To transfer out or not to transfer out? That is the question.

Hello, everybody! I am Aria, a young player from France. I play Jyhad since 2006 and I am used to playing some tournaments in France. My English is not perfect, so, I apologize for the mistakes you will find in this text. I would like to introduce you an issue, and a solution I propose to solve it. Over the past few months, I have noted that tranfer out ( the fact to kill yourself by spending your last pool, however), has a huge influence in a game and a tournament. By killing yourself, you change dramatically the tempo of a game, the number of actions your predator needs to kill you, and you broke all the calculations of players who are still alive. By transfering out, you can change all the game and literally choose who will win, or NOT win. Many of you are used to threating other players to kill yourself in order to make them stop their actions. Maybe, like me, you are used to losing games because of some players decided to transfer out, giving victory points or game win to your prey just to annoy you or to make you loose the game. In the last party I played, a player decided to not transfer out and it made me win. He was my predator and, because my prey quickly killed her prey, in a three way configuration I fought to make my predator survive. I was playing a deck based on “hide the heart”, and I was able to reduce some bleeds and intercept deflected bleeds on me. Finally, I killed my prey and killed my predator next turn, because he has no chance against me, and he knew it. At any time, my predator could kill himself and allow my prey to get 2 vp and prevent me from getting the Game Win. In the same game, the first prey of my prey killed herself. It was not very important but it made my prey gain an action, one more bleed in the same turn, it could kill my predator. I am really opposed to the rule that allows a player to choose his death. In my opinion, that rule is a violation of the “Play To Win” rule. That last rule has been made to prevent some random actions in a game, and to force players to do everything they can to get the GW. But, if they can’t get the GW, what choices do they have? First, the PTW rule forces you to get as many vp as you can. If you can’t get any more vp, nowadays you can do anything you want! But there is a way to get more vp. I mean, if you survive until the time limit, you win 0.5vp! So, why a player is allowed to kill himself? Where is the rule allowing him to not play in order to get this last half vp? Another question has to be asked here. Why a player kills himself during a game? Where is the benefit for him in suicide? I’ve got 2 reasons. First, you do not like a player, and you want to punish him because he is an asshole or whatever, so, you transfer out. The other one: you want to prevent a player in your table to make a game win, because you know that if he does not get a game win, you have more chances to play the final table. Each of these two reasons is illegal and a violation of rules. The first one contradicts the fair play, the second one contradicts the rule, which says “you have to play each game independently of whatever event or information out of the table”. I heard some players say “ if your predator deserves a vp why not to give him?” Because, if he is not able to kill you, maybe he does not deserve a victory point! My last opinion about the suicide in V:tES, is that it forces players to play only a few kinds of deck. I think that decks which want to control the table, such as multi-rush decks, Z decks ( funny decks), and some intercept decks have a huge disadvantage in tournaments, because they cannot make their prey loose huge amounts of pool in one turn. A multi-rush deck, for example, often kills all the minions of his prey and his grandprey before killing them. But he risks that his grand prey transfers out, to have her revenge. Other control decks, like my "hide the heart" deck for example, can’t win if a player kills himself. The amount of pool a player can loose in one turn is about 10 : 3 vessel/blood doll, an expensive master and actions like recruit expensive allies, and finally 4 transfer points at the end of your turn. So, if you do not want to risk your grandprey kills herself, you have to be able to make more than 10 pool of damage in one turn. Only a few decks are able to make that amount of damage. So, allowing suicide is an (one of the many) obstacle of deck diversity in tournaments. There is a last issue in allowing suicide: There are many ways to defend people “cross table”, reduce bleed, boons, parity shift, eagle sight… But there is no way to defend yourself against someone committing suicide, giving your prey 6 pools and a victory point. My solution? Respect the “Play To Win” rule! “A player can’t spend his last pool point during his turn unless it will give him a victory point or a game win”. These are the few words I want to read in the next rulebooks. It is not perfect. I know that a player can spend all except 1 pool point and tap all his minions and say “next”, but it could be the first step of a rule like “a player has to play in order to survive as long as he can”, but that is for my secret dreams.

[ quoted text not captured ] Aria, you have made some excellent points. I had never thought about how self-ousting hurts certain kinds of decks, particularly rush combat decks, thus discouraging deck diversity. You are also right that even though there are cards that allow you to control most other aspects of the table, there is no card that allows you to prevent self- ousting. (Life Boon might do it, but I think it would only prevent it if the self-oust happened on the last transfer of the influence phase.) I mentioned in the other thread that I think it is acceptable to self- oust in order to try to get more tournament points if you can't get more victory points. That is another reason to do it. In the example you gave of trying to prevent someone else from getting a game win by self-ousting, it really does makes sense to self-oust if (and only if) you will cause yourself and the other player to achieve a tie in the game's final results, thus increasing your tournament points. However, I'm not sure if playing for tournament points violates the "you have to play each game independently of whatever event or information out of the table" rule.

On May 11, 4:42 pm, Aria <evgueni.lec...@laposte.net> wrote: [ quoted text not captured ] Three things, First, there is a way to stop (delay) someone from self ousting (without playing the players) Lifeboon Second there is another reason to transfer out. To get a game win, if you already have 2 vp and no chance of another, helping your predator survive your prey can get you the game win. Third, there are positions that while still in the game, you can without a doubt get no more then 0vps, though people sometimes give up to soon. Matt

[ quoted text not captured ] Matt, I agree with all your points, and in fact the current rule set encourages self ousting if you are in the position of point 2 or 3. I do though, think that the positive effects of these rules on the game as a whole are minimal. I think the game would be bettered if your predator had to take at least one action to seal your suicidal move; one which could be reacted to by other players more easily that by packing life boons in every deck to deal with suicidal players. Jeff Poole

[ quoted text not captured ] Would a rule preventing players from transferring their last pool help? You could still almost self-oust if you want to help your predator for whatever reason, but some effort is still needed to get that 1VP and 6 pool. Just a thought. -YY

[ quoted text not captured ] > Jeff Poole- Hide quoted text - > > - Show quoted text - I still think that you should always see your time out in a tournament. Even if your turns consist of playing a (now pointless) master and then discarding... it can't hurt your position and you'd still be sitting around at the tournament anyway.

On Tue, 11 May 2010 21:11:51 -0700 (PDT), Juggernaut1981 <brassc...@gmail.com> wrote: > I still think that you should always see your time out in a > tournament. Even if your turns consist of playing a (now pointless) > master and then discarding... it can't hurt your position Yes it can. > and you'd still be sitting around at the tournament anyway. Not necessarily. You could go grab a bite. You could go do some shopping. Heck, you could do some trading with folks around. All much more fun than "playing a (now pointless) master and then discarding". Of course most players who are in a lost position will stick around anyway hoping for a miracle (and the miracle *does* sometimes happen). -- Regards, Daneel

> Would a rule preventing players from transferring their last pool > help? > You could still almost self-oust if you want to help your predator for > whatever reason, but some effort is still needed to get that 1VP and 6 > pool. Play to win is in my mind first objective. Self-ousting should be illegal. You shouldn't be able to spend your last pool by yourself in anyway (playing a card or transferring or using efect like blood doll). That last ousting action can be blocked. Even directed bleed action can be blocked with eagle sight etc.

On Tue, 11 May 2010 16:42:05 -0700 (PDT), Aria <evgueni...@laposte.net> wrote: > I would like to introduce you an issue, and a solution I propose to > solve it. Some people see an issue where others don't. > Finally, I > killed my prey and killed my predator next turn, because he has no > chance against me, and he knew it. At any time, my predator could kill > himself and allow my prey to get 2 vp and prevent me from getting the > Game Win. Based on your description, this course of action would have been just as legal as the one he took - that is, hand you his VP and the GW. You can view it as kingmaking in either case. > I am really opposed to the rule that allows a player to choose his > death. In my opinion, that rule is a violation of the “Play To Win” > rule. That last rule has been made to prevent some random actions in a > game, and to force players to do everything they can to get the GW. This has been argued many times over and over again. You are restating an opinion here that has been stated and refuted many times. > Another question has to be asked here. Why a player kills himself > during a game? Where is the benefit for him in suicide? > I’ve got 2 reasons. There may be countless other reasons (maximizing TPs, trying to do something more fun in the next hour, etc.). If self-ousting is legal (that is, the player is in a lost position) then it should not be artificially prevented. If you feel it's not legal call a judge. > My last opinion about the suicide in V:tES, is that it forces > players to play only a few kinds of deck. So if French players are so eager to suicide, play active decks. It's a metagame thing. E.g. in Hungary we used to have an insane amount of wall decks. So everybody started playing block denial or combat. Maybe your meta needs more S&B and Powerbleed and weenie bleed/rush. > There is a last issue in allowing suicide: There are many ways to > defend people “cross table”, reduce bleed, boons, parity shift, eagle > sight… But there is no way to defend yourself against someone > committing suicide, giving your prey 6 pools and a victory point. There are 2 very good ways. First, you can play a Boon when the player self-ousts. But more importantly, you can ensure that people have fun and don't feel to be in a truly lost position, and they won't be so much inclined to self-oust. I can't even be bothered to estimate how many games I've played in the last 16 years, even despite being more or less dormant for the last 1-2 years, but I've self-ousted maybe 5-10 times total. I'd say, definitely less than 1% of the games. About half of those were VP-deals (which are now handled), so that leaves us with a really low amount of self-ousts. It is generally not worth it to self-oust. But I still prefer to have the option rather than be arbitrarily limited in my play. > My solution? Respect the “Play To Win” rule! I fully agree with this one! :) -- Regards, Daneel

I think that self ousting is here EXACTLY for players to make a threat that they will oust themselves when they are hurt too much cross table. There are many decks which you can't defend when they are cross table. - baltimor purge - political deck - multi rush as an examples. Your only chance to get a VP/GW is by forcing them not hurting you too much. And self ousting possibility is the only way to prevent them from doing so. Current rule is not perfect, but forbidding self ousting will do more harm than good in my opinion.

I have self-ousted in a tournament situation before for strategical reasons. I had 2VP My prey had 1VP My pred had 0VP My prey was too well setup and was binning my guys when I went forward. I was nearly out of resources. My Pred couldn't get me before he was gotten however, as I had a bit too much pool if I sacked. I rationalised that my Prey was going to get the remaining 3VP and win the game. So I self-Ousted. My Pred got 1VP and my Prey then got my Pred eventually. Game ended up 2-2-1. Sometimes a noble sacrifice is the way to go. -- J

[ quoted text not captured ] Sorry that should have been I had 2 and the others had 0, but my Prey was going to get my Pred.,.... you know what I meant. :P -- J

On May 12, 3:18 pm, Daneel <dan...@eposta.hu> wrote: > On Tue, 11 May 2010 21:11:51 -0700 (PDT), Juggernaut1981 > [ quoted text not captured ] Then by leaving, and ignoring the chance of some crosstable miracle, you are breaking PTW because you aren't maximising your VPs. When you have the options of 0VP and 0.5VP you need to play to get 0.5VPs which means sitting around until the game ends or you get ousted; even if that means playing a master and then discarding something you can't use for a few turns in a row.

[ quoted text not captured ] Aria, let me express the warm feeling to yourself and your position, which is absolutely corresponds to mine. I've never self-ousted myself and never going to. And I've always considered all "desperate behaviour" a violation of PTW. I've beed a judge for a few years, and deliberately decided not to tell my players about the self-ousting and other "desperate options". Nobody seem to get hurt by my "dishonest behaviour". Unfortunately, I'm not a judge anymore, and our players know about the self-ousting. The only way we have is to agrue and vote for prohibiting the madness here. If we recruit enough players, we can finally convince LSJ to make some changes.

On Wed, 12 May 2010 02:10:24 -0700 (PDT), Ector <Ec...@mail.ru> wrote: >Aria, let me express the warm feeling to yourself and your position, >which is absolutely corresponds to mine. I've never self-ousted myself >and never going to. And I've always considered all "desperate >behaviour" a violation of PTW. > >I've beed a judge for a few years, and deliberately decided not to >tell my players about the self-ousting and other "desperate options". >Nobody seem to get hurt by my "dishonest behaviour". >Unfortunately, I'm not a judge anymore, and our players know about the >self-ousting. The only way we have is to agrue and vote for >prohibiting the madness here. If we recruit enough players, we can >finally convince LSJ to make some changes. So your local player refused to play by your house rules, and now your campaining to make them official and force them to. That is truly classy behavior and it also sheds an interesting light on all your past "crusades" in this newsgroup.

[ quoted text not captured ] And you think that should be legal? You have literally stolen the GW from a player! Maybe he has played all his game to see you to kill 2 preys, managing pressure on the table because he knew that you can't defeat him with your deck. So, in a three way configuration, he will win the game. But, because you are smart, you have seen it. And you decided to steal his GW by suicide, instead of hurting him with your predator and deal with him a vp if you get the GW ( and this deal is legal). I can't understand how a combat deck can win if, when it's time to kill all minions of the table, the predator can suicide to prevent the combat deck to get the GW.

On 12 mai, 07:39, Daneel <dan...@eposta.hu> wrote: > On Tue, 11 May 2010 16:42:05 -0700 (PDT), Aria > [ quoted text not captured ] Of course I am aware that it was a kind of kingmaking. But my predator fought to survive, fought to get the final 0.5vp at the end of the game. He could deal with my prey to get a vp and then fight in a duel when he wil be defeated ( or not?). Maybe I could let him concede the game and get 0.5 vp, and the game win for me. Am I alone to think that it is normal to play in order to survive? I am new in the newsgroup, this is my second message, I did not know that subject was already debated many times, but if a lot of players think that we must try to set a rule against "transfer out", maybe they are right?

[ quoted text not captured ] Actually, you have some other ways to defend yourself against cross table threats : eagle's sight, direct intervention, pentex subversion, delaying tactics and so much more. Against combat decks, you can play a little defense. There are solutions against these kinds of deck ( and baltimore purge does not win in France for a loooooong time). Players who have posted here could fing me some "solutions" against self-ousting. First of all : life boon. Sorry guys but only 1 life boon may be played by turn because it is an out of turn master. The second one : assure that all players spend a good time with you during the game. As J has explained : he was having a really good time, already having 2 vp, but for strategical reasons, he self- ousted! That's it! There is a real imbalance in favor of self-ousting. My proposition is not the only one possible. Maybe a card could be created and forbid players to self oust... I don't know.

> And you think that should be legal? Yes. > You have literally stolen the GW from a player! He could have played better also rather than concentrating backwards he could have gone forwards more. There are counter arguments to everything. Maybe if he had more bleed, less intercept, etc etc. -- J

[ quoted text not captured ] As I've said, nobody seem to get hurt by the lack of "desperate rulings". On the contrary, we have some players on the verge of leaving the game now, after introducing the concept. You have to notice that I'm not the only person who considers self-ousting rules disgusting, and this should make you think that you *might* be wrong. If you still able to think, of course :) As for my "crusades", let me remind that two of them considered banning or fixing PTO and prohibiting prize-splitting in the finals. While I obviously cannot take all credits of these changes, I'm still proud of participating in the appropriate campaigns. This should make you think that even I *may* be right sometimes. Aria, please forgive me for spamming in your thread. That Pascal really needs to be taught some manners.

On Wed, 12 May 2010 02:36:43 -0700 (PDT), Aria <evgueni...@laposte.net> wrote: >And you think that should be legal? Yes. I would hate to see canny play go unrewarded >You have literally stolen the GW >from a player! No, he just never had it to begin with. That he might have gotten if things went differently is completly irrelevant. >Maybe he has played all his game to see you to kill 2 >preys, managing pressure on the table because he knew that you can't >defeat him with your deck. Why should he should be protected from his plans going awry in this situation? He enjoys no such protection at other points in the game. > So, in a three way configuration, he will >win the game. But, because you are smart, you have seen it. And you >decided to steal his GW by suicide, instead of hurting him with your >predator and deal with him a vp if you get the GW ( and this deal is >legal). >I can't understand how a combat deck can win if, when it's time to >kill all minions of the table, the predator can suicide to prevent the >combat deck to get the GW. I think not killing all the minions on the table would be a start. I`ve seen combat decks win quite often by doing that. Also, since we now have had people being acussed of "literally" stealing gws from others on multiple occasions I propose a new Vtes mascot: The GWBurgler robble robble.

On Wed, 12 May 2010 03:19:15 -0700 (PDT), Ector <Ec...@mail.ru> wrote: >> So your local player refused to play by your house rules, and now your >> campaining to make them official and force them to. >> That is truly classy behavior and it also sheds an interesting light >> on all your past "crusades" in this newsgroup. >As I've said, nobody seem to get hurt by the lack of "desperate >rulings". On the contrary, we have some players on the verge of >leaving the game now, after introducing the concept. You have to >notice that I'm not the only person who considers self-ousting rules >disgusting, and this should make you think that you *might* be wrong. You have to notice that i`m not the only person who sees nothing wrong with selfousting, and this should make you think that you *might* be wrong. I have actually given the selfoust "issue" a great deal of thought and have come to the conclusion that it doesn`t hurt the game in any way. And really, is a Player quitting over selfousting any different from a player quitting over stealth-bleed or rush combat? Players will always come and go, and I`m sure some players would quit if the changes proposed here were implemented. >If you still able to think, of course :) Way to claim the high ground. >As for my "crusades", let me remind that two of them considered >banning or fixing PTO and prohibiting prize-splitting in the finals. >While I obviously cannot take all credits of these changes, I'm still >proud of participating in the appropriate campaigns. This should make >you think that even I *may* be right sometimes. Sure, just not in this case. And really, in both the cases you mentioned you hitched you wagon to causes that had been arguted for years. Even then, the changes were only implemented wwhen actual problems occured. >Aria, please forgive me for spamming in your thread. That Pascal >really needs to be taught some manners. Maybe. But since all you seem to offer is insults and veiled accusations, you are hardly qualified. Hey look, a smilyface: :)

Sorry Pascal but I think you are wrong. J writed precisely : "I rationalised that my Prey was going to get the remaining 3VP and win the game. So I self-Ousted. " So, he self ousted in order to prevent his prey from having the GW, call that as you want. In the other post, I read a message full of wisdom : I had a lot of sleepless nights thanks to this problem. What I figured out is that if everyone would do the following, then there would be no problem at all: 1. Try to maximize your vp's. Well there is actually a rule saying this. If you see a 0,1% chance to somehow get that 1 or 0,5 vp before getting ousted then don't hesitate! Try it! 2. If your chances to survive is totaly 0 and nobody can help you out, then try to stay in the game as long as possible (without stealing time ofc). Try to make it as hard for your predator as possible to oust you. If you have to die, die like a man! It's this simple. No rule change will be able to prevent people from acting stupid. I think the only way to go is showing a good example and "teaching" them. Always remember that v:tes is a GAME! I think the sentence " if you have to die, die like a man" should be a new rule^^.

Pascal wrote: > On Wed, 12 May 2010 03:19:15 -0700 (PDT), Ector <Ec...@mail.ru> wrote: > > > >> So your local player refused to play by your house rules, and now your > >> campaining to make them official and force them to. > >> That is truly classy behavior and it also sheds an interesting light > >> on all your past "crusades" in this newsgroup. > >As I've said, nobody seem to get hurt by the lack of "desperate > >rulings". On the contrary, we have some players on the verge of > >leaving the game now, after introducing the concept. You have to > >notice that I'm not the only person who considers self-ousting rules > >disgusting, and this should make you think that you *might* be wrong. > You have to notice that i`m not the only person who sees nothing wrong > with selfousting, and this should make you think that you *might* be > wrong. > I have actually given the selfoust "issue" a great deal of thought and > have come to the conclusion that it doesn`t hurt the game in any way. > And really, is a Player quitting over selfousting any different from a > player quitting over stealth-bleed or rush combat? > Players will always come and go, and I`m sure some players would quit > if the changes proposed here were implemented. What a pleasure to talk in a civilized way :) I'm always aware that I might be wrong, thank you. Winning is always difficult, and the fact that strong deck and good skills of ousting your preys and stopping your predators aren't enough since the player needs to "leave some chances to the poor" is really shocking. Add the constant disputes on whether some situation is really desperate or not (note that our judges don't possess godlike intelligence, and no judge does), and you will get the picture. Our games became stinky, as loud voices, personal matters and similar out- of-game things often determine the outcome. > > > >As for my "crusades", let me remind that two of them considered > >banning or fixing PTO and prohibiting prize-splitting in the finals. > >While I obviously cannot take all credits of these changes, I'm still > >proud of participating in the appropriate campaigns. This should make > >you think that even I *may* be right sometimes. > Sure, just not in this case. And really, in both the cases you > mentioned you hitched you wagon to causes that had been arguted for > years. Even then, the changes were only implemented wwhen actual > problems occured. You're wrong in multiple ways. Firstly, the prize splitting wasn't arguted for years - I've found just a question about this ruling and its discussion. Discussing is different from struggling. Secondly, there were no "wagons": nothing is going to change unless somebody would demand for the change. And thirdly, no "actual problems occured", besides the problems that were constantly occuring for years. > >Aria, please forgive me for spamming in your thread. That Pascal > >really needs to be taught some manners. > Maybe. > But since all you seem to offer is insults and veiled accusations, you > are hardly qualified. > Hey look, a smilyface: :) All I seem to offer is insults and veiled accusations? Far from it. I have a lot to offer. You simply don't want to listen to the things I'm offering :) Aria, I would happily sign the rule"if you have to die, die like a man", but, unfortunately, nobody can define what "like a man" means exactly :)

On May 12, 7:48 am, Ector <Ec...@mail.ru> wrote: > Aria, I would happily sign the rule"if you have to die, die like a > man", but, unfortunately, nobody can define what "like a man" means > exactly :) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sepuku :-)

On 12 mai, 12:06, Aria <evgueni.lec...@laposte.net> wrote: > As J has explained : he was having a really good > time, already having 2 vp, Is that not your mistake? A control deck should never allow any player to score 2 VPs, because at this point it cannot secure the GW by being the last one standing. In your example, the self-ousting player did not steal anybody's GW. He earned the right to remove the GW from the table by winning his first 2 VPs, and you lost the GW by letting him win them.

On 12 mai, 11:36, Aria <evgueni.lec...@laposte.net> wrote: > I can't understand how a combat deck can win if, when it's time to > kill all minions of the table, the predator can suicide to prevent the > combat deck to get the GW. There are least 2 safe, even if not easy, plans: 1 - Oust your first prey. Once you have a VP, if you win the duel you get at least a GW3, no matter where the other VPs go. 2 - The salmon. Crush your predator to oust him and your prey to prevent him from getting any VP. Once your predator is ousted, crush your new predator to give a VP to your grandprey. When the table has 3 players with your prey at 0 VP and your pred at 1 VP, you get at least a GW2 by being the last man standing.

On Wed, 12 May 2010 04:48:57 -0700 (PDT), Ector <Ec...@mail.ru> wrote: It`s odd to see you respond to me after basically expressing your wish that I don`t respond to you anymore. >Winning is always difficult, and the fact that strong deck and good >skills of ousting your preys and stopping your predators aren't enough >since the player needs to "leave some chances to the poor" is really >shocking. Why? It seems common sense to me. See also the Sun-tzu quote upthread. >Add the constant disputes on whether some situation is >really desperate or not (note that our judges don't possess godlike >intelligence, and no judge does), and you will get the picture. Our >games became stinky, as loud voices, personal matters and similar out- >of-game things often determine the outcome. Have you considered that these Problems may simply be symptoms of an underlying issue that has nothing to do with selfousting at all? >You're wrong in multiple ways. Firstly, the prize splitting wasn't >arguted for years - I've found just a question about this ruling and >its discussion. Discussing is different from struggling. Secondly, >there were no "wagons": nothing is going to change unless somebody >would demand for the change. And thirdly, no "actual problems >occured", besides the problems that were constantly occuring for >years. Table split deals of all kinds were an issue that was debated quite a bit over the years. Though I`ll grant you this specific instance. The part about specific problems occuring was meant to refer to PTO, which as you know was only banned in concert with other cards in what I personally intrepreted as an attempt to hit the strongest archetypes at the time, making sure that , with the void left by the other archetypes, none remained untouched to dominate. Though one could interpret that as meerely forstalling problems. >> >Aria, please forgive me for spamming in your thread. That Pascal >> >really needs to be taught some manners. >> Maybe. >> But since all you seem to offer is insults and veiled accusations, you >> are hardly qualified. >> Hey look, a smilyface: :) >All I seem to offer is insults and veiled accusations? Far from it. I >have a lot to offer. You simply don't want to listen to the things I'm >offering :) I can only look at things you actually show me and I`ve said above what I`ve seen from you. I`m going to say that post in question was probably over the line and I am sorry for that , but I stand by my basic complaints. But enlighten me, how exactly was I supposed to interpret us talking about the psychological component of vtes, you posting an example of two people colluding and asking me if considered that to be the psychological component of vtes, except as a veiled insult?

Pascal wrote: > On Wed, 12 May 2010 04:48:57 -0700 (PDT), Ector <Ec...@mail.ru> wrote: > > It`s odd to see you respond to me after basically expressing your wish > that I don`t respond to you anymore. > > >Winning is always difficult, and the fact that strong deck and good > >skills of ousting your preys and stopping your predators aren't enough > >since the player needs to "leave some chances to the poor" is really > >shocking. > Why? It seems common sense to me. > See also the Sun-tzu quote upthread. What quote? Sorry, but I failed to find it. > >Add the constant disputes on whether some situation is > >really desperate or not (note that our judges don't possess godlike > >intelligence, and no judge does), and you will get the picture. Our > >games became stinky, as loud voices, personal matters and similar out- > >of-game things often determine the outcome. > Have you considered that these Problems may simply be symptoms of an > underlying issue that has nothing to do with selfousting at all? Self-ousting (and other "desperation behaviour") has strong negative impact on the game, making it much more chaotic. Plus, it's really impossible to determine whether the player's chances of getting VPs are "reasonable" or not more or less exactly. This opens the way for the debates, which open way for the mentioned uncivilized things. People are civilized only when bound by the rules, you know, and they quicky lose the civilization when the rules allow this. That's why I'm struggling against the rules. > But enlighten me, how exactly was I supposed to interpret us talking > about the psychological component of vtes, you posting an example of > two people colluding and asking me if considered that to be the > psychological component of vtes, except as a veiled insult? No insult was meant, really. If these words insulted you, I apoligize. Actually, I'm a former judge, and the judge mentality is always to suspect possible cheating. Good rules are the rules that completely prevent cheating or at least make it very difficult. Bad rules make cheating easy and frequent. All I've wanted to say that the "desperate ruling" is very bad cheating-wise, as it allows the desperate player to do everything he wants for his friend. For instance, if I have just one Lorrie Dunsirn, and my prey has 30 pool, the judge may confirm that I have no chances of getting VPs. So, I can rush my grandpredator to give a VP to my grandprey, which happens to be my friend. Current rules allow this!

On Wed, 12 May 2010 03:45:19 -0700 (PDT), Aria <evgueni...@laposte.net> wrote: >Sorry Pascal but I think you are wrong. > >J writed precisely : "I rationalised that my Prey was going to get the >remaining 3VP and win >the game. So I self-Ousted. " > >So, he self ousted in order to prevent his prey from having the GW, >call that as you want. I call it selfousting in order to prevent his prey from getting the GW. I just see nothing wrong with it. He has no more stolen the GW from his prey than he would have by ousting him or by being ousted himself at an earlier stage in the game. Things like "dying like a man" or being "a gracious loser and conceding" both sound good but are ultimatly a matter of personal philosophy and thus beyond the scope of the rulebook (and probably this newsgroup too). The best thing the rules can do is provide a framework for the players to express themselves and their philosophies of play in.

> It's this simple. No rule change will be able to prevent people from > acting stupid. I think the only way to go is showing a good example > and "teaching" them. Always remember that v:tes is a GAME! hmmm, so it's a game, but one can't be clever and play the game for what it is? The object of a competetive game is to win, if you can't do that, don't lose. I don't condone self-ousting for self-ousting's sake, but if you can gain something tangible from it (gamewise), than it's fine. It is part of a clever player's strategy to know when to hold 'em and know when to fold 'em. :D > I think the sentence " if you have to die, die like a man" should be a > new rule^^. What about the women who play this game? :P -- J

Oh, and I was denied a place on the final table at the Australian nats a couple years ago by a player self-ousting. I had a First Trad in place, was going to get a sweep when my pred who was on 2 pool decided to take a turn. He did this to kill himself and give his pred another 6 pool so that *he* could take a turn and hopefully get me. That lost VP from that game saw me not get the sweep, and I came 6th by .5 of a VP, the sweep would have seen me come 5th and make the final. He made a tactical decision. I have no problem with him doing that, he was never going to get another turn anyway. Your pool is your asset to do with what you will, how you will and when you will. As long as it's not spiteful - it's fine. -- J

On Wed, 12 May 2010 07:17:42 -0700 (PDT), Ector <Ec...@mail.ru> wrote: > > >Pascal wrote: >> On Wed, 12 May 2010 04:48:57 -0700 (PDT), Ector <Ec...@mail.ru> wrote: >> >> It`s odd to see you respond to me after basically expressing your wish >> that I don`t respond to you anymore. >> >> >Winning is always difficult, and the fact that strong deck and good >> >skills of ousting your preys and stopping your predators aren't enough >> >since the player needs to "leave some chances to the poor" is really >> >shocking. >> Why? It seems common sense to me. >> See also the Sun-tzu quote upthread. >What quote? Sorry, but I failed to find it. "In surrounding the enemy, leave him an escape route; do not press a cornered enemy." >> >Add the constant disputes on whether some situation is >> >really desperate or not (note that our judges don't possess godlike >> >intelligence, and no judge does), and you will get the picture. Our >> >games became stinky, as loud voices, personal matters and similar out- >> >of-game things often determine the outcome. >> Have you considered that these Problems may simply be symptoms of an >> underlying issue that has nothing to do with selfousting at all? >Self-ousting (and other "desperation behaviour") has strong negative >impact on the game, making it much more chaotic. Plus, it's really >impossible to determine whether the player's chances of getting VPs >are "reasonable" or not more or less exactly. This opens the way for >the debates, which open way for the mentioned uncivilized things. >People are civilized only when bound by the rules, you know, and they >quicky lose the civilization when the rules allow this. That's why I'm >struggling against the rules. Leaving aside the fact that many things in the game have the potential to cause debates, I have never observed this strong negative effect of selfousting you describe in any of the groups I played with. Thus I must stick with my theory that something else poisoning the climate in your playgroup. As for your rather Hobbes-ian View of humanity, I can only say that it doesn`t match my life experience and prescribe you a dose of Jean-Jaques Rosseau. Stat. >> But enlighten me, how exactly was I supposed to interpret us talking >> about the psychological component of vtes, you posting an example of >> two people colluding and asking me if considered that to be the >> psychological component of vtes, except as a veiled insult? >No insult was meant, really. If these words insulted you, I apoligize. Apology accepted. >All I've wanted to say that the "desperate >ruling" is very bad cheating-wise, as it allows the desperate player >to do everything he wants for his friend. >For instance, if I have just one Lorrie Dunsirn, and my prey has 30 >pool, the judge may confirm that I have no chances of getting VPs. So, >I can rush my grandpredator to give a VP to my grandprey, which >happens to be my friend. Current rules allow this! They do not, since collusion is prohibted. When playing the game, the options you have are those not forbidden by the rules. In the same way you cannot use marked cards to obtain 3 vp, you cannot use collusion to obtain 0. Also, a rush deck with no forward momentum seems like a good deal partner for any of the other players which is another story entirley.

On Wed, 12 May 2010 07:45:48 -0700 (PDT), J <gra...@hotmail.com> wrote: [ quoted text not captured ] Beautiful.

On May 12, 7:48 am, Ector <Ec...@mail.ru> wrote: > Our games became stinky, as loud voices, personal matters and similar out- > of-game things often determine the outcome. These are player issues, not rules issues. Players who aren't interested in playing the game can screw up your game using any number of obfuscatory tactics; removing self-ousting won't stop that. John Eno

Pascal wrote: > On Wed, 12 May 2010 07:17:42 -0700 (PDT), Ector <Ec...@mail.ru> wrote: > > "In surrounding the enemy, leave him an escape route; do not press a > cornered enemy." Wise words, but I guess they are concerned with avoiding unneeded losses, which isn't much appropriate in games. > > >> >Add the constant disputes on whether some situation is > >> >really desperate or not (note that our judges don't possess godlike > >> >intelligence, and no judge does), and you will get the picture. Our > >> >games became stinky, as loud voices, personal matters and similar out- > >> >of-game things often determine the outcome. > >> Have you considered that these Problems may simply be symptoms of an > >> underlying issue that has nothing to do with selfousting at all? > >Self-ousting (and other "desperation behaviour") has strong negative > >impact on the game, making it much more chaotic. Plus, it's really > >impossible to determine whether the player's chances of getting VPs > >are "reasonable" or not more or less exactly. This opens the way for > >the debates, which open way for the mentioned uncivilized things. > >People are civilized only when bound by the rules, you know, and they > >quicky lose the civilization when the rules allow this. That's why I'm > >struggling against the rules. > Leaving aside the fact that many things in the game have the potential > to cause debates, I have never observed this strong negative effect of > selfousting you describe in any of the groups I played with. > Thus I must stick with my theory that something else poisoning the > climate in your playgroup. > > As for your rather Hobbes-ian View of humanity, I can only say that it > doesn`t match my life experience and prescribe you a dose of > Jean-Jaques Rosseau. Stat. Thanks, I'll try :) > >All I've wanted to say that the "desperate > >ruling" is very bad cheating-wise, as it allows the desperate player > >to do everything he wants for his friend. > >For instance, if I have just one Lorrie Dunsirn, and my prey has 30 > >pool, the judge may confirm that I have no chances of getting VPs. So, > >I can rush my grandpredator to give a VP to my grandprey, which > >happens to be my friend. Current rules allow this! > > They do not, since collusion is prohibted. When playing the game, the > options you have are those not forbidden by the rules. In the same way > you cannot use marked cards to obtain 3 vp, you cannot use collusion > to obtain 0. The rules really allow this - you can ask LSJ if you don't believe me. As long as the judge confirmed that the player has no reasonable chances of getting VPs, he can rush crosstable or do everything he wants. A judge will probably DQ the player if he will be silly enough to openly state his intentions, but he will be unable to do anything if the player will keep silence.

On May 12, 11:26 am, Ector <Ec...@mail.ru> wrote: > Pascal wrote: > > On Wed, 12 May 2010 07:17:42 -0700 (PDT), Ector <Ec...@mail.ru> wrote: > > >All I've wanted to say that the "desperate > > >ruling" is very bad cheating-wise, as it allows the desperate player > > >to do everything he wants for his friend. > > >For instance, if I have just one Lorrie Dunsirn, and my prey has 30 > > >pool, the judge may confirm that I have no chances of getting VPs. So, > > >I can rush my grandpredator to give a VP to my grandprey, which > > >happens to be my friend. Current rules allow this! > > > They do not, since collusion is prohibted. When playing the game, the > > options you have are those not forbidden by the rules. In the same way > > you cannot use marked cards to obtain 3 vp, you cannot use collusion > > to obtain 0. > > The rules really allow this - you can ask LSJ if you don't believe me. True enough. The example given doesn't involve collusion, so the collusion prohibition is immaterial to that example. But, for the same reason, it is not an illustration of how the rule is very bad, cheating-wise (since, as you note, no cheating is involved). > As long as the judge confirmed that the player has no reasonable > chances of getting VPs, he can rush crosstable or do everything he > wants. Right. He can gain his 0 VPs as he wishes. He can make a futile lunge, a futile wall, a futile transfer, a futile rush, or whatever, since they are all equally futile. The rules do not force the player to favor his prey, nor his predator, nor his cross-table opponents. Again, we're still assuming there's no collusion. > A judge will probably DQ the player if he will be silly enough > to openly state his intentions, but he will be unable to do anything > if the player will keep silence. Assuming his intentions are as stated in this thread (that is: he has no better option, so he chooses one of the best options in-game available, using whatever other metric he likes to help decide among the equal-in-game options), there'd be no reason to DQ him for stating so. If he states that he and his friend had colluded (or other evidence of collusion was to be had), then that would be quite a different story, of course.

On Wed, 12 May 2010 08:26:43 -0700 (PDT), Ector <Ec...@mail.ru> wrote: > > >Pascal wrote: >> On Wed, 12 May 2010 07:17:42 -0700 (PDT), Ector <Ec...@mail.ru> wrote: >> >> "In surrounding the enemy, leave him an escape route; do not press a >> cornered enemy." >Wise words, but I guess they are concerned with avoiding unneeded >losses, which isn't much appropriate in games. Well, one could make the argument that war is simply a competition (i. e a game) taken to the next level. In fact, one could translate the unneeded losse of men directly to the unneeded losses of vp. >> They do not, since collusion is prohibted. When playing the game, the >> options you have are those not forbidden by the rules. In the same way >> you cannot use marked cards to obtain 3 vp, you cannot use collusion >> to obtain 0. >The rules really allow this - you can ask LSJ if you don't believe me. >As long as the judge confirmed that the player has no reasonable >chances of getting VPs, he can rush crosstable or do everything he >wants. A judge will probably DQ the player if he will be silly enough >to openly state his intentions, but he will be unable to do anything >if the player will keep silence. That cheating is possible doesn`t mean it is allowed. The action may appear to be legal, but if the collusion is detected the head judge will issue appropriate penalties. It may frustrate you, especially since you seem somewhat inclined to suspect cheating, but that is just how it is: If the Cheating isn`t detected, the cheaters get away scott free. C`est la vie. Altering the ruleset to be as rigid as possible won`t stop cheaters, it will simply render the game unfun or unplayable. And, to get back to your lorry example: The prey can simply make a deal with the lorrie player, get his gw and then transfer out. The lorrie player refusing such a deal would make even the dimmest judge suspect tomfoolery so the cheating is likely thwarted. Self-oust rules to the rescue.

On Tue, 11 May 2010 23:25:54 -0700 (PDT), Juggernaut1981 <brassc...@gmail.com> wrote: > On May 12, 3:18ￜpm, Daneel <dan...@eposta.hu> wrote: >> On Tue, 11 May 2010 21:11:51 -0700 (PDT), Juggernaut1981 >> >> <brasscompo...@gmail.com> wrote: >> > I still think that you should always see your time out in a >> > tournament. ￜEven if your turns consist of playing a (now pointless) >> > master and then discarding... it can't hurt your position >> >> Yes it can. >> >> > and you'd still be sitting around at the tournament anyway. >> >> Not necessarily. You could go grab a bite. You could go do some >> ￜ shopping. Heck, you could do some trading with folks around. All >> ￜ much more fun than "playing a (now pointless) master and then >> ￜ discarding". Of course most players who are in a lost position >> ￜ will stick around anyway hoping for a miracle (and the miracle >> ￜ *does* sometimes happen). >> >> -- >> Regards, >> >> Daneel > > Then by leaving, and ignoring the chance of some crosstable miracle, > you are breaking PTW because you aren't maximising your VPs. Luckily, the rules don't force anyone to beleive in miracles... :) -- Regards, Daneel

[ quoted text not captured ] I think it's a bit less black-and-white than that. I think most people generally sit down to play V:tES to play V:tES (and even get a shot at scoring some VPs or a GW), and not to self-oust after playing for a while. Now as the game progresses, some players' chances improve, but that is only possible by diminishing other players' chances. Once a player has no tangible chance to win, then depending on the game so far, he may choose from among a number of equally valid plays. Some examples: 1. Go all-out on his prey, crippling him (and likely granting his predator two easy VPs). 2. Pick a random target and screw his game cross-table. 3. Play on as before, and be ousted soon in the process. 4. Wall up to screw his predator and help his prey. 5. Self-oust to help his predator. Just as you can argue that #5 is kingmaking, the end result is that no matter which action the player chooses, he will still have in impact on the table and on the play of others. He cannot choose one over the other based on that; because if he chooses #3 and plays on exactly as before, his prey might be pissed that he doesn't wall up (potentially increasing the time he survives), and his predator can be pissed that he doesn't go full forward, as any resources spent on defending against him just eat up his resources to get what he practically already has. > I am new in the newsgroup, this is my second message, I did not know > that subject was already debated many times, but if a lot of players > think that we must try to set a rule against "transfer out", maybe > they are right? The number of people voicing an argument does not relate to the validity of that argument. A few hundred years ago practically everybody was convinced that the earth was flat. Still, according to our current knowledge, they were all wrong. -- Regards, Daneel

On May 12, 5:48 am, Aria <evgueni.lec...@laposte.net> wrote: > Am I alone to think that it is normal to play in order to survive? Nope. The tournament rules assume that your main incentive is to win the game, and if you can't do that, get as many VPs as you can. If you can't get any VPs, you can do what you want. > I am new in the newsgroup, this is my second message, I did not know > that subject was already debated many times, but if a lot of players > think that we must try to set a rule against "transfer out", maybe > they are right? Maybe? But probably not. The short version (which has already been covered here): A) The number of times someone is in a truly lost position, such that they are enabled by the rules to oust themselves is very small. Such that it doesn't come up all that much. B) Making a rule that outlaws self ousting by some sort of mechanical means (i.e. "you can't spend your last pool if...") is mostly pointless, as it is incredibly easy to circumvent in any number of ways. The vast majority of the time, people don't oust themselves. The vast majority of the time, people aren't legally allowed to oust themselves (due to the PTW rules). It just doesn't come up all that much. In the small number of situations where someone is in a truly lost position such that them ousting themselves is both possible and viable, it will occasionally happen, and we can all live. If you end up not getting a table sweep 'cause you turned your predator into a smoking crater and they spend their last pool to spite you and give your grand predator a VP and 6 pool, maybe next time you'll remember not to turn your predator into a smoking crater. -Peter

[ quoted text not captured ] No offense Peter, but there are some decks, where using the Starship Troopers portable nuke is the ONLY reasonable defense. '94 malks, where a single ready minion can conceivably bleed you for 6-8 pool in one action, is one such deck. Which is yet another reason why I loathe the fact that only Dom/Aus have reliable bleed bounce. And don't get me started on Lost in Translation....

On May 12, 7:13 pm, OldFan <asif.i.chaud...@gmail.com> wrote: > No offense Peter, but there are some decks, where using the Starship > Troopers portable nuke is the ONLY reasonable defense. Sure. So nuke them. And accept that they might get ousted before you get to them. I'm pretty sure I said that a few times already in this discussion. Sometimes you need to destroy your predator. So you destroy your predator. Which might result in them being ousted by your grand predator. Or might result in them ousting themselves out of spite. That happens. The issue here is that folks are trying to change the rules so that they can: A) Nuke their predator out of existence. and B) Prevent them from ousting themselves out of spite. Which is the proverbial having one's cake and eating it too. That sometimes your predator gets nuked (by you) and then self ousts is a reasonable disincentive to playing backwards too much, which helps maintain the appropriate predator/prey relationship. Sometimes, however, one might feel that their best chance at winning is blowing up their predator upstream. So then do that. But don't also be sad that they might oust themselves. As that is a potential end result of blowing up ones predator. Which strikes me as completely reasonable. > '94 malks, where a single ready minion can conceivably bleed you for > 6-8 pool in one action, is one such deck. Sure. If you need to back oust them, back oust them. But part of back ousting your predator, often, is your predator getting ousted. Either by your grand predator, or by their own hand. This doesn't strike me as a problem. -Peter

> No offense Peter, but there are some decks, where using the Starship > Troopers portable nuke is the ONLY reasonable defense. > > '94 malks, where a single ready minion can conceivably bleed you for > 6-8 pool in one action, is one such deck. > > Which is yet another reason why I loathe the fact that only Dom/Aus > have reliable bleed bounce. And don't get me started on Lost in > Translation.... If you turn them into a smoking crater with the portable nuke and have left them nothing to play for, why do you reasonably expect them to play on? -- J

[ quoted text not captured ] Well, to turn this argument towards something that was brought up previously, and is tangential to this thread: If (when making a "tourney viable" deck) your only reliable defense to avoid getting ousted, while not "making your pred have NO hope" is to have either: a.) A pile of intercept and untap (i.e. a wall deck) b.) A pile of bleed bounce with some delaying tactics (i.e. a deck with dominate/AUS) c.) A breed&boon, vote&bloat deck (i.e. a deck with Con boon, Voter cap, big caps and minion tap, etc) and that is IT, then I dare say it makes for a kind of dull tournament scene, don't you? Reducing the number of viable deck types that can be considered "tier 1" or "tourney-worthy" isn't something that should be longed for. Now - this isn't to disagree with Peter & Steve. If your deck's ONLY defense is to beat the crap out of your predator, and doesn't go forward very well, then, as Steve so eloquently puts it, your deck sucks. And you probably deserve to have your pred self-oust himself. Personally, I'd like to see a bleed bounce that was discipline-less that DIDN'T suck as much as Lost in Translation. While some might argue that it would harm the game too much, I think it would enable a lot more deck creativity if people knew that they didn't HAVE TO have dominate/Auspex in their deck, either by innate design, or shoe-horned in (as Peter likes to call it) in order to have a capable defense that doesn't involve cratering your predator, or otherwise bloating faster than he can bleed/KRC you. Imagine - if Delaying tactics/Poison Pill/Irregular Proctocol didn't exist, we'd all have to have guys with Presence (Dread presence, scalpel tongue) and/or titles to give some kind of vote defense against weenie stealth/vote KRC kill decks. How much would the game environment suck then? And we could even have Surprise Influence take the place of Lost in Translation. Except, not quite as sucky. :) Just my $0.02. I don't do too much tourney play, so I don't let it hamper my creativity (or as Steve would put it "my tendency to make decks that suck." :) ). But I've been on both sides of the self oust thing: Lost VPs and GWs due to it, and also self-ousted myself to spite someone who cross table shafted me. Personally, I don't think you can do anything effective about the self-oust, but I guess it just "feels" dirtier than going down to 1 pool - at least then your pred has to take some action to get you that COULD be eagle-sighted, DI'd, etc. -Asif Chaudhry

On May 12, 11:01 pm, OldFan <asif.i.chaud...@gmail.com> wrote: > If (when making a "tourney viable" deck) your only reliable defense to > avoid getting ousted, while not "making your pred have NO hope" is to > have either: > a.) A pile of intercept and untap (i.e. a wall deck) > b.) A pile of bleed bounce with some delaying tactics (i.e. a deck > with dominate/AUS) > c.) A breed&boon, vote&bloat deck (i.e. a deck with Con boon, Voter > cap, big caps and minion tap, etc) > > and that is IT, then I dare say it makes for a kind of dull tournament > scene, don't you? There are also d) go really fast, and e) other forms of bloat You're right that those are about it for your options. But that's more forms of defense than there are forms of offense (bleed, vote, combat- related miscellany). Do you think that the tournament scene suffers as a result of having such narrow choices available for ousting? John Eno

> > If (when making a "tourney viable" deck) your only reliable defense to > > avoid getting ousted, while not "making your pred have NO hope" is to > > have either: > > a.) A pile of intercept and untap (i.e. a wall deck) > > b.) A pile of bleed bounce with some delaying tactics (i.e. a deck > > with dominate/AUS) > > c.) A breed&boon, vote&bloat deck (i.e. a deck with Con boon, Voter > > cap, big caps and minion tap, etc) > > > and that is IT, then I dare say it makes for a kind of dull tournament > > scene, don't you? > > There are also > > d) go really fast, and > e) other forms of bloat There are also combinations. And you can use bash in this situation as well, but you shouldn't completely neuter your pred if you want him to stick it out. However, regardless of what you do: Give your predator the illusion of hope rather than hope itself. If the Illusion is shattered because you smash all his vampires into dust or never let any action be successful then they will get despondant and angry and that is when the spite self-oust can occur. It is fine to Nuke your predator, but you must do it in such a way that they believe they are not dead and buried. Of course, some players believe they are dead and buried if anything goes against them, and these players are the ones that will self-oust the most, as they tend to be the poorer players and only enjoy playing when everything goes their way. -- J

[ quoted text not captured ] Actually she can't. Be it a 4 or 5 players game she would need more than 2VP's to secure the GW and not a draw, meaning being down to a head-to-head where all deals are off, thus no incentive at all. Trying to maximise her VP's is a different story, should the meta indicate this. Really, I feel the elegant solution is to remove the 'zero cards in library' requirement for withdrawing which always felt counter-intuitive to me anyway. This in turn points to 1VP always being a viable option with some deal making and puts an end to crazy shenanigans via the PTW rule. Aaron Archbishop of Adelaide City of Churches

On Thu, 13 May 2010 18:01:41 +0930, Aaron Connor <aaron....@gmail.com> wrote: >Pascal wrote: >> On Wed, 12 May 2010 08:26:43 -0700 (PDT), Ector <Ec...@mail.ru> wrote: > >> And, to get back to your lorry example: >> The prey can simply make a deal with the lorrie player, get his gw and >> then transfer out. The lorrie player refusing such a deal would make >> even the dimmest judge suspect tomfoolery so the cheating is likely >> thwarted. >> Self-oust rules to the rescue. > >Actually she can't. >Be it a 4 or 5 players game she would need more than 2VP's to secure the >GW and not a draw, meaning being down to a head-to-head where all deals >are off, thus no incentive at all. >Trying to maximise her VP's is a different story, should the meta >indicate this. You`re wrong. Assuming a 5 player table, which I did, if the prey ousts all other players beside the Lorry deck he will have 3 VP for ousting 3 people. That`s the GW.

J wrote: > Aria wrote: >> I think the sentence " if you have to die, die like a man" >> should be a new rule^^. > > What about the women who play this game? :P The women that I have played VTES with are some of the most subtle, intriguing, viscious, and powerful players in the world. Too bad all the men can't follow their lead. Kevin M., Prince of Las Vegas "Know your enemy and know yourself; in one-thousand battles you shall never be in peril." -- Sun Tzu, *The Art of War* "Contentment...Complacency...Catastrophe!" -- Joseph Chevalier Please visit VTESville daily! http://vtesville.myminicity.com/ Please bid on my auctions! http://shop.ebay.com/kjmergen/m.html

On May 12, 11:01 pm, OldFan <asif.i.chaud...@gmail.com> wrote: > Well, to turn this argument towards something that was brought up > previously, and is tangential to this thread: > > If (when making a "tourney viable" deck) your only reliable defense to > avoid getting ousted, while not "making your pred have NO hope" is to > have either: > a.) A pile of intercept and untap (i.e. a wall deck) > b.) A pile of bleed bounce with some delaying tactics (i.e. a deck > with dominate/AUS) > c.) A breed&boon, vote&bloat deck (i.e. a deck with Con boon, Voter > cap, big caps and minion tap, etc) > > and that is IT, then I dare say it makes for a kind of dull tournament > scene, don't you? All of these things are completely true. And I agree with you here. But to pull it back into the realm of "we don't want people to self oust!"--if you have a deck whose sole defense against their predator is to blast them into the stone age, then that is what you have to do. But you should also be able to win the game while doing it, even if your predator gets ousted 'cause you nuked them (either by their predator or by self ousting). As has been established, I play a lot of rush decks (well, I used to, and don't as much anymore, but still :-) And the ones that were most successful were the ones that: A) Ousted my first prey quickly and brutally. B) Survived to be the last guy at the table. Which is a 3VP GW. A reliable 3VP GW. These decks often completely nuked their predator into a giant smoking hole. Which generally resulted in them getting ousted. But as I was trying to back oust them, that worked. The issue here is "we want to be able to back oust our predators *and* reliably get the VP for doing so!" Which strikes me as an unecessary change. You can nuke your predator. But the cost is that you are giving a VP to someone else for doing so. Which strikes me as a completely reasonable trade off for circumventing the standard predator>prey relationship (i.e. giving a guy *two* predators). -Peter

>> Pascal wrote: > You`re wrong. > Assuming a 5 player table, which I did, if the prey ousts all other > players beside the Lorry deck he will have 3 VP for ousting 3 people. > That`s the GW. Actually no, because in order to oust all three you would need to then be left with two players, at which point all deals are off and the PTW rule forces the deal-breaking prey to attempt the sweep. Who would agree to this non-enforceable deal? 4.8. Play to Win <snip to relevant part> Exception: when only two Methuselahs remain, the tournament rules no longer acknowledge any deals. Prior deals are voided, even if they were play to win when made. When only two Methuselahs remain, both Methuselahs must play to win based only on game state, without regard to any deals. Regards, Aaron

On Thu, 13 May 2010 21:57:25 +0930, Aaron Connor <aaron....@gmail.com> wrote: > >>> Pascal wrote: > >> You`re wrong. >> Assuming a 5 player table, which I did, if the prey ousts all other >> players beside the Lorry deck he will have 3 VP for ousting 3 people. >> That`s the GW. > >Actually no, because in order to oust all three you would need to then >be left with two players, at which point all deals are off and the PTW >rule forces the deal-breaking prey to attempt the sweep. It does not. The PTW rule compells a player to either play for the Gw, or if this is not reasonably possible get as many victory points as possible. A Player who already has the GW is not bound by PTW at all. >Who would agree to this non-enforceable deal? The same person who would agree to any other deals presumably, since the game rules/torunament. never enforce deals deals between players. Both of these things are covered in the part of 4.8 you snipped: Citation : "4.8. Play to Win One aspect of sportsmanlike conduct is that players must not play toward goals that conflict with the goal of the game as stated in the V:TES rulebook (e.g., attacking certain players on the basis of their V:EKN ratings or overall tournament standing, etc.). For tournaments, playing to win means playing to get a Game Win if it is reasonably possible, and when a Game Win is not reasonably possible, then playing to get as many Victory Points as possible. Neither the basic game rules nor the tournament rules enforce or regulate deals made between players. The tournament rules acknowledge deals, however, in that a deal which represents the best interests of the players involved at the time the deal is made is allowed to be honored, even when the normal play to win rule would indicate that a deal should be broken. This only applies to deal that are in the best interests of the players involved at the time the deal is made. That is, it applies only when making the deal is playing to win. (It is also allowable to break such a deal, of course). Exception: when only two Methuselahs remain, the tournament rules no longer acknowledge any deals. Prior deals are voided, even if they were play to win when made. When only two Methuselahs remain, both Methuselahs must play to win based only on game state, without regard to any deals." >4.8. Play to Win > ><snip to relevant part> Well, I really don`t know what to say about this Sentence but well.... >Exception: when only two Methuselahs remain, the tournament rules no >longer acknowledge any deals. Prior deals are voided, even if they were >play to win when made. When only two Methuselahs remain, both >Methuselahs must play to win based only on game state, without regard to >any deals. Note how it says play to win, not play to sweep. These two things are not the same thing. In fact, even on a four player table the prey could even get 2 vp, then PTW by withdrawing, leaving the lorry player with 1.5 vp and securing his own gw 2.5.

> Do you think that the tournament scene suffers as > a result of having such narrow choices available for ousting? > > John Eno Honestly John, I'm not a die-hard tourney guy, so I'm probably the wrong person to ask. Peter or Steve have far more experience than I at such things. BUT, from my limited experience, I do believe the tourney scene suffers a little. I mean, yes, there are a wider variety of decks that show up, but inevitably, unless one of those "off the wall" or atypical decks happens to be the "Paper" to your "Rock", your greatest concern if you get to a final table probably revolves around: 1.) stealth bleed (either of the super fast weenie type, or the slightly less fast, but more potent, mid cap with DOM type). 2.) stealth vote 3.) breed & boon 4.) Aus wall Going off on another tangent (to this tangent), the final table decks I've noticed rarely have guys bigger than a 7 or 8 cap. Most of them work on the 3-6 cap range, because it's been well proven that lower cap guys means you can generally have more of them, which means you can take more actions. The exceptions of course are big caps with excellent disciplines/ abilities, like Arika, Stanislava, the Toreador AAA triplets, or Lutz. My most recent experience was last year's Western NY NAC qualifier. The final table consisted of: 1.) weenie Dem/Obf 2.) Tzimice wall 3.) Stanislava 4.) Aus intercept (with some eagle sight) 5.) Tre/!Tre toolbox Steve won with his Tre/!Tre deck, but not before Ruben Feldman and his Dem/Obf totally squashed the Tzimice and Stanislava decks. He just had too many weenies, who all bled for 2-4 each consistently. LSJ has done a good job of introducing more big caps with interesting abilities, and more cards to punish weenies (Neonate breech, Scourge of the Enochians), while helping to enable more big guy actions (Enkil Cog), but I think there is still a ways to go. And I think a discipline-less bounce card that isn't as poor as Lost in Translation would be a big start. I'd love to see more decks that could pack in a "defense module" of 6-9 bounce cards, and 2-4 delaying tactics, and then the rest could be - ANYTHING! I think it would definitely shake up the tourney scene for the better, but that's just my very inexperienced $0.02. -Asif Chaudhry

Pascal wrote: > Note how it says play to win, not play to sweep. > These two things are not the same thing. Duly noted. I mistakenly believed that even when securing a GW one must maximise their own VP's if possible. V:tES is the only competitive game I can think of where you are encouraged to throw the game however you feel like if you feel the game is lost. Perhaps my issue is I think of V:tES as a sport where that kind of behaviour is reprehensible, illegal and damaging to it's image. This might explain some peoples passionate dislike for the practise. Cheers, Aaron

On May 13, 9:40 am, OldFan <asif.i.chaud...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Do you think that the tournament scene suffers as > > a result of having such narrow choices available for ousting? > > > John Eno > > Honestly John, I'm not a die-hard tourney guy, so I'm probably the > wrong person to ask. Peter or Steve have far more experience than I > at such things. > > BUT, from my limited experience, I do believe the tourney scene > suffers a little. I mean, yes, there are a wider variety of decks > that show up, but inevitably, unless one of those "off the wall" or > atypical decks happens to be the "Paper" to your "Rock", your greatest > concern if you get to a final table probably revolves around: > > 1.) stealth bleed (either of the super fast weenie type, or the > slightly less fast, but more potent, mid cap with DOM type). > 2.) stealth vote > 3.) breed & boon > 4.) Aus wall This is mostly true, as these are consistently successful archetypes, but there are some others that do okay. Akunanse No Secrets works, Euro Brujah works okay, and the Ventrue Antitribu (i.e. Hugh Angseesing's deck) and variations of power bleed (Giovanni and Vignes) are all alright. But I see your point about there being limits to what is viable. I don't see this as a bad thing necessarily; the quest to find new archetypes drives a lot of creativity in the game, and the challenge is part of it. > Going off on another tangent (to this tangent), the final table decks > I've noticed rarely have guys bigger than a 7 or 8 cap. Most of them > work on the 3-6 cap range, because it's been well proven that lower > cap guys means you can generally have more of them, which means you > can take more actions. Also, Pentex Subversion. And Pentex Subversion. Maybe some stuff about actions, but really, Pentex. If you want larger capacity minions to work, that is the card that needs to be dealt with, either by devoting a significant portion of your own master package to Sudden Reversals or copies of Pentex, or by banning it. I'm all for banning it; in the meantime, I mostly am sticking to decks without 9-11 caps. > > The exceptions of course are big caps with excellent disciplines/ > abilities, like Arika, Stanislava, the Toreador AAA triplets, or Lutz. > > My most recent experience was last year's Western NY NAC qualifier. > The final table consisted of: > > 1.) weenie Dem/Obf > 2.) Tzimice wall > 3.) Stanislava > 4.) Aus intercept (with some eagle sight) > 5.) Tre/!Tre toolbox > > Steve won with his Tre/!Tre deck, but not before Ruben Feldman and his > Dem/Obf totally squashed the Tzimice and Stanislava decks. He just had > too many weenies, who all bled for 2-4 each consistently. Not a big thing, but Ruben's deck was mono-dementation. There wasn't any obfuscate stealth. > > LSJ has done a good job of introducing more big caps with interesting > abilities, and more cards to punish weenies (Neonate breech, Scourge > of the Enochians), while helping to enable more big guy actions (Enkil > Cog), but I think there is still a ways to go. > > And I think a discipline-less bounce card that isn't as poor as Lost > in Translation would be a big start. I'd love to see more decks that > could pack in a "defense module" of 6-9 bounce cards, and 2-4 delaying > tactics, and then the rest could be - ANYTHING! I think it would > definitely shake up the tourney scene for the better, but that's just > my very inexperienced $0.02. > > -Asif Chaudhry I don't know. Shoehorning in bounce is pretty easy to do now. I'm glad that the bleed reduction cards are improving, and I think that is a better way to go. There are more intercept options now for defense, which helps defense, and hasn't overpowered offense because of the increase in "block fails" cards and the increase in the viability of sideline combat (reprinting WWS, Target Vitals, etc) meaning that more intercept won't stop everything. I don't want better discipline-less bounce. The issue as I see it is that bounce is really offense, it isn't just defense. I don't want easy discipline-less offense, which is what it would be. -Dave Clooney

On May 13, 10:02 am, Aaron Connor <aaron.con...@gmail.com> wrote: > Pascal wrote: > > Note how it says play to win, not play to sweep. > > These two things are not the same thing. > > Duly noted. I mistakenly believed that even when securing a GW one must > maximise their own VP's if possible. > > V:tES is the only competitive game I can think of where you are > encouraged to throw the game however you feel like if you feel the game > is lost. It is not such a game. Nor is it the only game that recognizes the intrinsic fact that arises from choosing from among equal options. > Perhaps my issue is I think of V:tES as a sport where that > kind of behaviour is reprehensible, illegal and damaging to it's image. Which kind of behavior? Protecting the valuable quarterback by making not trying to force a score when you're in a lost position in (American) football? Or not running up the score in just because you can (after your win is assured) (in football, soccer, basketball, etc.)? I'm not much for sports, so I can't offer the full variety of examples which are almost certainly out there.

On May 13, 10:02 am, Aaron Connor <aaron.con...@gmail.com> wrote: > V:tES is the only competitive game I can think of where you are > encouraged to throw the game however you feel like if you feel the game > is lost. In the two Red Sox/Yankees games I saw this past weekend: Saturday, as the Yankees were crushing the Sox badly, the Sox put an outfielder on the mound for the last inning and a half or so. Sounds like throwing the game however they want to once they decided it was lost - that's certainly not the way to keep the score down. Sunday, as the Sox were gaining their much-deserved payback against the Evil Empire :-), the Yankees pulled their two heaviest hitters out of the game in the seventh inning. Again, they decided it was lost, and used an out-of-game goal - saving strength for a future game, in this case, but that's beside the point - to lose how they wanted to lose. - D.J.

LSJ wrote: > Which kind of behavior? > > Protecting the valuable quarterback by making not trying to force a > score when you're in a lost position in (American) football? > Or not running up the score in just because you can (after your win is > assured) (in football, soccer, basketball, etc.)? > I'm not much for sports, so I can't offer the full variety of examples > which are almost certainly out there. The closest thing I can think of to what you are trying to describe is substituting your valuable players off the pitch, or perhaps not playing them at all because it is a dead-rubber in terms of the competition. However, in Sport you have an imperative to win, no matter how disillusioned you are individually or as a team you might be due to the daunting nature of the adversary or the current scoreboard. To do otherwise is to invite scorn and derision, perhaps even sanctions. Loosing confidence is one thing, giving up and standing still (self-ousting) another. Sport is often a betting game or has significant prizes and sponsorship. It is also infamous for people throwing games, losing frames, taking dives, making bad decisions, all to the massive detriment of the sport in question. One only needs to look to the current controversy surrounding match fixing in European Football, or Indian Cricket, or World Class Snooker or many of the other examples in history. Stamping out this kind of behaviour provides much needed integrity for the game to thrive. I guess the closest example you can make between real world sports and V:tES would be World Class Poker Tournaments as it is multiplayer but not team based. One would hope that a player would never throw their entire stack cross table to another just because they felt they no longer had a reasonable chance. The lure of money typically prevents this behaviour. At least in Poker everyone is both your predator and prey. Aaron

[ quoted text not captured ] Yet this is not akin to self-ousting, it is protecting your existing resources, a sensible course of action when you are winning comfortably or losing badly. Having a vampire diablerized does not mean he is unavailable next game. Although it might make for an interesting variant. :) Aa

On Thu, 13 May 2010 23:32:37 +0930, Aaron Connor <aaron....@gmail.com> wrote: >Pascal wrote: > >> Note how it says play to win, not play to sweep. >> These two things are not the same thing. > >Duly noted. I mistakenly believed that even when securing a GW one must >maximise their own VP's if possible. No Problem. >V:tES is the only competitive game I can think of where you are >encouraged to throw the game however you feel like if you feel the game > is lost. Well, Vtes is very much it`s own animal even compared to other multiplayer cardgames. I`ll note however that pretty much any other trading card game gives players the option to concede at any time, no matter the gamestate. >Perhaps my issue is I think of V:tES as a sport where that >kind of behaviour is reprehensible, illegal and damaging to it's image. >This might explain some peoples passionate dislike for the practise. People often have strong responses to things and strategies in games and sports: See, for example, the reactions to the Catenaccio in Football (soccer) or the anti-throw movement in the early days of Street fighter 2. I won`t tell you that you are wrong to react in this way, but to me an emotional response is not in and of itself indicative of the need for a rules change.

On May 13, 10:43 am, Aaron Connor <aaron.con...@gmail.com> wrote: > LSJ wrote: > > Which kind of behavior? > > > Protecting the valuable quarterback by making not trying to force a > > score when you're in a lost position in (American) football? > > Or not running up the score in just because you can (after your win is > > assured) (in football, soccer, basketball, etc.)? > > I'm not much for sports, so I can't offer the full variety of examples > > which are almost certainly out there. > > The closest thing I can think of to what you are trying to describe is > substituting your valuable players off the pitch, or perhaps not playing > them at all because it is a dead-rubber in terms of the competition. > However, in Sport you have an imperative to win, no matter how > disillusioned you are individually or as a team you might be due to the > daunting nature of the adversary or the current scoreboard. To do > otherwise is to invite scorn and derision, perhaps even sanctions. > Loosing confidence is one thing, giving up and standing still > (self-ousting) another. Um, that's exactly the situation I described. In a "truly lost" position, then lost side is free to lose in the manner of their choosing, within the mechanics of the game. In boxing the jargon is "throw in the towel". (I assume this "rule" stems from a rule against introducing foreign objects into the ring, but I can find no source to confirm that). Doing so incurs no sanction or derision (assuming a "lost position"). Faced with a 34-0 score and 25 seconds on the clock, an American football team could choose to "give up and stand still" (called "taking a knee" in the jargon of the game) and let the clock run out (self-ousting) rather than face possible (further) injury. No sanctioned, scorn, or derision(*) would be incurred for that. (*) Well, some "fans" will provide derision for anything, of course. In chess, of course, a player can self-oust by tipping xer king over rather than make some other equally-futile move. > I guess the closest example you can make between real world sports and > V:tES would be World Class Poker Tournaments as it is multiplayer but > not team based. One would hope that a player would never throw their > entire stack cross table to another just because they felt they no > longer had a reasonable chance. The lure of money typically prevents > this behaviour. At least in Poker everyone is both your predator and prey. Throwing a stack is not "within the rules", so that offers no parallel. A player is free to fold, of course, since that is within the rules.

LSJ wrote: > In a "truly lost" position, then lost side is free to lose in the > manner of their choosing, within the mechanics of the game. > > In boxing the jargon is "throw in the towel". (I assume this "rule" > stems from a rule against introducing foreign objects into the ring, > but I can find no source to confirm that). Doing so incurs no sanction > or derision (assuming a "lost position"). A sport notorious for its match fixing. It is also there to prevent further injury, an arguably needed measure for a sport where you are beating the hell out of each other with your fists. > Faced with a 34-0 score and 25 seconds on the clock, an American > football team could choose to "give up and stand still" (called > "taking a knee" in the jargon of the game) and let the clock run out > (self-ousting) rather than face possible (further) injury. Really? I didn't know that though, it sounds pretty lame. With 25 seconds or its equivalent you would just play hoping for a timeout in V:tES. > No sanctioned, scorn, or derision(*) would be incurred for that. > (*) Well, some "fans" will provide derision for anything, of course. Maybe not, but I assume you can bet on American Football and I am sure there would be issue taken if it were done with 5 minutes to go or more. > In chess, of course, a player can self-oust by tipping xer king over > rather than make some other equally-futile move. True that, good catch. But they are human machines that can see far into all probable future moves with no hidden variables and V:tES is not that. > Throwing a stack is not "within the rules", so that offers no > parallel. > > A player is free to fold, of course, since that is within the rules. > What I meant by throwing the stack was betting all your chips on a highly improbable hand, thus giving another player advantage when you most likely lose. Folding is cutting your loses, not giving up. Aa

Hm, if my predator with two pools self oust just to prevent me to get the sweep, I think I will call the judge because he has no other interest than put me away from the final table. I am French and I understand nothing at american football. Maybe it could be transposed in rugby^^.

On May 13, 9:40 am, OldFan <asif.i.chaud...@gmail.com> wrote: > BUT, from my limited experience, I do believe the tourney scene > suffers a little. I mean, yes, there are a wider variety of decks > that show up, but inevitably, unless one of those "off the wall" or > atypical decks happens to be the "Paper" to your "Rock", your greatest > concern if you get to a final table probably revolves around: > > 1.) stealth bleed (either of the super fast weenie type, or the > slightly less fast, but more potent, mid cap with DOM type). > 2.) stealth vote > 3.) breed & boon > 4.) Aus wall I think maybe I wasn't clear in my previous post. I wasn't referring to a dearth of options when it comes to deckbuilding, but rather to a dearth of options when it comes to ousting methods. Because, again, all that you can use to oust anyone is a) bleed, b) vote, c) combat-related miscellany and that's it. (Well, there are also Choir and Brinksmanship, but I've never seen anyone be ousted due to those.) Having an issue with that feels to me like having an issue with the fact that you need to achieve checkmate to win at chess. It's a legitimate gripe, if that is your gripe, because it's an accurate assessment of how the game works, but that doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with the game because of it. Really, in most games, the endgame conditions aren't that interesting. It's how you get to them that makes playing the game worthwhile. And in VTES in particular, the interaction between the number of different variations on this very limited number of ways to oust people is what gives it its depth, not the basic variations themselves. > Going off on another tangent (to this tangent), the final table decks > I've noticed rarely have guys bigger than a 7 or 8 cap. Most of them > work on the 3-6 cap range, because it's been well proven that lower > cap guys means you can generally have more of them, which means you > can take more actions. You should check the TWDA. There have been quite a lot of large-cap vampire decks showing up in there in the past year or so. John Eno

[ quoted text not captured ] Second half, 35-3. you can call the game to avoid further embarassment

[ quoted text not captured ] With about 3 minutes on the clock.

On May 13, 11:15 am, Aria <evgueni.lec...@laposte.net> wrote: > Hm, if my predator with two pools self oust just to prevent me to get > the sweep, I think I will call the judge because he has no other > interest than put me away from the final table. If your predator has no chance of getting a VP before you sweep through him, then he is free to get his no VPs in the manner of his choosing, including facilitating his being ousted before you oust his predator. Calling the judge won't change that (assuming the judge understands the rule and is earnest in executing xer duties).

On Thu, 13 May 2010 08:15:11 -0700 (PDT), Aria <evgueni...@laposte.net> wrote: >I am French and I understand nothing at american football. Maybe it >could be transposed in rugby^^. Not familliar with Rugby, Sorry. But do note that I was talking about the sport known as football in Europe. I put Soccer in brackets to indicate this to US readers.

> Faced with a 34-0 score and 25 seconds on the clock, an American > football team could choose to "give up and stand still" (called > "taking a knee" in the jargon of the game) and let the clock run out > (self-ousting) rather than face possible (further) injury. > > No sanctioned, scorn, or derision(*) would be incurred for that. > (*) Well, some "fans" will provide derision for anything, of course. Not to undercut you Scott, but actually.... This past season in american style football, the Indianapolis Colts were playing against the New York Jets. It is the final game of the regular season before the playoffs. The colts had already secured their #1 playoff spot ("top see at the final table"). The Jets were still trying to qualify ("get the last seat at the Finals table). The colts elected to rest their star quarterback, and several other players. Unsurprisingly, the Jets won the game, and got to the playoffs, ahead of other teams that were hoping the Jets would lose. It proved irrelevant (to the masses) that the Jets proved worthy of their spot in the playoffs by winning 2 rounds before being defeated by the colts again in the conference championship game. The resulting hue & cry from the Colts decision to rest starters has directly resulted in the football comissioner changing the game schedule for the 2010 season so that only division rivals play each other. So - yeah, throwing in the towel can be a problem, regardless of sport type. Just saying..... -Asif Chaudhry

On May 13, 10:10 am, quickbeam <dcloo...@gmail.com> wrote: > Also, Pentex Subversion. And Pentex Subversion. Maybe some stuff > about actions, but really, Pentex. If you want larger capacity > minions to work, that is the card that needs to be dealt with, either > by devoting a significant portion of your own master package to Sudden > Reversals or copies of Pentex, or by banning it. I'm all for banning > it; in the meantime, I mostly am sticking to decks without 9-11 caps. Honestly Dave, while Pentex is super annoying, it usually isn't totally crippling (except in a lunge situation, and then a lot of cards can cripple you in a lunge situation). Usually, it's fairly simple to get rid of the Pentex, or have some crosstable ally get rid of it for you. One player having 2-3 minions, while the other has 6-7 minions is usually a lot worse. > Not a big thing, but Ruben's deck was mono-dementation. There wasn't > any obfuscate stealth. My bad - you are correct, it was a straight Dem stealth/bleed weenie deck. > I don't know. Shoehorning in bounce is pretty easy to do now. I'm > glad that the bleed reduction cards are improving, and I think that is > a better way to go. There are more intercept options now for defense, > which helps defense, and hasn't overpowered offense because of the > increase in "block fails" cards and the increase in the viability of > sideline combat (reprinting WWS, Target Vitals, etc) meaning that more > intercept won't stop everything. I know you and Peter have discussed this in another thread, and I agree - good bleed reduction would be great. Unfortunately, in a world that has Deflection, bleed reduction pales badly. And reprinting sideline combat is definitely a good thing - I commented that LSJ has been doing a good job in recent sets to help rectify certain shortcomings in the current play environment. > I don't want better discipline-less bounce. The issue as I see it is > that bounce is really offense, it isn't just defense. I don't want > easy discipline-less offense, which is what it would be. > > -Dave Clooney I can see your concern - but better discipline-less bounce would have the same problem as deflection does. Which is a.) Does you no good when only 2 players are left b.) Does you no good if your pred is voting you to pieces or beating your guys up with combat. I agree - bounce is offense & defense combined. Which of course is why bounce is the preferred method of defending oneself. Bleed reduction is good, but those cards do run out, and in the meantime, you've used up card slots that could have been used to attack your prey. Plus, when your pred is not worried about bounce, he can bleed much harder/more recklessly to burn through your reduction without fear of aiding you in gaining 6 pool. <shrug> I don't pretend to have a good answer for all of this, but getting back to the original topic slightly: Defense against getting ousted is an important facet of deck design. And as Peter pointed out previously, if you beat up/back oust your pred, then you have to live with it/plan for it. I'd just like to see more defense options for decks whose minions don't have Dominate, Auspex, or Presence (bloat). I think it would help the game in general, and perhaps increase the variety of different deck designs out there. -Asif Chaudhry

On May 13, 11:16 am, Kushiel <invisibleking...@gmail.com> wrote: > I think maybe I wasn't clear in my previous post. I wasn't referring > to a dearth of options when it comes to deckbuilding, but rather to a > dearth of options when it comes to ousting methods. Because, again, > all that you can use to oust anyone is > > a) bleed, > b) vote, > c) combat-related miscellany > > and that's it. (Well, there are also Choir and Brinksmanship, but I've > never seen anyone be ousted due to those.) This is being a little obsequious John. I realize that there are limited methods to ousting someone. A more accurate way to sum up what you just said is: "Because, again, all that you can use to oust anyone is a.) Reduce their pool to zero " > Having an issue with that > feels to me like having an issue with the fact that you need to > achieve checkmate to win at chess. It's a legitimate gripe, if that is > your gripe, because it's an accurate assessment of how the game works, > but that doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with the game > because of it. No - I have no issue with having to achieve checkmate. What I would have an issue with is if people could bring their own pieces (max of 6 of a kind), and it turned out that anyone that brought fewer than 6 queens to play had NO HOPE of beating the guy with 6 queens. That would say to me that you need to tweak the rules/available playing pieces so such extreme builds were not SO MUCH more effective than the next tier. > Really, in most games, the endgame conditions aren't that interesting. > It's how you get to them that makes playing the game worthwhile. And > in VTES in particular, the interaction between the number of different > variations on this very limited number of ways to oust people is what > gives it its depth, not the basic variations themselves. I concur - I have seen many decks who's primary ousting mechanism was to bleed, but that all had something different about them. But at the end of the day, those decks that maximized their efficiency, say by having cards that were both offense AND defense at the same time, like dominate Deflection, dementation Kindred spirits, or Parity Shift, tend to be much better than decks that did not have those options. Hence, why I would be greatly interested in a discipline-less bounce card that didn't stink - it would allow more deck archetypes to be fielded (or so I conjecture). > You should check the TWDA. There have been quite a lot of large-cap > vampire decks showing up in there in the past year or so. > > John Eno Indeed - and I praised Scott for introducing the cards and large-cap minions (such as Dimitra, Lutz, Enkil Cog, Scourge, Neonate, etc) that have made these recent "within the past year or so" decks possible. I just look to see him continue the trend, as I still feel that low/mid- cap vamps, and Dominate/Aus/Pres(bloat) still hold a significant advantage on the large caps and other disciplines to an unfair degree. -Asif Chaudhry

On May 13, 9:47 am, Aaron Connor <aaron.con...@gmail.com> wrote: > > the Yankees pulled their two heaviest hitters out > > of the game in the seventh inning. Again, they decided it was lost, > > and used an out-of-game goal - saving strength for a future game, in > > this case, but that's beside the point - to lose how they wanted to > > lose. > > > - D.J. > > Yet this is not akin to self-ousting, it is protecting your existing > resources, a sensible course of action when you are winning comfortably > or losing badly. > > Having a vampire diablerized does not mean he is unavailable next game. > Although it might make for an interesting variant. :) > > Aa Self ousting can be preserving your limited resources. If I've had all my minions pummeled into the ground, all that is left in my crypt is duplicate copies of my superstar 10 cap, I'm on five pool and there's an hour left in the game and its the first round of a tournament, transferring out allows me extra time to collect myself before the next round, relax and regroup. Making me sit at a table for an hour while my prey who went nuclear on the table tries to bleed through a table with Martin Franckel does my mental health no benefit. Self ousting allows me to: 1) preserve resources (my mental health) 2) take time to gain perspective and learn from any mistakes (like an 10 crypt) 3) gain nutritional resources that I might not have time to get and 4) educate my prey about the true consequences of ousting your predator. Playing tournament level Vtes can be pretty stressful. Stress can cause mistakes. Saying there is no benefit to escaping a no win situation early has been demonstrated to be untrue.

Aaron Connor wrote: > LSJ wrote: >> Faced with a 34-0 score and 25 seconds on the clock, an American >> football team could choose to "give up and stand still" (called >> "taking a knee" in the jargon of the game) and let the clock run out >> (self-ousting) rather than face possible (further) injury. > > Really? I didn't know that though, it sounds pretty lame. With 25 > seconds or its equivalent you would just play hoping for a timeout in > V:tES. > >> No sanctioned, scorn, or derision(*) would be incurred for that. >> (*) Well, some "fans" will provide derision for anything, of course. > > Maybe not, but I assume you can bet on American Football and I am sure > there would be issue taken if it were done with 5 minutes to go or more. > > Well yes, but then it wouldn't be a "lost" game, and just like in VTES, they would play to win. best - chris

[ quoted text not captured ] And SCOUT, don't forget scouting (except in Hungary, where you will be asked to leave)... best - chris and I don't mean Scout Youngwood...

[ quoted text not captured ] More like in injury time. Tries can be scored very quickly - you could conceivably score 5 tries (and make all conversion kicks) in 3 minutes; or perhaps a combination thereof of drop kicks and tries. VEEEEERRRRY unlikely. But perhaps doable? Highest rugby score ever was 164 points. best - chris

On May 13, 2:05 pm, OldFan <asif.i.chaud...@gmail.com> wrote: > This is being a little obsequious John. I don't think that word means what you think it means. (I had to look it up to make sure.) > I realize that there are > limited methods to ousting someone. A more accurate way to sum up > what you just said is: > > "Because, again, all that you can use to oust anyone is > > a.) Reduce their pool to zero " That's my point, yeah. Similarly, "don't let other people reduce your pool to zero" is essentially the only means of defense in the game, but for some reason you seemed to have an issue with that. I'm just trying to find out what the difference between the phrase as it's applied to offense and defense is, in your mind, because to me, there's isn't one. > What I would have an issue with is if people could bring their own > pieces (max of 6 of a kind), and it turned out that anyone that > brought fewer than 6 queens to play had NO HOPE of beating the guy > with 6 queens. While I see what you're saying here, the variety of decks that make the finals of and win tournaments in actual play gives lie to this analogy. I take the blame for deploying it in the first place. :) > That would say to me that you need to tweak the rules/available > playing pieces so such extreme builds were not SO MUCH more effective > than the next tier. That's not necessarily the case, though. We see the same players winning tournaments a whole lot more than we see the same decks winning tournaments, or at least that's the pattern that seems to occur in my casual assessment of who and what is frequently winning tournaments. And given that a lot of those players are winning with the kinds of decks that aren't generally considered top dog, I think that deck construction matters a whole lot less than playing skill when it comes to which produces winners. > But at the end of the day, those decks that maximized their > efficiency, say by having cards that were both offense AND defense at > the same time, like dominate Deflection, dementation Kindred spirits, > or Parity Shift, tend to be much better than decks that did not have > those options. Well, yeah. Decks that are good are better than decks that are bad. I agree with your tautology, but I'm not sure where you're going with it. > Hence, why I would be greatly interested in a discipline-less bounce > card that didn't stink - it would allow more deck archetypes to be > fielded (or so I conjecture). I agree that it would allow more deck archetypes to be more competitive, but it would do so at the cost of making those decks less interesting. The kind of disciplineless bounce card that you're referring to here would become an auto-include for every deck that didn't use Auspex or Aksinya or Dominate. The game is far more interesting when the deckbuilding process involves making hard decisions and compromises, which auto-include cards like Reflection of Chaudhry reduce. Like I've said elsewhere (and people are probably getting sick of hearing), I think it's nothing but good that this game includes both good and bad cards and decks. If you want to play something good, the option is open to you; if you're more interested in a challenge, you can pursue that as well. > Indeed - and I praised Scott for introducing the cards and large-cap > minions (such as Dimitra, Lutz, Enkil Cog, Scourge, Neonate, etc) that > have made these recent "within the past year or so" decks possible. I > just look to see him continue the trend, as I still feel that low/mid- > cap vamps, and Dominate/Aus/Pres(bloat) still hold a significant > advantage on the large caps and other disciplines to an unfair degree. Fair enough. I don't see how having even an approximate balance between all the various clans, vampires and disciplines is possible, particularly for a game initially based on and generally hewing closely to another game in which balance wasn't ever a consideration. But I can also understand why you'd prefer to see that balance. John Eno

[ quoted text not captured ] Um, bro, I'm from south africa, I know what scores can be created out of thin air.... ;) But still, the lead is so big at that point, that let us make it easier and more relevant, you have no players left, or maybe just the waterboy (no adam sandler jokes pls;) You die.

On May 13, 4:30 pm, Kushiel <invisibleking...@gmail.com> wrote: > On May 13, 2:05 pm, OldFan <asif.i.chaud...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > This is being a little obsequious John. > > I don't think that word means what you think it means. (I had to look > it up to make sure.) Huh - you're right. Meant to use a different word there - can't for the life of me figure out which though. What I meant was "being a little too obtuse, talking about the 3 ways to kill someone." It almost sounded like you were discussing Legend of the Five Rings ("The only way to win was military, honor, or 5 rings/enlightenment"). I realize that there are only so many ways to reduce someone's pool, and bleeding happens to be the default action choice, so it works really well. > That's my point, yeah. Similarly, "don't let other people reduce your > pool to zero" is essentially the only means of defense in the game, > but for some reason you seemed to have an issue with that. I'm just > trying to find out what the difference between the phrase as it's > applied to offense and defense is, in your mind, because to me, > there's isn't one. I don't have an issue with that. Trying to be as clear as possible: I'd like to see decks have viable "Trump" technology such as what dominate/AUS/Pre bloat has at the moment, which can keep you from being ousted, while not requiring you to block your pred's every action or torp all his guys/leave a smoking crater. Thereby causing him to self-oust, just to spite you. (Peter has already covered this well enough in his responses, so I'm going to leave this alone at this point) > While I see what you're saying here, the variety of decks that make > the finals of and win tournaments in actual play gives lie to this > analogy. I take the blame for deploying it in the first place. :) And well you should - I was scratching my head when checkmate started showing up. :) And I concur - the TWDA is not filled simply with dom/AUS/Pre decks. See below. > That's not necessarily the case, though. We see the same players > winning tournaments a whole lot more than we see the same decks > winning tournaments, or at least that's the pattern that seems to > occur in my casual assessment of who and what is frequently winning > tournaments. And given that a lot of those players are winning with > the kinds of decks that aren't generally considered top dog, I think > that deck construction matters a whole lot less than playing skill > when it comes to which produces winners. Agreed - it is a testament to those players' skills not only in deck construction, but also in how to play the game, and social engineer/ table talk their way to victory. I realize that the TWDA isn't chock full of archetype/"tier 1" decks. But (without doing the statistical math), I would wager that a disproportionate number of decks in the TWDA have strong elements of one of those tier 1 types. Because, well, they work. > Well, yeah. Decks that are good are better than decks that are bad. I > agree with your tautology, but I'm not sure where you're going with > it. It's HOW the "good" decks become "good". We both agree that player skill accounts for quite a bit in winning. But I would challenge you to give Ben Peal a crappy toolbox/Brinksmanship deck, while giving, say me (as an example of a bad/inexperienced player) a streamlined '94 malk stealth bleed deck, put 3 other players at the table, and see how we do. It's quite possible that Ben could table talk everyone else into ganging up and killing me, but unless I'm really feeb, I'm betting I get more VPs than Ben. Because I can bleed for a crap load AND defend myself from bleeders with bounce. While Ben - has a crappy deck with dubious ousting, dubious defense, and is just plain....dubious. My point would be: give decks other than dom/AUS some good bounce, and those decks might get trotted out for NAC quals and championships more often. So now (with good discipline-less bounce) - Ben can show up with a crappy Brinksmanship deck, but at LEAST he may have a chance to tool up and do the wacky shenanigans he plans to do, instead of being some kind of lame road bump to victory for someone else during the initial rounds. But as it stands, a "good" deck is one that plans on defending against being bled alot, and you do that either with dom/AUS/ or bloat technology. Your deck doesn't do one of those 3, odds are high that it is not a "good" tournament deck. > > Hence, why I would be greatly interested in a discipline-less bounce > > card that didn't stink - it would allow more deck archetypes to be > > fielded (or so I conjecture). > > I agree that it would allow more deck archetypes to be more > competitive, but it would do so at the cost of making those decks less > interesting. The kind of disciplineless bounce card that you're > referring to here would become an auto-include for every deck that > didn't use Auspex or Aksinya or Dominate. ? You mean, kind of how, "Delaying Tactics" is an auto include for every deck that doesn't have titles or anti vote specials on their minions (like Gerald Windham)? Or how almost every deck in the TWDA has some kind of "untap/wake/FA/ OtQV" cards in them. Because sometimes you really need to have a guy who can do something during your pred's and/or prey's turn? You mean like that kind of auto include? Those kind of "auto-inclusions" haven't hurt the game yet. I fail to see how this one would either. > The game is far more interesting when the deckbuilding process > involves making hard decisions and compromises, which auto-include > cards like Reflection of Chaudhry reduce. Not every deck would use them - decks that have dom/AUS wouldn't bother, just like decks with solid titles/vote power usually don't bother with delaying tactics. > Like I've said elsewhere > (and people are probably getting sick of hearing), I think it's > nothing but good that this game includes both good and bad cards and > decks. If you want to play something good, the option is open to you; > if you're more interested in a challenge, you can pursue that as well. Guess it depends on your definition of "bad". If "bad" = "a card that isn't an obvious bleed/vote card, but could be used to do interesting/wacky/hilarious things", then I agree, the game is certainly better off for having these bad cards. If "bad" = "a complete wall-paper/coaster card that has just about no redeeming value because it's cost/opportunity cost/utility is too high", then no, I don't think we need bad cards. After all, I spend my hard earned nickels on these little pieces of cardboard - I'd like to think I could make some kind of deck out of them SOME day, of SOME kind, even if it isn't a "tier 1" deck. Wall paper / coaster cards that make me cry when I see them in a booster pack are not good for the game. But either way, I don't think their is sufficient variety available to differentiate the "good" vs the "bad" decks. Right now, the "good" decks - have some kind of solid plan on how to deal with bleeding, either by bounce, bloat, or intercept. As those options are currently limited by discipline, I'd like to increase the viability of decks using designs/minions that don't necessarily focus on those disciplines. > Fair enough. I don't see how having even an approximate balance > between all the various clans, vampires and disciplines is possible, > particularly for a game initially based on and generally hewing > closely to another game in which balance wasn't ever a consideration. > But I can also understand why you'd prefer to see that balance. > > John Eno It may not be possible, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't keep trying. If it did, LSJ wouldn't keep trying to design and print new cards that have been heading in the direction of "make other disciplines less bad when compared to dominate" and "make big cap vamps less bad when compared to hordes of small/mid cap vamps". And honestly, its not so much about "balance" as it is about "making the largest number of possible deck design/types that can win consistently." So that winning has as much to do with the player/how the game is played as it does with what kind of deck those players are using. After all, to look at the thread about that degenerate "do nothing" deck that won brisbane 2010 recently, how deadly dull must it be to sit down to a game there and go "gee, I know most every deck here will be some kind of stealth bleed." Compared to "Damn, that guy's got animalism/Deep song, that guy has big cap Enkil Cog shenanigans, that guy is doing some kind of Laibon bloat and vote, and that guy has some kind of crazy anarch blood brothers bruise/bleed." Personally, I'd prefer the "hard to anticipate and manipulate" meta game - it would make creating decks to compete in such an environment much more fun and challenging. -Asif Chaudhry

OldFan wrote: > On May 13, 4:30 pm, Kushiel <invisibleking...@gmail.com> wrote: >> On May 13, 2:05 pm, OldFan <asif.i.chaud...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >>> This is being a little obsequious John. >> I don't think that word means what you think it means. (I had to look >> it up to make sure.) > > Huh - you're right. Meant to use a different word there - can't for > the life of me figure out which though. Disingenuous? best - chris

[ quoted text not captured ] Hmmm...no, I don't think he was being "lacking in frankness, candor, or sincerity; falsely or hypocritically ingenuous; insincere". I think "obtuse" was closer to my original intent. Plus, it starts with an "o", so it's closer to "obsequious" that way. :) -Asif Chaudhry

On May 14, 12:36 am, OldFan <asif.i.chaud...@gmail.com> wrote: > Trying to be as clear as possible: I'd like to see decks have viable > "Trump" technology such as what dominate/AUS/Pre bloat has at the > moment, which can keep you from being ousted, while not requiring you > to block your pred's every action or torp all his guys/leave a smoking > crater. Thereby causing him to self-oust, just to spite you. Are you talking about stuff like Faerie Wards that circumvents the act/ block interaction which is the spine of the game? Those kinds of cards are super-annoying, as far as I'm concerned. Being mostly a game of cumulative small effects, the auto-fail kinds of stuff always grates when it crops up in VTES. I think maybe we're just not seeing eye-to-eye in terms of what constitutes reasonable defense. I know of plenty of decks that can defend themselves long enough to get VPs without using bleed bounce or Tap-n-Cap or destroying their predators utterly. I'm also getting the sense that maybe defense just isn't an interesting part of deck construction to you, given your comment about how you think it would be cool if every deck could drop in the same disciplineless defense module. I'm not going to try to tell you that your preferences are wrong, but I certainly don't agree with them (assuming my assessment of your preferences is correct). > I realize that the TWDA isn't chock full of archetype/"tier 1" decks. > But (without doing the statistical math), I would wager that a > disproportionate number of decks in the TWDA have strong elements of > one of those tier 1 types. Because, well, they work. Sure. I don't think that's avoidable, though. Some stuff is always going to be better than other stuff. Everything else being equal (which, thankfully, it never ever is), the better stuff is always going to win. I'm still not seeing how that's a problem which needs a solution, given that total equality of goodness is straight-up impossible. > It's HOW the "good" decks become "good". We both agree that player > skill accounts for quite a bit in winning. But I would challenge you > to give Ben Peal a crappy toolbox/Brinksmanship deck, while giving, > say me (as an example of a bad/inexperienced player) a streamlined '94 > malk stealth bleed deck, put 3 other players at the table, and see how > we do. Impossible to tell with the information given. If those other three players are all playing rush decks, and Ben's Brinksmanship deck is one of the Enkidu varieties? Yeah, he's almost certainly going to do better than you will. I mean, we can make shit up at each other all day long, so let's not do that. The point of my counterexample is that seating and player skill are so much more important than decktype means that it's totally possible to win with decks that don't use one of your three methods of defense. > My point would be: give decks other than dom/AUS some good bounce, > and those decks might get trotted out for NAC quals and championships > more often. Heh. I know you said you don't play in tournaments too much, but you should really look at the decklists of the most recent NAC and EC. :) > But as it stands, a "good" deck is one that plans on defending against > being bled alot, and you do that either with dom/AUS/ or bloat > technology. Or by blocking, yeah. > Your deck doesn't do one of those 3, odds are high that it is not a "good" tournament deck. True. And if your deck doesn't bleed well or vote well or fight well, it's probably not good. I don't see that as a bug. > ? > You mean, kind of how, "Delaying Tactics" is an auto include for every > deck that doesn't have titles or anti vote specials on their minions > (like Gerald Windham)? > > Or how almost every deck in the TWDA has some kind of "untap/wake/FA/ > OtQV" cards in them. Because sometimes you really need to have a guy > who can do something during your pred's and/or prey's turn? > > You mean like that kind of auto include? Exactly like those kinds of cards. > Those kind of "auto-inclusions" haven't hurt the game yet. I fail to > see how this one would either. They've hurt it in the sense of making it more dull, at least during the deck-design phase of the game. Good disciplineless bounce would do the same thing. > Right now, the "good" decks - have some kind of solid plan on how to > deal with bleeding, either by bounce, bloat, or intercept. As those > options are currently limited by discipline, I'd like to increase the > viability of decks using designs/minions that don't necessarily focus > on those disciplines. Yeah, see, I'd be totally cool with disciplines that suck being given good cards. Bleed bounce for Celerity? Great! But there's a huge difference between giving good cards to bad disciplines and making good disciplineless cards (even if you add a blood cost to keep allies from playing those cards). > It may not be possible, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't keep trying. > If it did, LSJ wouldn't keep trying to design and print new cards that > have been heading in the direction of "make other disciplines less bad > when compared to dominate" and "make big cap vamps less bad when > compared to hordes of small/mid cap vamps". > > And honestly, its not so much about "balance" as it is about "making > the largest number of possible deck design/types that can win > consistently." So that winning has as much to do with the player/how > the game is played as it does with what kind of deck those players are > using. That works for me. We are probably just disagreeing about the particulars and specifics at this point. > After all, to look at the thread about that degenerate "do nothing" > deck that won brisbane 2010 recently, how deadly dull must it be to > sit down to a game there and go "gee, I know most every deck here will > be some kind of stealth bleed." Well, I think that's actually a really interesting deck, because playing it is a really high-risk/high-reward gamble. (Note the other people in that thread saying that they got squashed while playing similar decks.) On top of that, I've got no interest in trying to get other people to play more interesting decks - folks will play what they want to, regardless of whether or not I think their decks are cool, and that's exactly how the game should be. So I don't despair if I honestly think that everyone around me is going to be playing stealth/bleed, I just do my best to adapt to the environment. > Compared to "Damn, that guy's got > animalism/Deep song, that guy has big cap Enkil Cog shenanigans, that > guy is doing some kind of Laibon bloat and vote, and that guy has some > kind of crazy anarch blood brothers bruise/bleed." Personally, I'd > prefer the "hard to anticipate and manipulate" meta game - it would > make creating decks to compete in such an environment much more fun > and challenging. Fair enough. John Eno