Clan Hosers

Greetings It was recently noted by a poster (sk...@columbia.edu) that some of the 7 original clan hoser cards have been altered between the Jyhad and V:tES editions. These cards (one for each Camarilla clan) are: Brujah Frenzy, Gangrel De-evolution, Malkavian Dementia, Nosferatu Putrescence, Letter from Vienna, Tragic Love Affair, and Cultivated Blood Shortage. Gangrel De-Evolution was renamed Gangrel Atavism for the V:tES set. In the original set, none of these had any clan requirements. Since their purpose was to hose a particular clan, they were only usable is someone *else* was playing that clan. Within the game design, they serves as a safeguard in case some particular clan should turn out to be too powerful. That did in fact turn out to be the case for Malkavian Dementia, which was often used to counteract the power and popularity of Malkavian S&B. Most of the other clan hosers are rarely used. They hardly needed additional restrictions, espectially since the current number of clans (21) makes it far harder to predict what clans one's opponent will be playing. I have none of the V:tES versions of these cards so I checked out the on-line WOTC card-text listings. Three cards have apparently been changed: Gangrel Atavism now requires you control a ready Gangrel, Tragic Love Affair now requires a ready Toreador, and Brujah Frenzy now requires you control a ready Brujah. Could find no errata among the current listings. Why were the cards changed? Are the V:tES versions now official? Since Gangrel Atavism and Gangrel De-Evolution differ in more than name (like Stake and Wooden Stake), should they now be treated as two separate cards? Lupus Australis ____ ____ \ \----/ / |()__()| __\ __ /__ / __\()/__ \ |/ \==/ \| | || |

Lupus Australis wrote: > [VTES versions of the clan hosers were printed with clan symbols] > > Could find no errata among the current listings. Why were the cards > changed? Are the V:tES versions now official? No. None of the clan-hosers require control of a member of the clan being hosed. This is errata. I will add it to the lists ASAP, if not sooner. :-) > Since Gangrel Atavism and Gangrel De-Evolution differ in more than > name (like Stake and Wooden Stake), should they now be treated as two > separate cards? Yes (for no reason other than that the names are different), not that it matters, since Card Limits aren't a part of VtES. -- L. Scott Johnson (vte...@wizards.com) Official VtES Net.Rep for Wizards of the Coast. (*) - Subject to review by Rules Team

Lupus Australius wrote: "That did in fact turn out to be the case for Malkavian Dementia, which was often used to counteract the power and popularity of Malkavian S&B. Most of the other clan hosers are rarely used. They hardly needed additional restrictions, espectially since the current number of clans (21) makes it far harder to predict what clans one's opponent will be playing." Just as an aside, Clan hosers are complely unneeded in the game, and are pretty much contrary to the entire original design paradigm of the game. The bulk of Jyhad was designed to exist without the need of "Hoser Cards", and plays just fine without them. The Malkavian Dementia that is used for an example is completely unneeded to defend against the Malkavians, as any number of standard defenses/strategies (Rush combat/Bleed Bounce/Out race them) work just fine. The Clan Hosers were sort of a goofy idea that was an attempt to get some game world flavor into the set, but were more a left over from the M:TG game mechanic than a part of the Jyhad game mechanic. As a balancing factor, they are very sketchy. Malkavian Dementia (again, for instance, as it pretty much is the most effective of the clan hosers) is only useful if A) there is a Malkavian sitting next to you and B) You draw it. For there to be a Malkavian to be sitting next to you, you need to be either really lucky or know before hand that there are Malkavians playing. To know there are Malkavians playing, you need to either spy on your opponents and then change your deck in response (like Sideboarding or something), which is really lame, or be playing in your standard playgroup and picking on the guy who always plays Malkavians, which is also lame. To be able to draw the hoser card, you will need multiples of them in your deck to count as a viable defense. Having alot of them will hamstring your deck against anything but a Malkavian, and having few will just get you killed if you are relying on it as your defense. All in all, the clan hosers are a bad idea from a design standpoint and a bad idea from a strategy standpoint. I'd just stay away from them. (if you haven't already read the response from LSJ, the Clan requirment symbols on the VTES versions of these cards, as well as the lack of them from a couple others like Asylum Hunting ground, is a misprint. You don't need a Malkavian to play Malk Dementia.) Peter D Bakija PD...@aol.com "What's his number? Oh yeah. 1-800-I'm Dating a Skanky Ho." -Willow

Without gettting into the debate of whether these cards should exist. (The fact is they do exist, so let's just accept it) Malkavian dementia also has the flaw that the Malkavian you steal nedds to be unatpped to be useful. If you are sitting near a Malkavian bleed deck, and he always taps out, your cards are worthless. Jason

[ quoted text not captured ] There is no debate as to whether or not they exist nor whether or not they should exist, just whether they are either useful or balanced. I would claim that they are an example of bad game design because depending on the situation they are either completely useless or overly powerful and as a result, not particularly balanced (the Malk Dementia is probably the only one that fits this bill, as game effects that pretty much allow you to burn an opponents vampire are very few and far between, and generally have a pretty severe cost. The only cost of Malk Dementia is that of opportunity) . Granted, most of the basic set Clan Hoser cards pretty much suck, but here they are: Malkavian Dementia--Far and away the best of the lot. Very useful for killing off Malkavians ("Oh no! Zebulon has deablerized Gilbert Duane! He is outraged at his own actions and calls a blood hunt! Oh, the Inhumanity!"). The need for the Malkavian to be untapped is kind of a hamstring, but isn't a problem if you get it in your hand in the first 4 or 5 turns (when vampires are coming under control) or if there is something to sack vampires to (like Antedeluvian Awakening or Golconda). Brujah Frenzy--Possibly effective, as it will save one of your vampires from a Bum's Rush, but that is pretty much it, as it is unlikely that neither the Brujah or the frenzy victim will actually want to fight. Letter from Vienna--Sketchy, at best. Ok, it taps all the Tremere, but if the Tremere are untapped waiting to intercept/bleed bounce you, then they most likely are packing WWEF, making the Letter useless, and if they can't intercept/bounce you anyway, what difference does it make if they are tapped or not? Cultivated Blood Shortage--Could be slightly effective, except that it has a +1 stealth built in destruction clause. At best, it will make the Ventrue player waste a few actions killing it. Gangrel Atavism--Blows. Darn! My Gangrel has -1 bleed? I guess I'll just have to kill you instead... Tragic Love Affair--Somewhat debilitating for the one turn that it will be around, as it is really easy to get rid of, either by placing it on another Toreador or by ditching the edge. Nosferatu Putrescence--Very far from useful. The -1 hand damage that it gives out is only useful in multiples, and having multiples of this card is idiocy. Out of all of them, the only one that is particularly debilitating is the Malkavian Dementia, as more often than not, its use will result in one (if not two) destroyed Malkavians. The rest are merely nuisance. As such, the set of them are mostly not worth even putting in your deck when playing blind (as even with a 90 card deck, card space is at a premium most of the time), and putting them in your deck because you know what your opponent is playing is (in gamer terms) ethically questionable (the DCI Jyhad tournament rules do not utilize any sort of "sideboarding", as Jyhad is designed to be played on the strength of deck design, not hoser inclusion). The newer set inclusions in the Clan Hoser world are pretty wack as well. Most of them are little more than minor inconvinience (Giovanni Discrimination, Whispers of the Niktuku) and some of them are completely unacceptable (Out of Control comes to mind...). Malkavian Derangement, when compared to Malk Dementia, is far more balanced (costs 2 pool and requires a coin flip offset by lack of opportunity cost), and as a result much less effective. [ quoted text not captured ]

On 14 Feb 1998, PDB6 wrote: > Lupus Australius wrote: > "That did in fact turn out to be the case for Malkavian Dementia, which was > often used to counteract the power and popularity of Malkavian S&B. Most of > the other clan hosers are rarely used. They hardly needed additional > restrictions, espectially since the current number of clans (21) makes it far > harder to predict what clans one's opponent will be playing." > > Just as an aside, Clan hosers are complely unneeded in the game, Meaning what? In a CCG game, additional cards and new expansions are there to add variety and possibilities. Very few cards can be said to be "needed" in any absolute sense. If a card is "needed" then that is generally taken as a sign that card is overpowered and the game is unbalanced. > and are pretty > much contrary to the entire original design paradigm of the game. How can you defend such a statement when the "clan hosers" *were* in fact part of the original design, for good or ill. > The bulk of > Jyhad was designed to exist without the need of "Hoser Cards", If by the "bulk" you mean the other 431 cards of the original set, well, yes, I suppose they were designed to exist on their own. Meaning? > and plays just > fine without them. You could say the same for any other 7 cards in the game. In fact, one could argue that the game plays just fine without any of the expansions. > The Malkavian Dementia that is used for an example is > completely unneeded to defend against the Malkavians, as any number of standard > defenses/strategies (Rush combat/Bleed Bounce/Out race them) work just fine. It is useful against Malkavians, so who cares whether it is "needed". One must also remember that the game has changed somewhat since the original design. The V:tES reprint added anti-bleed cards, and increased the value of combat decks by changing the rules for aggravated damage. New expansions have further increased the power of combat decks, and the addition of new clans have decreased the potential usefulness of clan hosers. I can remember a time when posters on this ng were lamenting the power of Malkavians, and saying "Thank God for Malkavian Dementia" > The Clan Hosers were sort of a goofy idea that was an attempt to get some game > world flavor into the set, but were more a left over from the M:TG game > mechanic than a part of the Jyhad game mechanic. So you say, but I have no problem with the idea. > As a balancing factor, they are very sketchy. Mainly because the game turned out to be well balanced and well designed. Therefore, most of the clan hosers fell by the wayside, which was for the best. The game designers had no way of being completely sure that the game would be as well balanced as it was, and so the clan hosers were an appropriate safeguard. I admit that some, like Gangrel De-evolution, would have been pretty useless anyway, even if the Gangrel turned out to be an unstoppable and popular clan. Still, the concept seems fine to me. > Malkavian Dementia (again, for > instance, as it pretty much is the most effective of the clan hosers) is only > useful if A) there is a Malkavian sitting next to you and B) You draw it. For > there to be a Malkavian to be sitting next to you, you need to be either really > lucky or know before hand that there are Malkavians playing. To know there are > Malkavians playing, you need to either spy on your opponents and then change > your deck in response (like Sideboarding or something), which is really lame, > or be playing in your standard playgroup and picking on the guy who always > plays Malkavians, which is also lame. To be able to draw the hoser card, you > will need multiples of them in your deck to count as a viable defense. Having > alot of them will hamstring your deck against anything but a Malkavian, and > having few will just get you killed if you are relying on it as your defense. I don't think you get this card at all. It can be quite useful, and also fun, even if you are not trying to "hose" the Malkavian player. First off, there were only 7 clans (not counting caitiff) in the original design of the game. Imagine a 5 player game, in which each player has 3 or 4 vampires out (total of 12-16 vampires, not counting your own). The odds are pretty good (in the original 7-clan setup) that at least one of those vampires is going to be a Malkavian. If you can get them untapped, they can be used for free actions. Even if tapped, they can be used for votes, or to block with WWEF. > All in all, the clan hosers are a bad idea from a design standpoint and a bad > idea from a strategy standpoint. I'd just stay away from them. Well, I would today, with 20 clans in the game. In such an environment, cards that target specific clans need to have a more general usefulness as well. I would not put Malkavian Dementia in one of my decks today, as I would probably find myself facing Malkavian Antitribu, instead. "Seeds of Corruption" comes to mind, as, while it is particularly useful against Settites, it is still useful even if none are on the table. [ quoted text not captured ]

PDB6 wrote: > Jason wrote: > "Without gettting into the debate of whether these cards should > exist. (The > fact is they do exist, so let's just accept it) EVERY clan in the World of Darkness has a unique flaw. WotC has imbedded this fact with Clan Hoser Cards. Some cards are more powerful than others, this is true. But every clan has its weakness. > There is no debate as to whether or not they exist nor whether or not > they > should exist, just whether they are either useful or balanced. I > would claim > that they are an example of bad game design because depending on the > situation > they are either completely useless or overly powerful and as a result, > not > particularly balanced. When you're got in your pants, you always feel overpowered. Clan hosers represent clan weaknesses. Some weaknesses affect gameplay more than others. But I don't think that any clan hoser card is overpowered.You have to spend a slot in your library, hoping that the clan you want to hose is played and that the hoser card will be useful at the time you get it in your hand. > Granted, most of the basic set Clan Hoser cards pretty much suck, but > here they > are: > > Malkavian Dementia--Far and away the best of the lot. Very useful for > killing > off Malkavians ("Oh no! Zebulon has deablerized Gilbert Duane! He is > outraged > at his own actions and calls a blood hunt! Oh, the Inhumanity!"). > The need > for the Malkavian to be untapped is kind of a hamstring, but isn't a > problem if > you get it in your hand in the first 4 or 5 turns (when vampires are > coming > under control) or if there is something to sack vampires to (like > Antedeluvian > Awakening or Golconda). > It is the most useful, and the only clan hoser card with an active effect on game balance.But if you call Malk Dementia broken, what do you think of Malk Fast Bleed? Especially when you are out of bleed bounce cards... ? > Brujah Frenzy--Possibly effective, as it will save one of your > vampires from a > Bum's Rush, but that is pretty much it, as it is unlikely that neither > the > Brujah or the frenzy victim will actually want to fight. > The Brujah Controller has a face to loose. A Brujah in Frenzy who doesn't stamp his opponent into the ground? Pah. (After all you can make a deal with the Brujah. He eliminates someone for you and you will do him another favor. Say Consangineous Boon. Say Disputed Territory "You get this Huntingground". Say Succubbus Club.) > Letter from Vienna--Sketchy, at best. Ok, it taps all the Tremere, > but if the > Tremere are untapped waiting to intercept/bleed bounce you, then they > most > likely are packing WWEF, making the Letter useless, and if they can't > intercept/bounce you anyway, what difference does it make if they are > tapped or > not? > They actually have to play these wakes. Eventually they ran out of them. > Cultivated Blood Shortage--Could be slightly effective, except that it > has a +1 > stealth built in destruction clause. At best, it will make the > Ventrue player > waste a few actions killing it. > Exactly. It slows him down. It hinders him. And if you have a Form of Corruption in play...A lot of players consider the blood on their vamps nearly equal to their pool (they play with enough Blood Dolls). To these players, this card is really evil. > Gangrel Atavism--Blows. Darn! My Gangrel has -1 bleed? I guess I'll > just > have to kill you instead... Yep. But you would have done that anyway. But now it is more difficult for you to oust me. Since Gangrel are murderous combatants but no fearsome bleeders (when they play without Dominate), this card helps. Not much, of course. But a little bit. After all Clan hoser cards describe the effect of clan weaknesses on the jyhad. You may not like a specific effect of a card as a Meth. But if you choose to control clans known for their unpredictability, you will have to face the consequences. Chaos takes its toll. Michael Beer

Lupus Australius wrote: "Meaning what? In a CCG game, additional cards and new expansions are there to add variety and possibilities. Very few cards can be said to be "needed" in any absolute sense. If a card is "needed" then that is generally taken as a sign that card is overpowered and the game is unbalanced." Yes, yes, semantics are wonderful. Cards that fit into a game do so because they are compatable with the game design and add something to the game as a whole. Clan Hosers in Jyhad, IMO, are poorly compatable with the game design as a whole. Yes, they were in the basic set, but were a bad idea then. Jyhad stands as a very good example of a game where good deck design and good strategy are of a paramount importance. Hoser cards (single cards that shut down entire strategies but are completely useless in most situations) do not add to this sort of enviornment. "How can you defend such a statement when the "clan hosers" *were* in fact part of the original design, for good or ill." Just because they were in the main set doesn't mean they were a good idea. I understand that they were included as a representation of the various clans disadvantages, but when compared to the rest of the set, they stand out as an odd inclusion. "You could say the same for any other 7 cards in the game. In fact, one could argue that the game plays just fine without any of the expansions." Well no, you couldn't. Most of the cards in the game are general purpose cards to build strategies around. The Clan Hosers are incredibly specialized and mostly useless, unless you know what clans your opponents are playing. Most other card in the set (barring a few weak exceptions. Most specific anti-vote cards come to mind) are useful in any situation and, depending on your strategy, always worth including in your deck. Specific hoser cards do not fit this description. "It is useful against Malkavians, so who cares whether it is "needed"." So are many other non specific strategies that do not rely on either luckily being next to a Malkavian or knowning before you play that you will. "I can remember a time when posters on this ng were lamenting the power of Malkavians, and saying "Thank God for Malkavian Dementia"" Yes. Because they didn't really understand the game (myself included). "I don't think you get this card at all. It can be quite useful, and also fun, even if you are not trying to "hose" the Malkavian player." No, I understand the card perfectly. I play it on your untapped Malkavian, use him to diablerize your other torporized Malkavian, and call a blood hunt on the first Malkavian. You now have had 2 vampires burned with very little effort/cost on my part. This is pretty much what has happened every single time I have played Malkavian Dementia. ""Seeds of Corruption" comes to mind, as, while it is particularly useful against Settites, it is still useful even if none are on the table." Exactly. Seeds of Corruption is a perfectly acceptable card, as it is not highly situational. The Clan Hosers as a whole are incedibly sketchy, as again, they are not worth including in your deck unless you know you will be playing against a certain clan, and if you put them in your deck because you know you are going to be playing against said clan, you are gaining an unfair advantage. [ quoted text not captured ]

PDB6 wrote: > > Lupus Australius wrote: > "That did in fact turn out to be the case for Malkavian Dementia, which was > often used to counteract the power and popularity of Malkavian S&B. Most of > the other clan hosers are rarely used. They hardly needed additional > restrictions, espectially since the current number of clans (21) makes it far > harder to predict what clans one's opponent will be playing." > > Just as an aside, Clan hosers are complely unneeded in the game, and are pretty > much contrary to the entire original design paradigm of the game. The bulk of > Jyhad was designed to exist without the need of "Hoser Cards", and plays just > fine without them. The Malkavian Dementia that is used for an example is > completely unneeded to defend against the Malkavians, as any number of standard > defenses/strategies (Rush combat/Bleed Bounce/Out race them) work just fine. > The Clan Hosers were sort of a goofy idea that was an attempt to get some game > world flavor into the set, but were more a left over from the M:TG game > mechanic than a part of the Jyhad game mechanic. > > As a balancing factor, they are very sketchy. Malkavian Dementia (again, for > instance, as it pretty much is the most effective of the clan hosers) is only > useful if A) there is a Malkavian sitting next to you and B) You draw it. For > there to be a Malkavian to be sitting next to you, you need to be either really > lucky or know before hand that there are Malkavians playing. To know there are > Malkavians playing, you need to either spy on your opponents and then change > your deck in response (like Sideboarding or something), which is really lame, > or be playing in your standard playgroup and picking on the guy who always > plays Malkavians, which is also lame. To be able to draw the hoser card, you > will need multiples of them in your deck to count as a viable defense. Having > alot of them will hamstring your deck against anything but a Malkavian, and > having few will just get you killed if you are relying on it as your defense. > > All in all, the clan hosers are a bad idea from a design standpoint and a bad > idea from a strategy standpoint. I'd just stay away from them. > > (if you haven't already read the response from LSJ, the Clan requirment symbols > on the VTES versions of these cards, as well as the lack of them from a couple > others like Asylum Hunting ground, is a misprint. You don't need a Malkavian > to play Malk Dementia.) > > > Peter D Bakija > PD...@aol.com > > "What's his number? Oh yeah. > 1-800-I'm Dating a Skanky Ho." > -Willow Cud anyone tell me how 2 play this game D-Rai

PDB6 wrote: > > Lupus Australius wrote: [clip] > Just as an aside, Clan hosers are complely unneeded in the game, and are pretty > much contrary to the entire original design paradigm of the game. I'll have to disagree that they are contrary to the original design paradigm. I do know where you are coming from though. I'd say the master phase is the portion of the game that most resembles MtG. The Clan hosers are the equivalent of the MtG "protection from color x" type cards. Also, in the Master phase you see things like Sudden Reversal and now Direct Intervention which have the most obvious relation to the "Counterspell" in MtG. The minion cards have a completely different paradigm than the masters. > The bulk of > Jyhad was designed to exist without the need of "Hoser Cards", and plays just > fine without them. The Malkavian Dementia that is used for an example is > completely unneeded to defend against the Malkavians, as any number of standard > defenses/strategies (Rush combat/Bleed Bounce/Out race them) work just fine. > The Clan Hosers were sort of a goofy idea that was an attempt to get some game > world flavor into the set, but were more a left over from the M:TG game > mechanic than a part of the Jyhad game mechanic. Yes, agreed. Malk Dem wasn't created to "balance" the Malkavians. [clip] > All in all, the clan hosers are a bad idea from a design standpoint and a bad > idea from a strategy standpoint. I'd just stay away from them. I don't believe clan hosers are bad in either case. The risk of putting in a useless hoser is balanced with the benefit derived from such a card. From a strategy standpoint, the proper place for Clan Hosers is again, the Meta Game. If you can accurately predict what others will play, then it might be worth adding the hoser. Also, I routinely add Malk Dementia when my library selection would work well with a demented Malk. [clip] -Robert rrgo...@earthlink.net

On 15 Feb 1998, PDB6 wrote: > Lupus Australius wrote: > "Meaning what? In a CCG game, additional cards and new expansions are > there to add variety and possibilities. Very few cards can be said to > be "needed" in any absolute sense. If a card is "needed" then that is > generally taken as a sign that card is overpowered and the game is > unbalanced." > Yes, yes, semantics are wonderful. Huh? Your "semantics" were vague. I pointed that out. It is one thing to point out that most clan hosers have turned out to be useless in the typical game environment. The rest of your statements sound overblown and pretentious. > Cards that fit into a game do so > because they are compatable with the game design and add something to > the game as a whole. Clan hosers in Jyhad, IMO, are poorly compatible > with the game design as a whole. Yes, they were in the basic set, but > they were a bad idea then. In any CCG some cards will turn out to be wallpaper, because no-one has 20-20 foresight in such matters. In this light, grandiose statements like the one above sound pompous and arrogant. Only hindsight (and the specific game environment you play in) will tell if certain cards "are compatible" with the "game design". Many clan hosers did not in fact turn out to be wallpaper, at least not in a 7-clan multi-player environment. You have complained, in fact, that Malkavian Dementia can be too effective. Malkavian Dementia is "too effective" only a player is too predictable and has no sense of humor. It is hardly an inappropriate check on the most powerful clan in the original set, and certainly never stopped them from winning more than their fair share of games and tournaments. > Jyhad stands as a very good example of a game > where good deck design and good strategy are of a paramount importance. Lets not leave out variety, originality, unpredictability, atmosphere, and fun. > Hoser cards (single cards that shut down entire strategies but are > completely useless in most situations) do not add to this sort of > enviornment. I disagree. I used to play with them, and this was *not* in an environment where I knew what my opponents were playing. I felt they added variety, unpredictability, and fun to the decks. I did not use them to hose particular strategies, or shut down entire decks. If I was playing a Nosferatu vote deck, I might include Cultivated Blood Shortage to cause some trouble for any Ventrue, because they were the clan most likely to cause me trouble with vote competition. One or two Malkavian Dementias was often a good idea in a 4 or 5 player game (and we sometimes even played 9 player games), because one could use them to perform extra actions, gain extra votes, temporarily deprive an opponent of a minion, etc, etc. Brujah Frenzy was also a fun "surprise" card in a multi-player setup, though not as effective or likely to be used, since the Brujah were considerably less popular than the Malkavians. One such card in a deck was for fun and unpredictablility, and if the clan in question was not being played, it could be easily discarded. > "How can you defend such a statement when the "clan hosers" *were* in > fact part of the original design, for good or ill." > Just because they were in the main set doesn't mean they were a good > idea. I understand that they were included as a representation of the > various clans disadvantages, but when compared to the rest of the set, > they stand out as an odd inclusion. They are not much different from: Ancestor's Talisman: Only useful if an opponent plays action cards requiring Dominate or Presence. Kindred Segregation; Sacre-Cour Cathedral; Wave of Insanity; Command; Eyes of the Serpent; Art of Love; Coagulate Blood: Only useful if an opponent is plays with Allies. Far Mastery; Lure of the Serpent: Only usable if an opponent plays allies or retainers. Shepherd's Innocence: Only usable if one of your opponent plays permanents requiring animalism Peace Treaty; Up Yours; Fast Hands: Only useful if your opponent relies on weapons. Blessing of Durga Syn; Shattering Blow; Fractured Armament: Only usable if an opponent plays equipment. Ancilla Empowerment: Only useful if your opponent plays weenie decks. Arcanum Chapterhouse Alexandria: Only useful if predator or prey play Hunting Grounds Cards. Archon Investigation: Only usable if your predator likes to bleed for 4+. Justicar Retribution: Only useful if an opponent uses permanent bleed enhancers or IC members. Protected Resources: Only useful if an opponent bleeds for 3+. Anachronism: Only usable if an opponent plays big vampires with weapons. Betrayer: Only usable if your opponent is has the same vampires in play as you do in your uncontrolled region. Dog Pack: Only useful if an apponent plays combat-ends strike cards. Beyond Reproach: Only useful if your opponent plays Primogen. Command of the Harpies; The Treatment: Only useful if your opponent plays Princes. Wrath of the Inner Circle: Only useful if your opponent plays Justicars. Fear of Mekhet: Only usable if an opponent plays Justicars of IC Members. Open Grate: Only usable if an opponent plays press cards. Disputed Territory; Arson; Rampage; Unnatural Disaster; etc: Only useful if your opponent uses Locations. Mark of the Damned: Only useful if your prey likes to burn his prey's vampires. The Portrait, The Signet of King Saul, Legacy of Caine: Only useful if your prey plays big vampires. Rotschreck: Only usable if an opponent plays aggravated damage. Sacrifice; Clan Loyalty: Only usable if someone else is playing the same clan as you are. Weakness: Only usable if an opponent plays Master: Discipline cards. Any reaction card that is "only usable during a political action": Pointless unless an opponent plays political actions. Night Moves; Forgotten Labyrinth; (or any card that gives more than +1 stealth): Pointless unless your opponent plays intercept. Then we have some of the new Anti-Sect cards. These are a similar concept to the Anti-Clan cards, but more viable because there are only 3 sects, while there were originally 8 clans (Now 22). MtG has 5 factions, which is one reason why faction hosers work better in Magic than clan-hosers do in Jyhad. Covenant of Blood: Only usable if your opponent plays Camarilla vampires. Imperial Decree; Judgement-Camarilla Segregation: Only useful if an opponent plays non-camarilla vampires. Monomancy; Vaulderie: Only usable if an opponent plays Sabbat vampires. The above list is by no means complete. All of the cards listed above are cards whose usefulness or usability are dependent on what one's opponent has in his deck. Any deck designer takes into account his game environment when he designes his deck. If one's opponents have lots of intercept, you need lots of stealth. If lots of bleed decks you need bleed defence, if lots of vote decks you need vote defence, if lots of combat decks you need combat defence, etc. etc. One can never be predictable in what decks one plays because there is no deck so good that it cannot be countered. The clan hosers listed above are in no way out of spirit with the game, and are no different in spirit than many of the cards listed above. I accept that they are too specific to be often useful (far more so now than they used to be, due to the proliferation of the number of clans), and this can be attributed to a certain shortsightedness in design. So what? Many cards have turned out to be wallpaper and this is inevitable in any deck design. Everyone has 20/20 hindsight. However, if I was playing in a game environment where I were constantly being hosed by Brujah rush decks, I might well put a Brujah Frenzy of two in my next deck. Why not? > "You could say the same for any other 7 cards in the game. In fact, one > could argue that the game plays just fine without any of the > expansions." > Well no, you couldn't. Well, yes you could. In case you forgot, this was in reference to your statement that "the game plays just fine without them". Please name seven cards, and explain how their absence would make Jyhad unplayable. > Most of the cards in the game are general > purpose cards to build strategies around. The Clan Hosers are > incredibly specialized and mostly useless, unless you know what clans > your opponents are playing. Most other card in the set (barring a few > weak exceptions. Most specific anti-vote cards come to mind) are useful > in any situation and, depending on your strategy, always worth including > in your deck. Specific hoser cards do not fit this description. Neither do the "weak exceptions", a significant number of which are listed above, and some of which are not so weak. As I have shown, there are a significant number of these in Jyhad. While they may be rarely played, they do serve as a deterrent to predictability in the decks one plays. If you are too predictable, they WILL be used. I see no problem with this. > "It is useful against Malkavians, so who cares whether it is "needed"." > So are many other non specific strategies that do not rely on either > luckily being next to a Malkavian or knowning before you play that you > will. As I have said, I have never played hosers out of prior knowledgee. I have played them for fun, knowing I might have to discard them. I have never set out to hose a specific Malkavian player (and if I did, it would be his fault for letting me know what he was playing). I love to play Nossies, and, when I finally get my hands on a "Nosferatu Performance Art" I will certainly include one in my next Nossie deck...just because we Nossies hate the Toreador (who like to intercept us and disrupt our strategy). I shall probably have to discard the card, of course, but I'd like to see the look on my opponent's face when I *do* use it. Just for fun, I think I would like to construct a Nosferatu "Toreador Hoser" Deck, complete with lots of Tragic Love Affairs and Nosferatu Performance Arts. Then I will wait for a good opportunity to use it. If my opponent complains that it is "lame" or "unfair" then he just has no sense of humor, now does he? > "I can remember a time when posters on this ng were lamenting the power > of Malkavians, and saying "Thank God for Malkavian Dementia"" > Yes. Because they didn't really understand the game (myself included). That's an odd statement. I would still use the card if there were not so many clans in the game, or if it also effected Malk Antitribu. Is this because I don't understand the game? Or is it perhaps because my play style, and my game environment, have been somewhat different from yours? > "I don't think you get this card at all. It can be quite useful, and also fun, > even if you are not trying to "hose" the Malkavian player." > No, I understand the card perfectly. I play it on your untapped Malkavian, use > him to diablerize your other torporized Malkavian, and call a blood hunt on the > first Malkavian. You now have had 2 vampires burned with very little > effort/cost on my part. This is pretty much what has happened every single > time I have played Malkavian Dementia. Good for you. I personally would play the card in multiplayer games to get free actions for myself. I would not necessarily be using it to severely damage an opponent because I would be unlikely that the Malkavian opponent was my prey. > ""Seeds of Corruption" comes to mind, as, while it is particularly > useful against Settites, it is still useful even if none are on the table." > Exactly. Seeds of Corruption is a perfectly acceptable card, as it is not > highly situational. The Clan Hosers as a whole are incedibly sketchy, as > again, they are not worth including in your deck unless you know you will be > playing against a certain clan, and if you put them in your deck because you > know you are going to be playing against said clan, you are gaining an unfair > advantage. Well, I agree that any new "hosers" that are designed should be made less situational. I already see some attempt to do this. For istance "Jackal" can be used against two clans, not one. It is still probably too situational, but the idea is a step in the right direction. "Anti-Sect" cards are another step in this direction--less situational (as there are only 3 sects), but the same concept nonetheless. [ quoted text not captured ]

Lupus Australis (jbwh...@dorsai.org) wrote: : On 15 Feb 1998, PDB6 wrote: : > Lupus Australius wrote: : > "Meaning what? In a CCG game, additional cards and new expansions are : > there to add variety and possibilities. Very few cards can be said to : > be "needed" in any absolute sense. If a card is "needed" then that is : > generally taken as a sign that card is overpowered and the game is : > unbalanced." : > Yes, yes, semantics are wonderful. : Huh? Your "semantics" were vague. I pointed that out. It is one thing : to point out that most clan hosers have turned out to be useless in the : typical game environment. The rest of your statements sound overblown and : pretentious. Hey, there's no need to turn the previously on-topic discussions into flamewars... is this all my fault? Have I created an unstoppable monster by getting out the napalm a few weeks ago? Why can't we all just get along? ;-) : > Cards that fit into a game do so : > because they are compatable with the game design and add something to : > the game as a whole. Clan hosers in Jyhad, IMO, are poorly compatible : > with the game design as a whole. Yes, they were in the basic set, but : > they were a bad idea then. : In any CCG some cards will turn out to be wallpaper, because no-one has : 20-20 foresight in such matters. In this light, grandiose statements like : the one above sound pompous and arrogant. Only hindsight (and the : specific game environment you play in) will tell if certain cards "are : compatible" with the "game design". : Many clan hosers did not in fact turn out to be wallpaper, at least not in : a 7-clan multi-player environment. You have complained, in fact, that : Malkavian Dementia can be too effective. Malkavian Dementia is "too : effective" only a player is too predictable and has no sense of humor. It : is hardly an inappropriate check on the most powerful clan in the original : set, and certainly never stopped them from winning more than their fair : share of games and tournaments. No no, he's not saying that clan hosers are 'bad' or 'poorly compatible with the game design' because they're wallpaper. He's saying that they don't seem to fit into the game design philosophy that applied to the rest of the cardset. The basic design principle of Jyhad (at least back in the day) seemed to be 'appropriate cost for effect' and 'every card should be fairly useful'. There really isn't much wallpaper in the original set, and most of the cards are pretty fair in terms of not being blatantly overpowered. The problem Peter (and I, I guess) has with clan hosers is that they punish your opponent for showing up with a vampire belonging to a particular clan. In a world where no clan is inherently better than the others, this seems to be somewhat 'unfair' or at least not very nice. Basically, the idea here is that 'color screw' cards are not an appropriate solution for anything. Once everyone sits down with their decks, they have no control over what clans of vampires they can bring out; it seems wrong to punish them for having selected a clan for which you happen to be packing the hoser. (regarding Malk Dementia - I would disagree that the Malks were the most powerful clan in the base set. At least in no limits games, Ventrue Vote and Rush Combat decks have appeared at least as effective in my experience.) : Lets not leave out variety, originality, unpredictability, atmosphere, and : fun. All of these things are great, but in terms of game mechanics, I don't think they're really the goal. Balance and playability are (should be) the goals. : > Just because they were in the main set doesn't mean they were a good : > idea. I understand that they were included as a representation of the : > various clans disadvantages, but when compared to the rest of the set, : > they stand out as an odd inclusion. : They are not much different from: : Kindred Segregation; Sacre-Cour Cathedral; Wave of Insanity; Command; : Eyes of the Serpent; Art of Love; Coagulate Blood: Only useful if an : opponent is plays with Allies. Kindred Seg was in the basic set, and yes, it's pretty useless. : Far Mastery; Lure of the Serpent: Only usable if an opponent plays allies : or retainers. Also fairly useless (Far Mastery from the basic set). : Peace Treaty; Up Yours; Fast Hands: Only useful if your opponent relies : on weapons. Peace Treaty and Fast Hands were in the basic set, and yes, they're largely wallpaper. : Blessing of Durga Syn; Shattering Blow; Fractured Armament: Only usable : if an opponent plays equipment. Likewise with Shattering Blow. : Ancilla Empowerment: Only useful if your opponent plays weenie decks. Actually, any deck that gets out at least four vamps can be a good deal for an Ancilla Empowerment deck. It's like a Kine Resources Contested that hits everyone; handy if you're playing a pool-gain vote deck. : Betrayer: Only usable if your opponent is has the same vampires in play : as you do in your uncontrolled region. Also wallpaperish, yes. : Open Grate: Only usable if an opponent plays press cards. Very wallpaperish. : Disputed Territory; Arson; Rampage; Unnatural Disaster; etc: Only useful : if your opponent uses Locations. Some better than others, but on the whole not especially useful. : Rotschreck: Only usable if an opponent plays aggravated damage. Somewhat wallpapery, and confusing due to the rules reversals too. ;-) : Any reaction card that is "only usable during a political action": : Pointless unless an opponent plays political actions. Yes, these were difficult to make very useful I think. : Night Moves; Forgotten Labyrinth; (or any card that gives more than +1 : stealth): Pointless unless your opponent plays intercept. Sure, but there are degrees of 'playing intercept' and it is possible for a lot of people to be playing at least light intercept. Besides, stealth cards are never exactly 'wallpaper' since they are always useful in sneaking past blockers, even if the amount of stealth they grant may be overkill. : The above list is by no means complete. All of the cards listed above are : cards whose usefulness or usability are dependent on what one's opponent : has in his deck. Any deck designer takes into account his game : environment when he designes his deck. If one's opponents have lots of : intercept, you need lots of stealth. If lots of bleed decks you need : bleed defence, if lots of vote decks you need vote defence, if lots of : combat decks you need combat defence, etc. etc. One can never be : predictable in what decks one plays because there is no deck so good that : it cannot be countered. I snipped out everything not from the original set (Jyhad); there are twelve cards you list here that I agree are basically wallpapery due to depending so much on what your opponents are playing. That's out of at least three hundred cards, I believe. : The clan hosers listed above are in no way out of spirit with the game, : and are no different in spirit than many of the cards listed above. I : accept that they are too specific to be often useful (far more so now than : they used to be, due to the proliferation of the number of clans), and : this can be attributed to a certain shortsightedness in design. So what? : Many cards have turned out to be wallpaper and this is inevitable in any : deck design. Everyone has 20/20 hindsight. However, if I was playing in : a game environment where I were constantly being hosed by Brujah rush : decks, I might well put a Brujah Frenzy of two in my next deck. Why not? Well, for one thing because you'd be better off putting a Skin of Steel or two in your deck, but besides that, the idea of punishing someone for playing Brujah (or Ventrue, or Malkavian) is a little repugnant from the standpoint of 'it's just punishing him for showing up and playing the game.' : > "You could say the same for any other 7 cards in the game. In fact, one : > could argue that the game plays just fine without any of the : > expansions." : > Well no, you couldn't. : Well, yes you could. In case you forgot, this was in reference to your : statement that "the game plays just fine without them". Please name seven : cards, and explain how their absence would make Jyhad unplayable. I can do this. ;-) In a basic-set Jyhad-only environment: Bum's Rush, Haven Uncovered, Psyche, Fast Reaction, Hidden Lurker, Immortal Grapple, Blood Hunt. The loss of these seven cards would make rush combat nonexistent and also eliminate any way to get around Strike: Combat Ends. Without these cards, combat would fall by the wayside; bleed and vote would be the only viable strategies; maybe a fourth of the cards in the set (the combat cards) would be useless. I think eliminating an entire class of decks (combat decks) counts as making the game unplayable (at least as the same game). : Just for fun, I think I would like to construct a Nosferatu "Toreador : Hoser" Deck, complete with lots of Tragic Love Affairs and Nosferatu : Performance Arts. Then I will wait for a good opportunity to use it. If : my opponent complains that it is "lame" or "unfair" then he just has no : sense of humor, now does he? Well, it won't be very funny for him, will it? How much fun is it to be screwed by random chance? : > "I can remember a time when posters on this ng were lamenting the power : > of Malkavians, and saying "Thank God for Malkavian Dementia"" : > Yes. Because they didn't really understand the game (myself included). : That's an odd statement. I would still use the card if there were not so : many clans in the game, or if it also effected Malk Antitribu. Is this : because I don't understand the game? Or is it perhaps because my play : style, and my game environment, have been somewhat different from yours? We thought Malk Dementia was necessary back then because we were playing with a four-card limit, and the Malks were by far the most useful clan due to being able to make effective stealth/bleed decks even under the 4CL. We were wrong, because in no limits play (the way the game was designed), the Malks are not overpowered, and so Malk Dementia is unnecessary to keep them balanced. Josh sorry this is so long... I got a little carried away I think...

I really don't want to have to quote everything said about Clan Hosers, but I will add my own arguments. I feel that they are good for the game, and perhaps even necessary, for the following reasons: First off, flavour. In V:TM, each clan has a weakness. The Assamite weakness is built into their vampires. The weaknesses of all other clans are represented by their "Hoser" card. Malkavians are random and quick to change their minds. The fact that they are the strongest clan (and I purposefully do not qualify that with "under 4 CL" or "in the original set") is certainly at odds with their personalities. In V:TM, a Malk can be powerful and scary, but their Derangements ultimately keep them from being as devastating as their discipline set could make them. Thus, we have Malk Dementia. And, at least in my playgroup, when Malk decks were in vogue, Dementia's appeared to counteract them. Similarly, when Gangrel Freaky-bleed decks were in style (before NRA), Gangrel De-evolution checked it. In fact, Gangrel De-ev was very popular for a while, since most of the Gangrel decks around here liked bruise and bleed, leaving Bum's Rush and Haven Uncovered for the Brujah and Caitiff. So, actually, this is part of my second point, balance. I, for one, do not believe that all the clans are balanced. It's my strong opinion that Malkavians, Gangrel, and Ventrue have advantages over other clans. In 4CL, Malks rule easily. In NL, they're not as bad, but I still consider them the most powerful. And so, if there is a strong shift in the metagame, such that people notice the superiority of the clans, and start using these clans more, then the "Hosers" start popping up. And when a Ventrue deck is winning constantly, you have some recourse. If this punishes anything, it punishes uncreativity. If you use a deck with Giovanni, Nosferatu, and Tzimices, you're unlikely to get any clan hosers hurting you. But if you play mono- Ventrue *and* win all the time, you've got to expect Cultivated Blood Shortage to pop up, or even Triole's Revenge, if you're really unlucky. If there's one thing I hate, it's a one-clan deck. Sure, I've played them before, and I'll play them again, but if clan hosers were stronger, I wouldn't. Generally, my one-clan decks are Tremere Antitribu, and Infamous Warlock is probably *the* worst clan hoser. The third reason is this... say you've constructed a deck that is pretty good, but it always gets beaten by a certain type of deck... Say you have a Giovanni bruise-and-bleed with second round agg damage. Well, if your prey's a Tremere, you're not gonna get very far. If you're lucky enough to make it to the second round, you're just to going to get a Walk of Flame shoved in your face. So, maybe you throw in a couple of Letters from Vienna, and hope those nasty Tremere can't Wake. Or say you've got a slow-developing Brujah stealth-bleed deck (I do...). If your predator's bleeding you with Malkavians for 10 pool a turn, you need some protection. So you put in a couple of Malk Dementia's and use the Malks to your advantage. The best reason is the Lasombra. The Lasombra are just plain better than everyone else (at least in their opinion), so if they can't make a deck full of nothing but Clan Hosers, then I just don't want to play this game. Couldn't you just see it... the only ones to stand a chance would be the Tremere and Anti-Tremere. Well... and I suppose the Assamites and Ravnos, since they don't really have a hoser card. 8) -----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==----- http://www.dejanews.com/ Now offering spam-free web-based newsreading

Robert Goudie wrote: "I'll have to disagree that they are contrary to the original design paradigm. I do know where you are coming from though. I'd say the master phase is the portion of the game that most resembles MtG. The Clan hosers are the equivalent of the MtG "protection from color x" type cards. Also, in the Master phase you see things like Sudden Reversal and now Direct Intervention which have the most obvious relation to the "Counterspell" in MtG. The minion cards have a completely different paradigm than the masters." All in all, I suppose you are correct. I have, howver, always thought that Color Hosers in Magic were particularly wack and that Sudden reversal was also out of place in Jyhad :-) "I don't believe clan hosers are bad in either case. The risk of putting in a useless hoser is balanced with the benefit derived from such a card. From a strategy standpoint, the proper place for Clan Hosers is again, the Meta Game. If you can accurately predict what others will play, then it might be worth adding the hoser. Also, I routinely add Malk Dementia when my library selection would work well with a demented Malk." My view of Clan Hosers is that they give a huge advantage for having non game specific knowledge--i.e. if I know that you like to play Malkavians, and I show up playing with 6 Malk Dementias, I am gaining a pretty substantial advantage that far outweighs the cost of 6 card slots in my deck. Clan hosers are balanced out by their incredibly specific use. If that cost is nullified (because you know your opponents are playing a certain clan beforehand), then the cards become far more powerful than they should be--their cost (that of opportunity) is no longer sufficient for their power. In a situation where there is no ability to know for sure that you will be facing a particular clan (like in a tournament, for instance), the opportunity cost of these cards is appropriate. Without the opportunity cost, Clan Hosers become (IMO) far more powerful than their cost warrants. I prefer the meta game swing to affect deck strategy, rather than which Hoser Cards you cycle into your deck. If you can accurately predict what kinds of decks your opponents will be playing, you can adjust your deck strategy to deal with them. All in all though, most of the Clan Hosers are pretty useless even if you know that a particular clan will be at the table. Malkavian Dementia is an exception, as it tends to make Malkavians dissapear, not just waste an action or two (Out of Control is another noteable exception). [ quoted text not captured ]

Lupus Australius wrote: "Huh? Your "semantics" were vague. I pointed that out. It is one thing to point out that most clan hosers have turned out to be useless in the typical game environment. The rest of your statements sound overblown and pretentious." Umm, dude, settle down just a bit. If you cannot discuss silly card games without resorting insults, you had better re-examine your priorities a bit. "It is hardly an inappropriate check on the most powerful clan in the original set, and certainly never stopped them from winning more than their fair share of games and tournaments." The Malkavians are no more powerful than any other of the basic set clans. Just sit a Malk S+B deck next to an effective Bum's Rush deck, and see who gets to be "Rock". Under 4CL, the Malkavians are very powerful, as they are completely unhindered by the card limit. Under NL (as the game was designed), the Malkavians are fairly easy to build effective decks out of, but they are in no way "the most powerful clan in the original set". Malkavian Dementia is too powerful in a situation where the cost (the large possibility that it will be useless due to no Malkavians) is nullified (you know your opponent will be using the Malkavian). In this situation, the cost no longer justifies the ability of the card. "They are not much different from:" (large list snipped) A large portion of the above cards are mostly useless, due to their incredibly specific nature. However, the abilities of these cards generally are not outweighed by their cost when said cost (of opportunity) is nullified by outside of game knowledge, like Malkavian Dementia tends to be. An exception to this are the cards that outright destroy vampires (like Malkavian Dementia tends to do), such as Archon Investigation (for which there are veritable volumes of posts debating the appropriateness of this card. Check out Deja News), which are generally considered too powerful in general. "Well, yes you could. In case you forgot, this was in reference to your statement that "the game plays just fine without them". Please name seven cards, and explain how their absence would make Jyhad unplayable." I think Josh did this just fine. "Then I will wait for a good opportunity to use it. If my opponent complains that it is "lame" or "unfair" then he just has no sense of humor, now does he?" That is certainly an matter of opinion. I suspect that your opponent will think he has a fine sense of humor, but will still be miffed that you sat down at a table and took out a deck designed specifically to kill him. "That's an odd statement. I would still use the card if there were not so many clans in the game, or if it also effected Malk Antitribu. Is this because I don't understand the game? Or is it perhaps because my play style, and my game environment, have been somewhat different from yours?" Most beginning players of Jyhad quickly discover that the Malkavians are pretty easy to make effective decks out of. The Malkavians then dominate the play group, until everyone starts browbeating people out of playing them, or play Malkavian Dementia enough to demoralize them. This is not because the Malkavians are too powerful. It is because it is alot easier to understand how to play them then it is how to deal with them. Once a good understanding of Bum's Rush combat takes a hold in a play group, the Malkavians become considerably less effective. When players build decks that can deal with Malkavians (and still be perfectly viable regardless of whether or not Malkavians are around), Malkavian Dementia tends to be over kill. [ quoted text not captured ]

On 18 Feb 1998, PDB6 wrote: > Lupus Australius wrote: > > "Huh? Your "semantics" were vague. I pointed that out. It is one thing to > point out that most clan hosers have turned out to be useless in the typical > game environment. The rest of your statements sound overblown and > pretentious." > > Umm, dude, settle down just a bit. If you cannot discuss silly card games > without resorting insults, you had better re-examine your priorities a bit. OK. You're right, and I appologize. If I may restate somewhat, I do feel that your statements have lacked a certain humility of perspective. You seem to assume that there is one single game environment (or "metagame" as I have heard it called)--that of the hypothetical "experienced gamer" (exemplified by you, I presume)--and that cards which find little use in this environment are therefore "incompatible with game design". But there are many game environements, or "metagames", and it is hard to totally predict which cards will or will not be worth putting in a deck. It does seem a mite lacking in humility to imply, as you do, that if someone puts clan hosers in a deck it is because he (or his companions) do not know how to play. But much of what you say is true. The clan hosers are in fact very specific, or situational, and this is increasingly becoming a problem due to the proliferation of clans. Thus it is less likely than for most cards that you will find a game environment, or "metagame" where they are worth putting in a deck. One poster just mentioned that Gangrel Atavism was useful in an environment where Gangrel Freaky Bleed Decks are common. This is certainly something I never thought of, and just goes to show that one should be cautious when making absolutist statements that certain cards are always a bad idea. > It is hardly an inappropriate check on the most powerful clan in the original > set, and certainly never stopped them from winning more than their fair share > of games and tournaments." > The Malkavians are no more powerful than any other of the basic set > clans. Just sit a Malk S+B deck next to an effective Bum's Rush deck, > and see who gets to be "Rock". I have personally never played a Malkavian Stealth Bleed deck (except for a poorly focussed one I constructed carelessly out of my pile of excess cards--which worked suprisingly well.) I think I may try to create a determinedly dangerous one for the next tournament, and see how it works. (I normally play Nossies, and some very non-standard decks). It should not be too hard to give the Malks some combat defence. > Under 4CL, the Malkavians are very powerful, as they are completely > unhindered by the card limit. Under NL (as the game was designed), the > Malkavians are fairly easy to build effective decks out of, but they are > in no way "the most powerful clan in the original set". I don't approve of 4CL on the whole, but what you say about it does illustrate the point that not all game environments are the same. In fact, a 4CL-type game environment can be mimicked in situations where a formal 4CL limit is not enforced, such as a situation where the players have a limitted number of cards to choose from and don't happen to have a dozen of each uncommon available to them. Some game groups might not have that many cards apiece, and even experienced players might agree to play decks constructed from a few sealed starter packs. In such a situation, including Malk Dementia is your deck is hardly a bad idea, even if you are an experienced player. > Malkavian Dementia is too powerful in a situation where the cost (the large > possibility that it will be useless due to no Malkavians) is nullified (you > know your opponent will be using the Malkavian). In this situation, the cost > no longer justifies the ability of the card. The setup of the game is that you are not supposed to know what one's opponent is playing until well after each of you has chosen their decks. Thus, in theory, there should never be a situation where you *know* your opponent is playing Malkavian. If you can guess this, that is your opponents fault for being too predictable. Players are always trying to outguess eachother. It is part of the game. The power of Malkavian Dementia is offset by the likelyhood that it will be useless and jam your hand, and this is becoming increasingly true with proliferation of the number of clans. > A large portion of the above cards are mostly useless, due to their > incredibly specific nature. However, the abilities of these cards > generally are not outweighed by their cost when said cost (of > opportunity) is nullified by outside of game knowledge, like Malkavian > Dementia tends to be. An exception to this are the cards that outright > destroy vampires (like Malkavian Dementia tends to do), such as Archon > Investigation (for which there are veritable volumes of posts debating > the appropriateness of this card. Check out Deja News), which are > generally considered too powerful in general. What sort of "outside of game" knowledge are you talking about. I always thought it was an accepted aspect of the game that it is dangerous to let your opponent know what deck you are playing. > "Then I will wait for a good opportunity to use it. If my opponent > complains that it is "lame" or "unfair" then he just has no sense of > humor, now does he?" > That is certainly an matter of opinion. I suspect that your opponent > will think he has a fine sense of humor, but will still be miffed that > you sat down at a table and took out a deck designed specifically to > kill him. What else is my deck supposed to be designed for? What's he going to say: "Damn it, I trusted you, and told you what clan I was playing, but you tricked me and hosed me you no good filthy undead bloodsucking vampire!" When I sit down with a friend for a one-to-one game, we hose eachother's decks all the time. "Hey, do you still have that Nossie Weenie Wall deck you played last week? I've come up with a deck that can hose it." "OK, lets see what you can do." In such one-on-one play, the "metagame" becomes extremely specific, since it is not tempered by an average of a large number of decks. I hope you will not now instruct me that Jyhad was not designed for this type of play, and that this sort of fun is somehow illigitimate. Seriously, I play Nossies with distressing regularity (at least half the time). If my opponents wise up and put Whispers of the Niktuku in their decks, whose fault is it but mine? So far, no one has come after me that way, but if I were to win often enough with Nossies, and others began following my example, I am sure they would. Oh well. Guess I'd have to try another clan. > "That's an odd statement. I would still use the card if there were not > so many clans in the game, or if it also effected Malk Antitribu. Is > this because I don't understand the game? Or is it perhaps because my > play style, and my game environment, have been somewhat different from > yours?" > Most beginning players of Jyhad quickly discover that the Malkavians are > pretty easy to make effective decks out of. The Malkavians then > dominate the play group, until everyone starts browbeating people out of > playing them, or play Malkavian Dementia enough to demoralize them. > This is not because the Malkavians are too powerful. It is because it > is alot easier to understand how to play them then it is how to deal > with them. Once a good understanding of Bum's Rush combat takes a hold > in a play group, the Malkavians become considerably less effective. I'm sure there is much truth to this analysis, as long as one realizes it is merely a generalization of the incredible complexity of "metagame" flux. None of it applies in any absolute sense. The above apparently concedes that there *are* certain metagames (specifically, some "beginning player" metagames) in which Malkavian Dementia is a useful card. You are apparently conceding, that, in such game environments, Malkavians *are* too powerful and predominant, and that Malkavian Dementia can be an appropriate counter for those who don't have 8 in every card. I think you should also concede that Jyhad consists of innumerable metagames, and that certain hoser cards could in fact be useful in certain game environments, even for experienced players. You cannot anticipate all possible game environments. The clan hosers may have failed to contribute to the game to the extent that they should, but I feel they hardly distract from it. Suppose I were to construct a Settite Temptation deck. I would probably include at leat one Malkavian Dementia, since that fits perfectly will with this theme. If no-one played Malkavians, I would simply discard it. > When players build decks that can deal with Malkavians (and still be > perfectly viable regardless of whether or not Malkavians are around), > Malkavian Dementia tends to be over kill. Actually, when players build decks that can deal with Malkavians (and still be perfectly viable regardless of whether Malkavians are around), then people will tend to avoid Malkavians, and Malkavian Dementia will become useless. The "metagame" is constantly shifting. [ quoted text not captured ]

the use of hosers as you call them or as we do in our play groups clan fuckers is just fine. we find that the cards are used for what they were there for. most of the games that we play tend to be 8 or more so you get a fairly wide spread of clans. But you do find some clans are more popular then others like Malk demt. But I find that the Brujah frenzie is fine I like playing Brujah my self and don't mind most of the time being frenzied. The unacceptable appearence for Noss anti I like as well combine that with beast and boy you could have some fun Lupus Australis <jbwh...@dorsai.org> wrote in article <Pine.SUN.3.96.980216020526.5291A-100000@amanda>... [ quoted text not captured ]

Lupus Australius wrote: "If I may restate somewhat, I do feel that your statements have lacked a certain humility of perspective." The lack of humility comes from the enviornment of the discussion, i.e. the internet. If I wanted to display humility, I would discuss such things in real life. As this is not the case, I just talk smack like there is no tomorrow. I do not assume that I am better than anyone, nor do I assume that my understanding of the game is greater than everyone elses (nor have I ever claimed such a thing). I just talk smack cause I like talking smack, and it ususally tends to get discussions going (you may notice that this is one of the most active threads in weeks...). My statements about cards being incompatable with the game environment are little more than my opinions, and I never claimed them to be anything other than that. Now, on the the game! :-) "It does seem a mite lacking in humility to imply, as you do, that if someone puts clan hosers in a deck it is because he (or his companions) do not know how to play." This was never my point, and if it came across as such, I apologize. My statements about Malkavian Dementia being viewed as an attempt to balance out the Malkavians was based on the fairly common belief by newer players that the Malkavians are too powerful. When I started playing Jyhad, our play group felt the exact same way, and put 4 MD in every deck we made, and still kept getting killed by S+B decks. After playing the game for a while, we all figured out what we were doing wrong, and now our play group looks at the Malkavians like most other effective clans--useful, but not overpowered. "It should not be too hard to give the Malks some combat defence." Against determined combat decks, it is pretty difficult(By determined, I mean pure Rush combat that is prepared to deal with S:CE and Dodges, and designed to put an opponent into torpor with every attack). All the Malks have (in clan disciplines) are Thoughts Betrayed and Obedience. For TB, you need superior DOM and 2 blood, and enough of them to be constantly available. With Obediance, you need to be older then the attacking vampire and untapped/packing Wakes. It isn't impossible to use them, but if you load your deck with Obediance, TB, and Wakes, and then you end up next to a non combat deck, you will be incredibly hand jammed, as is always a risk. "What sort of "outside of game" knowledge are you talking about. I always thought it was an accepted aspect of the game that it is dangerous to let your opponent know what deck you are playing." I'm ususally talking about your general play group. In my standard play group, It is fairly likely that I will be playing the Nosferatu (I always play the Nosferatu...), fairly likely that Josh will be playing the Brujah, and fairly likely that Dave will be playing the Ventrue. As a result, if I put Ventrue hosers and Brujah hosers in my deck when I go to play with Josh and Dave, it is highly likely that they will be useful (much like Nosferatu hosers are highly likely to be useful against me...). Thus, the cost of the hoser cards (opportunity cost) is nullified by the fact that I know I'll be playing with Josh and Dave, who like to use particular clans. In a tournament situation (where you are playing blind) I'm all for clan hosers, as they have a cost. In freindly play with your standard Jyhad pals, they generally no longer have a cost. "I hope you will not now instruct me that Jyhad was not designed for this type of play, and that this sort of fun is somehow illigitimate." I claim no such thing. If you guys enjoy yourselves, by all means, go to town. All along, I have been stating my opinion, which is that clan hosers are unaccpetable in non blind play, due to their lack of appropriate cost, and as a result, they were a poor addition to the game. It is simply my opinion. "None of it applies in any absolute sense." Again, I never claimed that any of my opinions were in any way absolute, simply my opinions. [ quoted text not captured ]

Lupus Australis wrote: > [snip a lot..] > Seriously, I play Nossies with distressing regularity (at least half > the > time). If my opponents wise up and put Whispers of the Niktuku in > their > decks, whose fault is it but mine? So far, no one has come after me > that > way, but if I were to win often enough with Nossies, and others began > following my example, I am sure they would. Oh well. Guess I'd have > to > try another clan. > I have lurked on this discussion a long time (it is a long thread) and I think that this is the main point. Picture your local playgroup. One person *always* plays the same clan. You are sick of it, as they never change their deck, and to an experienced player, the true joy of Jyhad is to see exactly how bizarre a deck can be that still (partially) works. To "encourage" the player to understand the true joy of variety, include the clan hosers. They will swiftly become annoyed with you, but in the long term, they will thank you, for moving them away from the path of true boredom onto the path of enlightenment. In short, clan hosers encourage variety in play for a local group. To "encourage" someone to try a new deck, you can either build a deck specifically to kill that annoying little deck, or (much more simply) just include a few hosers in the deck you are about to build. HOSERS = VARIETY = LONGEVITY Praise to the hosers. David Naseby

David Naseby (d.na...@unsw.edu.au) wrote: : I have lurked on this discussion a long time (it is a long thread) and I : think that this is the main point. Picture your local playgroup. One : person *always* plays the same clan. You are sick of it, as they never : change their deck, and to an experienced player, the true joy of Jyhad : is to see exactly how bizarre a deck can be that still (partially) : works. : To "encourage" the player to understand the true joy of variety, include : the clan hosers. They will swiftly become annoyed with you, but in the : long term, they will thank you, for moving them away from the path of : true boredom onto the path of enlightenment. Ummm, yeah. Of course they will. I always love it when someone encourages me to change my behavior by repeatedly poking me with a sharp stick. ;-) : In short, clan hosers encourage variety in play for a local group. To : "encourage" someone to try a new deck, you can either build a deck : specifically to kill that annoying little deck, or (much more simply) : just include a few hosers in the deck you are about to build. Well, if you don't like the person very much, sure... ;-) Maybe I'm just naive, but it seems to me that most people would wind up happier and more encouraged if you tried explaining to them verbally what's boring about what they're doing, and why they should try doing something else for the sake of variety. Also, I'm not sure that it's really anyone else's responsibility to make sure that I'm excited during a game of Jyhad. If I find someone's deck boring, I can certainly tell them so and whine about it if I want, but it seems to me that it's pretty much their right to play any deck that makes them happy. Even if I think it's uncreative and stupid. If I'm concerned about variety and wacky ideas, I can always try them out myself. Of course, it's nice if you can get your playgroup to think the same way you do in terms of variety and what is the appropriate level of 'playing to win' type behavior. But clan hosers, if you ask me, look like a very blunt instrument for behavior modification. Kinda like opening doors with a sledgehammer or something. Josh trying to come up with colorful analogies as good as scott adams, but falling dismally short...

Joshua Duffin wrote: > Also, I'm not sure that it's really anyone else's responsibility to > make sure that I'm excited during a game of Jyhad. If I find someone's > deck boring, I can certainly tell them so and whine about it if I > want, but it seems to me that it's pretty much their right to play > any deck that makes them happy. Even if I think it's uncreative and > stupid. If I'm concerned about variety and wacky ideas, I can always > try them out myself. I can imagine an unimaginative playgroup that would totally destroy my fun. Hell, just last night I had to pound against endless Majesties while seeing everything deflected around the table. I had thought are playgroup had moved beyond a lot of this, because it gets boring, and if I want to deal with it there are simple, boring, and prescribed ways to stop it. Someone else's boring play forces me to respond with boring play. Ho-hum. Personally I'm having more fun playing with my Giovanni thaumaturgy deck, which usually loses, but always does something fun. For the clan hosers: do you remember when we first started playing the game. We all had a little over ten boosters worth of cards, and the Malkavians rocked. Intercept and Blood Dolls were worth their weight in rares, and I would give anything for a sports bike. I was able to tweak my deck enough to do a rudimentary Malk stealth/bleed, but I couldn't compare to the power Malk stealth/bleed of someone else. Then the dementia's started popping up regularly - it quickly became dangerous to play Malk, because you could expect to be Dementia-ed three times per game. The game shifted in its goals and forced more variety. I hated that hoser then, but always packed it into my own decks for fear of a good Malk deck. Guess what, while never switching to straight intercept play the Malk threat was neutralized. Everybody was happy again. I'm all for hosers, although I find they are inconsistently created, from wallpaper to nasty-as-hell. (I even tried to make a Giovanni deck with all the Clan Hosers in it, Deals with the Devil and Necromancy garbage picking - it really didn't work at all)

this was a misprint and you don't need the clans to use the cards Lupus Australis <jbwh...@dorsai.org> wrote in article <Pine.SUN.3.96.980213130822.7638A-100000@amanda>... > Greetings > > It was recently noted by a poster (sk...@columbia.edu) that some of the 7 > original clan hoser cards have been altered between the Jyhad and V:tES > editions. > > These cards (one for each Camarilla clan) are: Brujah Frenzy, Gangrel > De-evolution, Malkavian Dementia, Nosferatu Putrescence, Letter from > Vienna, Tragic Love Affair, and Cultivated Blood Shortage. Gangrel > De-Evolution was renamed Gangrel Atavism for the V:tES set. > > In the original set, none of these had any clan requirements. Since their > purpose was to hose a particular clan, they were only usable is someone > *else* was playing that clan. Within the game design, they serves as a > safeguard in case some particular clan should turn out to be too powerful. > That did in fact turn out to be the case for Malkavian Dementia, which was > often used to counteract the power and popularity of Malkavian S&B. Most > of the other clan hosers are rarely used. They hardly needed additional > restrictions, espectially since the current number of clans (21) makes it > far harder to predict what clans one's opponent will be playing. > > I have none of the V:tES versions of these cards so I checked out the > on-line WOTC card-text listings. Three cards have apparently been > changed: Gangrel Atavism now requires you control a ready Gangrel, Tragic > Love Affair now requires a ready Toreador, and Brujah Frenzy now requires > you control a ready Brujah. > > Could find no errata among the current listings. Why were the cards > changed? Are the V:tES versions now official? > > Since Gangrel Atavism and Gangrel De-Evolution differ in more than > name (like Stake and Wooden Stake), should they now be treated as two > separate cards? > [ quoted text not captured ]

On 18 Feb 1998, Joshua Duffin wrote: > No no, he's not saying that clan hosers are 'bad' or 'poorly compatible > with the game design' because they're wallpaper. To my mind, this is the only way they *are* 'bad' or 'poorly compatible'. to the extent that anyone can figure a way to make use of them, I think they are fine. > He's saying that they > don't seem to fit into the game design philosophy that applied to the > rest of the cardset. The basic design principle of Jyhad (at least back > in the day) seemed to be 'appropriate cost for effect' and 'every card > should be fairly useful'. There really isn't much wallpaper in the > original set, and most of the cards are pretty fair in terms of not > being blatantly overpowered. > > The problem Peter (and I, I guess) has with clan hosers is that they > punish your opponent for showing up with a vampire belonging to a > particular clan. In a world where no clan is inherently better than > the others, this seems to be somewhat 'unfair' or at least not very > nice. I still don't get you. How is this any different from putting a dog pack in my gangrel deck to "punish" a player who uses S:CE instead of dodges? How is it different from putting a Far Mastery in ones deck to "punish" the player who brings out Renegade Garous and then equips them with Flak Jackets and Bastard Swords. How is it different from using Ancilla Empowerment, Ebenezer Rousch, and Muddled Vampire Hunter to hose them weenie decks? And since when are Methuselah's supposed to be "nice" to each other? > Basically, the idea here is that 'color screw' cards are not > an appropriate solution for anything. Once everyone sits down with > their decks, they have no control over what clans of vampires they > can bring out; it seems wrong to punish them for having selected a > clan for which you happen to be packing the hoser. Does it also seem wrong to punish them for putting cards in their library that don't happen to work against yours? Besides, it is perfectly acceptable to have more than one clan in your crypt, and you *do* have some control over which vampires you choose to bring out. Sometimes I get upset when I play my "Wynn" deck or my "Lucretia" deck or my "Democritus" deck, and find that the vampire I built my deck around becomes contested. How is this any different? An enormous part of the game will always be deck design. Skill of play will count for alot, but some decks just don't work right against others or in a certain play environment. A deck that may be well designed for one "metagame" may be poorly designed for another. If you don't think this is as it should be, you would have to fix alot more than the clan hosers. You'd have to design a totally different game. > (regarding Malk Dementia - I would disagree that the Malks were the > most powerful clan in the base set. At least in no limits games, > Ventrue Vote and Rush Combat decks have appeared at least as effective > in my experience.) The Malks *were* the most powerful clan in the basic set. There is no such thing as a "no limit" play environment, as no players I have an unlimited number of cards. The cards that make Malks powerful are common, numerous and readily available. This is a real and ongoing advantage, which one cannot completely ignore by wishfully imagining that we all, (and especially any newer players) have an unlimited number of all uncommons and rares. I think many are also forgetting the enormous extent that combat decks were enhanced by the change in Aggravated Damage rules. (BTW, while I like the fact that combat has been enhanced, I do not like the effect of the new rules on the game atmosphere. In the old game, there was a real sense that vampires were immortal, and near impossible to kill, and that the best one could normally do was put them out of action for a while. You could kill them, by committing diablerie, but it was a serious and dangerous crime. In the new game they are constantly being burned with impunity. Diablerie and the bloodhunt vote have fallen by the wayside as significant elements of the game). > : Lets not leave out variety, originality, unpredictability, atmosphere, and > : fun. > > All of these things are great, but in terms of game mechanics, I don't > think they're really the goal. Balance and playability are (should be) > the goals. Well, yes, I admit that many of the clan hosers have turned out to have minimum playability (too specific, as Peter said), but they have not adversely affected balance. To the extent that they have turned out to be playable, I cannot see your objections to them. > I snipped out everything not from the original set (Jyhad); there are > twelve cards you list here that I agree are basically wallpapery due > to depending so much on what your opponents are playing. That's out > of at least three hundred cards, I believe. From the Jyhad set: 1. Betrayer 2. Brujah Frenzy 3. Cultivated Blood Shortage 4. Gangrel De-evolution 5. Illegal Search and Siezure 6. Letter from Vienna 7. Police Department 8. Rotschreck 9. Storm Sewers 10. Tragic Love Affair 11. Unnatural Disaster 12. Arson 13. Delaying Tactics 14. Dread Gaze 15. Elder Kindred Network 16. Far Mastery 17. Fast Hands 18. Flesh of Marble 19. Nosferatu Putrescence 20. Open Grate 21. Political Backlash 22. Pulling Strings 23. Rampage 24. Shattering Blow 25. Surprise Influence 26. Disputed Territory 27. Kindred Segregation 28. Praxis: Solomon I think that makes about 9% of the minion card set. I concede that many of them are minimally useful, some more than others, depending on the extent that what they are designed to hose have become a significant part of the game. Anti-location cards are less "wallpaperish" than anti-weapon cards, because locations have become more a part of the game than weapons. Anti-press cards are, as you point out, total wallpaper, because presses have almost completely fallen by the wayside because of the excessive power of S:CE. Cards that hose S:CE, however, are extremely valued, and when Dog Pack came out in the Sabbat set, I don't remember anyone complaining about the inappropriateness of its specificity. It is possible that future cards in future sets ( :( ) will further reduce the power of S:CE, and increase the value of press and anti-press, and Open Grate will no longer be wallpaper. Honorable mention to 29. Immortal Grapple: Only useful if opponent plays strike cards or weapons. The press it grants at superior is the only thing that saves it from being on the above list (and it's not like anyone plays this for the press at superior). 30. Night Moves: It is not, as you pointed out, unusable, but why put it in a deck when you can play a host of +1 stealth cards that would not reduce your bleed... unless you suspect your opponents have serious intercept? 31. Canine Horde: Yes, it can be used for 1R damage, but one would never pick it over Aid from Bats unless you believe your opponent has equipment. 32. Skin of Night: The superior version can be used for damage prevention, but is inferior to numerous other fortitude damage prevention cards. The card's usefulness depends almost entirely on one's opponent playing aggravated damage. 33. Skin of Steel: The Skin of Steel/Pulled Fangs combo is the only thing (in the original set) that prevents this card's usefulness from being entirely dependent on what one's opponent plays. Otherwise, it is an expensive and pointless way to prevent normal cardless hand slaps (since you lose a blood anyway, and can't play it if you don't have a blood). 34. Blood Rage: I guess the superior version is approximately equivalent to a Lucky Blow, except that it cannot be combined with other bonuses. The inferior version is completely pointless unless your opponent plays weapons or fortitude damage prevention. > : The clan hosers listed above are in no way out of spirit with the game, > : and are no different in spirit than many of the cards listed above. I > : accept that they are too specific to be often useful (far more so now than > : they used to be, due to the proliferation of the number of clans), and > : this can be attributed to a certain shortsightedness in design. So what? > : Many cards have turned out to be wallpaper and this is inevitable in any > : deck design. Everyone has 20/20 hindsight. However, if I was playing in > : a game environment where I were constantly being hosed by Brujah rush > : decks, I might well put a Brujah Frenzy of two in my next deck. Why not? > > Well, for one thing because you'd be better off putting a Skin of Steel > or two in your deck, To which I gave an honorable mention: See above. > but besides that, the idea of punishing someone > for playing Brujah (or Ventrue, or Malkavian) is a little repugnant from > the standpoint of 'it's just punishing him for showing up and playing > the game.' Since when is trying to win "repugnant"? And how are clan hosers any different from putting a Far Mastery in your deck when you are tired of being hosed by Renegade Garou? Or putting in alot of intercept because you expect alot of stealth? Or putting in alot of Immortal Grapples (or psyches) because you expect alot of Strike: Combat Ends? You'll have to explain this more because I really don't understand this at all. How is punishing someone for what is in his crypt any different from punishing him for what is in his library? > : Please name seven > : cards, and explain how their absence would make Jyhad unplayable. > > I can do this. ;-) In a basic-set Jyhad-only environment: Bum's Rush, > Haven Uncovered, Psyche, Fast Reaction, Hidden Lurker, Immortal Grapple, > Blood Hunt. Not bad, though my intention was not a basic-set only environment. Ironically, however, cards like Immortal Grapple are no different in principle than the "Clan Hosers" (except for that extra press, which is not what we play it for). > The loss of these seven cards would make rush combat nonexistent Except for Archon, Wynn, Renegade Garou, Ebenezer Rousch, Muddled Vampire Hunter, Roxanne, and Talbot's Chainsaw. I concede it would be severely hurt though. > and > also eliminate any way to get around Strike: Combat Ends. You forgot Drawing out the Beast, Mariel, and Weather Control, especially when combined with Dawn Operation and Skin of Night. Still, S:CE is the most overpowered effect of the original set. Good thing there was a hoser for it, yes? > Without these > cards, combat would fall by the wayside; bleed and vote would be the > only viable strategies; maybe a fourth of the cards in the set (the > combat cards) would be useless. I think eliminating an entire class > of decks (combat decks) counts as making the game unplayable (at least > as the same game). No. It would not make the game unplayable--as I think you would find if you experimented with playing without these cards. It would do severe damage to the potential variety, and, as you have said, make many a great many cards, even clans, very hard to play. It would be a very different game environment, primarily of voters and bleeders. Ventrue, Malks, and Toreador would rule. Nossies and Gangrel would suffer (except for Wynn). Rush Allies would become more popular, as would anti ally cards like Kindred Segregation and Far Mastery. Anti-vote and anti-bleed cards would become popular and essential. Anti-Ventrue, anti-Malk, and anti-Toreador hosers would become essential too. Good thing the designers put in those 7 cards you listed, otherwise we really would have needed them hosers wouldn't we? > : Just for fun, I think I would like to construct a Nosferatu "Toreador > : Hoser" Deck, complete with lots of Tragic Love Affairs and Nosferatu > : Performance Arts. Then I will wait for a good opportunity to use it. If > : my opponent complains that it is "lame" or "unfair" then he just has no > : sense of humor, now does he? > > Well, it won't be very funny for him, will it? How much fun is it to > be screwed by random chance? That's how I often get screwed, and it is often how I screw others. Would have won the last tournament if I hadn't got my KRCG contested and been bled by Freaky bleed Gangrel with Fame that he got out in the first turn. I have a real difficult time with this notion of yours that some ways of getting screwed are somehow less legitimate than others. If someone takes a chance, guesses at the game environment, and puts a clan hoser in his deck, why should he not be able to benefit from it substantially if he gets lucky enough to face the right clan? > We thought Malk Dementia was necessary back then because we were playing > with a four-card limit, and the Malks were by far the most useful clan > due to being able to make effective stealth/bleed decks even under the > 4CL. We were wrong, because in no limits play (the way the game was > designed), the Malks are not overpowered, and so Malk Dementia is > unnecessary to keep them balanced. I suspect what you really mean is that you all finally bought enough cards so that you had more than 4 each of Immortal Grapple, and decided to see what would happen if you were alowed to use them all. Card limits are the natural state of affairs for anyone who has not made a huge investment in cards yet. The no-card-limit is a conceptual idealization that exists only on JOL or in an environment that allows proxies. Card limits will always be a de-facto part of the game, dependent on player resources. [ quoted text not captured ]

On 19 Feb 1998, Bruce Ramsay wrote: > the use of hosers as you call them or as we do in our play groups clan > fuckers is just fine. we find that the cards are used for what they were > there for. most of the games that we play tend to be 8 or more so you get a > fairly wide spread of clans. But you do find some clans are more popular > then others like Malk demt. But I find that the Brujah frenzie is fine I > like playing Brujah my self and don't mind most of the time being frenzied. > The unacceptable appearence for Noss anti I like as well combine that with > beast and boy you could have some fun 8-player games! Wow. Well is just goes to show that there are still a number of game environment ("metagame") characteristics that favor clan hosers. 1. Limited card supply (formal or de-facto). 2. Large number of players. 3. Any game imbalance (even temporary) leading to predominance for certain clans. Lupus Australis

On 19 Feb 1998, PDB6 wrote: > "It does seem a mite lacking in humility to imply, as you do, that if > someone puts clan hosers in a deck it is because he (or his companions) > do not know how to play." > This was never my point, and if it came across as such, I apologize. My > statements about Malkavian Dementia being viewed as an attempt to > balance out the Malkavians was based on the fairly common belief by > newer players that the Malkavians are too powerful. When I started > playing Jyhad, our play group felt the exact same way, and put 4 MD in > every deck we made, and still kept getting killed by S+B decks. After > playing the game for a while, we all figured out what we were doing > wrong, and now our play group looks at the Malkavians like most other > effective clans--useful, but not overpowered. > "It should not be too hard to give the Malks some combat defence." > Against determined combat decks, it is pretty difficult(By determined, I > mean pure Rush combat that is prepared to deal with S:CE and Dodges, and > designed to put an opponent into torpor with every attack). All the > Malks have (in clan disciplines) are Thoughts Betrayed and Obedience. Focus on superior Obfuscate rather than superior Dominate. They have Swallowed by the Night, a stealth card that can also be used to maneuver to long range. Behind You is under-rated. You can maneuver to long range, and then dodge at long range, and you are immune to anything except multiple long-range strikes and damage dealing retainers. Since Brujah Rush is a danger (multiple long-range strikes), throw in a Brujah Frenzy. In case of Renegade Garou's, throw in a Far Mastery. Bring out a Muddled Vampire Hunter to attack them before they attack you. A few cheap permanents like IR Goggles, Jackie Therman, or Zip Guns will keep you from using up valuable dodges. Throw in a Police Station to keep them from pressing. Put a Secure Haven on Mariel and leave her untapped, and don't forget the Elesium. > I'm ususally talking about your general play group. In my standard play > group, It is fairly likely that I will be playing the Nosferatu (I > always play the Nosferatu...), fairly likely that Josh will be playing > the Brujah, and fairly likely that Dave will be playing the Ventrue. As > a result, if I put Ventrue hosers and Brujah hosers in my deck when I go > to play with Josh and Dave, it is highly likely that they will be useful > (much like Nosferatu hosers are highly likely to be useful against > me...). Thus, the cost of the hoser cards (opportunity cost) is > nullified by the fact that I know I'll be playing with Josh and Dave, > who like to use particular clans. What I still don't understand is, if this is in the situation, why do you not use clan hosers? If you were to do so, why would it be unfair? It seems to me that your playgroup has an unspoken agreement that no-one will do anything to interfere with eachother's regularly playing their favorite clan. I also play Nossies regularly, but I would have no problem with becoming a mite less predictable if this began to be used against me. Those Nossie hosers will be useless against my Cryptic Mission deck, or Settite Temptation deck, and my Nossie deck will still be around when my opponent sadly discards those hosers that are jamming his hand. Guesswork is part of the game. If I stop playing Nossies at the moment that he starts putting in his hosers, then I have screwed him rather than he screwing me. > In a tournament situation (where you > are playing blind) I'm all for clan hosers, as they have a cost. In > freindly play with your standard Jyhad pals, they generally no longer > have a cost. The cost is less when you can make an educated guess at the play environment. It depends on how predictable your pals are. One rarely is rarely completely "playing blind". One can often make an educated guess at the play environment, and he who can do so most accurately stands the greatest chance of victory. If you know something about the play style of the participants, you are certainly entitled to use this to your advantage, and this applies to alot of things besides clan hosers. [ quoted text not captured ]

Lupus Australis wrote: > > I suspect what you really mean is that you all finally bought enough cards > so that you had more than 4 each of Immortal Grapple, and decided to see > what would happen if you were alowed to use them all. > > Card limits are the natural state of affairs for anyone who has not made a > huge investment in cards yet. The no-card-limit is a conceptual > idealization that exists only on JOL or in an environment that allows > proxies. Card limits will always be a de-facto part of the game, dependent > on player resources. The no-card-limit is an idea that exists in Los Angeles. EVERY card is available in any quantity you wish save for Tomb, RTI, Mind Rape, Direct Intervention, and Protected Resources. The secondary market allows cards like immortal grapple to be picked-up in mass quantities for very little money. It is a question of access. When I wanted to build a Catatonic Fear deck I was able to get about 15 of them with almost no effort. Rarity wasn't an issue. Certainly for uncommon and common cards the no-card-limit is a reality in *most* playgroups. --Robert rrgo...@earthlink.net

On 20 Feb 1998, Joshua Duffin wrote: > David Naseby (d.na...@unsw.edu.au) wrote:> > : To "encourage" the player to understand the true joy of variety, include > : the clan hosers. They will swiftly become annoyed with you, but in the > : long term, they will thank you, for moving them away from the path of > : true boredom onto the path of enlightenment. > Ummm, yeah. Of course they will. I always love it when someone > encourages me to change my behavior by repeatedly poking me with a > sharp stick. ;-) Yes. It's also real obnoxious the way those Gangrel keep trying to convince me to add combat defence by torporizing my vamps, or those Ventrue encourage me to have intercept by voting me to death, or those Malks encourage me to have bleed defence by bleeding me dry. It's also rude the way those presence-misdirection decks try to convince me to put WWEF in my deck. If they were to kindly explain to me on the error of my ways, I think it would be alot more appropriate. :) > : In short, clan hosers encourage variety in play for a local group. To > : "encourage" someone to try a new deck, you can either build a deck > : specifically to kill that annoying little deck, or (much more simply) > : just include a few hosers in the deck you are about to build. > > Well, if you don't like the person very much, sure... ;-) Most of us who play Jyhad are adults. We expect our opponents to try to win by any means possible, and it is perfectly acceptable to make an educated guess about what they expect you to have in your hand or crypt. Personally, I am flattered when the table gangs up on my (especially when they all come after me in a tournament's final round), as it means they regard me as a threat. If someone in my playgroup were to add Nossie hosers, I would take that as a complement--it would mean I had actually managed to turn the underpowered Nossies into a threat. If people were to begin playing Nossie clan hosers consistently, I would be filled with pride beyond belief. > Maybe I'm just naive, but it seems to me that most people would > wind up happier and more encouraged if you tried explaining to them > verbally what's boring about what they're doing, and why they should > try doing something else for the sake of variety. I'm sorry, but that does sound naive. I fully expect my fellow methuselahs to screw me any way they can (and that includes punishing me for predictability). However, if they started giving me condescending lectures about how boring they think I am, I might be kinda miffed. I have no patience for the use of moral suasion to shame others out of playing "cheesy decks" like Malkavian S&B, especially since this is one of the few decks that Newbie players can be competitive with. If your newbie player starts winning consistently with Malkavians, then the appropriate and respectable way to show him the error of his ways is to tear off the kid gloves and start hosing him (using clan hosers or any other technique designed specifically to deal with him). He may be forced to design a new deck, but at least he has the satisfaction of knowing that he has been treated as a threat and has had an effect on the play environment. If this newbie were, on the other hand, to recieve condescending lectures on creativity from players with alot more cards than he, he might very well go away and never return. > Also, I'm not sure that it's really anyone else's responsibility to > make sure that I'm excited during a game of Jyhad. I agree to an extent (and I think David was being a little facetious about that part). I think the point is that Clan Hosers do tend to promote creativity and variety. This is true even if you just play them to win, in an effort to use your opponents predicability to your own advantage. > If I find someone's > deck boring, I can certainly tell them so and whine about it if I > want, but it seems to me that it's pretty much their right to play > any deck that makes them happy. Even if I think it's uncreative and > stupid. If I'm concerned about variety and wacky ideas, I can always > try them out myself. Yes, but you also have a right to use your opponent's predictability against him. > Of course, it's nice if you can get your playgroup to think the same > way you do in terms of variety and what is the appropriate level of > 'playing to win' type behavior. I don't think there is an enormous dichotomy between "playing to win" and playing for fun and variety. The creative player may occasionally play wacky decks that he does not expect to win, but in the long run he learns more about the game and wins more often. He also makes it harder for his opponents to predict his hand. > But clan hosers, if you ask me, look > like a very blunt instrument for behavior modification. Kinda like > opening doors with a sledgehammer or something. They are just an instrument by which a player may be punished for being too consistent, especially if he is consistently winning. They are just one (small) part of how the basic game design encourages creativity and variety. [ quoted text not captured ]

daniel frey (daniel_fr...@bcpress.com) wrote: : Joshua Duffin wrote: : > Also, I'm not sure that it's really anyone else's responsibility to : > make sure that I'm excited during a game of Jyhad. If I find someone's : > deck boring, I can certainly tell them so and whine about it if I : > want, but it seems to me that it's pretty much their right to play : > any deck that makes them happy. Even if I think it's uncreative and : > stupid. If I'm concerned about variety and wacky ideas, I can always : > try them out myself. : I can imagine an unimaginative playgroup that would totally destroy my : fun. Hell, just last night I had to pound against endless Majesties : while seeing everything deflected around the table. I had thought are : playgroup had moved beyond a lot of this, because it gets boring, and if : I want to deal with it there are simple, boring, and prescribed ways to : stop it. Someone else's boring play forces me to respond with boring : play. Ho-hum. Personally I'm having more fun playing with my Giovanni : thaumaturgy deck, which usually loses, but always does something fun. If these people think that lots of Majesties and Deflections are fun, who am I to tell them otherwise? I certainly think it's best if you can arrange to have your playgroup feel the same way you do in terms of what is fun to play and so on, but I wouldn't feel justified in dictating to anyone what they should be doing. Trying to convince them, maybe. ;-) : For the clan hosers: do you remember when we first started playing the : game. We all had a little over ten boosters worth of cards, and the : Malkavians rocked. Intercept and Blood Dolls were worth their weight in : rares, and I would give anything for a sports bike. I was able to tweak : my deck enough to do a rudimentary Malk stealth/bleed, but I couldn't : compare to the power Malk stealth/bleed of someone else. Then the : dementia's started popping up regularly - it quickly became dangerous to : play Malk, because you could expect to be Dementia-ed three times per : game. The game shifted in its goals and forced more variety. I hated : that hoser then, but always packed it into my own decks for fear of a : good Malk deck. : Guess what, while never switching to straight intercept play the Malk : threat was neutralized. Everybody was happy again. I'm all for hosers, : although I find they are inconsistently created, from wallpaper to : nasty-as-hell. (I even tried to make a Giovanni deck with all the Clan : Hosers in it, Deals with the Devil and Necromancy garbage picking - it : really didn't work at all) Personally, I think some of the clan-hosers are not very well designed in terms of cost versus effect. The ones on the higher end of the power curve (e.g. Malkavian Dementia, Out of Control (a burn-an-Anti- Brujah of some maximal size master) don't cost enough (a card and a master card action, usually) for what they do. It's true that they only work if someone has a vampire of the appropriate clan. But I don't think that's enough of a restriction to justify the cost reduction these cards seem to enjoy (Letter from Vienna - like a Misdirection that costs 0 instead of X; the Malkavian Derangement: Paranoia from Sabbat, a Pentex Subversion that costs 0 instead of 2). Basically, if someone is playing the appropriate clan, you get an undercosted efffect, and if they're not, you have a dead card. The metagame-swinging effect they have can be desirable in some cases, I guess, as in the one where the Malks became too powerful and popular due to a limited card pool - but even in a situation like that, it seems to me that it would (ideally) be better if people had the cards to make decks that could beat Malks without resorting to clan-hosing (intercept combat, rush combat, bleed bounce, that sort of thing). Josh contributing toward a lack of resolution

Lupus Australius wrote: "29. Immortal Grapple: Only useful if opponent plays strike cards or weapons. The press it grants at superior is the only thing that saves it from being on the above list (and it's not like anyone plays this for the press at superior)." I can only assume that your particular playgroup does not have a heavy combat environment, leading to your particular view on many of these cards. This is not a judgement (nor am I attempting to imply that I am in any way more advanced a player as a result of this statement), but many of the cards you mentioned in the above list were incredibly important cards in a high/efficient combat environment. Immortal Grapple, in particular, is a key card in any Potence combat deck, as it prevents the use of: S:CE, Dodge, Guns, Weapons, Thaumaturgy strikes, Viscicitude strikes, and basically anything that isn't a hand strike. Without Immortal Grapple, Potence combat simply is not a viably concept. "Focus on superior Obfuscate rather than superior Dominate. They have Swallowed by the Night, a stealth card that can also be used to maneuver to long range. Behind You is under-rated. " It just won't work out that well. Again, a good combat deck is a deck that is designed to successfully put its opponent into torpor with every attack, and if it cannot deal with some manuvers and dodges, it simply is not worth playing. An effective combat deck will either have plenty of manuvers (the Brujah with Flash), plenty of presses (the Gangrel with Trap), or some schtick like Drawing out the Beast, otherwise, the deck will just not be effective. In actual practice, any combat deck that does not rely heavily upon either Immortal Grapple or Psyche! will simply not work all that well (Decks that use Hidden Lurker, Fast Reaction, or Thoughts Betrayed can be effective as well, but tend to be a bit trickier) Loading a Malkavian deck with Manuvers (I always liked Behind You, myself, but for Nosferatu manuvers, so I could Immortally Grapple my opponents...) makes them work a bit harder, but it just won't work against a good rush deck. The Elisium and Mariel are very important to a Malk deck, but the Elisium is pretty fragile, and Mariel tends to die very quickly. "What I still don't understand is, if this is in the situation, why do you not use clan hosers? If you were to do so, why would it be unfair?" The situation is this: Our playgroup is a bunch of over analytical game critics who have been playing Jyhad since it was invented. In our overly thought out view of the game, in a situation where you are likely to know what clan your opponents will be playing, clan hosers tend to be too effective for their cost, as their inherrent cost is nullified. In reality, only a few of the clan hosers really suffer from this (Malk Dementia, Out of Control and a few others), but as a result of these few, we just don't use clan hosers. The end issue is cost vs. effectiveness. Malk Dementia (and Out of Control) is just too effective for its completely negligible cost. "It seems to me that your playgroup has an unspoken agreement that no-one will do anything to interfere with eachother's regularly playing their favorite clan." No, we have a spoken agreement to not use Clan Hosers for the above reasons. The lack of clan hosers in no way impedes our deck construction, and in no way impedes our strategy decisions, as clan hosers are just too random to have an effect of design considerations. "If you know something about the play style of the participants, you are certainly entitled to use this to your advantage, and this applies to alot of things besides clan hosers." Yes, but clan hosers are, again, far too effective for their incredibly limited cost, where most other situational cards just are not. Again, it is mostly Malk Dementia (as for one master phase and one card, you generally manage to destroy a vampire or two), but you can't curse one clan hoser and not curse tham all. [ quoted text not captured ]

Lupus Australis wrote: > 8-player games! Wow. Well is just goes to show that there are still > a > number of game environment ("metagame") characteristics that favor > clan > hosers. > > 1. Limited card supply (formal or de-facto). > 2. Large number of players. > 3. Any game imbalance (even temporary) leading to predominance for > certain clans. > You forgot: 4. Just for the fun of it. (When you hose other players than Malks or Brujah) OK. This is no serious use of cards, but some decks are not meant to be sooo serious. Michael

On 22 Feb 1998, PDB6 wrote: > Lupus Australius wrote: > "29. Immortal Grapple: Only useful if opponent plays strike cards or weapons. > The press it grants at superior is the only thing that saves it from being on > the above list (and it's not like anyone plays this for the press at > superior)." > I can only assume that your particular playgroup does not have a heavy > combat environment, leading to your particular view on many of these > cards. This is not a judgement (nor am I attempting to imply that I am > in any way more advanced a player as a result of this statement), but > many of the cards you mentioned in the above list were incredibly > important cards in a high/efficient combat environment. Immortal > Grapple, in particular, is a key card in any Potence combat deck, as it > prevents the use of: [snip] I don't think you're getting me. I never expressed an opinion of this card at all. Obviously I agree that it is a very useful and effective card. The reason it is (almost) on the list is because the list is of cards whose usefulness depends on what cards one's opponent is playing. I'm aware that the card can be used against alot of things. I count 38 cards from the original set (including all the weapons except RPG launcher), whose use can be prevented by Immortal Grapple. But if your opponent has none of these in his deck then IG is useless (except for the press it grants at superior). It is less specific than other cards, but it's usefulness is still dependent on what one's opponent has in their deck. Thus, in principle, it is no different from other "hoser" type cards. I don't know about you, but I have constructed many decks completely without weapons or non-hand damage strike cards. If non-hand damage strike cards were rarely used, then so would Imortal Grapple. IG is a "hoser" card like any other, with the difference that what it is designed to "hose" are commonly played. > "Focus on superior Obfuscate rather than superior Dominate. They have > Swallowed by the Night, a stealth card that can also be used to maneuver to > long range. Behind You is under-rated. " > It just won't work out that well [snip]. Perhaps not, but I intend to try it. You're making me want to defend the honor of the much abused Malkavians, whom I have no experience playing. I did not consider that Drawing out the Beast will prevent maneuvers from my zip guns and IR goggles. I am more used to playing the Nossies, who tend to rely on Jackie Therman and Patagia, and have greater access to superior obfuscate. > The Elisium and Mariel are very important to a Malk deck, but the Elisium is > pretty fragile, and Mariel tends to die very quickly. Yes, I know. That's what the Secure Haven is for. One rather expensive idea I have (horribly expensive actually): My Malkavian minions employ Ghoul Retainers. When I am attacked, I whip out a Combat Shotgun via Disguised Weapon. The Ghoul (who is not restricted from using equipment even if DotB is played) then blasts for 3 damage, which Skin of Steel cannot prevent. Or ZipGun/DragonBreath Rounds. With a Ghoul Retainer, this cannot be stopped by anti-equipment cards. (I'm just brainstorming. Don't take me seriously > "What I still don't understand is, if this is in the situation, why do > you not use clan hosers? If you were to do so, why would it be unfair?" > The situation is this: Our playgroup is a bunch of over analytical game > critics who have been playing Jyhad since it was invented. In our > overly thought out view of the game, in a situation where you are likely > to know what clan your opponents will be playing, clan hosers tend to be > too effective for their cost, I got that part, but my opinion is that that is entirely your opponents fault for letting you know what clan he is going to play. > as their inherrent cost is nullified. In > reality, only a few of the clan hosers really suffer from this (Malk > Dementia, Out of Control and a few others), but as a result of these > few, we just don't use clan hosers. The end issue is cost vs. > effectiveness. Malk Dementia (and Out of Control) is just too effective > for its completely negligible cost. But you don't object to it's use in tournaments? Out of Control doesn't seem so bad to me. It can only be used once in a game. One can defend against it too. If you bring out a 5-capacity vamp, put on a skill card. 4-capacity, play Clan Impersonation, 3 or 2 capacity, don't worry, it will cost your opponent 2 pool and a master phase to kill it--just make sure he don't carry valuable equipment. Nosferatu Performance Art: Now that seems dangerous. But again, the opportunity cost is high. Besides, all those Sabbat diabolists are scum anyway. I say burn the lot of them! It's not like they have any respect for unlife or anything. > "It seems to me that your playgroup has an unspoken agreement that no-one will > do anything to interfere with eachother's regularly playing their favorite > clan." > > No, we have a spoken agreement to not use Clan Hosers for the above reasons. > The lack of clan hosers in no way impedes our deck construction, and in no way > impedes our strategy decisions, as clan hosers are just too random to have an > effect of design considerations. Really? Then why is there an agreement not to use them? Couldn't you just decide "Lets not trust each other like friends, and instead try to screw each other like Methuselahs". The only result would be that you would have to be unpredictable about the clans you play. > "If you know something about the play style of the participants, you are > certainly entitled to use this to your advantage, and this applies to alot of > things besides clan hosers." > Yes, but clan hosers are, again, far too effective for their incredibly > limited cost, where most other situational cards just are not. Depends. Have you ever played a deck based on a well-equiped Renegade Garou? Far Mastery is my nightmare when I pull this deck out. It is a far more effective "hoser" (of this particular deck) than Malk Dement could possibly be of a Malk deck. > Again, > it is mostly Malk Dementia (as for one master phase and one card, you > generally manage to destroy a vampire or two), but you can't curse one > clan hoser and not curse tham all. Then why not leave them all alone? Sounds like none of you guys play Malkavians anyway. [ quoted text not captured ]

Lupus Australius wrote: (in response to the Immortal Grapple/other situational non-clan hoser cards) "I don't think you're getting me. I never expressed an opinion of this card at all. Obviously I agree that it is a very useful and effective card. The reason it is (almost) on the list is because the list is of cards whose usefulness depends on what cards one's opponent is playing." I got that part, but as opposed to Clan hosers, Immortal Grapple is always useful. There is no situation where it cannot be played (barring an inabbility to get into a fight, but then you are just screwed...) and will not help in some way if you are playing a Potence combat deck. If your predator or prey (or grand predator or grand prey) have zero combat cards in their deck, you can still use them just to cycle your hand, as well as using it for the press (I use the Press at superior all the time). For instance, I play a Nosferatu combat deck that relies very heavily on its 9 Immortal Grapples. Without them, the deck would be completely non-viable, as the it would be shut down by S:CE and Dodge. If my opponents are playing zero combat cards, then I can play the IG (multiple times in a single combat if need be) to gain presses and just to cycle my hand. Immortal Grapple is the very basis of the entire deck, and without it, the deck would just not work on a grand scale. Sure, occasionally it would kill stuff without the Immortal Grapples, but more often than not, my opponents would play the incredibly common S:CE or just dodge, and I would just sit around and do nothing. That is the difference between cards like Immortal Grapple and clan hosers. You cannot build an effective deck strategy around clan hosers. They are too random and situational to rely on (and they clog your hand when you can't use them). Occasionally, if they are in your deck, you will gain an advantage from them, but you simply cannot build a deck and say, "Oh, this deck here would not work without its Letter From Viennas." Immortal Grapple and Skin of Steel are often the very basis of deck strategy. "It is less specific than other cards, but it's usefulness is still dependent on what one's opponent has in their deck. Thus, in principle, it is no different from other "hoser" type cards." The principal, again, is fundamentally different. Immortal Grapple makes certain deck strategies viably compettetive. Clan hosers simply do not have the ability to do this. They are random bonuses, not design backbones. [ quoted text not captured ]

Lupus Australius wrote: (about Clan hosers and stuff) "Perhaps not, but I intend to try it. You're making me want to defend the honor of the much abused Malkavians, whom I have no experience playing." It's worth trying, but unless someone has a good Rush deck, it won't really matter. "One rather expensive idea I have (horribly expensive actually): My Malkavian minions employ Ghoul Retainers. When I am attacked, I whip out a Combat Shotgun via Disguised Weapon. The Ghoul (who is not restricted from using equipment even if DotB is played) then blasts for 3 damage,which Skin of Steel cannot prevent." Actually, that is a rather brilliant (if very obtuse and expensive) idea. "But you don't object to it's use in tournaments?" No. I thought I made that pretty clear. In tournaments (when you don't know who all your opponents are), clan hosers have a pretty severe cost--opportunity and deck space. For instance, my Nosferatu combat deck only has 12 master cards in it, and they are all pretty important. I can't really use any more masters, as then they tend to jam my hand, so I 'd have to swap out some important masters to put in clan hosers which may or may not be useful. In my normal play group, however, if I am going to be playing with Howard, I know my Malkavian Dementia will be useful, cause he only owns one deck. "Out of Control doesn't seem so bad to me. It can only be used once in a game. One can defend against it too." I pay 2 pool and a master card. You lose a vampire. That is wrong. "Nosferatu Performance Art: Now that seems dangerous. But again, the opportunity cost is high." Not if you know it is likely your opponents will be playing Toreador. "Besides, all those Sabbat diabolists are scum anyway. I say burn the lot of them! It's not like they have any respect for unlife or anything." Heh heh :-) "Really? Then why is there an agreement not to use them? Couldn't you just decide "Lets not trust each other like friends, and instead try to screw each other like Methuselahs". The only result would be that you would have to be unpredictable about the clans you play." Because not everyone in my playgroup has the ability to be unpredictable. Josh and I have infinite cards and can make any decks we could possibly imagine. Wampler and Ian are highschool kids with only enough cards to make one good deck. If I were to say "Hmm...Wampler is probably going to be playing that Ravanos deck again. It's the only deck he owns. I'd better put in all of my Ravanos Hosers!", that would not be particularly fair. Howard only owns one deck, a Malkavian Pro/Obf/Dom S+B deck. He doesn't play Jyhad enough to have alot of cards and the manical drive (like myself) to change his deck every time we play. Thus, if I were to put in Malkavian Dementias every time I was going to play with Howard, I would be gaing a huge advantage (and probably inspiring Howard to not play anymore). There are other people in our play group, and there is a pretty good deck selection, but still, why should I punnish my less well card endowed pals for wanting to play Jyhad with over powered/undercosted/highly situational clan hosers for which there is no defense? You can defend against normal strategy with common cards. If I am afraid of S+B. I use Deflection or Rush combat or pool gain or intercept. If I am afraid of combat, I use S:CE or Dodge. If I am afraid of Immortal Grapple, I use Fortitude. If I am afraid of votes, I use Delaying Tactics or Intercept. If I am afraid of S:CE, I use IG or Psyche or Hidden Lurker. If I am afraid of manuvers, I use Flash or Drawing out the Beast. If I am afraid of Malkavian Dementia or Out of Control, however, there is no defense except for Sudden Reversal (which won't even help against Brujah Frenzy), and you can't build a deck strategy out of Sudden Reversal. "Depends. Have you ever played a deck based on a well-equiped Renegade Garou?" No. They just keep dying around here. The 5 Pool for 3 life lasts about one strike phase. [ quoted text not captured ]

Lupus Australis (jbwh...@dorsai.org) wrote: [snip] [I wrote] : > Maybe I'm just naive, but it seems to me that most people would : > wind up happier and more encouraged if you tried explaining to them : > verbally what's boring about what they're doing, and why they should : > try doing something else for the sake of variety. : I'm sorry, but that does sound naive. I fully expect my fellow : methuselahs to screw me any way they can (and that includes punishing me : for predictability). However, if they started giving me condescending : lectures about how boring they think I am, I might be kinda miffed. Well, I'm not really arguing for condescending lectures. But I do think that resorting to, for example, the use of clan hosers to punish people for being predictable in the deck they're playing - because otherwise they'll win too often - shows an embarrassing inability to simply make decks that can deal with the winning deck on a level basis. : I have no patience for the use of moral suasion to shame others out of : playing "cheesy decks" like Malkavian S&B, especially since this is one of : the few decks that Newbie players can be competitive with. If your newbie : player starts winning consistently with Malkavians, then the appropriate : and respectable way to show him the error of his ways is to tear off the : kid gloves and start hosing him (using clan hosers or any other technique : designed specifically to deal with him). He may be forced to design a new : deck, but at least he has the satisfaction of knowing that he has been : treated as a threat and has had an effect on the play environment. : If this newbie were, on the other hand, to recieve condescending lectures : on creativity from players with alot more cards than he, he might very : well go away and never return. He might just as well go away and not come back if people start piling Malk Dementias on his head, especially if he's one of those people with a limited card pool so he can't make any other good decks. I completely agree that you shouldn't have to shame anyone out of playing anything; I don't think there are any very feasibly cheesy Jyhad decks. (Except maybe the ones built around the expansion broken cards, like Return to Innocence and Tomb of Rameses III...) Beating the new Malkavian kid on the block by taking him seriously is all well and good, but I think it's much more reasonably to do that by, for example, teaching his vampires a good lesson in combat than by showing him that you do in fact own several copies of Malkavian Dementia, and he won't be able to win with that deck anymore. : > Of course, it's nice if you can get your playgroup to think the same : > way you do in terms of variety and what is the appropriate level of : > 'playing to win' type behavior. : I don't think there is an enormous dichotomy between "playing to win" and : playing for fun and variety. The creative player may occasionally play : wacky decks that he does not expect to win, but in the long run he learns : more about the game and wins more often. He also makes it harder for his : opponents to predict his hand. Heh. It's kinda funny for me to get the 'playing to win' lecture. I'm actually a big advocate of 'playing to win' in some sense. I think the game only really works well if everybody does play to win, ie plays a deck that is designed to win rather than to get out some funny combo for example. The whole clan-hoser thing is kinda an idiosyncrasy of me and my playgroup I guess. It's not that we think they shouldn't be used because they reflect too much emphasis on trying to win, but that they were implemented in a stupid and not very appropriate way, and therefore we don't like them. We actually have rather a number of house rules to mess with the cards we've found to be problematic in some way - either being overpowered or simply not fitting iinto what we consider the spirit of the game. Like Peter, I won't argue for banning clan hosers from tournaments or anything like that. I juust think the game would have been a little better designed if it hadn't had the clan hosers put into it in the form they were. Josh never willing to let a good argument die

On 22 Feb 1998, PDB6 wrote: > Lupus Australius wrote: > "I don't think you're getting me. I never expressed an opinion of this card at > all. Obviously I agree that it is a very useful and effective card. The > reason it is (almost) on the list is because the list is of cards whose > usefulness depends on what cards one's opponent is playing." > > I got that part, but as opposed to Clan hosers, Immortal Grapple is > always useful. There is no situation where it cannot be played (barring > an inabbility I think you mean it is always "usable", rather than always "useful". It is not always useful unless one uses it at superior for the press. As far as being usable, so are Letter from Vienna and Cultivated Blood Shortage. One may use both these cards even if there are no Tremere or Ventrue in play, but they have no effect in these cases. I considered IG to be analagous. But I guess you could argue that IG is rather *more* usable than the latter. It does not cost a master phase action, or even a minion phase action, or even a "strike phase action". One may automatically play as many as one likes after range in any short range combat without interfering with one's ability to play any cards that remain in one's hand afterwards. It's only disadvantage comes from its taking up space in one's hand or library. [ quoted text not captured ]

Lupus Australis (jbwh...@dorsai.org) wrote: : On 18 Feb 1998, Joshua Duffin wrote: : > No no, he's not saying that clan hosers are 'bad' or 'poorly compatible : > with the game design' because they're wallpaper. : To my mind, this is the only way they *are* 'bad' or 'poorly compatible'. : to the extent that anyone can figure a way to make use of them, I think : they are fine. Hmmmm. Do you mean that you only have problems with cards that are underpowered, not ones that are overpowered (for their costs etc)? Or just that you don't think any clan hosers could fall into the overpowered category? : I still don't get you. How is this any different from putting a dog pack : in my gangrel deck to "punish" a player who uses S:CE instead of dodges? : How is it different from putting a Far Mastery in ones deck to "punish" : the player who brings out Renegade Garous and then equips them with Flak : Jackets and Bastard Swords. How is it different from using Ancilla : Empowerment, Ebenezer Rousch, and Muddled Vampire Hunter to hose them : weenie decks? And since when are Methuselah's supposed to be "nice" to : each other? Well, the way it's different is that the other ideas you mention essentially punish the player for using a particular strategy, by using cards that counter or work against that strategy. A clan hoser doesn't do anything directly toward stopping someone from accomplishing the goals of their deck or toward defending you from their attacks; it just messes with their vampires. I don't know if I can really explain the mindset I'm coming from here, but I'll try anyway. Being 'nice' isn't exactly the issue. But trying to specifically screw someone over by using cards that only work against that person seems somehow unfriendly (ie not in keeping with the concept of a 'friendly game'). : An enormous part of the game will always be deck design. Skill of play : will count for alot, but some decks just don't work right against others : or in a certain play environment. A deck that may be well designed for : one "metagame" may be poorly designed for another. If you don't think : this is as it should be, you would have to fix alot more than the clan : hosers. You'd have to design a totally different game. This is true to some extent. But I think that Jyhad/VTES at least tries to escape this difficulty. I don't know if you have any familiarity with the Star Wars ccg, but in my experience, it is very possible to have the Dark Side and Light Side players focus on sufficiently different parts of the game that the cards they deploy will never directly interact with each other. (For example, the Empire might be playing a deep-space deck while the Rebels are playing a Tattooine planet-based deck.) In Jyhad, every deck has some basic compatibility with every other deck. If you guess poorly about what kinds of strategies the other players will be using, you can end up with a lot of useless cards in your library. But you always have at least the basic structure of the game (cardless actions, vampires which are the most basic tool of gameplay, etc) to go on, and you should certainly have some cards that will be useful in any situation. My point is that cards with very specific applicability do carry some higher risk of being useless with them. But that doesn't mean that it's appropriate to entirely recost them, as in the case of clan hosers which seem to get greatly reduced costs for their effects. : > (regarding Malk Dementia - I would disagree that the Malks were the : > most powerful clan in the base set. At least in no limits games, : > Ventrue Vote and Rush Combat decks have appeared at least as effective : > in my experience.) : The Malks *were* the most powerful clan in the basic set. There is no : such thing as a "no limit" play environment, as no players I have an : unlimited number of cards. The cards that make Malks powerful are common, : numerous and readily available. This is a real and ongoing advantage, : which one cannot completely ignore by wishfully imagining that we all, : (and especially any newer players) have an unlimited number of all : uncommons and rares. The cards that beat Malks up are also common, numerous, and readily available. Deflection. Bum's Rush. Fast Reaction. Hidden Lurker. (Psyche and Immortal Grapple are much better but are rarer. I do, by the way, think that a card as important as IG to the effectiveness of combat decks should not have been a rare.) And Jyhad cards are so cheap that it's not that pricey to get a lot of everything useful - as much as you could reasonably want. Sure, you don't have an actually unlimited number of cards, but I would never want to put more than a dozen of most cards into a deck anyway. : I think many are also forgetting the enormous extent that combat decks : were enhanced by the change in Aggravated Damage rules. (BTW, while I : like the fact that combat has been enhanced, I do not like the effect of : the new rules on the game atmosphere. In the old game, there was a real : sense that vampires were immortal, and near impossible to kill, and that : the best one could normally do was put them out of action for a while. You : could kill them, by committing diablerie, but it was a serious and : dangerous crime. In the new game they are constantly being burned with : impunity. Diablerie and the bloodhunt vote have fallen by the wayside as : significant elements of the game). While the agg-damage change did make it much easier to burn vampires, that really doesn't help all combat decks. Potence strikes are usually not agg. Pulled Fangs is now able to burn vamps, which it really shouldn't be (I think), and that's significant. But combat didn't become all *that* much more effective overall due to the agg-damage change. (I do agree though that the old way was better, with vamps being harder to simply burn via agg, making diablerie more widely necessary.) : Well, yes, I admit that many of the clan hosers have turned out to have : minimum playability (too specific, as Peter said), but they have not : adversely affected balance. To the extent that they have turned out to be : playable, I cannot see your objections to them. Well, I think some of them are overpowered, basically. Also, personally I don't think they're 'fun' or 'creative' cards. : > I snipped out everything not from the original set (Jyhad); there are : > twelve cards you list here that I agree are basically wallpapery due : > to depending so much on what your opponents are playing. That's out : > of at least three hundred cards, I believe. : From the Jyhad set: : 9. Storm Sewers : 13. Delaying Tactics These two in particular I disagree about being wallpaper. I guess maybe I should explain what I mean by wallpaper first. Obviously every card is situationally dependent to some extent. Given that bleed, vote, and combat are the three major strategies of Jyhad, I think it's reasonably to expect these aspects of the game to show up on a regular basis. Given that, Storm Sewers has shown up in a Nosferatu combat deck fairly often around here, as it guarantees close range if blocked, which is handy for the Nosfers who are otherwise somewhat lacking in maneuvers (and who, when playing Immortal Grapple potence combat, want very much to be at close range). Delaying Tactics is the best vote defense I know of which is neither outvoting the voter (ie having too many votes of your own on the table to be a viable target for being harmed by voting) or intercepting the votes. : I think that makes about 9% of the minion card set. I concede that many : of them are minimally useful, some more than others, depending on the : extent that what they are designed to hose have become a significant part : of the game. Anti-location cards are less "wallpaperish" than anti-weapon : cards, because locations have become more a part of the game than weapons. : Anti-press cards are, as you point out, total wallpaper, because presses : have almost completely fallen by the wayside because of the excessive : power of S:CE. Cards that hose S:CE, however, are extremely valued, and : when Dog Pack came out in the Sabbat set, I don't remember anyone : complaining about the inappropriateness of its specificity. It is : possible that future cards in future sets ( :( ) will further reduce the : power of S:CE, and increase the value of press and anti-press, and Open : Grate will no longer be wallpaper. Actually, Dog Pack (Ancient Hearts if I remember right - the Gangrel retainer that prevents the opposing minion from playing S:CE etc) suffers not only from being ultra hard to come by (as it was a rare) but also from being very specific in its application. In other words, it can be hard to justify paying two pool and taking an action to be able to avoid S:CE in future combats, even when you're the Gangrel, who have no other good in-clan way of dealing with S:CE. : Honorable mention to : 29. Immortal Grapple: Only useful if opponent plays strike cards : or weapons. The press it grants at superior is the only thing that saves : it from being on the above list (and it's not like anyone plays this for : the press at superior). I'm not quite sure how this makes an almost-wallpaper list. As you mentioned, S:CE is a very powerful effect, and widely available, which makes things like Immortal Grapple (which prevents S:CE) very handy if you want to play a combat deck (and win). : 33. Skin of Steel: The Skin of Steel/Pulled Fangs combo is the : only thing (in the original set) that prevents this card's usefulness from : being entirely dependent on what one's opponent plays. Otherwise, it is : an expensive and pointless way to prevent normal cardless hand slaps : (since you lose a blood anyway, and can't play it if you don't have a : blood). What about Blur? Or any large Potence strike for that matter? Potence combat did not suck in the basic set, and Skin of Steel is by far the best fortitude card against big strikes. If the point you're getting at is that things like SoS and Immortal Grapple rely on knowing that people are likely to be playing S:CE or potence combat, you're right, but I don't see how it matters. In order to design a deck at all, you have to make some assumptions about what people will play. Generally you make these guesses based on what cards seem to be highly useful, powerful, or widely used. : > Well, for one thing because you'd be better off putting a Skin of Steel : > or two in your deck, : To which I gave an honorable mention: See above. Yeah, but I think you're wrong to do so. Do people in your playgroup actually not play Skin of Steel? Don't you have anyone that plays serious combat? : > but besides that, the idea of punishing someone : > for playing Brujah (or Ventrue, or Malkavian) is a little repugnant from : > the standpoint of 'it's just punishing him for showing up and playing : > the game.' : Since when is trying to win "repugnant"? And how are clan hosers any : different from putting a Far Mastery in your deck when you are tired of : being hosed by Renegade Garou? Or putting in alot of intercept because : you expect alot of stealth? Or putting in alot of Immortal Grapples (or : psyches) because you expect alot of Strike: Combat Ends? These are strategy-based decisions (choices based on what the in-game environment looks like in terms of the methods people use to win and otherwise accomplish their goals). Attacking vampires based on their clan is not directly strategy-related - there are any number of possible strategies someone could be pursuing, for example, with Volker, the Puppet Prince. Using a clan hoser against Volker is different from using a Bum's Rush on him because it doesn't fit into what I consider to be the basic framework of the game. : You'll have to explain this more because I really don't understand this at : all. How is punishing someone for what is in his crypt any different from : punishing him for what is in his library? You use library cards to punish someone for what's in their library. You also use library cards to punish someone for what's in their crypt. You can't use crypt cards to punish someone for anything at all. Clearly the crypt is qualitatively different from the library. : > : Please name seven : > : cards, and explain how their absence would make Jyhad unplayable. : > : > I can do this. ;-) In a basic-set Jyhad-only environment: Bum's Rush, : > Haven Uncovered, Psyche, Fast Reaction, Hidden Lurker, Immortal Grapple, : > Blood Hunt. : Not bad, though my intention was not a basic-set only environment. : Ironically, however, cards like Immortal Grapple are no different in : principle than the "Clan Hosers" (except for that extra press, which is : not what we play it for). In that its usefulness depends on the environment, yes. But it depends on a completely different aspect of the environment (strategies of combat and combat defense rather than the happenstance of particular vampire clans). : > and : > also eliminate any way to get around Strike: Combat Ends. : You forgot Drawing out the Beast, Mariel, and Weather Control, especially : when combined with Dawn Operation and Skin of Night. Still, S:CE is the : most overpowered effect of the original set. Good thing there was a hoser : for it, yes? None of these really 'get around' S:CE except maybe Weather Control (in severe multiple) - one point of damage per combat is not really the kind of thing that makes a combat deck effective. : No. It would not make the game unplayable--as I think you would find if : you experimented with playing without these cards. It would do severe : damage to the potential variety, and, as you have said, make many a great : many cards, even clans, very hard to play. It would be a very different : game environment, primarily of voters and bleeders. Ventrue, Malks, and : Toreador would rule. Nossies and Gangrel would suffer (except for Wynn). : Rush Allies would become more popular, as would anti ally cards like : Kindred Segregation and Far Mastery. Anti-vote and anti-bleed cards would : become popular and essential. Anti-Ventrue, anti-Malk, and anti-Toreador : hosers would become essential too. Good thing the designers put in those : 7 cards you listed, otherwise we really would have needed them hosers : wouldn't we? It would be a very different game without the major strategy of rush combat. : > : Just for fun, I think I would like to construct a Nosferatu "Toreador : > : Hoser" Deck, complete with lots of Tragic Love Affairs and Nosferatu : > : Performance Arts. Then I will wait for a good opportunity to use it. If : > : my opponent complains that it is "lame" or "unfair" then he just has no : > : sense of humor, now does he? : > : > Well, it won't be very funny for him, will it? How much fun is it to : > be screwed by random chance? : That's how I often get screwed, and it is often how I screw others. Would : have won the last tournament if I hadn't got my KRCG contested and been : bled by Freaky bleed Gangrel with Fame that he got out in the first turn. : I have a real difficult time with this notion of yours that some ways of : getting screwed are somehow less legitimate than others. If someone takes : a chance, guesses at the game environment, and puts a clan hoser in his : deck, why should he not be able to benefit from it substantially if he : gets lucky enough to face the right clan? But being screwed due to luck sucks. It's no fun. Because clan hosers appear to have reduced costs for the effects they produce, they are inherently 'luckier' than the run of the mill cards, which work within particular strategies. : > We thought Malk Dementia was necessary back then because we were playing : > with a four-card limit, and the Malks were by far the most useful clan : > due to being able to make effective stealth/bleed decks even under the : > 4CL. We were wrong, because in no limits play (the way the game was : > designed), the Malks are not overpowered, and so Malk Dementia is : > unnecessary to keep them balanced. : I suspect what you really mean is that you all finally bought enough cards : so that you had more than 4 each of Immortal Grapple, and decided to see : what would happen if you were alowed to use them all. Actually, as far as I remember, one of us (Peter Bakija) had the four Immortal Grapples when we still played under 4CL. I don't think anyone else really had any at that time. At some point we decided to switch to NL. Peter may have had more than 4 IGs at that time; the rest of us who now have a bunch (I think I have 9) got them later (and for very little cost). : Card limits are the natural state of affairs for anyone who has not made a : huge investment in cards yet. The no-card-limit is a conceptual : idealization that exists only on JOL or in an environment that allows : proxies. Card limits will always be a de-facto part of the game, dependent : on player resources. Only when the resources are extremely limited, I think. When you can buy a box of Jyhad boosters for $7 plus shipping, you can easily get plenty of the most useful cards. (Remember, there is always a de facto limit of 90 of any one card in your library, as long as you follow the rules on deck size and aren't playing games bigger than 5 players. Max deck sizes tend to make the number of copies of particular cards required not all *that* high.) Sorry this is so lengthy; we both seem to be awfully long winded at the moment for some reason. Josh have to stop typing now so I can eat...

Lupus Australius wrote: "I think you mean it is always "usable", rather than always "useful". It is not always useful unless one uses it at superior for the press." No, I mean it is always useful. Immortal Grapple is an example of a card that makes an entire deck strategy playable. Without Immortal Grapple, Potence combat is not a viable concept (in this statement, Immortal Grapple could theoretically be replaced by Psyche! or a couple other far sketchier cards). As a result, Immortal Grapple is a neccessary card to put into a Potence combat deck to make it a viable deck. Without Immortal Grapple, more often than not, the Potence combat deck will be unable to kill its opponent, and thus its action will be wasted, and thus it will be an unsucessful deck. It is kind of like making a Stealth and Bleed deck without Steath--you can make such a deck, but it won't be particularly effective. Occasionally, an opponent will not have a single card in their deck that Immortal Grapple affects. In this instance, it is still playeable, will not jam your hand, and is still useable for the press. Even in this sort of fairly rare situation, the space it takes up in your deck is worth the fact that it makes an entire deck concept viable. There is not a single clan hoser that is even close in concept to this. Name me a deck that is in any way hindered by the lack of a particular clan hoser. There are none. Some decks can benefit occasionally from clan hosers, if they are lucky, but no decks require them to be effective and compettetive. "As far as being usable, so are Letter from Vienna and Cultivated Blood Shortage. One may use both these cards even if there are no Tremere or Ventrue in play, but they have no effect in these cases. I considered IG to be analagous." The vast majority of the time that one draws a clan hoser, it will be useless (unless one puts them in their deck knowing that a particular clan will be played). The vast majority of the time that one draws an Immortal Grapple (in a Rush combat deck), it will be useful, and always worth having in such a deck, as it makes such a deck a compettetive design. Again, clan hosers cannot have the same thing said about them in any situation. [ quoted text not captured ]

On 23 Feb 1998, PDB6 wrote: > Lupus Australius wrote: > "I think you mean it is always "usable", rather than always "useful". It is > not always useful unless one uses it at superior for the press." > > No, I mean it is always useful. Well, unless you are referring to the press at superior (a point I long ago conceded) then I'm afraid you're just plain wrong. Immortal Grapple is useful against a wide range of cards -- about 38 weapon cards and non-hand-damage-based strike cards from the original set alone. It is necessary to counter many of these cards especially the commonly used Majesty, etc. However, if a deck does not use *any* of these cards (and many decks do not), then this card is just *not* going to be useful (except for the press at superior). Such decks do exist, and most specifically include other Immortal Grapple combat decks. These typically contain no strike cards that are not consistent with Immortal Grapple. Other examples might be a decks that respond to the widespread use of immortal grapple using only multiple maneuvers, damage prevention, or non strike cards like TB or Obedience, for combat defence. Or decks that rely on Mariel, the Elesium, & Secure Haven. Or decks which have no combat defence at all but rely on bringing out the weenies faster than you can kill them. Suppose you put in your 80-card Nossie deck 10 Immortal Grapples and 10 Maneuvers to get you to close range, plus a Storm Sewer to save on guarantee close range even if your bum's rushes are blocked. One of your opponents plays another IG close range deck relying exclusively on Bum's rush to get the necessary manevers. Another plays a Giovanni TB potence close range hand damage deck (with no maneuvers, cus he figures you won't be able to play any). A third plays a fast multiplying weenie deck with no combat defence at all. A fourth plays a fast Malkavian bleed deck whose only combat defence is Elesium, Mariel, Secure Haven, and a Muddled Vampire Hunter with a sport bike to block your Bums Rushes. A five-player game, and over a quarter of your library (IG, maneuvers, and Storm Sewers) are completely useless (though "usable" to no effect). (...except of course for the press at superior). Situations like the above may be rare, but the point remains...the usefulness of IG depends on what other players have in their decks. > Immortal Grapple is an example of a card that makes an entire deck > strategy playable. Without Immortal Grapple, Potence combat is not a > viable concept (in this statement, Immortal Grapple could theoretically > be replaced by Psyche! or a couple other far sketchier cards). As a > result, Immortal Grapple is a neccessary card to put into a Potence > combat deck to make it a viable deck. Without Immortal Grapple, more > often than not, the Potence combat deck will be unable to kill its > opponent, and thus its action will be wasted, and thus it will be an > unsucessful deck. It is kind of like making a Stealth and Bleed deck > without Steath--you can make such a deck, but it won't be particularly > effective. Occasionally, an opponent will not have a single card in > their deck that Immortal Grapple affects. In this instance, it is still > playeable, will not jam your hand, and is still useable for the press. > Even in this sort of fairly rare situation, the space it takes up in > your deck is worth the fact that it makes an entire deck concept viable. All of this is true, but what I said above still stands. > There is not a single clan hoser that is even close in concept to this. > Name me a deck that is in any way hindered by the lack of a particular > clan hoser. There are none. Some decks can benefit occasionally from > clan hosers, if they are lucky, but no decks require them to be > effective and compettetive. IG is essential because a game imbalance has made it essential. Were the game environment to shift, it would become less essential. Its usefulness depends on the game environment and especially on what one's fellow players put in their decks. Someone said that without IG and a few other cards, Venture Vote and Malk S&B would become unbeatable. Assuming this is true (which we need not debate at the moment), then Malk and Ventrue hosers *would* become essential in the resulting game environment. Things did not turn out this way. But to say that cards like IG are compatible with the game design, and Clan Hosers are inherently not compatible, is to demand prescient foresight on the part of the game designers on how all these cards would fall into place through months and years of competitive game play. > "As far as being usable, so are Letter from Vienna and Cultivated Blood > Shortage. One may use both these cards even if there are no Tremere or > Ventrue in play, but they have no effect in these cases. I considered > IG to be analagous." > The vast majority of the time that one draws a clan hoser, it will be > useless (unless one puts them in their deck knowing that a particular > clan will be played). Like you put IG in your deck not knowing if strikes other than hand strikes will be played. > The vast majority of the time that one draws an > Immortal Grapple (in a Rush combat deck), it will be useful, and always > worth having in such a deck, as it makes such a deck a compettetive > design. The above is true because of the game environment, which might have turned out differently, and remains constantly mutable. Indeed, it is still quite conceivable that, as my above example shows, the "competitive design" you describe above can turn out to be a waste of effort in certain situations. Perhaps this is not likely, but the difference between IG and Clan Hosers is not absolute, but merely a matter of degree based on the (constantly shifting) likelyhood that the cards it counters will be played. > Again, clan hosers cannot have the same thing said about them in any > situation. Only because the game environment turned out the way it did. [ quoted text not captured ]

> There is not a single clan hoser that is even close in concept to this. > Name me a deck that is in any way hindered by the lack of a particular clan > hoser. Okay, I will. Parthenon, Malkavian Derangement: Paranoia, Blood Puppy, various Powerbases, Anarch Revolt, Antediluvian Awakening, Derange, various stealth cards, 2 copies each of 6 vampires with dem/obf. That deck would be useless without the Paranoia. -Chris -----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==----- http://www.dejanews.com/ Now offering spam-free web-based newsreading

On Tue, 24 Feb 1998 ber...@cco.caltech.edu wrote: > > There is not a single clan hoser that is even close in concept to this. > > Name me a deck that is in any way hindered by the lack of a particular clan > > hoser. > > Okay, I will. > > Parthenon, Malkavian Derangement: Paranoia, Blood Puppy, various Powerbases, > Anarch Revolt, Antediluvian Awakening, Derange, various stealth cards, 2 > copies each of 6 vampires with dem/obf. > > That deck would be useless without the Paranoia. Heh. I've actually had that done to me. Not nice. Another idea I had, probably less feasible, is to use "Temptation" to tempt vampires to impersonate a particular clan, then hose that clan. [ quoted text not captured ]

Lupus Australius wrote: "Situations like the above may be rare, but the point remains...the usefulness of IG depends on what other players have in their decks." While all of your points about cards being useful based on your opponents decks are completely valid, you are taking them to an extreme. Yes, Immortal Grapple becomes little more than a press in the right circumstances, but the same can be said about almost any card in the game (not the press part :-). Deflection/Telepathic Counter are completely useless if no one ever tries to bleed you. Stealth cards are only useful if someone tries to block you. Intercept cards are only useful in your deck if one of your opponents try to do something involving stealth. Conditioning is only useful if you try and bleed someone. You can come up with any situation where any card in the game becomes non useable. The point I am trying to make here (and to vainly attempt to tie this back into the clan hoser bit) is that cards like Immortal Grapple are always useful in a grand strategic sense. Yes, not every opponent will have cards that require you to have an Immortal Grapple with which to kill them. However, in a grand sense, without Immortal Grapple, Potence combat decks become inneffectual, due to the myriad of common defenses that make combat fail. There is no clan hoser that fits this bill. Without Deflection, bleed bounce is no longer a defense. Without Lost in Crowds, Stealth Bleed is not a viable strategy. Without Immortal Grapple, Rush Decks are not competetive. And without Letter from Vienna? "Someone said that without IG and a few other cards, Venture Vote and Malk S&B would become unbeatable. Assuming this is true (which we need not debate at the moment), then Malk and Ventrue hosers *would* become essential in the resulting game environment." No, they would not. Bleed Bounce (vs S+B) and Intercept (vs Ventrue Vote) would become essential in the resulting game enviornement, just like they already are. Malkavian Dementia is, under no circumstances, a viable and reliable defense against S+B. You simply cannot have enough in your deck to be an effective and consistent defense, and any deck that relies on Malk Dementia as their sole defense against S+B will be consistently killed by Ventrue Bonding decks, Nosferatu S+B, Setite S+B, Tremere S+B, etc. Such a deck would not be successful in a grand sense. "Like you put IG in your deck not knowing if strikes other than hand strikes will be played." Immortal Grapple is not put into your deck because you know what cards your opponent is playing. Immortal Grapple is put into your deck because in a strategic sense, Immortal Grapple is a completely necessary component of a Potence Rush deck. Occasionally, it will not be needed in a particular fight, but without it as a component, the deck will simply be not worth designing. Clan hosers, on the other hand, are never the basis of deck strategy, and are often just thrown in a deck because of knowledge of what clans are being played. "The above is true because of the game environment, which might have turned out differently, and remains constantly mutable. Indeed, it is still quite conceivable that, as my above example shows, the "competitive design" you describe above can turn out to be a waste of effort in certain situations." True, but again, the same can be said about literaly every deck in the game. "Perhaps this is not likely, but the difference between IG and Clan Hosers is not absolute, but merely a matter of degree based on the (constantly shifting) likelyhood that the cards it counters will be played." I would claim that the difference is absolute. Immortal Grapple is an example of a card that strategies are designed around. Clan hosers are not. Pretty absolute IMO. [ quoted text not captured ]

> > > There is not a single clan hoser that is even close in concept to this. > > > Name me a deck that is in any way hindered by the lack of a particular > clan hoser. > > > > Okay, I will. > > > > Parthenon, Malkavian Derangement: Paranoia, Blood Puppy, various > > Powerbases, Anarch Revolt, Antediluvian Awakening, Derange, various > > stealth cards, 2 copies each of 6 vampires with dem/obf. > > > > That deck would be useless without the Paranoia. > > Heh. I've actually had that done to me. Not nice. > I was planning on making a MalkAT/I.C. deck which used Derange/Protect Thine Own, but this looks better. I may try it. The only problem would be once methuselahs other than my predator/prey started getting mad and rushed me. I could only take care of 1 or 2 vampires per turn. > Another idea I had, probably less feasible, is to use "Temptation" to > tempt vampires to impersonate a particular clan, then hose that clan. > I'd like to see that. It'd be hilarious. But my bet is, you'd only get it to work maybe once per game. It's just too slow of a combo. You're better off playing straight Corruption/Temptation. But hmm... what clan would you choose? Maybe Ventrue? That would at least keep the Temptations going, with Cultivated Blood Shortage, but what you do with them? Malks would be useless, although you could steal 'em each turn... Maybe if you clan impersonated to Tzimice and then had a bunch of Vicissitude cards for Vicissitude poisoning? Anti-Brujah would allow you to kill one vamp, but only one. I think your best bet would probably be Brujah. Couple Brujah Frenzy with Mark of Damnation to get your predator to slaughter all of your prey's vamps. Hmm... I still don't think the Temptation is fast enough. But what about using Mind Rape instead. It'd be a good concept for a Malk deck. Mind Rape(with stealth), Clan Impersonate: Brujah. When the Brujah tries to punish you... Brujah Frenzy and make them attack your prey's vamps. If you could find enough vamps with dom/obf/ser (I count three of them), you could still use the Mark of Damnation. I think the combo still isn't really feasible. Maybe with playtest cards, though... Then you could get a second M:ooT to play more than one Brujah Frenzy per turn, and there are 6 playtest vampires with dom/obf/ser (4 of them are Serpents of the Light). Still a little sketchy though. And at a pretty high cost (2 blood for the Mind Rape, and 1 blood for each Mark of Damnation). [ quoted text not captured ]

ber...@cco.caltech.edu wrote: > > > > > There is not a single clan hoser that is even close in concept to this. > > > > Name me a deck that is in any way hindered by the lack of a particular > > clan hoser. > > > > > > Okay, I will. > > > > > > Parthenon, Malkavian Derangement: Paranoia, Blood Puppy, various > > > Powerbases, Anarch Revolt, Antediluvian Awakening, Derange, various > > > stealth cards, 2 copies each of 6 vampires with dem/obf. > > > > > > That deck would be useless without the Paranoia. > > > > Heh. I've actually had that done to me. Not nice. > > > I was planning on making a MalkAT/I.C. deck which used Derange/Protect Thine > Own, but this looks better. I may try it. The only problem would be once > methuselahs other than my predator/prey started getting mad and rushed me. I > could only take care of 1 or 2 vampires per turn. > > > Another idea I had, probably less feasible, is to use "Temptation" to > > tempt vampires to impersonate a particular clan, then hose that clan. > > > I'd like to see that. It'd be hilarious. But my bet is, you'd only get it > to work maybe once per game. It's just too slow of a combo. You're better > off playing straight Corruption/Temptation. Somebody in our playgroup made a similar deck. It uses Followers of Set, Uriah Winter, revelation of the Sire and the Jackal. You bring out Uriah Winter, Reveal him to be a FoS, then send him on down the line. With a corruption you can get him back to you, but anytime your prey has him your minions w/ the Jackals have plenty of stealth. The Betrayers are what makes this deck really funny.

daniel frey wrote: > Somebody in our playgroup made a similar deck. It uses Followers of Set, > Uriah Winter, revelation of the Sire and the Jackal. You bring out Uriah > Winter, Reveal him to be a FoS, then send him on down the line. With a > corruption you can get him back to you, Two corruptions, actually, since the Revelation increased his capacity. > but anytime your prey has him > your minions w/ the Jackals have plenty of stealth. The Betrayers are > what makes this deck really funny. -- L. Scott Johnson (vte...@wizards.com) Official VtES Net.Rep for Wizards of the Coast. (*) - Subject to review by Rules Team

>> your minions w/ the Jackals have plenty of stealth. The Betrayers are >> what makes this deck really funny. Could someone explain to me how Betrayer actually work. The wording makes no sense. Sorrow --- I don't want to be alone | I hurt, therefore I am anymore |-------------------------------- I don't want to be anyone | "What are you looking at...? anymore | you never seen anyone try to I don't need a reason to kill myself | commit suicide before?" - Anon ------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm an old Jyhad player and am not familiar with the new rules pertaining to ag damage. I pose these questions: 1) How much ag does it take to burn a vamp? Yuri has 3 blood. Will 3 ag burn him? 4 ag? 2) Do you still subtract one from the ag damage? Yuri with 3 blood takes 2 ag... does he go to torpor with 1 or 2 blood? 3) does environmental damage come before or after ag hand damage? 4) with DOtB and Dawn Operation, would a vamp with no blood be burned from the one ag? 5) what is the webpage URL where I can find the new rules? **) One extra question... can two vamps in combat both play TB... if not, then does one take precedence over the other? Thanks in advance Ted W. Malisch

On Wed, 25 Feb 1998, T.W.Malisch wrote: > I'm an old Jyhad player and am not familiar with the new rules pertaining > to ag damage. I pose these questions: > > 1) How much ag does it take to burn a vamp? > Yuri has 3 blood. Will 3 ag burn him? 4 ag? 4 ag, as opposed to 5 under the old rules. > 2) Do you still subtract one from the ag damage? > Yuri with 3 blood takes 2 ag... does he go to torpor with 1 or 2 blood? You never subtracted anything from the ag damage per se, even under the old rules. Under the old rules you *did* subtract 1 from the amount of blood you burn healing damage. This is because the first point of ag damage you take shocks the system so you cannot heal, and sends you immediately into torpor for being unable to burn a blood to heal the damage. Only additional points of ag damage beyond the first caused the loss of blood. You were burned if an (additional) point of ag damage required you to burn blood, and you had no more left to lose. Thus it required 2 ag damage to burn a vampire with no blood. The first shocks the system so it cannot heal and sends to torpor. The second requires him to burn a blood he does not have, resulting in his destruction. This is no longer true in the new rules. Each point of ag damage results in a loss of blood. 1 ag damage to a vampire with no blood will burn him. Pulled fangs now burns vampires, making it horrendously powerful. > 3) does environmental damage come before or after ag hand damage? Environmental damage has no specific time to it. Like most damage, it is usually dealt during the strike resolution phase, simultaneous with any aggravated damage also dealt in that phase. Environmental damage cannot be contrasted with ag damage, since environmental damage can also be either aggravated or normal. > 4) with DOtB and Dawn Operation, would a vamp with no blood be burned from > the one ag? With the new rules, I'm afraid so. > 5) what is the webpage URL where I can find the new rules? Ummm....someone? I think LSJ just posted it; > **) One extra question... can two vamps in combat both play TB... if not, > then does one take precedence over the other? Yes, but only if the first vamp plays it at inferior (as if anyone would). Acting vampire gets the opportunity to play it first. If the acting vampire plays it at superior, the blocking vamp is forbidden from doing so (because she cannot play *any* cards). [ quoted text not captured ]

All of this kinda reminds me of the reason I got into CCGs in the first place - I'm an old-time roleplayer [I remember when D&D was three crappy little brown books and one crappy little silver book], and then I got a job and spent all my leisure time drinking and shagging and painting miniatures and playing wargames. And then along came Magic where you got to have an RPG character who was actually a deck of cards, so inherently unpredictable in the way that real people are, no matter how hard you work at educating and shaping them. And best of all, your character wasn't at the mercy of incompetent or unimaginative DMs - s/he could really go out into the world, meet interesting and fascinating deck-shaped people, and beat the living shit out of them. I thought that Magic was the best game ever, until along came Jyhad, where you could be an EVIL deathless deck-shaped character bound into a shifting web of alliances and hatreds with the other deck-shaped psychopaths. And that's why despite having collected and played Jyhad right from the beginning, I've only just recently started being a "serious" Jyhad player, ie trying to compete with really good players ruthlessly using the cards to the best of their abilities. To do this I had to liquidate all the decks I had built [about 50] and I created 10 or so stonkingly good tournament-quality decks, partly by cloning the JOLT finalists, but with a coupla novel ideas there too. Now, these decks work a treat - ok, I didn't get to the final in Ryde, but I thoroughly beat up two of the finalists, including the European champion, in the prelims. And we've enjoyed playtesting the decks in my family and friends playgroup - they are AWESOMELY powerful. So I understand EXACTLY what Lupus is on about. But two weeks ago I went off to Southsea Models and bought another box of Sabbat so's to recreate the fun decks .. cos we were actually getting BORED with stomping on each other in less than two hours. We realised that we like the business of sitting around with a few bottles of decent wine and the best and most beautiful game on the planet, to the extent that we actually don't care who wins, so long as the game lasts for a decent while, no-one plays like shit, and no-one wins all the time. It kinda reminds me of this game we used to play with three crappy little brown books and one crappy little silver book ..... hey Josh, you wouldn't be an old-time D&D junky, wouldja????

In article <Pine.SUN.3.96.980225221728.17436A-100000@amanda>, Lupus Australis <jbwh...@dorsai.org> wrote: > > On Wed, 25 Feb 1998, T.W.Malisch wrote: > > I'm an old Jyhad player and am not familiar with the new rules pertaining > > to ag damage. I pose these questions: > > > > 1) How much ag does it take to burn a vamp? > > Yuri has 3 blood. Will 3 ag burn him? 4 ag? > > 4 ag, as opposed to 5 under the old rules. Correct. > > 2) Do you still subtract one from the ag damage? > > Yuri with 3 blood takes 2 ag... does he go to torpor with 1 or 2 blood? > > [Explanation deleted] Correct. Yuri would go to torpor with 1 blood. > > 3) does environmental damage come before or after ag hand damage? > > Environmental damage has no specific time to it. Like most damage, it is > usually dealt during the strike resolution phase, simultaneous with any > aggravated damage also dealt in that phase. > > Environmental damage cannot be contrasted with ag damage, since > environmental damage can also be either aggravated or normal. Correct. But if a mix of non-agg and agg damage is done at the same time (a retainer's damage applied with a vampire's aggravated hand strike), the damage is applied all at once. WHen burning blood to heal/prevent damage, however, the non-agg damage is healed first, before any blood can be spent to prevent destruction from the agg damage. > > 4) with DOtB and Dawn Operation, would a vamp with no blood be burned from > > the one ag? > > With the new rules, I'm afraid so. Correct. > > 5) what is the webpage URL where I can find the new rules? > > Ummm....someone? I think LSJ just posted it; http://Rulemonger.Home.ML.Org Choose a mirror site and check under the "rules" section. > > **) One extra question... can two vamps in combat both play TB... if not, > > then does one take precedence over the other? > > Yes, but only if the first vamp plays it at inferior (as if anyone would). > > Acting vampire gets the opportunity to play it first. If the acting > vampire plays it at superior, the blocking vamp is forbidden from doing so > (because she cannot play *any* cards). Correct again. -- L. Scott Johnson (vte...@wizards.com) Official VtES Net.Rep for Wizards of the Coast. (*) - Subject to review by Rules Team -----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==----- [ quoted text not captured ]

Legbiter (james.m...@port.ac.uk) wrote: : But two weeks ago I went off to Southsea Models and bought another box of : Sabbat so's to recreate the fun decks .. cos we were actually getting : BORED with stomping on each other in less than two hours. We realised that : we like the business of sitting around with a few bottles of decent wine : and the best and most beautiful game on the planet, to the extent that we : actually don't care who wins, so long as the game lasts for a decent : while, no-one plays like shit, and no-one wins all the time. It kinda : reminds me of this game we used to play with three crappy little brown : books and one crappy little silver book ..... hey Josh, you wouldn't be an : old-time D&D junky, wouldja???? Who, me? Well, actually, I have to admit, I did play D&D once upon a time. I haven't really done any role-playing games for quite a while though. I do agree that the point of the game is to have fun. And that winning isn't necessarily all that important. But I didn't think that was really what I was arguing in this thread - I have no problem with clan hosers in the sense of thinking that people who use them are trying too hard to win, but just that I don't think they're very well balanced in terms of their relative power to cost ratio compared to the other cards in the game. Josh but it's always nice to be asked...