >their PA's down. A deck that has nothing but PA cards has no defense against >> >anything...which leaves it extremely vulnerable. >> >> Its defense is to race and spend no pool. With 4-8 weenies all >> calling KRC or Cons Ag every turn and pushing PAs as necessary to pass >> them, > >Previous to the new errata, you could not replace PA cards used to vote push >until the end of your turn. So...at most he can get 8 votes (plus titles) for >one >vote a turn. And when he shoves through 4 praxis seizures he won't need to push more than a couple PAs per turn to pass 'em. mbohlman addressed that in his post, which you've already read. > >> Which brings my point around finally; so the only effective defense >> against weenie vote push is to have your OWN Presence voting deck, >> packed chock full of Awe, a borderline-broken card to begin with? > >The only effective defense against a WVP deck is the same defense you use >against _any_ weenie deck. And it is my experience that at least one >weenie deck will show up to a tournament....so be prepared. again, as mbohlman mentioned, weenie vote has a natural +1 stealth. You can be pretty assured of beating up -some- weenie bleeders by just leaving a few people untapped. Heck, if you get panicky leave ALL your vampires untapped for awhile; you might get rid of a whole bunch of his weenies all at once if he doesn't draw his Dodge back, and if he taps out trying to come get you his predator might finish him off. Weenie bleed, while still pretty nasty to be caught in front of, just isn't as horrific as weenie vote. > >I'm also concerned that you think that Awe is a borderline-broken card. >I'm noticing a trend that any effective card is labeled "broken" in these >parts. Um, correct me if I'm wrong but weren't YOU the one worrying about how Presence has too much voting power as a discipline originally? I don't think your fears stemmed from Bewitching Oration and Disarming Presence, somehow. Note that I also said borderline-broken. It's horrendously effective. It provides, effectively, a vast number of completely free votes when played at superior with a Voter Cap in hand -- assuming you have the sense to have a sufficiently large vampire be the one playing it. So I haul out Mr. Ventrue Deck, and I have Democritus at 5 blood call any not-too-terribly-obnoxious vote, say, Regaining the Upper Hand. If nobody intercepts me, I lay down Awe on it and tip all my blood off of Democritus; the vote is now passing by 14 votes assuming Democritus is my ONLY vampire with a title! Hopefully someone has votes against me, because right now when I Voter Cap this, I'm gonna fill Democritus back up to 10, get 2 pool on top of it, and have 2 blood just totally wasted. More likely than not I'll get Democritus' blood back up to 7 and get the 2 pool as well. Now I can Cryptic Rider it and have any other vampire call something much more obnoxious. Sure, you won't let me pass a "first vote" ever again now that you've seen the Cryptic Rider, but what are you gonna do about it? Awe generates an insane amount of votes at superior. I think Delaying Tactics can be played -after- someone plays Awe, which is a rude surprise and may help some, but I'm still not sure. The reason I only refer to it as "borderline" broken is because at inferior, it's absolutely *NOT* a broken card at all IMO; one blood per vote? Sounds like a great Presence card to me. The other reason is because I still haven't seen anyone wind up and create an Awe deck with a sufficient number of Awe and Voter Cap to really beat people senseless with the blood gain and raw vote power - perhaps because of Delaying Tactics, perhaps due to card rarity, although if card rarity *is* the reason I'm worried too, because Jyhad was designed carefully so card rarity wouldn't be required to balance the game. Bleh. I need a course in "Brevity 101; making your point in ONE paragraph, not ten." [ quoted text not captured ]

I tend to use 2-3 B. Overload and Dread gaze for my vote defense, along with a little perm intercept. In this fashion I can block votes after the Weenie has spend the blood to call the vote and send it straing to torpor. If the vote is not blocked then the DG can stop most votes early in the game before people have built up their PS votes. Unless the weenies get the BO out of play the horde will dry up and die. Raille.

Jasper Phillips wrote: > In article <727ojh$vba$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, <Dhar...@yahoo.com> wrote: > > > >> > You intercept the votes. > >> > >> How many times are you going to intercept? I have 1 to 4 vampires on my > >> second turn depending on how many transfers I had on my first turn. How > >> many intercepting weenies did you bring out? After that, I don't care if > >> you intercept me because I'll have all the Praxis Seizures I need. > > > >All I need is a Atonement and a Flak Jacket or Guardian Angel on a 4 or 5 cap > >vampire and I shut down any weenie deck flat. It's that simple. > > *Laugh* Right. How many decks use those things? Are you saying that > you can build a deck specifically to stop WVP? I think you'll find > that nobody is surprised. I put Attonements in about 1/2 of my decks, just because weenie decks are so nasty and because you can almost always use the Attonement if there is no weenie deck. Heck, I even have a couple in my rush deck. Of course, I agree with your point. Any deck can be beat if you know what you are going to play against. That does not make the WVP deck any less broken under the old system. I like the new ruling.

Derek S. Ray wrote: [ quoted text not captured ] Awe has a few limitations. First, to be really affective you have to have the Voter Captivation and a vampire will lots of blood. Second, even with the Awe you may (unlikely though it may be) not be able to pass the vote. Third, I believe the traditional non-voters defense totally hoses the Awing vampire... Delaying Tactics. You spend the blood then get the vote cancelled. Fourth, which is really not a disad with Awe in particular, it can be blocked. However, the prey and predator can chose to block the vampires most likely to abuse Awe. Sure I'll let Gideon call his vote but if Democritus tries I'll block! And you are not likely to have more than 2 large capacity vampires available. My point is that Awe is a powerful vote card and in my opinion more abusable than Bewitching Oration, but not broken. I think abusable cards are a good thing, as long as the abuse is not of the broken kind.

Direct Intervention -is- a broken card... Jasper Phillips wrote in message <728qbd$rcr$1...@news.NERO.NET>... >In article <727ojh$vba$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, <Dhar...@yahoo.com> wrote: >> >>> > You intercept the votes. >>> >>> How many times are you going to intercept? I have 1 to 4 vampires on my >>> second turn depending on how many transfers I had on my first turn. How >>> many intercepting weenies did you bring out? After that, I don't care if >>> you intercept me because I'll have all the Praxis Seizures I need. >> >>All I need is a Atonement and a Flak Jacket or Guardian Angel on a 4 or 5 cap >>vampire and I shut down any weenie deck flat. It's that simple. > >*Laugh* Right. How many decks use those things? Are you saying that >you can build a deck specifically to stop WVP? I think you'll find >that nobody is surprised. > [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <D967FBCB8A6E1D07.14597BEF...@library-proxy.airnews.net >, lor...@nospam.nineball.org (Derek S. Ray) wrote: > On Tue, 10 Nov 1998 13:47:26 GMT, Dhar...@yahoo.com wrote: > > >Derek wrote: [snip some...] > >I'm also concerned that you think that Awe is a borderline-broken card. > >I'm noticing a trend that any effective card is labeled "broken" in these > >parts. > [snip long example of Democritus getting off Awe & Voter Cap] > is a rude surprise and may help some, but I'm still not sure. The > reason I only refer to it as "borderline" broken is because at > inferior, it's absolutely *NOT* a broken card at all IMO; one blood > per vote? Sounds like a great Presence card to me. The other reason I'm going to agree with the person mentioning that the word broken is going to get bandied about a lot just because of vastly differring opinions on the net. However, I think that it is largely unreasonable to call Awe broken. Sure, it's a good card, and quite good for voting, but its cost is not completely out-of-bounds for its effect (i.e. pre-7/7 Tomb of Rameses III), and it doesn't violate any big principles of the game (i.e. pre-7/7 Thoughts Betrayed...) > is because I still haven't seen anyone wind up and create an Awe deck > with a sufficient number of Awe and Voter Cap to really beat people > senseless with the blood gain and raw vote power - perhaps because of Hmm...that gives me an idea for JOL...heh. Kidding...I have much more foolish decks to test with JOL... > Delaying Tactics, perhaps due to card rarity, although if card rarity > *is* the reason I'm worried too, because Jyhad was designed carefully > so card rarity wouldn't be required to balance the game. I don't really need to suck up any on this newsgroup, but people always ask me why I like this damn game, and this is the reason I *always* forget to mention...that rarity != power. That rocks. > Bleh. I need a course in "Brevity 101; making your point in ONE > paragraph, not ten." Well...most of it *was* one paragraph... :P Xian, using too many emoticons for his own comfort... "You can just ignore it...and let hand jam sort them out." --Jasper Phillips -----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==---------- [ quoted text not captured ]

mboh...@shout.net wrote in message <72a1un$ta1$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>... >In article <729rk7$njh$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, > Dhar...@yahoo.com wrote: > > >What other disciplines should have vote aiding action modifiers? > >Corrupt Assembly >Action Modifier - 1 blood >Only usable during a political action. >ser: After a minion controlled by another player has cast its votes, > you may change how it voted to how you wish. >SER: As above, but this vampire may burn X blood to change the votes > of X minions. > I think that this would be way too powerful. The only reason that Dominate vote canceling cards are not overpowered is because they are Reaction cards. Therefore they are useful only if you happen to have one in your hand whne a vote is called. People may put 1-5 or so of these in a deck to defense politics. if you are playing a political deck however, you would put maybe 10-30 "Corrupt Assemblies" in your deck and never lose a vote. I would suggest that it cost 2 blood intitially and 2X blood to change X votes, or that it be restated as cancel votes at basic, and change votes at superior. I definitely agree with the concept. A Dominate or Dementation card like this would work too. >Threatening Lobby >Action Modifier - Nosferatu >Only usable during a political action. Choose a minion controlled >by another player. If that minion votes against you, put Threatening >Lobby on that minion. Until that minion is burned or goes to Torpor, >this acting minion may enter combat with the target minion at +1 stealth >and will have +1 hand damage for the duration of combat. Burn Threatening >Lobby if the target vampire is burned or goes to torpor. > >Aren't you dead? >Action Modifier - 1 blood >Only usable during a political aciton. >nec: This vampire gains votes equal to those of a chosen vampire that is > in Torpor or has been burned. >NEC: As above, but may choose 2 vampires. >"In many elections, the voter turnout among the dead or missing is quite >surprising." - Carlotta Giovanni That is just downright funny. > >These are just off the top of my head. Quite frankly, where do you >draw the line? Do you give every clan or discipline a card that gains >votes? How do you decide which ones get such cards? I don't know. I think that Dominate and Auspex at least need a couple of offensive vote cards. Giovanni need help too. > >Mike > >-- >Mike Bohlmann, MAIP - Prince of Urbana-Champaign >Rules Survey - http://www.shout.net/~mbohlman/vekn/ > [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <F28BB...@midway.uchicago.edu>, Rachel & Chris <reei...@midway.uchicago.edu> writes >Direct Intervention -is- a broken card... A very controversial remark. First of all, I *will* concede that for many people there are reasons of taste why it shouldn't be in the game. It smacks of counterspell which they just don't like. Maybe it does or doesn't fit into the theme of the game. For me, I just like the idea that, every once in a while, a Methuselah just come out and force one of his ideas through. Other people don't like that. There are circumstances when the card has to be banned. In JOL (http://www.deckserver.net) having Direct Intervention is not a practical thing, really. Every time someone plays a card, another person could just wait 24 hours and reverse the card. Due to it being play-by-email, the ramifications of the card are different. But looking at it from purely a power-cost ratio point of view. Okay, it CAN cancel any minion card. What does that really mean? Well, if it's stealth, it could mean you get into combat and die. If it's intercept, it could mean my action gets through and does horrible things to you. If it's a vote, the vote is stopped or fails (from cancelling the Awe, say), or passes if you cancel someone else's Delaying Tactics, say. In combat, it means someone gets hit harder. Let's look at this the other way though. If it's stealth you want to cancel, you can play intercept. If it's intercept you want to cancel, play more stealth. If it's a vote you want to cancel, play Delaying Tactics or Surprise Influence or a Vote card. If you want to pass a vote, have more vote passing and vote cards. In combat, if it's a maneuver that's been cancelled, play another maneuver. If it's a strike, play Dodge. If it's damage, play Skin of Rock, or Flesh of Marble or Flak Jacket. So, most cards in the game have ways round them somehow or other. I can burn cards, sew up cards (Pentex, Sensory Deprivation etc.), vote, bleed or whatever. Each thing you do has a counter-card from my point of view. If I'm desperately afraid of you, I'll have a few of those cards. Now, consider Delaying Tactics. Once per turn, I can pay 1 pool to cancel a card you play. Once per turn - well, if I've been thoughtful and put lots of Dread Gazes in my deck to stop your votes, I can do that several times. Or Delaying Tactics. I can prevent your strikes multiple times (Skin of Steel in every combat). I can intercept more of your actions if I play proper intercept. Direct Intervention is, in many instances, a poor man's whatever card you wanted to play. 1 pool - well, that's pretty hefty. If I play a Sport Bike, I can block many of your actions for the same pool cost, perhaps. If I play a Labyrinth, that's more stealth for me a lot of the time, rather than stopping one of your intercept cards once. Cancelling a card - Well, what can that do? One of the often heard arguments is that "Well, it stops my plans dead." No, it doesn't, at least, not moreso than, say, Delaying Tactics. I'm planning to call a vote. If I call it, someone could play Delaying Tactics and I have to plan to that effect. It's not like everything not going to plan is a new concept. I have to, at every point, take into account that you can smack me back, or block, or burn my location, or eat me or whatever. Delaying Tactics provides a new, flexible way for me to do it, but it's nothing new. You may play Immortal Grapple but I could have a Burning Wrath hiding in my big Ventrue with Potence deck which is just as much of a surprise as Direct Intervention would be. Looking at it from the spoiling my plans point of view, from another perspective, is that what Jyhad is about? Just bringing plans to fruition and trying to stop other people. Not quite. That's what something like the X-Files is like (Mythos, too, perhaps) - two people playing separate games and just trying to beat the other and maybe throw a spanner in the works from time to time. Jyhad has always been about interaction - the voting system, the blood hunts, the ability to share intercept and so forth have been hard encoded into the game from Day 1. And does it really bugger up my plans? Well, if I'm playing a vote deck, I should have enough of the votes I need to get through, expecting that some of them will fail. If I don't, that's my tough luck. Same with stealth etc. If it's a prayer card you've drawn (your one Arson) then which is more unfair? You drawing a prayer card and getting a shift in the balance of the game (perhaps heavily to you), or my cancelling the prayer card and keeping the balance how it is? [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <F29In...@midway.uchicago.edu>, Rachel & Chris <reei...@midway.uchicago.edu> writes >I think that Dominate and Auspex at least need a couple of >offensive vote cards. Dominate needs no more power and flexibility than it has already. Bleed, anti-vote, location stealing, vampire stealing, combat defence, retainer/ally stealing, minor stealth, minor unblockability, free pool to vampires, bleed bounce, contention abilities. Suggesting that Dominate needs the capacity to vote offensively is wrong. [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <7A1GWdAC...@obeah.demon.co.uk>, James Coupe <ve...@obeah.demon.co.uk> wrote: >In article <F29In...@midway.uchicago.edu>, Rachel & Chris ><reei...@midway.uchicago.edu> writes >>I think that Dominate and Auspex at least need a couple of >>offensive vote cards. > >Dominate needs no more power and flexibility than it has already. > >Bleed, anti-vote, location stealing, vampire stealing, combat defence, >retainer/ally stealing, minor stealth, minor unblockability, free pool >to vampires, bleed bounce, contention abilities. And you even forgot combat offense (Thoughts Betrayed). >Suggesting that Dominate needs the capacity to vote offensively is >wrong. Dominate doesn't need anything. Auspex would probably be the best place to go for new +vote cards, or even Obfuscate. But dominate is already the most powerfull discipline. [ quoted text not captured ]

Yes James comments on DI are exactly on target. The biggest pain is that the DI does smack of a counter spell card, and to many THAT is reason enough to list it as broken! Me I play with all the cards! and I suffer, come hell or high water, all the ramifications of that! Raille.

> Suggesting that Dominate needs the capacity to vote offensively is > wrong. I disagree. Clans like Tremere and Lasombra who traditionally have had a fair amount of political power are fairly hamstrung without presence. I would suggest that Dominate would do well to have cards that allow it to vote offensively. Maybe not as strong as Bewitching Oration or Awe, but certainly a card that has half the effect. Keep in mind that I'd like to see Auspex also beefed up in this regard, and to a lesser extent Animalism and maybe Obfuscate. It would level the playing field quite a bit and give more than a few clans the ability to make a decent voting deck without vote pushing. Noal McDonald Archbishop of Westland, MI -- "DISCUSSION, n. A method of confirming others in their errors." -Ambrose Bierce. -----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==---------- [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <72cne6$528$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, Dhar...@yahoo.com writes > >> Suggesting that Dominate needs the capacity to vote offensively is >> wrong. > >I disagree. Clans like Tremere and Lasombra who traditionally have >had a fair amount of political power are fairly hamstrung without >presence. I would suggest that Dominate would do well to have cards >that allow it to vote offensively. *sigh* How hard did you try to miss my point? Dominate is the best discipline in the game. It does almost everything. It runs away with the statistics in JOL. It doesn't need to do anything else. If the Tremere are having problems voting, it doesn't mean you should address it through Dominate. However, I must say I've never seen the Tremere vote well actually. >Maybe not as strong as Bewitching >Oration or Awe, but certainly a card that has half the effect. You mean a card like Lyndhurst Estate, New York? > >Keep in mind that I'd like to see Auspex also beefed up in this regard, Doesn't need to. It's already got Telepathic Vote Counting. I fail to see how anything to do with Auspex will influence you more votes in a way that fits the discipline. >and to a lesser extent Animalism Erm... Animalism has *never* been a political discipline and never should be. Homogonising the disciplines is not a good thing, because then the restrictions and difficulties you overcome to make a really cracking deck become negligible. > and maybe Obfuscate. Stealth. Little bits of bleed. Little bits of weirdness. That's your lot with Obfuscate. >It would >level the playing field quite a bit We don't have a level playing field though. Card power, yes, there should be one. Discipline abilities, no. Dominate can wipe the floor with any other discipline for bleeding. It's cards generally aren't too powerful, but you won't find another discipline as good as it for bleeding. Does that mean we should give all the other disciplines the ability to bleed? No, it doesn't. Each discipline should have its own unique facets that it exploits well. To a large degree, that is true now, although some of the newer disciplines have their toes trampled by an old discipline (eg stealing vampires in Dominate, not Serpentis etc.) >and give more than a few clans >the ability to make a decent voting deck without vote pushing. Permanent titles, Lyndhurst Estate, diplomacy, the edge, locations and so forth already provide a half decent voting deck. Giving every clan the ability to vote well will not solve problems. It will create more. The Nosferatu can't bleed too well. Should we give them more bleed cards? How about vampire stealing for those of us with Fortitude - it can't do that. It might give more than a few clans the ability to make a decent vampire stealing deck without Serpentis. [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <72cne6$528$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, <Dhar...@yahoo.com> wrote: > >> Suggesting that Dominate needs the capacity to vote offensively is >> wrong. > >I disagree. Clans like Tremere and Lasombra who traditionally have >had a fair amount of political power are fairly hamstrung without >presence. I would suggest that Dominate would do well to have cards >that allow it to vote offensively. Maybe not as strong as Bewitching >Oration or Awe, but certainly a card that has half the effect. I, for one, don't care for keeping with the theme of the game if it's bad for game balance. >Keep in mind that I'd like to see Auspex also beefed up in this regard, >and to a lesser extent Animalism and maybe Obfuscate. It would >level the playing field quite a bit and give more than a few clans >the ability to make a decent voting deck without vote pushing. Well, it would level the _voting_ playing field. It would push dominate even further ahead of the other disciplines. [ quoted text not captured ]

Here's the thing: Direct Intervention is an Intercept card, a Stealth Card, a Vote Card, and a Damage Prevention card all in one. That ruins the game. Why play anything else? Of course the answer is that Direct Intervention as a Master-out-of-Turn can only be played once each time around the table. I should rephrase my short and inflamatory statement- it is definitely broken in a two player and perhaps overpowered in a three player game because it can be used effectively in lieu of a half-dozen other tactics combined. Sudden Reversal is more broken because it can destroy a concept deck by itself, and there are far fewer Master phase actions that take place than minion actions. A player could almost eliminate Master Card effects by using 30 of these in a deck. Again, table size affects the power of the card. In the end I have apersonal disrespect for these cards because they are generic and all-encompasing. The haven of someone with little imagination (or a drive to win). They are effective cards, but they lack personality. I won't use them, but I'll admit that they are not broken. James Coupe wrote in message <7z62qCA9...@obeah.demon.co.uk>... [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <IQbRMLAU...@obeah.demon.co.uk>, James Coupe <ve...@obeah.demon.co.uk> wrote: > >Dominate can wipe the floor with any other discipline for bleeding. >It's cards generally aren't too powerful, but you won't find another >discipline as good as it for bleeding. Does that mean we should give >all the other disciplines the ability to bleed? No, it doesn't. Hmmm, maybe potence needs bleed bonus... I mean, after all it does make sense from a basic "wrecking shit" point of view. Or what about Animalism? Both of these could easily have bleed bonus thematically... [ quoted text not captured ]

Rachel & Chris wrote: > Direct Intervention is an Intercept card, a Stealth Card, a Vote Card, and a > Damage Prevention card all in one. That ruins the game. Why play anything > else? First off, it can't be a stealth card because it is an Out-Of-Turn card. Secondly, name a card that does any of the above that costs one pool and is limited to one use, can't be used during your turn and can only be played once until the end of your next turn. Seeing my point yet? > Of course the answer is that Direct Intervention as a Master-out-of-Turn can > only be played once each time around the table. I should rephrase my short > and inflamatory statement- it is definitely broken in a two player and > perhaps overpowered in a three player game because it can be used > effectively in lieu of a half-dozen other tactics combined. 2 or 3 player game??? Most games are at least 4 players. A card should not be determined to be "broken" because you can imagine drastic circumstances. > Sudden Reversal is more broken because it can destroy a concept deck by > itself, and there are far fewer Master phase actions that take place than > minion actions. A player could almost eliminate Master Card effects by > using 30 of these in a deck. Again, table size affects the power of the > card. Now Sudden Reversal is broken??? *laughs so hard I hurt* I think I've seen enough. Noal McDonald Great Googily Moogily of Westland, MI [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <7z62qCA9...@obeah.demon.co.uk>, James Coupe <ve...@obeah.demon.co.uk> wrote: > In article <F28BB...@midway.uchicago.edu>, Rachel & Chris > <reei...@midway.uchicago.edu> writes > >Direct Intervention -is- a broken card... > > A very controversial remark. Yes, in fact any remark using the word 'broken' tends to be controversial doesn't it. ^_^ Did you read Adrian Sullivan's article on DI and how it can take advantage of 'moments of jeopardy'? It made some good points. The main idea was that DI becomes overpowered when it produces a very large swing effect by stopping a card at a critical moment. For example, if you DI someone's Majesty and thereby burn their vampire... or DI someone's Deflection, and they are therefore ousted... that sort of thing. Yes, the person suffering the DI could just play another copy of the card if they had one. But they won't *always* have one. In my mind, DI adds to the luck involved in the game, which is not a good thing. (in addition, of course, to being a classic 'trump' card.) And its versatility is not sufficiently compensated by the 1-pool cost. Consider your example of DI vs 'prayer' cards: Is it more fair for someone to draw their prayer card at the right time and get a big shift, or for someone to DI that prayer card, maintaining the status quo? Notice that 'prayer' cards are by their nature very limited in the number you can put into a deck. DI on the other hand can easily be used in multiples, because it can be used against *everything*. Josh 'cause your crystal ball ain't so crystal clear...' [ quoted text not captured ]

Dhar...@yahoo.com wrote: > > > Suggesting that Dominate needs the capacity to vote offensively is > > wrong. > > I disagree. Clans like Tremere and Lasombra who traditionally have > had a fair amount of political power are fairly hamstrung without > presence. I would suggest that Dominate would do well to have cards > that allow it to vote offensively. Maybe not as strong as Bewitching > Oration or Awe, but certainly a card that has half the effect. > While Dominate probably should be more political (in keeping with the flavour), the fact that it is so strong (as Jasper and James have pointed out) means that giving it any more strengths would hurt the game. IMO, Dominate should have been made more as a "control your minions" discipline than a bleed discipline like it is. If I could go back and design Jyhad, Dominate would be good at: Bleed bounce, vote control (offensive, but not so much defensive), minion control (like Graverobbing and Mind Rape), and some weak combat defense and maybe (just maybe) a little weak bleeding. But then, I didn't design Jyhad, and Presence and Dominate are very strong bleed disciplines. Dominate especially has a gazillion useful abilities, making it one of the most versatile discipline and also very strong at what it does. Compare to Necromancy and Chimerstry which are versatile (but maybe not quite as versatile as Dominate) but not particularly good at anything. -Chris

On Thu, 12 Nov 1998 04:59:45 GMT, "Rachel & Chris" <reei...@midway.uchicago.edu> wrote: >Here's the thing: > >Of course the answer is that Direct Intervention as a Master-out-of-Turn can >only be played once each time around the table. I should rephrase my short >and inflamatory statement- it is definitely broken in a two player and >perhaps overpowered in a three player game because it can be used >effectively in lieu of a half-dozen other tactics combined. Yeah, but tournament format requires four or five player games, for this very reason; there are many cards and/or decks which are much more broken in a 'duel' or "three person" format. The game appears to have been designed to perform optimally in a four person environment. (one semi-ally, two enemies). Master-out-of-Turn actions come very preciously in a 4 player game... unless you don't have other master cards ready to play, your deck can be VERY slowed down by playing a tempting Sudden Reversal or DI. >Sudden Reversal is more broken because it can destroy a concept deck by >itself, and there are far fewer Master phase actions that take place than >minion actions. A player could almost eliminate Master Card effects by >using 30 of these in a deck. Again, table size affects the power of the >card. Goodness, no. 30 Sudden Reversals? You'd only be able to eliminate your PREY's master card effects, and i don't know of but one deck that will be crippled by having no master actions. So you'll be stuck with a hand full of Sudden Reversals and probably a bunch of weenies bleeding for 1 each (not ENTIRELY bad, but:) while your prey happily goes onward, mildly inconvenienced. It's not an awful idea for a deck concept but I wouldn't expect it to ever win much. >In the end I have apersonal disrespect for these cards because they are >generic and all-encompasing. The haven of someone with little imagination >(or a drive to win). They are effective cards, but they lack personality. >I won't use them, but I'll admit that they are not broken. Hm. I pack one Sudden Reversal in almost every deck I play. It may never come up, but it always proves beneficial when it does. It would prove a lot less beneficial if I were to pack five of them, because I doubt my prey or predator will produce five master phase actions that i'm willing to give up my OWN master phase action for. I can always stall something for a turn, but stalling for too long will melt any deck. [ quoted text not captured ]

> While Dominate probably should be more political (in keeping with the > flavour), the fact that it is so strong (as Jasper and James have > pointed out) means that giving it any more strengths would hurt the > game. IMO, Dominate should have been made more as a "control your > minions" discipline than a bleed discipline like it is. Okay...versatility of Dominate aside, how can you break up the monopoly that Presence has on political actions without giving other disciplines more offensive voting power or reinstating vote pushing? I've heard alot of nay-sayers, but I haven't seen hardly anyone propose a viable alternative. Telepathic Vote Counting is not enough. It's a tough card to get a hold of and it's effects aren't that dramatic. Noal -- "DISCUSSION, n. A method of confirming others in their errors." -Ambrose Bierce. -----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==---------- [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <72f7v6$8sa$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, Dhar...@yahoo.com wrote: > Okay...versatility of Dominate aside, how can you break up the monopoly > that Presence has on political actions without giving other disciplines > more offensive voting power or reinstating vote pushing? Yeah! And how can you break up the monopoly that Obfuscate has on stealth actions without giving other disciplines more stealth power? You say ludicrous, but the same goes with your statement. Presence doesn't have a monopoly on votes. I've said it many times before, and I'll say it again. I and other have made many successful vote decks that didn't use Presence or vote pushing. However, I'll grant you that on a single discipline vs. single discipline basis ignoring all other things, Presence is most definitely the most powerful voting discipline. > I've heard alot of nay-sayers, but I haven't seen hardly anyone propose > a viable alternative. Telepathic Vote Counting is not enough. It's a tough > card to get a hold of and it's effects aren't that dramatic. I like deck-building skill as an alternative. Someone once said in this thread somewhere that if you want to build the best possible bleed deck, you use Malkavians with Obfuscate and Dominate (this is different from a _viable_ bleed deck). With combat, most would say that Potence and Celerity are the best possible. With voting, Presence is best but has to have some other support unless you use weenies (titled vampires or whatever). Voting is a somewhat fragile strategy on the whole compared with combat and especially bleed. In comparing Presence with other voting strategies, the overall capability isn't a whole lot different. But compare building a good Obf/Dom S&B deck with a Pro/Dom S&B deck. It takes a good amount of skill more to make the Pro/Dom deck mainly because of your vampire selection. Compare Presence voting and non-Presence voting, and you have a similar situation. Mike -- Mike Bohlmann, MAIP - Prince of Urbana-Champaign Rules Survey - http://www.shout.net/~mbohlman/vekn/ -----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==---------- [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <72f7v6$8sa$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, Dhar...@yahoo.com writes >Okay...versatility of Dominate aside, how can you break up the monopoly >that Presence has on political actions without giving other disciplines >more offensive voting power or reinstating vote pushing? > Re-instating vote pushing would kill Presence but still.... If you want to give a clan more political power, give it to the *clan*. eg Give the Tremere a card which gives them more votes, or the capacity to vote, or makes it easier to kill votes etc. >I've heard alot of nay-sayers, but I haven't seen hardly anyone propose >a viable alternative. Telepathic Vote Counting is not enough. It's a tough >card to get a hold of and it's effects aren't that dramatic. -- [ quoted text not captured ]

Here's the thing: Direct Intervention is an Intercept card, a Stealth Card, a Vote Card, and a Damage Prevention card all in one. That ruins the game. Why play anything else? Of course the answer is that Direct Intervention as a Master-out-of-Turn can only be played once each time around the table. I should rephrase my short and inflammatory statement- it is definitely broken in a two player and perhaps overpowered in a three player game because it can be used effectively in lieu of a half-dozen other tactics combined. Sudden Reversal is more broken because it can destroy a concept deck by itself, and there are far fewer Master phase actions that take place than minion actions. A player could almost eliminate Master Card effects by using 30 of these in a deck. Again, table size affects the power of the card. In the end I have a personal disrespect for these cards because they are generic and all-encompassing. The haven of someone with little imagination (or a drive to win). They are effective cards, but they lack personality. I won't use them, but I'll admit that they are not broken. James Coupe wrote in message <7z62qCA9...@obeah.demon.co.uk>... [ quoted text not captured ]

mboh...@shout.net wrote: > > Okay...versatility of Dominate aside, how can you break up the monopoly > > that Presence has on political actions without giving other disciplines > > more offensive voting power or reinstating vote pushing? > > Yeah! And how can you break up the monopoly that Obfuscate has on > stealth actions without giving other disciplines more stealth power? Obfuscate doesn't have a monopoly on stealth. Celerity, Chimerstry, Dementation, Dominate (for bleeds), Necromancy, Obtenebration, Protean, Serpentis and Viccisitude all have action modifiers that give stealth. Besides Presence, Aupsex is the only discipline that has action modifiers to be used during a politcal action. The comparison simply doesn't match up. I would appreciate it if everyone would stop trying to use this faulty analogy. I'm not discussing stealth, I'm discussing politics. Keep your orange juice out of my apple cider. > You say ludicrous, but the same goes with your statement. Presence > doesn't have a monopoly on votes. I've said it many times before, and > I'll say it again. I and other have made many successful vote decks > that didn't use Presence or vote pushing. And without vote pushing, a good Presence voting deck will rip it apart unless you are using Malk Rider Clauses. > However, I'll grant you that on a single discipline vs. single discipline > basis ignoring all other things, Presence is most definitely the most > powerful voting discipline. Besides the one card in Auspex, it's the _only_ one. > It takes a good amount > of skill more to make the Pro/Dom deck mainly because of your vampire > selection. Not really, Mike. From my own protean-dominate deck: Stanislava-Gangrel-11 cap-PRO DOM-Inner Circle (x2) Iliana-Gangrel-7 cap-PRO DOM (x2) Lisette Visquel-Lasombra-6 cap-DOM pro-Bishop Caitlin-Gangrel Antitribu-5 cap-PRO dom-Bishop Gloria Giovanni-Giovanni-4 cap-DOM Daliyah-Nosferatu-4 cap-PRO Ingrid Russo-Ventrue Antitribu-4 cap-DOM Chandler Hungerford-Gangrel-3 cap-PRO Samson-Ventrue Antitribu-2 cap-dom Sadie-Gangrel Antitribu-2 cap-pro There's a couple other vampires that could go in, but this crypt has always worked out the best. Now that we have a decent protean-dominate crypt, can we stop using this example? Noal McDonald The Great Googily Moogily of Westland, MI -- "DISCUSSION, n. A method of confirming others in their errors." -Ambrose Bierce. -----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==---------- [ quoted text not captured ]

Read the last paragraph and calm down. Then read Joshua Duffin's remarks. He sums up my problems with these cards better than I do. Dhar...@yahoo.com wrote in message <72eonm$qnq$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>... >Rachel & Chris wrote: >> Direct Intervention is an Intercept card, a Stealth Card, a Vote Card, and a >> Damage Prevention card all in one. That ruins the game. Why play anything >> else? > >First off, it can't be a stealth card because it is an Out-Of-Turn card. > >Secondly, name a card that does any of the above that costs one pool and is >limited to one use, can't be used during your turn and can only be played once >until the end of your next turn. Seeing my point yet? > >> Of course the answer is that Direct Intervention as a Master-out-of-Turn can >> only be played once each time around the table. I should rephrase my short >> and inflamatory statement- it is definitely broken in a two player and >> perhaps overpowered in a three player game because it can be used >> effectively in lieu of a half-dozen other tactics combined. > >2 or 3 player game??? Most games are at least 4 players. >A card should not be determined to be "broken" because you can >imagine drastic circumstances. > >> Sudden Reversal is more broken because it can destroy a concept deck by >> itself, and there are far fewer Master phase actions that take place than >> minion actions. A player could almost eliminate Master Card effects by >> using 30 of these in a deck. Again, table size affects the power of the >> card. > >Now Sudden Reversal is broken??? *laughs so hard I hurt* >I think I've seen enough. > >Noal McDonald [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <72fjgq$jbc$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, Dhar...@yahoo.com wrote: > The comparison simply doesn't match up. I would appreciate it if everyone > would stop trying to use this faulty analogy. I'm not discussing stealth, I'm > discussing politics. Keep your orange juice out of my apple cider. Fine, but the point is, you have to choose the right tools to do the job or you're going to get unexpected results. > > You say ludicrous, but the same goes with your statement. Presence > > doesn't have a monopoly on votes. I've said it many times before, and > > I'll say it again. I and other have made many successful vote decks > > that didn't use Presence or vote pushing. > > And without vote pushing, a good Presence voting deck will rip it > apart unless you are using Malk Rider Clauses. Do you see that little bit at the end there of my last sentence? "...didn't use Presence or vote pushing." If you build a vote deck that is effective when it isn't facing a Presence deck, it doesn't exactly become mashed potatoes when it does face Presence. How many vote reaction cards does the average Presence deck use? Not many, if any. I've faced good Presence-based vote decks that hardly lose with my Lasombra vote deck. The wins to losses are about even, maybe even in my favor. Are you trying to tell me that I'm imagining things when I say that a vote deck doesn't have to use Presence to win _and_ doesn't fall apart when facing Presence? It's called skilled deck design. You used to say that people should learn good deck design to defeat WVP. The point is, you have to devote a significant portion of cards just to defeat that one strategy for defense. When you are on offense, you don't have to rely on the other players. You don't need to restate your position that you are at the mercy of the other players with non-Presence votes. The point is, it depends on how you build your deck. > There's a couple other vampires that could go in, but this crypt > has always worked out the best. Now that we have a decent > protean-dominate crypt, can we stop using this example? I'm assuming you have several Protean skill cards. Otherwise, you're max stealth on an action could often be +2 stealth. Elder Intervention and Pack Tactics stop that rather handily. You won't always have a bonding for the 3rd. And if you actually face an intercept deck, you're hosed. But wait, if you are playing a non-Presence voting deck and face a Presence-based voting deck, you say you're hosed. Sorry, I forgot we stopped using this example. Btw, you didn't respond to my statement that good deck building skills can get around the difficulty of having a non-Presence based voting deck. Mike -- Mike Bohlmann, MAIP - Prince of Urbana-Champaign Rules Survey - http://www.shout.net/~mbohlman/vekn/ -----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==---------- [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <72cne6$528$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, <Dhar...@yahoo.com> wrote: >> Suggesting that Dominate needs the capacity to vote offensively is >> wrong. >I disagree. Clans like Tremere and Lasombra who traditionally have >had a fair amount of political power are fairly hamstrung without >presence. I would suggest that Dominate would do well to have cards >that allow it to vote offensively. Maybe not as strong as Bewitching >Oration or Awe, but certainly a card that has half the effect. If you want to beef up voting for the Lasombra or Tremere, then wouldn't it be better to do it directly with Lasombra or Tremere clan cards? As others have pointed out, Dominate already has a strong claim to being the most powerful discipline. -- Justin Fang (jus...@ugcs.caltech.edu) This space intentionally left blank.

mboh...@shout.net wrote: > In article <72fjgq$jbc$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, > Dhar...@yahoo.com wrote: > <snips> > > > You say ludicrous, but the same goes with your statement. > Presence > > > doesn't have a monopoly on votes. I've said it many times before, > and > > > I'll say it again. I and other have made many successful vote > decks > > > that didn't use Presence or vote pushing. > > > > And without vote pushing, a good Presence voting deck will rip it > > apart unless you are using Malk Rider Clauses. > > Do you see that little bit at the end there of my last sentence? > "...didn't use Presence or vote pushing." If you build a vote deck > that is effective when it isn't facing a Presence deck, it doesn't > exactly become mashed potatoes when it does face Presence. > > How many vote reaction cards does the average Presence deck use? Not > many, if any. I've faced good Presence-based vote decks that hardly > lose with my Lasombra vote deck. The wins to losses are about even, > maybe even in my favor. <snip a lot> I think this is a key point. Changing vote pushing weakens the dominance of a presence vote deck when another vote deck is at the table _a wee bit_, as reaction votes are rarely in the deck, and they can't just drop votes to defend against the other voters. Defense against a presence based vote deck is extremely tough, I grant ya, but when two vote decks are at the table, one presence and the other not, if the non-presence vote deck is well built some votes should still pass. Perhaps. This thread is draggin on too long. David Naseby

I agree wiith Justin. If a *clan* is weak in politics and the source material of the game (White Wolf stroytelling games) suggests otherwise then the *clan* should be improved- "Tremere Headquarters" or some such.

In article <729qln$mig$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, <Dhar...@yahoo.com> wrote: >>In jol88, I think I'm about to be run over by the weenie hordes of hell >>using Night Moves. A thankfully nearly impossible deck to construct in >>the real world. That's my "Trouble with Tribbles" deck, the point of which is to Embrace vampires as fast as possible, using The Hungry Coyote to feed the hordes. >I don't know about impossible...but I would have to beg, borrow and steal >the cards needed from everyone I know. I admit the deck looks like a CLer's strawman of a NL deck: it has 48 Embraces and 20 Hungry Coyotes out of 100 cards. This is because you get a lot fewer games to test a deck in JOL than in tabletop games, and I really, really wanted to make sure I had all the cards I needed to get started in my opening draw. So I chose the brute force approach. It could probably be done with considerably fewer of those two cards, at the cost of some speed. >At this point, Mike, he doesn't need Night Moves. You're tapped out >with 15 pool and your predator has 11 vampires. Under optimal conditions, I would have 16 vampires by now (after 4 turns). Sick, isn't it? The deck has a number of weaknesses; the Obfuscate is mainly to address one of them: early intercept that blocks the initial Embraces. This is, shall we say, no longer a concern in jol88. A really fast rush deck (i.e., Hasina Kesai + Koko on the first turn) would also have shut it down. That, too, is no longer a concern in jol88. >I give you two turns max before he takes you out. Since I'm your prey, I >give myself another turn or two before I get ousted...maybe one more since >I'm playing an weenie and allies deck. *shrug* Either way, it's going to >be a quick game both of us unless someone unleashes a Domain Challenge, >Anarch Uprising, or some other weenie horde killer. Yeah, at this point the deck is pretty much running on automatic. If I ever make another version, I'll have to include more funky weird stuff to mess around with. [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <72drkt$ftc$1...@news.NERO.NET>, phil...@nd.ENGR.ORST.EDU (Jasper Phillips) wrote: > In article <IQbRMLAU...@obeah.demon.co.uk>, > James Coupe <ve...@obeah.demon.co.uk> wrote: > > > >Dominate can wipe the floor with any other discipline for bleeding. > >It's cards generally aren't too powerful, but you won't find another > >discipline as good as it for bleeding. Does that mean we should give > >all the other disciplines the ability to bleed? No, it doesn't. > > Hmmm, maybe potence needs bleed bonus... I mean, after all it does > make sense from a basic "wrecking shit" point of view. Or what about > Animalism? Both of these could easily have bleed bonus thematically... Wait! It does...oh no...sorry...just teasing... I was so crushed when I found out that darn card from Sabbat that has the dominate & potence symbols on it was actually dominate...sigh...ahh... Slaughtering the Herd...it so should have been potence... It would have made my day to be a potence +bleed action... Xian "You can just ignore it...and let hand jam sort them out." --Jasper Phillips [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <72fjgq$jbc$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, Dhar...@yahoo.com wrote: > mboh...@shout.net wrote: > > > Okay...versatility of Dominate aside, how can you break up the monopoly > > > that Presence has on political actions without giving other disciplines > > > more offensive voting power or reinstating vote pushing? > > > > Yeah! And how can you break up the monopoly that Obfuscate has on > > stealth actions without giving other disciplines more stealth power? > > Obfuscate doesn't have a monopoly on stealth. Celerity, Chimerstry, > Dementation, Dominate (for bleeds), Necromancy, Obtenebration, Protean, > Serpentis and Viccisitude all have action modifiers that give stealth. > Besides Presence, Aupsex is the only discipline that has action modifiers > to be used during a politcal action. Noal, I think this is a weak argument. True, Obfuscate does not have *all* of the stealth cards. Most disciplines include at least one action that is at +1 stealth. However, of the disciplines you listed above, only Protean and Obtenebration (I believe) have more than 2 cards that are +stealth action modifiers. Most of the other disciplines also only have +1 stealth action modifiers. Necromancy, for example has the +1 stealth/+1 intercept (or the reverse...whatever...) card. That's it. As has been discussed many a time on here, getting +1 or +2 permanent intercept is pretty easy. Many players make a habit of including this much in *any* deck they build. Celerity has Alacrity. +1 stealth. That's it, unless you count the "bleed for 1, ignore excess" actions as being highly stealthy. Vicissitude: Changeling & Plasmic Form. +1 stealth, one at inferior, the other at superior. Dominate has Bonding. It also has Dominate Kine as an action, or whatever, I think. Neither really counts. Chimerstry: Fata Morgana. +1 stealth. Dementation: Mind Tricks. Confusion adds stealth to a bleed. Obtenebration: Shadow Play +1/+2 stealth = Lost in Crowds. Shroud of Night +1 stealth for non-bleeding/+1 stealth. Pretty weak. Protean: Earth Control +1/+2 stealth = Lost in Crowds. Form of Mist...sorta. Rapid Change: +1 stealth at inferior. Also pretty weak. Serpentis: Form of the Serpent. +1 stealth at inferior. Compare this all with Obfuscate's Cloak the Gathering, Faceless Night, Lost in Crowds, Mask of 1K Faces, Psychic Veil (not an action mod, but close enough in practice...), Spying Mission, Elder Impersonation, Forgotten Labyrinth, Swallowed by Night...that's 9 stealth cards, plus Marked Path and Hidden Pathways...which almost count... Protean is the second best with about 2-and-a-half stealth cards. All told, Obfuscate cards make up approximately half of the stealth cards in the whole set. Now, considering that in practice, you would not likely be using more than three or four of these disciplines at the same time (and most of them don't match up anyway...), you would have trouble playing more than 3 or 4 action modifiers for stealth...for we all know you can't use the same card twice on the same action. However, with Obfuscate, you can use almost all of the above at once. Cloak + Faceless Night + Lost in Crowds + Mask of 1K Faces + Spying Mission + Elder Impersonation + Forgotten Labyrinth + Swallowed by Night = (at superior) +11 stealth. Almost quadruple what the next closest discipline can come up with. And at least double what you could come up with any non-screwy (read: workable without lots and lots of skill cards...) combination of the above disciplines. Note also that there's a lot more stealth flying around than intercept. Auspex has intercept. Auspex *is* intercept. Chimerstry has a little intercept, 2 or 3 cards IIRC. Necromancy has that card, Spectral Divination for +1 int at superior. It also has +1/+2 intercept vs...diablerie with Eyes of the Dead. Big deal. Animalism has Cat's Guidance and Raptors/Raven Spies. Obtenebration has Eyes of the night for +1 intercept. Anything else? Maybe 1 card under Vicissitude. > The comparison simply doesn't match up. I would appreciate it if everyone > would stop trying to use this faulty analogy. I'm not discussing stealth, I'm > discussing politics. Keep your orange juice out of my apple cider. I'm not trying to continue this discussion, I'm merely pointing out that your insistence that Obfuscate isn't the only stealth discipline, while correct, is not a very strong argument in practice, because it is the only discipline that has reasonable stacking of stealth, which is what is required for a stealthy deck. I agree that each discipline should maybe be able to do more things, but we don't need them all to do everything. Disciplines are the different flavors of the game...sweet, salty, sour, and purple. (It is *too* a flavor! Haven't you ever had Dimetapp?) Celerity shouldn't taste like Dominate, and Obfuscate shouldn't taste like Vicissitude. They should each be able to do a number of things, they should each do a couple of things well. They should also each do some things poorly. I don't think that you are arguing that they should all do the same things equally well, but that *is* how it is coming across. Xian "Peace and Love Incorporated..." -Information Society [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <72gf8m$p...@gap.cco.caltech.edu>, jus...@ugcs.caltech.edu (Justin Fang) wrote: > The deck has a number of weaknesses; the Obfuscate is mainly to address one > of them: early intercept that blocks the initial Embraces. This is, shall > we say, no longer a concern in jol88. So I basically made a bad assumption that you actually used Obfuscate for stealth.... I'm even playing a light intercept deck. If only Noal had let me cycle some cards on him earlier. :) > Yeah, at this point the deck is pretty much running on automatic. If I ever > make another version, I'll have to include more funky weird stuff to mess > around with. Since you're already using Obfuscate, I would exchange some of those Embraces for Night Moves. It's a pretty sure way that your bleeds to get through. Mike -- Mike Bohlmann, MAIP - Prince of Urbana-Champaign Rules Survey - http://www.shout.net/~mbohlman/vekn/ -----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==---------- [ quoted text not captured ]

Noal wrote: "Okay...versatility of Dominate aside, how can you break up the monopoly that Presence has on political actions without giving other disciplines more offensive voting power or reinstating vote pushing?" Not that I condone the construction of such a card, as it isn't needed, but at one point in time I was agitating for: Anti-Surprise Influence no discipline action modifier Gain 2 votes during a political action. This is the only card needed to completely do away with any perceived Presence vote monopoly. And it doesn't make Dominate any stronger. Peter D Bakija PD...@aol.com "No other object has been misidentified as a flying saucer more often than the planet Venus." -Jesse "The Governor" Ventura

Noal wrote: "The comparison simply doesn't match up. I would appreciate it if everyone would stop trying to use this faulty analogy. I'm not discussing stealth, I'm discussing politics. Keep your orange juice out of my apple cider." It is in no way a faulty analogy. Stealth, for the most part, comes from Obfuscate. There are a few other cards here and there (maybe a card or two in each of a few disciplines) that also provide stealth. Ok. Good. Now look at votes. Presence provides the bulk of voting power, but you can still get voting power elsewhere--Vote cards give you vote power; Bribes give you vote power; Titled vampires give you vote power; Auspex gives you vote power; Some locations give you vote power (just like some locations give you stealth power). Other disciplines don't need to provide vote power, as there are already plenty of ways to get votes power that don't require disciplines. "And without vote pushing, a good Presence voting deck will rip it apart unless you are using Malk Rider Clauses." Presence only provides vote power offensively. It helps you pass votes, but it doesn't help you prevent other folks from passing votes (it can, but if you start talking about vote defense, then you open up the arena to Surprise Influence, Pulling Strings, and Delaying Tactics, none of which are Presence based). Thus, we are talking pure offensiveness. With Presence, you can push pretty much any vote you want through, true. With Bribes and Titled vampires can also push any vote it wants through, regardless of whether or not a deck across the table has Presence. "Besides the one card in Auspex, it's the _only_ one." And Bribes. And titled vampires. And Cryptic Rider. "Not really, Mike. From my own protean-dominate deck: Stanislava-Gangrel-11 cap-PRO DOM-Inner Circle (x2) Iliana-Gangrel-7 cap-PRO DOM (x2) Lisette Visquel-Lasombra-6 cap-DOM pro-Bishop Caitlin-Gangrel Antitribu-5 cap-PRO dom-Bishop Gloria Giovanni-Giovanni-4 cap-DOM Daliyah-Nosferatu-4 cap-PRO Ingrid Russo-Ventrue Antitribu-4 cap-DOM Chandler Hungerford-Gangrel-3 cap-PRO Samson-Ventrue Antitribu-2 cap-dom Sadie-Gangrel Antitribu-2 cap-pro There's a couple other vampires that could go in, but this crypt has always worked out the best. Now that we have a decent protean-dominate crypt, can we stop using this example?" While this has nothing to do with the vote debate at hand, I wouldn't say that in a purely objective sense that this a particularly good crypt. Only half the crypt has both disciplines, only three of them have both at superior (both of which are important to be superior), and there is a very good possibility of drawing either all small vampires, none of which have both disciplines or all huge vampires. Not to say that this isn't a good crypt for a deck that uses Pro/Dom, as it is probably the best you are going to get, but in comparison to a deck that relies on, say, Obf/Dom, this crypt will be much slower, much less consistent, and require far more skill cards to be in the deck. As a result, the Obf/Dom deck is going to be quicker, more reliable, and all around a better deck. Which brings me back to the point at hand. The above Pro/Dom deck, if intended to be a S+B deck, will probably be a perfectly viable S+B deck, possibly even a good one, but will be less effective at S+B than a straight Obf/Dom deck. Much like a non Presence vote deck can be perfectly effective, while still less effective than a Presence vote deck in a head to head situation. I fail to see how this is a problem. [ quoted text not captured ]

> I'll say it again. I and other have made many successful vote decks > that didn't use Presence or vote pushing. Without trying to sound antagonistic, I would *love* to see such a deck. Even more, I would *love* to see such a deck work. a0 [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <72hivl$7tq$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, agen...@my-dejanews.com wrote: > > I'll say it again. I and other have made many successful vote decks > > that didn't use Presence or vote pushing. > > Without trying to sound antagonistic, I would *love* to see such a > deck. Even more, I would *love* to see such a deck work. The only one of these decks that I currently have constructed is my Lasombra deck. For other examples, you could probably check the JOL archives or regular deck archives. Lasombra - Core Card: Political Struggle In case you aren't familiar with it, Political Struggle gives the acting vampire the ability to attack the target vampire at +1 stealth as a (D) action. If the target vampire is burned or goes to torpor, burn PS and the acting vampire gains votes equal to those of the target vampire. Like many of the non-Presence vote decks I've made, it relies on combat to eliminate or intimidate oppositional voters. In a four player game, there is commonly 3 or more other titled vampires in play with my group. A couple successful Political Struggles and a Power Structure in play give me vote dominance. The Lasombra are particularly good at this because they don't require a ton of cards to send a vampire to Torpor. My group's style allows me to use Arms of the Abyss, Entombment, and Disarm quite effectively. These could be adjusted for Thoughts Betrayed and Torn Signpost with Disarm. Once I have vote dominance through actual votes or negotiation (like I'll split my KRC's even if you vote with me), I go into stealthy vote mode. I'll probably modify this deck to remove bleed and add Grave Robbing and Peace of Khetamon. Antonio Delgado, Alvaro, and Gratiano are the core vampires. It gets usually trounced by dedicated rush if that deck doesn't have pressure from their Predator. Usually, I bring out two of the above vampires plus Aurora Van Brande and/or Ignacio with a Camarilla Vitae Slave. I also use Blood Bath and wish I had more than just one. Other general non-Presence voting decks: Nosferatu Princes - same principle as Lasombra but more difficult Weenies with Praxis Seizures - the weenie vote deck is still quite effective, just harder to build and play Tremere using Anathema - particularly good in a heavy combat environment If I also recall correctly, someone had a similar deck to this in the GenCon finals. Mike -- Mike Bohlmann, MAIP - Prince of Urbana-Champaign Rules Survey - http://www.shout.net/~mbohlman/vekn/ -----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==---------- [ quoted text not captured ]

Peter wrote: > It is in no way a faulty analogy. Stealth, for the most part, comes from > Obfuscate. There are a few other cards here and there (maybe a card or two in > each of a few disciplines) that also provide stealth. Over half of the disciplines that provide at least +1 stealth. There are a grand total of 2 diisciplines that provide action mods for voting: Presence and Auspex. Telepathic Vote Counting isn't that big of a deal. The stealth comparison simply does not add up. The point that you are missing isn't that I think that Dominate or any other discipline should rival Presence for voting offense, but I would like to see at least a nod coming from other disciplines. > Ok. Good. Now look at > votes. Presence provides the bulk of voting power, but you can still get > voting power elsewhere-- > Vote cards give you vote power; For a grand total of 1 vote. Yipee. >Bribes give you vote power; No. Bribes gives you pool. The only way that Bribes gives you voting power is if nobody else cares or the vote will pass anyway. > Titled vampires give you vote power; True. But with other people's vampires with titles will more often than not cancel this out. > Auspex gives you vote power; Very little. > Some locations give you vote power Agreed. But locations are fragile. > Other disciplines don't need to provide vote power, as there are already plenty > of ways to get votes power that don't require disciplines. Again...I disagree. > Presence only provides vote power offensively. It helps you pass votes, but it > doesn't help you prevent other folks from passing votes (it can, but if you > start talking about vote defense, then you open up the arena to Surprise > Influence, Pulling Strings, and Delaying Tactics, none of which are Presence > based). Bwah!!!! This makes two gut busters I've seen in this forum this week. Have you forgotten Dread Gaze and Treachery? They are very solid defensive cards. However, Dominate at least rivals Presence in this regard, which is why I haven't been discussing this avenue. I'm going to skip the rest in favor of the realization that you and I will not agree on this issue no matter how much we debate it and relevant and irrelevant points that we bring up. Noal McDonald The Great Googily Moogily of Westland, MI -- "DISCUSSION, n. A method of confirming others in their errors." -Ambrose Bierce. -----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==---------- [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <72hg9h$5ar$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, <mboh...@shout.net> wrote: >In article <72gf8m$p...@gap.cco.caltech.edu>, > jus...@ugcs.caltech.edu (Justin Fang) wrote: [my Trouble with Tribbles deck] >> The deck has a number of weaknesses; the Obfuscate is mainly to address one >> of them: early intercept that blocks the initial Embraces. This is, shall >> we say, no longer a concern in jol88. >So I basically made a bad assumption that you actually used Obfuscate >for stealth.... I'm even playing a light intercept deck. If only Noal >had let me cycle some cards on him earlier. :) Um, I am using Obfuscate for stealth. Just not for Night Moves. >> Yeah, at this point the deck is pretty much running on automatic. If I ever >> make another version, I'll have to include more funky weird stuff to mess >> around with. >Since you're already using Obfuscate, I would exchange some of those >Embraces for Night Moves. It's a pretty sure way that your bleeds to get >through. Having more vampires than your prey can possibly block is also a sure way of getting some through. :) I'm not sure the Night Moves are really worth it, though. Computer hacking, maybe. When you have this many minions, I think the effect of one-shot actions would tend to get diluted, if that makes any sense. I was thinking more of ideas like, using potence cards, sticking a Haven Uncovered on a vamp, and then rushing him with 5 or 6 weenies. [ quoted text not captured ]

Noal wrote: "Over half of the disciplines that provide at least +1 stealth. There are a grand total of 2 diisciplines that provide action mods for voting: Presence and Auspex. Telepathic Vote Counting isn't that big of a deal. The stealth comparison simply does not add up." Apparently you missed the entire point of my paragraph. I was pointing out that there was no need for other disciplines to provide vote cards, like other disciplines provide stealth cards, as there are a ton of non-discipline vote cards, where there are zero non-discipline stealth providing cards. For every Earth Control there is a Cryptic Rider. For every Fata Morgana there is a Bribes. I agree that there is simply not the same spread of vote cards as there are stealth cards in the disciplines. However, this is unimportant as there are plenty of non-disciplne vote related cards. "The point that you are missing isn't that I think that Dominate or any other discipline should rival Presence for voting offense, but I would like to see at least a nod coming from other disciplines." And again, I don't believe that there is a need, as there is already far more than a nod from the non-discipline cards. "For a grand total of 1 vote. Yipee." A vote is a vote. "No. Bribes gives you pool. The only way that Bribes gives you voting power is if nobody else cares or the vote will pass anyway." No, Bribes gets you votes from the guys across the table who's best interest it is in to help you weaken their predator or prey. Political decks are supposed to be political. Bribes is a card that works by politicking, not brute force. "True. But with other people's vampires with titles will more often than not cancel this out." Not if you Bribe them :-) "Very little." Telepathic Vote Counting is a strong card. Without vote pushing, opposing votes must come (for the most part) from vampires, not Methuselae. As such, TVC will provide a far greater vote swing in a no vote push environment. "Agreed. But locations are fragile." As are most vampires with Presence :-) "Bwah!!!! This makes two gut busters I've seen in this forum this week. Have you forgotten Dread Gaze and Treachery? They are very solid defensive cards. However, Dominate at least rivals Presence in this regard, which is why I haven't been discussing this avenue." No, I have not forgotten any of these. I was, as I pointed out, completely ommiting defensive vote cards from this discussion, as they are seldom used in actual practice (due to their incredibly high opportunity cost), and the most reliable vote defense there is, Delaying Tactics, is a non-discipline card. You could have all the Dreaded Gazes in the world, and still a few DTs will shut you down. "I'm going to skip the rest in favor of the realization that you and I will not agree on this issue no matter how much we debate it and relevant and irrelevant points that we bring up." Of course we aren't going to agree. That isn't why I debate these things. I debate these things so that people who aren't you or I and are reading this thread might make an intelligent decision based on our ramblings. That and I'm stubborn. I think the biggest rift in our views here is that you seem to think that Political decks should be able to consistently have a lock down effect, and not have to rely on, well, politics. From my point of view, Political decks already have a great deal of advantage (speed, card efficiency), which is balanced out by having to work the political angle of the table. Presence decks have the ability to have a complete lockdown votewise, but pay for it by generally not having stealth available. I am much happier if vote decks are not automatically sucessful (as they were with vote pushing), and currently, yes, to have a automatically sucessful vote deck, you need Presence. This is not a problem to me. [ quoted text not captured ]

> >Since you're already using Obfuscate, I would exchange some of those > >Embraces for Night Moves. It's a pretty sure way that your bleeds to get > >through. > > Having more vampires than your prey can possibly block is also a sure way of > getting some through. :) I'm not sure the Night Moves are really worth it, > though. Computer hacking, maybe. When you have this many minions, I think > the effect of one-shot actions would tend to get diluted, if that makes any > sense. I was thinking more of ideas like, using potence cards, sticking a > Haven Uncovered on a vamp, and then rushing him with 5 or 6 weenies. > I'd go with the Computer Hacking angle myeslf. If you get just one Computer Hacked bleed through each turn, that's like having another minion. Although having a gazillion Embraces also sounds like fun. If you're using Sabbat vampires (and I see to recall you saying that you were using Hungry Coyote, so I think you are), Pentex Loves You may also be worthwile. -Chris

> I think the biggest rift in our views here is that you seem to think that > Political decks should be able to consistently have a lock down effect, > and not have to rely on, well, politics. Actually, no. My concern isn't that political decks should be able to consistently have a "lock down effect." My concern is that political deck using Presence generally will with no balance from other avenues. All of the things you mention are available to decks using Presence, except Telepathic Vote Counting (unless you play Toreador). > Presence > decks have the ability to have a complete lockdown votewise, but pay for it by > generally not having stealth available. Not necessarily. To begin with, all political actions are at +1 stealth. Which means that the predator or prey needs to consistently have +1 intercept to stop votes. Marijava Ghouls with Charming Lobby can give votes extra stealth. Besides that, there are four clans that use Presence: Brujah, Setites, Toreador and Ventrue. Brujah and Toreador can use Alacrity for an extra +1 stealth, Setites have Obfuscate for +1,000,000 stealth, which leaves Ventrue. While Ventrue don't have stealth, they do have Fortitude and Dominate. Fortitude can be made to make an action unblockable or Dawn Op/Skin of Steel to make people think twice about blocking. Dominate has Seduction and Sleeping Mind to make it difficult to block. In my mind, that makes the point of stealth moot. > I am much happier if vote decks are > not automatically sucessful (as they were with vote pushing), and currently, > yes, to have a automatically sucessful vote deck, you need Presence. This is > not a problem to me. This, however, _is_ a problem to me. If offensive voting power is more available to other disciplines, it would lessen the monopoly that Presence has on voting, making it a more level playing field for voting. Noal McDonald [ quoted text not captured ]

Dhar...@yahoo.com wrote in message >The comparison simply doesn't match up. I would appreciate it if everyone >would stop trying to use this faulty analogy. I'm not discussing stealth, I'm >discussing politics. Keep your orange juice out of my apple cider. > >Noal McDonald >The Great Googily Moogily of Westland, MI > >-- Noal, you seem to keep bringing up oranges! Is there some deep psychosis you have against oranges? Be different! break free of the crowd. Mix your orange juice and cider! It's verrryy good. Raille