Balancing Ashur Tablets

First, why ? Well, I believe that right now this card is way too strong, and it is also rare and expensive. It is a card that is present in maybe 50% of the winning decks right now, which says a lot about it (and it's not a Blood Dool type of card either). Recursion is the stronger mechanism in the game. It should be restricted to Necromancers and users of Temporis. With Ashur anyone can have it, and it makes the multiple Master decks even stronger than they are, and they didn't need that. Now : how ? Sol. 1 : ban it outright. For me this should always be a last resort, I believe there are many better things to do. Sol. 2 : Ashur was the Cappadocian antediluvian. If Ashur Tablets required a Harbinger of Skulls I think it would balance it way more. Hell, I'm pretty sure some decks would include one HoS just for that purpose ! Sol. 3 : Create a card that trumps it. For example an event stating that no card allowing a card to be taken back from the Ash Heap can be played, except through Necromancy, Temporis, or a Giovanni of HoS clan card. The theme of the event would be that the necromancers take back the control of the otherworld. Hell, it could even be a Gio / HoS card. Note that this also trumps Anthelios, and that can't be bad in my book. Another way to do that could be a Master or an action that can destroy all cards in play "not on a vampire" with the same name, with cost equal to the cards destroyed. So one Dreams would cost 1 pool, 4 Ashur (played by various Methuselahs) would cost 0. This could need to be balanced but you get the general idea. Sol. 4 : tune down the card somehow (the card in hand + cards in deck + pool gain is way too much). Thoughts and comments welcome.

Solution five: Make it so it's only possible to shuffle back MINION cards.

It's a solution, but do you think the cycling of the Master cards is the worst thing you can do with Ashur ? Many decks will get minion cards back and win thus (Tupdogs for instance).

There's no point in doing that. Ashur Tablets auto-regulate themselves. If everyone plays Ashur Tablets, the guys playing them will break themselves their Ashur Tablets respectively. And if that's not the case, that means Ashur Tablets aren't that much played. Anyway if that anoys you just play Trochomancy.

Well sure there is. When the only / best way to counter a card / strategy is to adopt the same one, that card / strategy is bad for the game. In any game. Always has been, always will be. And not "everyone" plays Ashur. Not that many players in fact, compared to the number of decks with Ashur that actually WIN ! Which shows how broken that card is. @Trocho.

> Orpheus wrote: > It is a card that is present in maybe 50% of the winning decks right now, which says a lot about it (and it's not a Blood Dool type of card either). > Building a discussion on false assertion is not a good way to start. Out of the last 100 TWD registered, only 16 contained Ashur Tablets. > Orpheus wrote: > it makes the multiple Master decks even stronger than they are, and they didn't need that. > That is maybe a problem with MMPA decks, not Ashur Tablets. Frankly, I find the card interesting for deck building and balanced. Using 6 or 9 Ashur Tablets to build a 70 cards deck that relies on massive copies of a card (Barrenness for instance) is great (the deck would be otherwise impossible to build) Discarding a Dragonbound in the early game and getting it back with Ashur Tablets seems ok to me. Taking back a Pentex Subversion in hand isn't a problem, even for MMPA decks because they could use Anthelios anyway. Of course, people tend to see the tip of the iceberg ("50% of the decks...", "MMPA decks are even stronger with it...") but the card is fine. Prince of Paris, France Ratings Coordinator, Rules Director

Iwas about to request data to bqack up Orpheus' claim ("a card that is present in maybe 50% of the winning decks right now") but Ankha managed to beat me to it by supllying the said data. Don't see the problem (unless we're talking about the scarcity of the Ashur Tablets among the playerbase) since, like cordovader said, playing Trochomancy trows a nice wrench in the Ashur machine. All being said and done, I also am somewhat peeved by the fact that with Ashurs previously rare recursion has become a free for all. Tough! Finnish Politics!

Ok, so I was off on the numbers (not so much in Marseille numbers) , at least in the 100 last ones. Nearly 1 in 5 is still a LOT !! Means on average nearly one in every final. And I'm under the impression it's played much more in France than in other places. The card is anything but fine. If it allows some cards / strategies to be played, it also reinforces other much too powerful ones. > Discarding a Dragonbound in the early game and getting it back with Ashur Tablets seems ok to me. > First, the choice in your example is game-changing. Second, it's not even the worst possible case. Third, it's fine if you have access to recursion, which should be a rare mechanism reserved to some clans / disciplines with the restrictions it entails. And last, but not least, the game is based around difficult choices, the idea that you sometimes must hold on to some cards that might jam your hand riht away but be useful later (or in this case play a card that can hinder you too). There are exceptions to this but they should stay rare (and in my opinion, thematic). > Taking back a Pentex Subversion in hand isn't a problem, even for MMPA decks because they could use Anthelios anyway. > Citing an overpowered card has never made another overpowered card right. > > Don't see the problem (unless we're talking about the scarcity of the Ashur Tablets among the playerbase) since, like cordovader said, playing Trochomancy trows a nice wrench in the Ashur machine. > How often do you see Trochomancy played ?! SO everyone should play Nec or at least Aus just to trump Ashur decks ? That's preposterous. Not to mention that, in order to work, the guy will have at least succeeded once in playing his combo. Seeing as some decks play "only" 6-9 Ashur, you wouldn't really jam his way to victory. Yes, the scarcity of Ashur is also an issue. But if it wasn't that rare even more players would play it. No way is that good for the game. > All being said and done, I also am somewhat peeved by the fact that with Ashurs previously rare recursion has become a free for all. Tough! > Tough ? The most powerful mechanism of the game (of most CCGs actually) becomes available to all types of decks, yes, that's bad !! The HoS sure need some help to win more games. Anson, Nana Buruku and so may others don't !! As always I'm not advocating a change based on what I have or not, play or not. For me this card, as is, is a really bad card for the game.

> Orpheus wrote: > When the only / best way to counter a card / strategy is to adopt the same one, that card / strategy is bad for the game. In any game. Always has been, always will be. > Erm, sort of. It is definitely the case that if a strategy is incredibly strong and the only way to survive is either to play it yourself or to play explicitly to counter it, something is probably amiss. For example, 1996 era turbo-Tomb+Soul Gem+RTI combos of hideousness basically required you to either play that (hoping to get it off faster) or to explicitly play to counter it. And the problem with playing to counter it was that that was moderately hard because bounce passed the problem to someone else, rather than actually neutering it (in the way that the errata was clearly intended to). If a particular strategy is relatively insular in terms of its moving parts, it may also be the case that you need to either play that strategy or deliberately select cards to interact with it. For example, my long-standing grumble about Events is that there's too little tech to interact with them, like there might be if they were - say - a special type of master card, or had actions on them to burn them, or there were more cards with levels that touch events. I like interactivity, I like decks being able to bump up against each other in ways that cause interesting table dynamics, and in ways that let people trade favours. My prince in my not-a-vote deck will lend you his incidental votes. My vampire will rescue my cross-table buddy's vampire. That sort of thing is cool when you don't need special tech. However, needing special tech is only a particular problem if you need to directly interact with that tech to do well, though. Do you need to be playing Ashur or anti-Ashur to win? Apparently 84% of tournament winning decks believe not.

> Orpheus wrote: > Nearly 1 in 5 is still a LOT !! > Actually 16% is almost exactly one in six, not five... > Orpheus wrote: > How often do you see Trochomancy played ?! > Saw some played in last Sunday's tournament. Use if quite often myself too. Finnish Politics!

> Zenedar wrote: > Solution five: Make it so it's only possible to shuffle back MINION cards. > Lets be clear here: This fixes the problems Ashurs causes. Liquidation and MMPA shit os why they are broken, fluid decks or streamlined decks arent as bad. This is an easy, one word fix. Lilliths Blessing isnt even this easy to fix. Scarcety is a huge problem, and hopefully Steve Weick helps with that, but its not something to bam cards for, or monestary and cog go too....

> Lönkka wrote: > > > Orpheus wrote: > > Nearly 1 in 5 is still a LOT !! > > > Actually 16% is almost exactly one in six, not five... > Point still stands. > Orpheus wrote: > How often do you see Trochomancy played ?! > Saw some played in last Sunday's tournament. > Lönkka wrote: > Use if quite often myself too. > Why did you play it ? In which type of deck ?

> ReverendRevolver wrote: > Scarcety is a huge problem, and hopefully Steve Weick helps with that > How ?

> jamesatzephyr wrote: > > > Orpheus wrote: > > When the only / best way to counter a card / strategy is to adopt the same one, that card / strategy is bad for the game. In any game. Always has been, always will be. > > > Erm, sort of. > > It is definitely the case that if a strategy is incredibly strong and the only way to survive is either to play it yourself or to play explicitly to counter it, something is probably amiss. For example, 1996 era turbo-Tomb+Soul Gem+RTI combos of hideousness basically required you to either play that (hoping to get it off faster) or to explicitly play to counter it. And the problem with playing to counter it was that that was moderately hard because bounce passed the problem to someone else, rather than actually neutering it (in the way that the errata was clearly intended to). > > If a particular strategy is relatively insular in terms of its moving parts, it may also be the case that you need to either play that strategy or deliberately select cards to interact with it. For example, my long-standing grumble about Events is that there's too little tech to interact with them, like there might be if they were - say - a special type of master card, or had actions on them to burn them, or there were more cards with levels that touch events. I like interactivity, I like decks being able to bump up against each other in ways that cause interesting table dynamics, and in ways that let people trade favours. My prince in my not-a-vote deck will lend you his incidental votes. My vampire will rescue my cross-table buddy's vampire. That sort of thing is cool when you don't need special tech. > > However, needing special tech is only a particular problem if you need to directly interact with that tech to do well, though. Do you need to be playing Ashur or anti-Ashur to win? Apparently 84% of tournament winning decks believe not. > Thank you for developping your argument thus, very interesting. As for that last point : Ashur isn't a special tech per se, as it doesn't create a combo in and by itself, it reinforces existing combos and makes them available at the right time (for instance if you need 2 cards at a given time and have only one in hand). So you don't need to counter it and can win without it, but so many decks are just made way better by it ! If impossible or even improbable decks can becomre viable as Ankha said, it can also make already good decks rather broken. As for the percentages, they're pretty high, but you'll recall that even at the heighth of Succubus Club not everyone played it. But the players who did play it and knew how were nigh invincible. This had to be proven by S. Lavrut and some others, because the international community didn't think it was that good, and despite being broken enough to need a ban I don't think that more then 1 player in 5 or 6 actually had one in his deck. I know I didn't (disapproved the whole thing, and maybe wasn't adept enough at using it). Still broken, though.

> Orpheus wrote: > > > ReverendRevolver wrote: > > Scarcety is a huge problem, and hopefully Steve Weick helps with that > > > How ? > He is (again) negotiating to print. Since current meta is all about great cards in the >$5 range, its a good thing. Deep song, eyes of argus, rego motus, target vitals and mots are in the price range and you run 3-10 in a deck most of the time. Ashurs are in the higher $15-20s range, with preturnatural strength, touch of clarity, mind rape, purge, villein, and jake washington. Problem is Ashurs you nees in higher quantity than the rest of pricerange. The whole thing takea away 2 attractive parts of vtes,to nwebies and outsiders: our low cost effective decks get less diverse if kep cheap, and it makes it too expensive to keep 12+ decks assembled at once. These arent fixable things even with erratta, though, so we just keep the game ok until we get printed

> ReverendRevolver wrote: > Ashurs are in the higher $15-20s range... > Ashur Tablets are more than $40 each now. When you are anvil, be patient; when a hammer, strike. pckvtes.wordpress.com @pckvtes

> Orpheus wrote: > Why did you play it ? In which type of deck ? > I used it in a deck that had Necromancy and some Auspex to boot. It is a +1/+2 bleed modifier that doesn't cost blood. Which by itself is nice. What makes it golden is that is nicely usable against the recursion decks, but we all knew that. (and everything else I said in thsi message). Finnish Politics!

> Orpheus wrote: > As for that last point : Ashur isn't a special tech per se, as it doesn't create a combo in and by itself, it reinforces existing combos and makes them available at the right time (for instance if you need 2 cards at a given time and have only one in hand). So you don't need to counter it and can win without it, but so many decks are just made way better by it ! > Erm, that's true of a lot of powerful, tier one cards - especially those that don't have significant requirements or are generally playable. Dreams of the Sphinx is a great card. It makes lots of decks better. Blood Doll is a great card. It makes lots of decks better. Various media locations make decks better. JS Simmons and Tasha Morgan make lots of decks better. Cameraphone makes lots of decks better. Perfectionist is a good card that makes lots of decks better. One way of dealing with Dreams of the Sphinx is to play your own, contesting it - just like you could play your own Ashur, to explode it. Or you could play Sudden, Wash etc. (Oh look, more cards that are attractive to a lot of decks and make them better.) Or you could decide to just bleed the crap out of your prey instead. But "being good" and "making decks better" and "being attractive to players" is not a problem for play. In some implementations, it can be a problem for design - Perfectionist, above, is a design issue in my opinion, in that it cramps out most of the other archetypes by being just a little too good. Ditto, some of the Target cards (Head/Vitals) - not overpowered in themselves, but they're cramping the design space for combat a bit. Every time I come up with a possible combat card that has some +damage on it, my brain goes "Why wouldn't I play Target H/V instead?" But that's not a balance problem for play. > Orpheus wrote: > AIf impossible or even improbable decks can becomre viable as Ankha said, it can also make already good decks rather broken. > Of the 16 decks using it, could you point to the ones that are broken by it? > Orpheus wrote: > As for the percentages, they're pretty high, but you'll recall that even at the heighth of Succubus Club not everyone played it. But the players who did play it and knew how were nigh invincible. This had to be proven by S. Lavrut and some others, because the international community didn't think it was that good, and despite being broken enough to need a ban I don't think that more then 1 player in 5 or 6 actually had one in his deck. I know I didn't (disapproved the whole thing, and maybe wasn't adept enough at using it). Still broken, though. > This is a totally, totally, totally different thing, though. Succubus Club caused many problems. It facilitated potentially collusive behaviour. It undermined the predator/prey dynamic, in a similar way to the seat switchers - you have the power of two predators, and my predator can't put enough pressure on me to stop me. Ashur hopefully gives me some pool. It also hopefully gives me some cards back. If a deck is on the table that isn't expecting me to gain pool, that player is doing something wrong. If a deck is on the table not expecting me to have and play cards, that player is doing something wrong. This is totally unlike a situation where cards undermine the fundamental mechanic of "My predator started with 30 pool" becomes "My predator started with 60 pool and could bring out vampires twice as quickly. Wheee!"

> Lönkka wrote: > > > Orpheus wrote: > > Why did you play it ? In which type of deck ? > > > I used it in a deck that had Necromancy and some Auspex to boot. > > It is a +1/+2 bleed modifier that doesn't cost blood. Which by itself is nice. What makes it golden is that is nicely usable against the recursion decks, but we all knew that. (and everything else I said in thsi message). > I cut in sargon fragment with a Santaleous CEL guns deck. It was a solid Aus Cel shooty wall, but was by nature built as an anti girls deck. Tasting and palatial, also hunting ground and Rack helped him stay full. Fragment let me pick cards back up, and also play trochomancy with Santaleous or a supporter, while Asguresh could play it without Sargon. Trochomancy is good against decks everybody hates, Imbued and Girls being the biggest table annoyers. It involves shitty ass necromancy, thats its drawback. But its still decent. All that said, Girls decks are slow and ponderous contraptions that time out tables and sit unoustable for like ever. Trochomancy just lets you eat away at thier resources, not oust them. Not gaining the pool matters alot. Bannomg lilliths didnt fix the issue, and Id said LB and Ashurs need errattad before that ban. Its not just an attractive card like TV or perfectionist, where theres no reason to play similar card X when this card is better, it works well with other cards to be a problem. Problem is solved by adding in one word to change its interaction with other cards while still staying good. Jeff, I havent seen ashurs auctions close that high, but i dont pay that close attention either. I know some BL rares are still high but stay in one range (sirens lure, beast meld) some drop slightly (coagulated entity, nuetral gaurd) some drop alot (armer of terra) and some go up(engling fury) Tablets go all over the place, and im not buying a tablet for the cost of several freak drives or deep somgs, or egen an eyes of argus, since all of those go in more decks so i can have more built to play with more of those. But i do notice Ashurs not going down to a $10 rare as mmpa decks lose popularity, so i expect them to only to up.

> ReverendRevolver wrote: > > > Orpheus wrote: > > > > > ReverendRevolver wrote: > > > Scarcety is a huge problem, and hopefully Steve Weick helps with that > > > > > > > > How ? > > > He is (again) negotiating to print. > That's great news ! If it does get printed, what form would it take ? I can imagine mostly starter sets, or LCG format where you could still play all the old cards...

I agree that I hat e this card too, only because it slows the game down... 13 cards is way too much... sure it is Lucky 13 and sounds cool and all, realistically should still be playable with even two or three cards fetched, no? A fair question: Woould you still play it with lower amount of cards fetched? I'm not sure how to make a poll.... but sounds like an interesting one 2? 3? 6? cards Merci kinedly

> delangen wrote: > Woould you still play it with lower amount of cards fetched? I'm not sure how to make a poll.... but sounds like an interesting one 2? 3? 6? cards > Interesting. I guess it would be playable with 3-5 cards fetched. "My strategy? Luck is my strategy, of course."

> Orpheus wrote: > > > Lönkka wrote: > > > > > Orpheus wrote: > > > Nearly 1 in 5 is still a LOT !! > > > > > Actually 16% is almost exactly one in six, not five... > > > Point still stands. > > > Orpheus wrote: > > How often do you see Trochomancy played ?! > > > Saw some played in last Sunday's tournament. > > > Lönkka wrote: > > Use if quite often myself too. > > > Why did you play it ? In which type of deck ? > Doubling down on false assertions does not a reasonable argument make. Be careful when you fight the monsters, lest you become one. -Friedrich Nietzsche brandonsantacruz.blogspot.com/

a lot of interesting points were made above. TWDA we all know TWDA does not have complete and exact results as there are too many missing records. on the other hand is fact that many players do not play ashur deck on tournaments being afraid of already described screw up when two of them meet. 16% in TWDA means every sixth tournament was WON by ashur deck not that there was 16% of decks containing ashurs!!! when you can compare it to whole used game mechanics it's similar to amount of COMBAT decks that won a tournament. are we really ok that ashur deck is becoming simply a 'strategy' same as combat or politics are? yes it's true that you can't win the game by simply playing ashurs, but as game mechanism they are used way too often and role ashurs can (and usually) play in game results are too high. it's true that several interesting decks would not exist without ashurs, but it's sad true that most of decks are simply better with them. per my experience since ashurs show up i see them on every tournament and usually in finals as well. maybe one tournament without ashurs deck(s) in finals occurred in last 2-3 years here. MPAs unfortunately this failed out of discussion too quickly. personally for me biggest problem is that decks are able to pull out 'complete' set of ashurs out of nowhere. all you need is proper vampire and Parthenon on table. i have seen this effect to completely change the game more than once. Sudden reversal and wash is not an answer for ashur tablet decks, they do play anthelios to dig it back and/or play too many of them to be stoped. cards recursion: this is not huge problem, options for recursion were there in past. yes this one bring it out of regular clans, but it does not change anything. biggest concern i see in that 1 cards is placed into hand. this 'cheat' hand operations won too many games and many times before game was over as deciding moment occurred in round 7 from 13 for example. ashur card terms: many do concern that recycling master cards is powerful, but this is not the option. if you play ashur tablet trigger them and use second MPA for card returned to hand it's same as you would have used anthelios but it did cost you 4 MPAs not 2. bonus? of course you get another 12 cards and 3 pools. choosing [up to 13] cards may be the problem. change wording that you had to have at least 13 cards in asheap and this will block few times ability to play 'third ashur' we have tested 'changed' version of ashurs for one play weekend. ashurs were triggered by 3 on table not 3 controlled by one player. every other aspect worked. players gain 1 pool and returned 4 cards to library per ashur tablet they controlled and player who played 'last' one gets 'bonus card to hand' effect. worked fine. while controled all by 1 player no problem occurs 13 cards are digged back as usual. no blockages for tablets controled by various players and most important amount of tablets used in one deck in game cannot be so easily predicted. seen Cybele deck screep up 2 sets of ashurs to Nana Buruku deck and then die, ending for nana with 5 ashurs in desk not able to run 2 sets anymore. he still got his 16 cards and 4 pool for tablets played, but at the end 2 of them were in his deck for nothing. there were several other suggestions we considered and i tried to 'play test' some of them: solution: to resolve MPAs problem try to increase amount of tablet's required to trigger whole combo to 4. keep all other terms unchanged. + it's almost impossible to run them in 1 round now so there need to be at least some table at the table to predict it w(c)ould come. - const one more MPA is forcing to definitively play more trifles and serious drop on other master cards. completely forced me to stop using Minion Taps with ashurs. to resolve card recursion problems: suggestion: make ashurs to trigger (when in proper amount on table) in discard phase instead of resolving them right away. + you get the whole combo for minimal card change, but delayed for next turn, not usable for probably most feared return of pentex. - part of combo is gone and we all cry for return of pentex, oh wait there is still Anthelion, there is a light at the end of the tunnel... suggestion 2: make ashurs to trigger when in proper amount on table as discard phase action. when so triggered remove your 3 copies, but keep others (even you own) in play. + you do not loose you tablets when there are other players, but still need to spend 3 MPAs to gain effect and as an addition you pay with your discard phase (with this model you can say that by triggering this you return a card to you hand as discard... and some aditional cards goes into library...) - same as above and you can't screew other's people tablets. suggestion 3: allow player to cycle on 1 set of ashurs per game + endless recursion is gone, 13 cards do help you and still may make a huge difference at the end game. as need for amount of tablets per player will definitively drop with this there might be help on other (40 EURO) problems with ashurs as well. - some decks will simply stop to work. ashur card terms: suggestion: change wording that you had to have at least 14 cards in asheap and this will block few times ability to play 'third ashur' + can't trigger them with half empty asheap. - can result in holding last ashur in hand for 2-3 turns, while somebody else can trigger them and screw you. assholepopulation.com/ Did u saw one today?

> Asnek wrote: > 16% in TWDA means every sixth tournament was WON by ashur deck not that there was 16% of decks containing ashurs!!! when you can compare it to whole used game mechanics it's similar to amount of COMBAT decks that won a tournament. > are we really ok that ashur deck is becoming simply a 'strategy' same as combat or politics are? > You do realize that a lot of the Ashurs decks are COMBAT decks which were enabled by Ashurs?

> johannes wrote: > > > Asnek wrote: > > 16% in TWDA means every sixth tournament was WON by ashur deck not that there was 16% of decks containing ashurs!!! when you can compare it to whole used game mechanics it's similar to amount of COMBAT decks that won a tournament. > > are we really ok that ashur deck is becoming simply a 'strategy' same as combat or politics are? > > > You do realize that a lot of the Ashurs decks are COMBAT decks which were enabled by Ashurs? > Very important to note that Ive only ever felt Ashurs were NEEDED in fluid combat where you run out of cards Thats why limiting ti minion cards helps. Making 4 needed to trigger would be less optimal than banning, since it makes ONLY mmpa decks really able to drop enough. Master recursion is a problem. Anthelios is what is is, but gaining liquidation pool then ashurs pool to just pick up what you still want is broken. Ban liquidation (after i sell mine, naturally)? Ashurs letting decks play alot of cards and recur instead of runout is good. Letting 75 card decks pack tools and smaller numbers of cards they need to recur is also good. Its turning your deck into pool and your asheap into a second deck, then cherrypicking just what you want to be in your deck each turn that break tablets Ferox combat recurring red cards and rushes, not ever broken. Anson recurring red cards, secomd trads, and parity shifts? Not too bad. Nana and Cybele letting you villein for 8, gain liquidation pool possibly twice, then pipping tablets to gain more and pick up 12 cards back to deck, ignoring the chaff? Yea, seriously problematic, since they put liquidated ashurs back to deck, accidentally liquidated anthelios back in deck, pentexes, DIs, Suddens, and whatever else to lock down the game and barely ever bother touching your minions...... its not good vtes. Combat decks: A. Suck B. Need help C. Like recurring redcards, since nothing else is as temporary as combat cards. Master heavy decks are bad in 96% of every good thing in vtes. Tablets can be changed to make them not as evil. We can test anything. But I worry that wed hate life alot if testing Girls variants all the time......

Yeah, Master recursion need to go or become limited. Ashur/Liquidation is just stupid. Sabbat.Black Hand Shakar: Lech loathe ranged weapons. Once each action, he may burn 1 blood to become Camarilla Prince of Krakow until the end of the action.

> Lech wrote: > Yeah, Master recursion need to go or become limited. Ashur/Liquidation is just stupid. > this can be easily resolved. add some card text and it's done. If Ashurs would be automatically removed when dropped into asheap... yeah liquidate what do you want, but those ashurs you liquidated are gone for this game... assholepopulation.com/ Did u saw one today?

How often do you really run across the apparenty "dreaded" Liquidation + Ashur combo? Been quite a while for me at least... Finnish Politics!

> Lönkka wrote: > How often do you really run across the apparenty "dreaded" Liquidation + Ashur combo? > > Been quite a while for me at least... > hmm quite often i'm affraid... 2 weeks ago i played my own on casual games and not more than 2 months ago i met this deck in tournament finals. assholepopulation.com/ Did u saw one today?

To stop the Ashur + Liquidation combo, rather than change Ashur Tablets, can change Liquidation to remove the cards from the game. People don't seem bothered by Liquidation, maybe liking the combo appeal with Shambling Hordes or Dis Pater or whatever, but I find both cards about equally offensive, if for different reasons. Traveller Card Game

There are 3 TWD entries thatcontain Liquidation and NOT ashurs(and/or)sudario(and/or)shamblers. One gangel, with a,copy for pool i guess, one older IC deck with 1 copy, and one imbued/henry twister deck with several, presumably for speed. Everything else is using ashurs to be a girls deck or streamline, or using sudario to pick goodness up, or just hoping to get shambler food. Liquidation SUCKS most of the time if you dont have a pressing reason to dump cards. It even has a DNR clause..... But it doea end up in decks with banned cards (PTO, MoM,LB) alot. Ashurs only hitting minion cards is the easiest fix to ashurs. Liquidation, a seriously shitty card if not enabling acombo, is in like a billion (maybe 100) TWDA entries. Its USELESS as in just ban it useless in all but like 2, possibly 3 of those, and 2 of my source example dont need it, and the third actually needs the conviction in the asheap. So...... hows it reasonable to erratta a card that sucks instead of banning it, when We have banned good cards that cpuld have been nerfed and still playable? Ashurs have been an issue for awhile, according to folks who like to complain, and according to legit theorists, andaccording to people sick of girls decks. I love Ashurs in combat decks. Anson combat is a great thing, until you have to contest with AAA girlsy decks.... I see ashurs are good, and people have large monetary investments in them. They can be nerfed to stop the bad part from happening, and everythings still ok for many ashur decks, just less easy to win with girls decks if you lose your anthelios. Its been the simplest solution for awhile, hurts the problem the perfect amount withouf turning the card to wallpaper.

After re-reading the whole topic, I'm sure everybody's NOT talking about the same thing. People don't seem to know exactly what they try to fix. They talk about problems but aren't clear. And once again, the topic has drifted towards MMPA problems. - some people find Ashur "too strong" . But they don't explain exactly why. Recursion? Pool gain? When it is ok, and when does it start to become too strong? - some people find Ashur too well-spread. It's not clear why, it looks like something very subjective, such as "50% of the decks I've played against contained Ashur Tablets". In fact, the percentage is far less (15-16%). Is it a lot? Is it temporary? Is Govern the Unaligned also too frequent? Anyway, I can see two explanations to this "feeling": - these are the latest cards and people like to play with new toys, either Nana or Ashur Tablets. So maybe in some playgroups percentage is high - there are many old players that quit the game for a while and discover now new cards and their first reaction is "it's too strong". Not long ago I recall Orpheus reading the card (so it must be quite new to him) and exclaiming "it's too strong". He looked a bit like a new player discovering Obedience or Psyche! - some people find that recursion should only be given to certain clans/disciplines. It's maybe true from a RPG point of view, but the card game can be different. Game-wise, it's not a good reason, otherwise Dogs on bikes should be disallowed. - some people are talking about MMPA decks that eventually use Ashur Tablets. Some times ago, it was MMPA + Anthelios that was a concern. Fact: such games don't trust the tournaments since they represent 15% of the last 100 TWD. Ashur Tablets + MMPA represent 13% of the last 100 decks (Anson 4, Nana 6, Cybele 2, Huitzi 1, Parthenon alone 0). Out of the 15 last decks that use Ashur Tablets, 7 are 70-76 cards, 8 are 82-90 cards big, and 9 use more than 20 combat cards. What can we tell from these figures? 1/ Of course, Ashur Tablets are easier to play with MMPA. But it's true for all masters. 2/ quarter the decks they're in don't use MMPA 3/ half the decks they're in a 70-76 cards big 4/ half the decks they're in are combat decks (and half of them are Anson, the other half Nana) Question is: would the 70-76 cards deck as slim without Ashur Tablets? Would those combat deck be viable without them? I feel there's diversity here in the deckbuilding process. - some people say it slows the game down. From my experience, not more than a Dreams of the Sphinx, when you have to discard down. Fast players stay fast (they plan ahead the cards they're going to pick) and slow players stay slow, whether they are playing Ashur Tablets or not. Lowering the number of cards would mean you have to choose more thoughtfully which cards you keep. - some people think that playing 3 Ashur Tablets is a row is a problem (this brings us back to MMPA). Why? Is it easy to do it? Is it to strong? - some people thing that Ashur + Liquidation is too strong. Why? In the end, you gain pool and slim your deck by not putting back cards you don't want at the expense of slots and MPA. Does it gain a lot more pool than other pooling strategies? Is the deck filtering better than using other techs (burn option, MDPA...)? In short: being perfectly neutral:: - What does "a lot of decks" mean? 15% ? 25%? 50%? - What does "broken" or "too strong mean"? Is Govern the Unaligned "broken" or "too strong"? Is 13 cards to many? Bringing back minion cards only would make the cards less effective, but does it solve any problem (if any)? Once these question have been answered, then maybe it will be time to look for fixes, not the other way round. Prince of Paris, France Ratings Coordinator, Rules Director

Considerations about brokenness or non-brokenness of the card aside, what I find sad with Ashur Tablets is that even if it could be beneficial and enable a variety of card-intensive decks, it compels you to play with multiple masters (if only to be able to reduce the risk to get out-tabletted by another player or to out-tablet others more easily) which is not that great as far as deck-enabling is concerned. A "once per turn" clause would put all decks (mmpa or not) on equal grounds for playing tablets and make the card slightly more risky to use (for mmpa decks at least).

I forgot to include the figures: MMPADeck size# Combat# Ashur Tablets -9006 -7438 4 Huitzilopochtly7546 -7586 -7589 5 Cybele8699 3 Anson70209 4 Anson90219 4 Anson90219 1 Nana 3 Cybele 4 Aksynia75229 1 Anson90237 4 Nana90287 4 Nana823310 4 Nana76359 2 Nana90383 Prince of Paris, France Ratings Coordinator, Rules Director

> FrançoisV wrote: > I find sad with Ashur Tablets is that even if it could be beneficial and enable a variety of card-intensive decks, it compels you to play with multiple masters (if only to be able to reduce the risk to get out-tabletted by another player or to out-tablet others more easily) > It's true for every non-unique masters: being able to play many Minion Taps in a row is better than only one. That's why Villein is so popular. I understand that there's a slight difference with Ashur Tablets since its mecanics require to play multiple copies before it does something. Does that mean that "all decks (mmpa or not) [should be] on equal grounds for playing tablets"? I've been playing Ashur Tablets for quite a while now, and never in MMPA decks. I've already been racing against MMPA decks to put the third tablet in play. Sometimes I won. I know the risk and accept to take it, and I don't find it so unbalanced. I'm far more concerned by the Giant's Blood+Villein lottery that allows a random player to start at 40 pool instead of 30 (27% of the decks contain Villein + Giant's Blood, 46% of the decks contain Giant's Blood). Prince of Paris, France Ratings Coordinator, Rules Director

Lets break this down from my perspective. Remember, Im anti-ban, pro erratta on EVERYTHING, and originally saw no problem with Ashurs, until they (and girls style mmpa) gained popularity. Too strong? Ashurs are ok. Fine in a vaccuum. Its the other stuff that breaks them. You have the numbers. Its not that EVERY ashurs deck is a mmpa deck, but that style is what creates the problem. Lilliths was banned for contributing to the same problem. Ashurs are identical in that they are a good card that works with other good cards and some other cards that are only good in a combo to make this machine of too good/broken stuff. Very Gestalt, the whole is far greater than the sum of its parts. So, specifically, Ashurs are GREAT for recurring stuff, especially for combat and stuff that burns through cards and wouldnt be as reliable without what ashurs allows. Problem with ashurs isnt a problem with just ashurs, since even those combat decks recurring fame isnt allowed with my proposed solution. A deck capable of nearly no VTES interaction is bad. Ashurs allow good and that bad part. The problem is being able to dump cards for pool then shuffle them baxk into the deck as you please. The issuexisnt one of clan specific recursion, since tablets can help everything. No problem with popularity, and yes they very by meta, but its one specialized application thqt warrants a change. Poolgain and recursion is hot. Needing 3 is too. The issue isnt an every use thing, its that you can barely interact with a table and do what girls mmpa does thats an issue. Solutions are tweak components to weaken it, or make a rule that no non-trifle source can allow more than ome adsitional mpa a turn.

> Ankha wrote: > > > FrançoisV wrote: > > I find sad with Ashur Tablets is that even if it could be beneficial and enable a variety of card-intensive decks, it compels you to play with multiple masters (if only to be able to reduce the risk to get out-tabletted by another player or to out-tablet others more easily) > > > It's true for every non-unique masters: being able to play many Minion Taps in a row is better than only one. That's why Villein is so popular. > I understand that there's a slight difference with Ashur Tablets since its mecanics require to play multiple copies before it does something. Does that mean that "all decks (mmpa or not) [should be] on equal grounds for playing tablets"? > I've been playing Ashur Tablets for quite a while now, and never in MMPA decks. I've already been racing against MMPA decks to put the third tablet in play. Sometimes I won. I know the risk and accept to take it, and I don't find it so unbalanced. > Well from your stats (and not your personal deckbuilding preferences) most succesful ashur decks are mmpa decks (or I'm reading it wrong). Any other master does what it does whether or not you have multiple mpas or not. Ashur has a risk of doing nothing in single mpa decks, risk you can reduce to zero in multiple mpa decks. Regardless of your personnal deckbuilding taste, your Tablet techs will always be more succesful with multiple mpas, even if sometime the single mpa deck will be lucky and win the tablet race. It's not really a problem in itself : it's only natural that cards designed with drawbacks (here : the 3 tablet requirement and the risk to lose everything) have these drawbacks circumvented more easily by specific deckbuilding paradigms than by others (no one complains it's unfair that Protected Resources works poorly in bleed decks). That being said : was the MMPA paradigm so weak that it needed another advantage in being better at tableting than single mpa decks ? And am I even using the word "paradigm" correctly ? > I'm far more concerned by the Giant's Blood+Villein lottery that allows a random player to start at 40 pool instead of 30 (27% of the decks contain Villein + Giant's Blood, 46% of the decks contain Giant's Blood). > I won't disagree with you on that since Villein.... ah, I understand that it enables more fatty decks but in the current state of the card you could just erratum Minion Tap as a trifle and the state of the game would not be very different and that bothers me. But this is another topic

Wow, lots of input and reactions, that's good. Apparently lots of people do believe that Ashur, at least in combo with some other cards, do pose problems. Lots of people also offer interesting solutions. I'll just answer to a few things (including the ones directly adressing me). Yes, I've been out of the game for a while. I was still playing when Ashur came out but barely. So I knew the card. Still, I was surprised and impressed by its efficiency. And having been out of the tournament scene didn't make me forget what a good card or mechanism was. Recursion has always been (too) good. At one point, some players included Carlotta Giovanni in Arika decks just for recursion. Then some got the Sargon Fragment, then it was Anthelios for the MMPA decks, then Ashurs. Nothing new in the mechanism, except that it is available to all, includes direct recursion (into hand), recycling the deck, gaining pool, and combo with Liquidation, Anthelios etc. That's a bit much in the end isn't it ? "Are other cards often included in decks too good" ? Well, the Blood Dolls, Villein etc. are must-play in every decks, nearly since the beginning, and getting back the blood toyour pool is part of what makes a deck playable. It doesn't "break" anything. Sure, Govern is strong. Certainly, Deflection is. Dominate is a very good discipline, one of the best. Still, it requires the vampires to have it, and either be untapped to react or able to pass their actions. All normal part of the game, and limited to some vamps. Arguably, Second Trad and Parity Shift are at least as strong, possibly too strong, but once more they require a title. Ashur might make MMPA decks stronger, but it is also played in other decks with some success. I wonder, in the ones not including Nana, Anson or Cybele etc. , how many play Parthenon ? Anyway, I've seen that card break other already good (but hard to play) decks, like Tupdogs, Summon History etc. As a general rule, when the 3rd Ashur hits the table, the way to victory is all but paved. At least, it gives a biiiig advantage. So many players will include thelm in their decks. It's not like you can just put one as kinder : you need at least 3, more often 6+. So it means that this card will take an important part of the deck, without being part of the initial strategy, as it is just there to reinforce a winning strategy. This in itself I dislike. But apparently, in the experience of many players, the effect of Ashur is worse in MMPA decks. In my experience, for having played Giovanni a loooong time, getting back the minion card you need at the right moment is often enough to give you the game. Most of you seem to think that recycling Master cards is worse, especially with MMPA and / or Liquidation. I feel that it would still be too strong if you could only recycle minion cards, but it's just my non-tested opinion. So I would be more than ready to test variants on your ideas to fix Ashur, and see which solution would make it interesting enough to keep seeing it sometimes, as any "normal" card, without giving such an advantage to the player who puts his combo into play. I would be glad to see Steve printing some cards back. But if some are broken or unbalancing they need to be fixed before that, because if Ashurs become available to all they will be included in many more decks. Oh and BTW, not being sure that you will be the one playing the 3rd Ashur makes it less easy for someone at the table to play them, but either it gives the advantage to the MMPAs, or to the random player who will get the 3rd Ashur at the right time, which just isn't good in a strategic game.

> Orpheus wrote: > Wow, lots of input and reactions, that's good. > > Apparently lots of people do believe that Ashur, at least in combo with some other cards, do pose problems. > I don't believe in appearance, I prefer facts. It's not because 10 players express their opinion in a topic that it's "lots of people". Many forum users don't express themselves. And many players are not even on this forum. If one finds a card broken, one must prove it by gaining tournaments with it in a way so outrageous the card needs some fix. All the solutions that were proposed did power down Ashur, but what were they supposed to fix? An apparent unqualified brokeness. Recursion mecanisms in general is too good? Then it's a nonsense to try to fix Ashur Tablets because if it doesn't do recursion, what it is useful for? If it's a quantity of cards, why 13? Why 7? Does it solve anything? Or bringing any type of cards? Give me a case where bringing back an event, a master card or a conviction is too good. Saying "this card is too good and I propose this fix" is not constructive if one doesn't explain why it's too good (and from an impartial point of view: facts again!) and why the fix addresses the concern. The only sensible argumentation I've read is FrancoisV's: limiting Ashur Tablets to one per turn would balance MMPA decks and non-MMPA decks. It raises a lot of other questions then: is it a good thing? are MMPA decks so strong they need to be watered down? if it is the case, is Ashur Tablets the best angle? Prince of Paris, France Ratings Coordinator, Rules Director

> Asnek wrote: > > > Lönkka wrote: > > How often do you really run across the apparenty "dreaded" Liquidation + Ashur combo? > > > > Been quite a while for me at least... > > > hmm quite often i'm affraid... 2 weeks ago i played my own on casual games and not more than 2 months ago i met this deck in tournament finals. > that's twice in 6 weeks. Wouldn't call that "quite often" myself, unless that was the only times you played VTES during that time (in which case playing a bit more oten might remove the problem?) Finnish Politics!

If MMPA-Decks seem to be such a Problem, why not add a Card somewhat like this: Incompetent Leadership Unique Master. Cost: 1 Pool Only one Incompetent Leadership can be played in a game. Put this Card in play. While you control this Card you may Play no more than one Master Card during your master Phase. Tap this Card to cancel a non-out-of.turn Master Card as it is played (No cost is paid). If you tap this Card, put a Counter on it and your Predator takes control of it. Burn this Card when it has 5 Counters. If the table feels a MMPA Deck is harassing the table, it adds 4 Sudden Reversals to the Table. It doesnt shut down MMPA per se, but helps to Keep it in Balance. Not being able to Play more than 1 master Card while you control this Card prevents the MMPA deck to Play it and just Keep it all game.

> M.Schumacher wrote: > If MMPA-Decks seem to be such a Problem, why not add a Card somewhat like this: > > Incompetent Leadership > Unique Master. > Cost: 1 Pool > Only one Incompetent Leadership can be played in a game. > Put this Card in play. While you control this Card you may Play no more than one Master Card during your master Phase. > Tap this Card to cancel a non-out-of.turn > Master Card as it is played (No cost is paid). > If you tap this Card, put a Counter on it and your Predator takes control of it. > Burn this Card when it has 5 Counters. > > If the table feels a MMPA Deck is harassing the table, it adds 4 Sudden Reversals > to the Table. It doesnt shut down MMPA per se, but helps to Keep it in Balance. > Not being able to Play more than 1 master Card while you control this Card prevents the MMPA deck to Play it and just Keep it all game. > Silver bullets are never an answer. We can do one of three things: Nothing, and see what happens. Change the next strong card in a problem deck, which is now ashurs, in a way that makes it playable by non problem decks, and less broken in the problem. Or Change game rules or 2 library and 5 crypt cards to say you cannot gain any more master phases after you use the one provided by (anson, cybele, isanowyn, huitzilblahblahblah,nana,parthenon, or year of fortune). Game rules wpuld be "you can onoy gain an additional mpa from one non trifle source a turn"

> ReverendRevolver wrote: > > Silver bullets are never an answer. > I feel its not a silver bullet. Its viable even if there are no MMMPA decks at the table. I would play it in a dem s&b deck since mpa tend to increase pool rather then reduce it. That way, fewer pool gain by all players lead to less time outs. It beeing useable to contain MMPA decks is merely a nice side effect.

This is a nercopost of a proper augment opposing ashurs. It is more salient any position I could take. > TryDeflectingThisGrapple wrote: > > > Izaak wrote: > > I have never actually seen a proper argument why they [Ashur Tablets] are broken. > > > Then I offer this for your consideration. It's lengthy, but you asked for a "proper argument." > > There are 2 related aspects of library recursion that suggest brokenness. > > First, V:tES is a card game. Intimately tied to the definition are common threads: the random draw of objects from a face-down, predefined set and the imperfect knowledge that results from that action. > > Second, V:tES is structured for each player using 3 basic resources for play. > > - pool as the global resource, > - crypt-based minions to act in one's playspace and > - library cards to connect resources and manipulate the playspace. > > Its time to look at how Ashur Tablets can violate both of those fundamental design properties. > > Ashur Tablets accesses a fourth resource, the Ash Heap. This resource is not innately available to every player. It seems reasonable to conclude that any player who accesses additional (valuable) resources might gain a strategic advantage. > > This 4th resource either develops naturally or can be profitably grown. Beyond the cards used to access this resource, there is no opportunity cost in using it. Arguably, even that cost is offset by the 3 pool gain realized triggering a set of Ashur Tablets. > > So far, we're up to free access to a resource not every player has. But since we haven't proven that resources is valuable, it is best to continue. > > Some might suggest the Ash Heap is not an independent resource, but is completely redundant with the library. True in definition, not in practice. If Ashur Tablets read "shuffle your Ash Heap. Put 13 randoms cards from your Ash Heap into your Library," then it would be a truely redundant resource and I wouldn't be writing this post. > > Selecting 13 tactically appropriate cards to return is a different matter. It significantly reconstructs a deck at point of use. We're using perfect knowledge of cards in the Ash Heap and reliable information about other player's minions and and his Ash Heap to rebuild a deck at point of use. > > Ooops. Perfect knowledge (and solid inferences) in a game of imperfect knowledge. That seems like a strategic advantage in the hands of any capable player. > > Large-scale recursion impacts card drawing probability. As fewer cards reside in the library, the probability of drawing desired cards (the situationally useful ones recurred) grows. Now we have further optimized the deck to any task immediately at hand. > > That's messing with the random nature of drawing from a predefined set. Its not really pre-defined anymore. We're starting to stack the odds in our favor as the library empties. > > Even when a deck is perfectly designed for the tasks at hand, variability in draws can affect its ability to perform. either immediately or some point in the future. We call it "clumping." Recursion can smooth variability in past card draws. Hit too many of card "X" in the first 1/4 of the deck......recur as needed to re-balance the set of available objects again. > > Wait, isn't that counteracting risk of unfavorable permutations in drawing from a predefined set? And it creates a new set of a more favorable options for subsequent draws? Seems like a double whammy on the whole randomness aspect of the game. > > The way I see it, we just ripped the fundamental fabric the game. Two for two now. > > In short, hand-selected recursion undermines the reliance on one's library as one of the three primary resources, can smooth variability in draws. In extreme cases, it can transfer the focus of card flow into to "working the Ash Heap." > > As an analogy, imagine playing poker and being able to draw your cards from a face-up muck1. Immediately, you transform the probability of "hitting your draw" into a simple function of your ability to reach into the muck. > > As the ease of recursion increases, the mechanic becomes increasingly broken. Nothing is easier than Imbued recurring Conviction. Second on the list is Ashur Tablets (MPA only, no clan or discipline requirement). > > -Darby. > > 1 The muck is the agglomeration of discards and folded hands in a game of poker. >

While some premises are true, there are so many inaccuracies mixed with wrong logic that I can't say I'm convinced. In fact, much of Darby's argumentation could be true with a continuous recursion cards such as Waste Management Operation. Not with one-shot Ashur Tablets. Let's see why. > Ashur Tablets accesses a fourth resource, the Ash Heap. This resource is not innately available to every player. It seems reasonable to conclude that any player who accesses additional (valuable) resources might gain a strategic advantage. > Right. (It's also true for Research Area, by the way, if only it was used) > Beyond the cards used to access this resource, there is no opportunity cost in using it. Arguably, even that cost is offset by the 3 pool gain realized triggering a set of Ashur Tablets. > The fact that 3 Ashur Tablets are required is a cost that is omitted here. 1 Ashur Tablets alone does nothing. Not mentioning that up to 2 Ashur Tablets can be removed from the game through the interaction of another player (that means 2 MPA and 2 cards lost -- meaning the 3rd one will not be as useful as it will not make a complete set of 3). You could put it the other way: the 3 pool would offset the 3 cards and MPA spent, leaving the "opportunity cost" un-offset. > So far, we're up to free access to a resource not every player has. But since we haven't proven that resources is valuable, it is best to continue. > It starts becoming wrong. What does "free access" mean, since you need cards to access it? And what's wrong in the fact that only the player that plays that cards has access to it? For instance, if I play a titled vampire, I have access to a resource (the votes) that not every player has. But I paid for it, so there's nothing wrong there. > Selecting 13 tactically appropriate cards to return is a different matter. It significantly reconstructs a deck at point of use. We're using perfect knowledge of cards in the Ash Heap and reliable information about other player's minions and and his Ash Heap to rebuild a deck at point of use. > Ooops. Perfect knowledge (and solid inferences) in a game of imperfect knowledge. That seems like a strategic advantage in the hands of any capable player. > "Rebuilding a deck" seems a bit excessive. In a 75-cards deck, supposing you've used already 30 cards, you'll put 12 back in the deck of 45 cards. 12 / 12 + 45 = 21%. Don't get wrong: it only means 1 card out of 5 will be one of the 12 cards put back, that were cards in the deck in the first place. (Maybe a Lost in Crowds I put back because my prey is playing intercept. Or an Ashur Tablets that will cripple my hand until the next master phase.) The order is totally random, you're putting back cards that were present in the first place. Of course, some cards you won't use anymore won't get back. But how many is that? Then I find dishonest to use "perfect knowledge" is a sense that is different of the premises. Remember the premises: "the random draw of objects from a face-down, predefined set and the imperfect knowledge that results from that action." In the premises, "imperfect knowledge" means the deck is random. You don't know what cards you'll draw in which order. Here "perfect knowledge" refers only to the cards you are putting back. It doesn't mean the deck is no longer random. But it's what Darby is suggesting, mixing deliberately two different things. And Darby continues mixing thing: > Large-scale recursion impacts card drawing probability. As fewer cards reside in the library, the probability of drawing desired cards (the situationally useful ones recurred) grows. Now we have further optimized the deck to any task immediately at hand. > That's messing with the random nature of drawing from a predefined set. > While the first sentence is true (though I disagree on the "large-scale" adjective), putting back cards in the library doesn't change the "random nature of drawing from a predefined set". The set has changed (but so does it when you play cards), but it's still random. > Its not really pre-defined anymore. > Neither it is when someone plays with your cards (Agaitas, Erciyes, the Ravnos card that calls a vote from someone's ash heap), nor when someone remove cards from your hand (Le Din Tho, Revelation) or from your deck (Slaughterhouse). One will never play exactly all the cards that is in his deck. So the notion of "pre-defined" deck has no strong value in the end. It's not at least the "fundamental design" property Darby want us to believe in. > We're starting to stack the odds in our favor as the library empties. > Indeed. But for something approaching "perfect knowledge", you'd need to empty your library first and then recurse once 13 cards. Needless to say that with Ashur Tablets, you'll only do it once (unless you've put back 3 Ashur Tablets out of the 12 cards you've put back, leaving you with 9 useful cards -- I'm not sure it's worth the effort) and that you won't get far with 13 cards. The more the odds are in our favor, the less cards we have in the deck (one of the 3 resources that Darby mentionned), which is not a good thing as it will deplete sooner. This is where the argumentation could make sense with a card that recurse each turn cards in an empty library: you'd play always with the same card. But it's not true with Ashur Tablets. > Wait, isn't that counteracting risk of unfavorable permutations in drawing from a predefined set? And it creates a new set of a more favorable options for subsequent draws? Seems like a double whammy on the whole randomness aspect of the game. > The way I see it, we just ripped the fundamental fabric the game. Two for two now. > Since when the game is random? Is randomness a "fundamental fabric the game"? The randomness induced by predator/prey relationship and deck order (which is untouched) is only a small part of the deck, mostly balanced by the interactions between players. Unless everyone on the table plays randomly of course... Prince of Paris, France Ratings Coordinator, Rules Director

BTW, here's the design of Ashur Tablets how I understand it: Given a deck in 70 cards. You can build (almost*) the same deck in a different way by playing 60 cards: 57 of the original cards + 3 Ashur Tablets. The Ashur Tablets will put back 13 cards in the deck (well 12 really), meaning you'll be able to play 70 cards of the deck.** (69 in you have to discard a card when putting back one of the 13 cards in hand). In the process, you gain 3 pool and 1 card in hand at the expense of using 3 MPA and the risk that someone else plays 3 copies before you. * almost, because in 57 cards, you'll put less kinder cards such as a Fear of Mekhet, because you have less slots. Ashur works better with repetitive decks with little surprise in them. ** and you have a slight advantage of choosing which cards will come back, and which cards will not. Prince of Paris, France Ratings Coordinator, Rules Director

Ankha: To counter some of your analysis of Darby. > Ankha wrote: > In fact, much of Darby's (argument) could be true with continuous recursion cards such as WMO. Not with one-shot Ashur Tablets. > Actually, for WMO to return 13 cards to the library requires at least 13 turns after a !Brujah has reached the ready region. That means it is at least a 14-turn proposition to recycle 13 cards to your library with WMO. Darby's definitions of "VTES Resources" (as can be seen from other posts) are: Library Cards, Hand Cards, Minions, Pool, Blood/Life. In general Ashheap cards are not resources because once they reach that location, there are comparatively few interactions possible and most commonly it is to remove them from the ashheap out of the game. Allowing people to reuse ashheap cards converts the ashheap into a resource by allowing you to reinvest cards. This is part of the strength in the Liquidation + Ashur Tablets combination, because your cards 'lost' to Liquidation are actually only temporary losses (mostly losses of opportunity). > Ankha wrote: > The fact that 3 Ashur Tablets are required is a cost that is omitted here. ... You could put it the other way: the 3 pool would offset the 3 cards and MPA spent, leaving the "opportunity cost" un-offset. > The resource Darby is speaking of is ashheap cards. There is no opportunity cost in ashheap cards because in general they will remain there for the rest of the game and form part of the game's perfect knowledge source (i.e. you have perfect knowledge of the number of Card X in your ashheap). The opportunity costs all rest with Ashur Tablets, which is true of any other Master card that may be at risk because of others MPA choices. > Ankha wrote: > It starts becoming wrong. What does "free access" mean, since you need cards to access it? And what's wrong in the fact that only the player that plays that cards has access to it? > Free as in 'not locked away' rather than Free as in 'no price'. Darby is suggesting that Ashur Tablets allows us to access a resource that did not previously exist in the game (freeing the resource) and not that Ashur Tablets create a resource without cost. So your connection with titled vampires is a non sequitur because all players must choose to have crypt cards in their crypt. The power and composition of those crypt cards is not a 'resource' Darby is using for this argument. > Ankha wrote: > "Rebuilding a deck" seems a bit excessive. In a 75-cards deck, supposing you've used already 30 cards, you'll put 12 back in the deck of 45 cards. ... (Maybe a Lost in Crowds I put back because my prey is playing intercept. Or an Ashur Tablets that will cripple my hand until the next master phase.) > When you build a deck you have created a set of probability ratios with a specific mix (i.e. there is X chance of drawing "Combat Card X" in my opening hand). This mix changes by necessity during a game, but that is while the deck is in play, not while the deck is being built. You are turning theoretical chances into measured chances as you play. Ashur Tablets allows you to redraw the probability set while you are also converting your theoretical chances to measured chances; in effect you can build the remainder of the deck to favour certain outcomes while you are playing the deck. This is 'rebuilding the deck'. When most players test a deck for tournaments, they have a rough version that they play and adjust in and out cards until the deck suits the probabilities and events that appear most commonly. This happens between multiple games and effectively involves changing the probability set for the deck between games. Ashur Tablets allows deck testing changes to be made to a deck while you are playing the deck in a game. The Perfect Knowledge Darby is speaking of is the composition of your own ashheap, the cards you could put back into your library with Ashur Tablets and how many other copies exist in your Library. The Inferences are the approximate number of copies of cards in an opponents deck based on their ashheap. "A game of imperfect knowledge" is just that... most of the time in VTES you don't know exactly what cards are in someone's hand, someone's library and so on. > Ankha wrote: > While the first sentence is true (though I disagree on the "large-scale" adjective), putting back cards in the library doesn't change the "random nature of drawing from a predefined set". The set has changed (but so does it when you play cards), but it's still random. > See above about adjusting internal probability during play. When another player uses Agaitas, Slaughterhouses, Le Din Tho/Revelations/Precision they are not editing the composition of the deck as it was when you sat down. They are depleting your resources (in all these cases card resources). They are not altering the mix of cards in your library but making those cards unavailable to you. If for instance there was a card which was "Choose a player and remove all copies of a named card from their Library" then that would be one which altered the pre-defined mix of cards. > Ankha wrote: > For something approaching perfect knowledge... > You mean you couldn't count your library cards face down, count how many copies of Majesty/Wash/Sudden Reversal/Immortal Grapple/Voter Captivation/KRC you were putting into the deck and then come up with at least approximate odds for drawing one off the top? You aren't also choosing those cards because you want them to appear more often? So let's go for counter-tactics and alternative plots with things like Ashur Tablets and other 'continuous recycle' cards. Anthelios. Anthelios lets me trade a resource in hand for a known resource in my ash-heap. Let's not choose one of the 'screamingly big ticket targets' and instead choose Golconda. Without assuming that I have MMPA... If I can draw a master, in 2 turns I can play Golconda even if that is the only copy of Golconda in the deck. If I draw Golconda early and I have Anthelios in the deck, then I can easily discard Golconda knowing that later I will be able to return it to my hand for something else I will find to be a dead card (i.e. Zillah's Valley, Villein, Fear of Mekhet, Fame, etc). My Golconda is in a known location (knowledge of it is perfect) AND I have a known mechanism to gain that resource back at the cost of 1 MPA and a dead master card I would have thrown out in my discard phase. My ashheap Golconda is a useful resource. If I play multiple Golconda cards in my deck, and I find out that my prey is playing less-than-8-caps, then I can trade my 'dead Golcondas' for something more useful against my prey (Fame, Haven Uncovered, ToGP, etc, etc, etc). Then my Golconda cards are again, a resource instead of a dead card. If I play cards such as Giant's Blood or Week of Nightmares, that are only playable once per game, I can discard an early copy of the card, intending to bring it back with Anthelios OR instead I can play the card knowing that later in the game I will be able to bring back other useful Masters from my ashheap with the extra Giant's Blood/WoN/etc I put in the deck to mitigate not drawing one early enough in the game. Either path gives me Perfect Knowledge of some sort (I will be able to XYZ...). Another core component of VTES is resource depletion. You usually deplete your library into your ashheap with few ways to bring it back. Ashur Tablets breaks that aspect of the game quite thoroughly. So does Anthelios but to a lesser extent. If WMO's constant recursion was as powerful as claimed, it seems depressingly absent from TWDA. Retired Baron of Sydney, Australia, 418

This thread is so boring that it looks like a master phase of someone playing ashur tablets.

> Juggernaut1981 wrote: > <snip all the redundant explanation about how Ashur Tablets work and how Darby's "perfect knowledge" must be interpreted> > Another core component of VTES is resource depletion. You usually deplete your library into your ashheap with few ways to bring it back. Ashur Tablets breaks that aspect of the game quite thoroughly. > What do you mean by "aspect of the game": resource depletion, or recursion? If you mean recursion, then all the cards that perform recursion should be banned since they break that so-important "aspect of the game". If you mean resource depletion, you're wrong, because you'll deplete your deck anyway. Depleting a 90-cards deck without Ashur Tablets will take as much time as depleting a 70-cards deck with 6 Ashur Tablets (70 + 2*13 - 6 = 90). Tell me how it breaks that "aspect of the game". Even if WMO is slower, it breaks that "aspect of the game" because you could theorically play with an endless deck. But as you said, "If WMO's constant recursion was as powerful as claimed, it seems depressingly absent from TWDA." so in fact breaking that "aspect of the game" isn't as bad as you pretend. Prince of Paris, France Ratings Coordinator, Rules Director

What I am saying is that managing a finite resource (a library of cards) is a core component of the game. In as much as managing the finite resource of 30 pool is a core component of the game. VTES is also a game about making sure you're the last car to run out of petrol rather than the first car over the line. You only have to ensure you are still going when every other player is not... so resource advantages are big. This is the complaint against Giant's Blood (creating large swing in resources) and Pentex (effectively removing large amounts of resource). By 'breaks that aspect of the game' I mean that "Recursion of cards from the ash heap breaks the limitation of a finite resource either by increasing the resource beyond game limits OR by creating a potentially infinite resource". Ashur Tablets does not create an infinite resource, but it does create a potentially 11% to 20% increase in library size for a cost of 3 cards. This is not possible with any other major card recursion method, except WMO and that is hardly destroying tournaments. Necromancy ash-heap recycle has most commonly been "trade 1 card to get back 2 cards" which increases the library by an effective 1 card per action. Hardly game breaking, and probably comparable with WMO. Reinforcements is hardly seen and requires at least 1 card to bring back 4 cards with an effective net library increase of 3 cards per action, but less if you play other cards to ensure the action success. If I heard Ben Peal was cooking up a card that said "Every turn, discard 1 card from your hand to move 3 cards from your ashheap to your library" I'd be very very strongly advocating for that card to never see the light of day. The reasons why WMO is hardly tearing up the tournament scene and breaking recursion are: 1) It's a !Brujah card. They have hardly been tearing up the tournament scene at any point, even when you started seeing a lot more of them with Hektor, the other guy and the G5 Brujah Justicar making appearances. 2) It's one card per turn after you get the card. So, assuming it is the average 14 turns or less game AND you draw it in your first two turns AND you can influence out a !Brujah in the first Influence phase then you get equivalent card recursion to Ashur Tablets. Other than that very limited chance and high opportunity cost, WMO is strictly worse than 3x Ashur Tablets. Retired Baron of Sydney, Australia, 418

> Juggernaut1981 wrote: > What I am saying is that managing a finite resource (a library of cards) is a core component of the game. In as much as managing the finite resource of 30 pool is a core component of the game. VTES is also a game about making sure you're the last car to run out of petrol rather than the first car over the line. You only have to ensure you are still going when every other player is not... so resource advantages are big. This is the complaint against Giant's Blood (creating large swing in resources) and Pentex (effectively removing large amounts of resource). > > By 'breaks that aspect of the game' I mean that "Recursion of cards from the ash heap breaks the limitation of a finite resource either by increasing the resource beyond game limits OR by creating a potentially infinite resource". > > Ashur Tablets does not create an infinite resource, but it does create a potentially 11% to 20% increase in library size for a cost of 3 cards. > The increase in library size is only true if D + 10 * A/3 > 90, where D is the deck size and A the number of Ashur Tablets. For instance, a 70-cards deck with 6 Ashur Tablets allows you to "consume" 90 cards, just like a regular 90-cards deck. Drawback: it uses MPAs, can be slightly unreliable (Sudden/Wash or someone else playing Ashur) and you must have consumed the cards first to get them back. Advantage: you don't put back cards you won't really need. So the "problem" is restricted to decks that are effectively playing (if the deck is depleted, it's rarely the case) more than 90 cards through the recursion. Yet, the tendency has shifted from 'always 90 cards' to slimer decks, mainly because of the Swiss influence. It may be interesting to ask people playing 90-cards deck with Ashur Tablets how many cards they really use. Let's say they do use more than 90 cards. Is it a problem? The only decks I've seen so far with 90 cards and Tablets are combat decks. Is it bad if combat decks can be improved that way? > This is not possible with any other major card recursion method, > But is it a problem? I mean, starting with 30 pool don't stop people from having more pool (in fact, it's much more easier to gain massive amout of pool rather than retrieving that amount of cards). Is it worse to gain 20 pool or get back 20 cards (figures at just examples)? Prince of Paris, France Ratings Coordinator, Rules Director

Due to the way this discussion is turning, Im unsure if we can use math in a vaccuum and % of deck recurred. If we both use tablets, and you play girls mmpa and I play g2 gargoyle combat, WHAT i get back and HOW it got into the ash heap is important to what happens with tablets. I rushed all game, somehow ousted first prey and my fame went away with him. I have lotw of red cards in my ash heap, along with lets say a tension that was burned via burn clause, the fame i mentioned, a haven uncovered that burned, and a few force of wills. Girls mmpa has a ton of cards such as golconda that they played once after villeining nana, he villein from said nana, a di theyve anthelios recurred all game, a,pentex that has been similarly returning, and several similar cards that have been liquidated imto the deck. Also some stuff they paid to bounce with aksynia. The girls deck is built to abuse tablets, liquidation, andthelios, nana, aksynia, cybele, villein, golconda, and of coirse through recurring one copy of each if needed imdefinately, DI and pentex. Its several goodxparts and a few that suck outside of combos like this, all working as strong parts of a broken whole. Returning to g2 gargoyles, they suck anyway. They use strong cards like tablets to recur good cards like fame and as the crow and taste along with cut rate junk like swoop (a GOOD flight red cardeven) crawling chamber, stone strength, etc. They work as out math in a vaccum, using 4 card slots and 3 mpas to recur 13 of 90 cards, netting 9 really, but its with pool and late game when you need fame, tastes, grapples, diaarms, etc to actually win (well, its still gargoyles, so just TRYING to win is impressive). Tactically advantageous? Yes, thats why its worth the card slots and mpas. You use 3-4 slots that balance returning what you really need times 13 instead of what you may neex times 3-4. Also you are playing delayed ascendance twice instead of master cards you may not have drawn anyway,,since its probably master lite. Mmpa girls is better at abusing the parts, that why its broken outside of ashur tablets. Imbued recurring conviction is as big a time sink risk as tablet shuffling, and they have better built in recursion only givi g middle of the road power level cards, when compared to tablets or wmo or sudario or necro cards that suck, or even sargon. Theres mathematically little problem with some uses, cost more than balances. Its what else happens when its a problem that made it a problem. Agaim, AAA decks came in with tablets after cel guns anson, and still nobody really botched hard until girlz mmpa stuff waz everywhere. In summary, having the tools,to expoit the thing is the problem, and always was. You mitigate cost because you have many MPAS and your tablets arent taking up slots/useless sometimes, since its also a bounce to Aksynia. You liquidate for pool, and you really just lose to the DNR clause, since it lets you spend an MPA (which since you have 3-4 is really like spending a transfer in many ways) and a hand size to gain pool and look at parts of yoir deck to pick up with anthelios or return to deck with tablets. Villein someone, then golconda. Get back villein and golconda if you want via anthelios and or tablets. Pentex and DI are great and you use them alot without wasting slots. Oh, amd all this shit is also a deflection once a turn. You build your crypt to use yoir deck, which is all masters basically. They give MPAS and one uses masters to bounce. Then the deck uses your billion mpas to gain pool and not die. And its adapting as you play since you tablets stuff back. So, again, its what you do with what happens, and using costs and drawbacks to help instead of hurt, that makes aproblem occur here.

Revrev, We can easily set limits based on simple assumptions: 1) VTES games are, on average, 14 turns in length. So as a safe guess, assuming a fairly small standard deviation, >75% of all games finish between turns 12 and 16. (Including time-limited games). 2) The upper limit of a library is 90 cards, the lower limit is 60. @Ankha: Your argument that 70 + 3x Ashurs = 90 cards is just highlighting that you can extend a 70card deck to 90 cards. If you choose at the deckbuilding stage to bring in a libaray with 70 cards, that is the resource you have chosen. Ashur Tablets allows you to extend that resource to 90 cards. You have, in effect, increased your own library by 20 cards (which would be a 28% increase on deck size). It is not restricted to decks getting to greater than 90 cards. That is not the resource limit. The resource limit is the number of cards you choose to bring with you into the game. If you bring 60 cards and can basically pad it out to 70 cards by Ashur Tablets, then you're increasing your resources by around 16%. For the record, I am actually very very strongly against Voter Captivation even though it has been in the game for a long time purely because it can add a large amount of resource into the game without deviating away from ousting players. Even a relatively modest Voter Captivation of around 4 to 6 counters, this is easily a 14-20% increase in counters in the game. For a similar effect imagine a card which said "Only usable after a successful bleed. Put 12 cards into your library from your ashheap." I doubt that would see printing. On the implied argument of "Increasing pool isn't a problem so why is increasing the library a problem?"... How many actions can remove 10% of your starting library? Basically none. Slaughterhouse can do it, but again, to do that requires at least 6 turns of play (if you can get a HoS out in Turn 1). Retired Baron of Sydney, Australia, 418

> Juggernaut1981 wrote: > It is not restricted to decks getting to greater than 90 cards. That is not the resource limit. The resource limit is the number of cards you choose to bring with you into the game. If you bring 60 cards and can basically pad it out to 70 cards by Ashur Tablets, then you're increasing your resources by around 16%. > But you could have built your deck in 90 cards right from the beginning, right? So what's the problem? > Juggernaut1981 wrote: > For the record, I am actually very very strongly against Voter Captivation even though it has been in the game for a long time purely because it can add a large amount of resource into the game without deviating away from ousting players. > I wasn't thinking of Voter Captivation, but of Consanguineous Boon and Autarkis Persecution that bring more pool in play than Voter Captivation. But I'm sure you're also strongly against those cards (unless you're against Voter Captivation for other reasons, in which case your point is moot). Prince of Paris, France Ratings Coordinator, Rules Director

You could have, but you did not. It was a choice you made to have a less-than-90 card deck. People tend to do it to probability and improve consistency of card flow in the deck. You are arguing from a point of 'what is permitted by the rules' and not 'the resources you chose to bring'. Ankha, would you want there to be a Necromancy card that said "Remove this card from the game. Choose four cards from you ashheap and put them into your library."? If not, why not? Darby's argument and my argument is: the ashheap exists mostly to collect 'used resources'. I actually have a greater problem with VC than Con Boon and Autarkis. VC gives you additional rewards beyond ousting your prey. Again, I don't think playtesters or the DT would create an action modifier which said "When you bleed your prey, gain 2 pool and 2 blood on this minion." If that card wouldn't see play now, then maybe we should look at VC. Con Boon and Autarkis do potentially create large amounts of resource, Autarkis particularly, but: - Autarkis tends not to be played because there is low control over where resources are gained and how much resource is gained. It is a greater culprit than Con Boon but is less of a resource generator than Voter Cap. - Con Boon tends to be roughly equal to a Govern at Dominate or Tend the Flock unless the deck is specifically intended to exploit it. Most people choose other methods. Retired Baron of Sydney, Australia, 418

> Juggernaut1981 wrote: > Ankha, would you want there to be a Necromancy card that said "Remove this card from the game. Choose four cards from you ashheap and put them into your library."? If not, why not? Darby's argument and my argument is: the ashheap exists mostly to collect 'used resources'. > You mean Name: Summon Soul [FN:C2/PG2] Cardtype: Action Discipline: Necromancy +1 stealth action. [nec] This vampire gains 2 blood. [NEC] Remove this card from the game and move up to 2 cards from your ash heap to your library. Shuffle your library afterward. Utterly broken, should be banned. I can't count the number of times I've seen it played right before the prey was ousted. > Juggernaut1981 wrote: > I actually have a greater problem with VC than Con Boon and Autarkis. VC gives you additional rewards beyond ousting your prey. > Well, this is more a moral issue than a game issue. There is a lot more pool generated with ConBoon or Autarkis than Voter Cap (considering that both are played in the adequate deck). You've never played against a Palla Embrace or a Ravnos Carnival Eldest are Kholo? Prince of Paris, France Ratings Coordinator, Rules Director

Summon Soul is: 1 action + 1 card (opportunity cost included) to get 2 cards in your library. Or a net result of 1 unblocked action creates +1 library card. Ashur Tablets is: 3 MPA + 4 cards* to get 12 cards in your library + 1 card in hand + 3 pool. Net Result: 3 MPAs gets you +9 cards and +3 pool. * 4 cards = 3x Ashur Tablet + 1 card that should be discarded as part of resolving the Ashur Tablets. To make Summon Soul be a close equivalent to Ashur Tablets it needs to read: Summon Soul Action Necromancy +1 stealth action. [nec] ((who cares some stuff, lets make it gain 2 blood)) [NEC] Remove this card from the game to gain 1 pool and move four cards from your ash heap to your library. Do you think this action is still balanced?? My problem with VC giving extra rewards for ousting your prey has nothing to do with morals. Which other action modifier gives you blood and pool for taking actions to oust your prey? The only one that immediately springs to mind is Edge of the World which has a huge opportunity cost on it to start with. Voter Cap gives you back blood and pool, it can easily put into the game a lot more pool than ConBoon can. Yes, I've seen the African Clown Car, I've also seen Palla Grande Weenies (had a reasonable one using Undue Influence to really put it into gear)... but your two edge cases don't diminish the argument against Voter Cap, if anything they just reinforce why allowing cards to add large volumes of resource into the game are destabilising. One of my locals is running a Clown Car Commands Undeath deck... equally destabilising. ConBoon will often add around 6 counters to the game (excluding VC) most people rarely have more than 6 minions of the same clan, and even Clown Cars generally tend not to have 8+. Autarkis Persecution, assuming the person playing it is going for a weenie trick, will add 6-8 for the person playing it and around 3-5 for everyone else. Voter Cap regularly puts in a number of extra counters equivalent to Con Boon, and can do so while also damaging your prey. It is not just the number of counters that is problematic but HOW they enter play. If you wouldn't hand someone 6+ blood and 2 pool for a successful bleed for 3, why is it legitimate to do it for a vote action? Retired Baron of Sydney, Australia, 418

> Juggernaut1981 wrote: > Voter Cap gives you back blood and pool, it can easily put into the game a lot more pool than ConBoon can. > No, it doesn't and it can't. The most pool Voter Cap can put into the game is 2. This is a fixed number. The number of blood counters from Voter Cap is also capped by the capacity of the vampire playing it. Furthermore, Voter Captivation requires Presence, superior Presence to gain any pool benefit. Consanguineous Boon doesn't have a maximum limit to the pool that can be gained, it doesn't require a discipline and can therefore be played by vampires with 1-capacity, and it doesn't require another card (i.e. one that provides a political action) in order for it to be played. When you are anvil, be patient; when a hammer, strike. pckvtes.wordpress.com @pckvtes

> Jeff wrote: > > > Juggernaut1981 wrote: > > Voter Cap gives you back blood and pool, it can easily put into the game a lot more pool than ConBoon can. > > > No, it doesn't and it can't. The most pool Voter Cap can put into the game is 2. This is a fixed number. The number of blood counters from Voter Cap is also capped by the capacity of the vampire playing it. Furthermore, Voter Captivation requires Presence, superior Presence to gain any pool benefit. > > Consanguineous Boon doesn't have a maximum limit to the pool that can be gained, it doesn't require a discipline and can therefore be played by vampires with 1-capacity, and it doesn't require another card (i.e. one that provides a political action) in order for it to be played. > I dont think any of these are REALLY a problem like a card that says "Gain 2 pool and fill this vampire to maximum capacity. Only playable during a referendum and with cards you were already going to play." Which is in many cases (Id guess 65-78% of the time) what happens with voter cap. You already were passing a vote with a 10 cap justicar, you have 2-3 princes as well, you called a KRC and had cap and awe in hand. You AWE for 6, gain 12, and have 20 votes. Cards like Awe make reactionary voting a bad idea, since you either have the standing votes to stop the referedum, or they have an Awe and you play DT. Or, if youre crafty, let them vote and awe, and then Touch of Clarity the cap Anyway, more on topic, Con Boon and AP WITH Awe and Vcap are similar to the girls mmpa issue, just not broken. Vote, gain pool, fill a vamp, then minion tap. Then, vote, gain pool, fill a vamp, minion tap, etc. System is straightforward, gains crazy pool. But, you can get: blocked. Dtd. DId. Touch of claritied. Tap suddened. Outvoted. Rushed. Or many other things, so theres balance. If no mmpa decks played ashurs, itd be a fair race to get to 3. Its a deck doing so many tbings with every drawback actually a gain thats a problem. Voter cap is a free card that works PERFECT with any deck that can vote. If you vote, you pump with presence and then cap. You need a vamp with presence, and brown cards, titles optional. Presence and votes are a thing. They monopolize it, mostly because If YOU vote with Ingrid, Niklaus V, and Basilica, the most you get is 1 vote pump from inferior animal magnatism and then a sucessdul vote that MIGHT happen, get outvoted, or DTd. Votes and presence, you for sure will play a vote amd either get blocked, DTd, or pass a vote and gain pool if you have the cards in your hand. No other discipline will come close, since they cany gain pool AND pass votes while filling a vamp too. Ive built a voting Grotesque deck. Zane, Rusticus, Malachai, and like 13 Grotesque. Conboon, second trads, tons of storage annex. But I HAD to get out a vamp and become prince IMMIDIATELY because a freaking primogen was enough to make the whole thing never work. Presence has no such issues. Arika, Lucinde, Victorine, and Anne all sitting to yoir left? Its only 11 votes. Ayo with no other vamps out can call a vote, play AWE, BO, and VC to get 21, pass by 10, gain 2 pool and refil. Its good. Renewed vigor is a Bloodline discipline card and costs a blood. Very good. Anyway, why fan THAT good of a card not be as problematic as Girls MMPA? Its still not as strong a machine.

> ReverendRevolver wrote: > ...Which is in many cases (Id guess 65-78% of the time) what happens with voter cap. You already were passing a vote with a 10 cap justicar, you have 2-3 princes as well, you called a KRC and had cap and awe in hand. You AWE for 6, gain 12, and have 20 votes. > If you can get that set up, you deserve to Voter Cap for a lot (and gain 2 pool). When you are anvil, be patient; when a hammer, strike. pckvtes.wordpress.com @pckvtes

No player deserves a single counter more than 1 from a Voter Cap whenever possible. They are ousting their prey and working towards gaining 6 pool + 1VP... any other counters you let them have is your own foolishness. It's not about 'deserving' things. The point still stands Ankha & Jeff... Voter Cap is easy to dump counters into play and it works while you still go about ousting your prey. For Summon Soul to be equivalent to Ashur Tablets, it needs to be changed to give 4 cards to the library and 1 pool at Superior. Then you're comparing effects with effects... because being able to be blocked is a bigger risk cost than basically crossing your fingers that people are not holding Wash/Sudden Reversel. Retired Baron of Sydney, Australia, 418

> Juggernaut1981 wrote: > No player deserves a single counter more than 1 from a Voter Cap whenever possible. They are ousting their prey and working towards gaining 6 pool + 1VP... any other counters you let them have is your own foolishness. It's not about 'deserving' things. > They do certainly deserve to gain the full benefit of playing a Voter Captivation successfully. They took a successful action, passed a successful referendum and had a special card in play that provides that effect. Kudos to the vote decks! Do you have problems with Social Charm, Legal Manipulation and Kindred Spirits too? Oust your prey and gain pool...with a single card! > The point still stands Ankha & Jeff... Voter Cap is easy to dump counters into play and it works while you still go about ousting your prey. > "Easy"? Says who? That point is debatable. See my above contrast/compare with Con Boon. > For Summon Soul to be equivalent to Ashur Tablets, it needs to be... > A master card. When you are anvil, be patient; when a hammer, strike. pckvtes.wordpress.com @pckvtes

I know I will be oversimplifying things rather a lot here but -as a 'general rule' for Vtes-card design- you could say that any card that adds 5 or more counters (blood or pool) to the game in one go should raise some flags unless there are some very very very serious drawbacks attached (not like e.g Abactor with a Mindraped vampire or with Muaziz/Ariadne). I never understood how Fifth Tradition went to 4 counters (5 would have been ideal here, I feel) and Voter Cap as an 'en passant'-modifier was allowed to stay exactly the same... A Giant's Blood + 2 pool every time you pass a vote with enough votes. Pretty crazy when you consider all the easy ways of gaining votes in some games/metas. Other examples of cards that are potentially game-disrupting IMHO because they add too many counters at once are Ravnos Carnival (6+ counters and you know the game is all but decided), Villeining an 11-cap down to next to nothing (preferably followed by a Giant's Blood and another Villein), Concert Tour though this *does* have severe limitations because of its built-in delay and the small capacities of all-non-Scout Y. , Renewed Vigour @ (also OK thanks to the Scarcity of and the fact that they can only play it on other vampires besides themselves, Festivo, Alamuth + Revolutionary Council, ... In short, I feel Vtes was not made for near-infinite 'dotcom-bubble' or MtG-amounts of counters, but for the more realistic and reasonable '1 to 5' amounts. It is of course a lot of fun to see where it might go with the gloves off but neigh-unfixable 'Return to Innocence'-fiasco's are always SO damn near. Oh, and Ashur Tablets, I feel there is a 'before' and 'after Ashur'-Vtes. That's just how good it is and how deep it affects the game. But it is an interesting card allowing MANY -if at times quite similar- new deck-types, even if it is too vanilla and not nearly Harbingers-flavoured enough for my taste.

I agree that open-ended/unbounded effects are things to be concerned with and generally avoided in design, but, actually, I'd say the correct number is 4 and not 5 for capping effects. I know that breaks the symmetry of the number of players in a game being from 1-5, but that means the cards that are based on number of players can be exceptions that makes them feel more special. Fifth Tradition is a very good card, as it currently is. Whether very good cards are worth card slots, well, that's another story in a world where there are far too many beyond very good cards. Traveller Card Game

Some setups that happen while ousting are properly "deserved". If thucimia with khabar glory ousts with a kindred spirits bleed, its legit. You played cards to set up the extra pool gain that were only going to help with ousting on one axtion (or another oist action for glory). Vc isnt hard to set up. You already were doing what you needed to do in order to capitalize. Daughters can parity shift. They play lily prelude with bribes then cap. No pool requirement. They can deal 4 damage to thier prey then gain 4 pool. With at least 3 cards not countimg vote push setup. So lets call it 7 cards. The prelude, bribes, vc, awe, bo, a fee stake, and conductor. You can parity shift and gain 4, then cap to gain 2 more, then minion tap your 10 cap next turn. Its a stupid good card, but its not the same as tablets due to even presence monopoly on voting not competing with the innerworkings of girls mmpa. We dont need mtg level resource creation. I had a Thallid casual deck that would exponentially generate saprolings. No joke, you needed a calculator doubling season, sporesower, all sorts of other thallids.... Vtes is hard enough without that crap. But we arent even close to that bad yet. Vc is balanced, as is tablets outside of some applications. We have to decide where the machine goes turbo with girls mmpa, since its the big problem.

> Juggernaut1981 wrote: > What I am saying is that managing a finite resource (a library of cards) is a core component of the game. In as much as managing the finite resource of 30 pool is a core component of the game. VTES is also a game about making sure you're the last car to run out of petrol rather than the first car over the line. You only have to ensure you are still going when every other player is not... so resource advantages are big. This is the complaint against Giant's Blood (creating large swing in resources) and Pentex (effectively removing large amounts of resource). > This is an eloquent way to say what many players agree with. Maybe it's because I'm inclined to be on your side, but your arguments against Ashurs have certainly seemed stronger than others' arguments in favor. Huge resource gains are questionable. Getting free access to many cards in your ash heap is questionable. The conversation veered to VC, which is also questionable. It just sometimes feels like some people's reaction is: since it's been printed and I am familiar with it, it is balanced.

> AaronC wrote: > > > Juggernaut1981 wrote: > > What I am saying is that managing a finite resource (a library of cards) is a core component of the game. In as much as managing the finite resource of 30 pool is a core component of the game. VTES is also a game about making sure you're the last car to run out of petrol rather than the first car over the line. You only have to ensure you are still going when every other player is not... so resource advantages are big. This is the complaint against Giant's Blood (creating large swing in resources) and Pentex (effectively removing large amounts of resource). > > > This is an eloquent way to say what many players agree with. > > Maybe it's because I'm inclined to be on your side, but your arguments against Ashurs have certainly seemed stronger than others' arguments in favor. Huge resource gains are questionable. Getting free access to many cards in your ash heap is questionable. The conversation veered to VC, which is also questionable. > > It just sometimes feels like some people's reaction is: since it's been printed and I am familiar with it, it is balanced. > I'd love to take credit, but really it is what I've gotten from hearing Darby and ICL talk about VTES for a while. Plus other debates with Ben Peal and more recently Peter Rophail have convinced me that VTES is not necessarily about crushing all your foes like a tabletop wargame or Monopoly, but ensuring that you are the last one standing and you took others out on the way there. Retired Baron of Sydney, Australia, 418

Perhaps the debate then becomes "Should VTES be a game with huge swings in resources?" If the answer is 'No', then it's hard to argue that cards such as Ashur's Tablets aren't unbalanced. Also included in the list would be the perennial debate targets Giant's Blood and Pentex Subversion, and certainly Voter Captivation (and maybe Autarkis/Con Boon?). Your insight (or Darby's or ICL's) creates a good framework with which to judge card design. Ian (ICL) here voiced again his perennial criticism of VTES that the presence of uber cards means that very good cards see much less play. Maybe VTES should be a game that makes huge swings in resources really hard to pull off. "A huge swing" would also include effects that allowed you to easily get around the uncertainty of what you were going to draw next. That premise would imply that many of the cards we've just been talking about could be or should be changed to make them less good or harder to play. It would also mean admitting that some the popular cards currently in circulation have desiign flaws.

> AaronC wrote: > Perhaps the debate then becomes "Should VTES be a game with huge swings in resources?" If the answer is 'No', then it's hard to argue that cards such as Ashur's Tablets aren't unbalanced. > The retort is "Should VTES be a game with powerful cards?" That answer to that must be "Yes" or else the appeal of the game would be greatly diminished. There is only so much design space if you limit yourself to effects that provide a bonus of 1 or 2 per card. People complain all the time about the disciplines and clans "losing their identity" as they are granted effects that replicate something another discipline does. Giving Thaumaturgy some damage prevention with Rego Motus wasn't the end of the world. There are many other examples where people fretted about this or that with every expansion. But if there are to be powerful cards, some of them must have inherent risks associated with playing them. Ashur Tablets has a very big one built in. You can be totally screwed over if you lose the race to pop them. It is balanced by it being self-limiting. The main problem with Ashur Tablets is that KoT wasn't a big enough print run (could have easily been 2x as large), and now many printed common cards are effectively super rare and expensive. If you want to really see how balanced or imbalanced Ashur Tablets are, play them in *every* deck. I use 6 of them in 95% of my decks, and all of my decks have 66 or fewer cards. I only own 6, but we allow proxies in casual play, and Ascendance is a good proxy card for AT. It's obvious that I think the risk of playing with Ashur Tablets is well worth the reward. But many, many other people don't. Maybe they fear MMPA decks. Maybe they play 90 card decks so the random factor is too much for them. Maybe they don't proxy. Who knows? I think most likely the cost ($50+ per Tablet now) is prohibitive, and I also think this kind of anti-Mr.Suitcase sentiment is a subtext that isn't acknowledged with respect to expensive power cards. I know I wish I could afford to buy 3x Enkil Cog for all my large-cap decks. Back to huge swings... IMO the effect you get for 3 successful Master phase actions (no Sudden Reversal or Washes) and no "contesting" of Ashur Tablets is not a huge swing. As a thought experiment, consider this hypothetical card: Tablet Master. Remove this card from the game as it is played. Gain 1 pool and move up to X cards from your ash heap to your library. Shuffle afterward. What is the appropriate value of "X"? When you are anvil, be patient; when a hammer, strike. pckvtes.wordpress.com @pckvtes

> Jeff wrote: > > > AaronC wrote: > > Perhaps the debate then becomes "Should VTES be a game with huge swings in resources?" If the answer is 'No', then it's hard to argue that cards such as Ashur's Tablets aren't unbalanced. > > > The retort is "Should VTES be a game with powerful cards?" That answer to that must be "Yes" or else the appeal of the game would be greatly diminished. > > There is only so much design space if you limit yourself to effects that provide a bonus of 1 or 2 per card. People complain all the time about the disciplines and clans "losing their identity" as they are granted effects that replicate something another discipline does. Giving Thaumaturgy some damage prevention with Rego Motus wasn't the end of the world. There are many other examples where people fretted about this or that with every expansion. > > But if there are to be powerful cards, some of them must have inherent risks associated with playing them. Ashur Tablets has a very big one built in. You can be totally screwed over if you lose the race to pop them. It is balanced by it being self-limiting. The main problem with Ashur Tablets is that KoT wasn't a big enough print run (could have easily been 2x as large), and now many printed common cards are effectively super rare and expensive. > > If you want to really see how balanced or imbalanced Ashur Tablets are, play them in *every* deck. I use 6 of them in 95% of my decks, and all of my decks have 66 or fewer cards. I only own 6, but we allow proxies in casual play, and Ascendance is a good proxy card for AT. > > It's obvious that I think the risk of playing with Ashur Tablets is well worth the reward. But many, many other people don't. Maybe they fear MMPA decks. Maybe they play 90 card decks so the random factor is too much for them. Maybe they don't proxy. Who knows? I think most likely the cost ($50+ per Tablet now) is prohibitive, and I also think this kind of anti-Mr.Suitcase sentiment is a subtext that isn't acknowledged with respect to expensive power cards. I know I wish I could afford to buy 3x Enkil Cog for all my large-cap decks. > > Back to huge swings... > IMO the effect you get for 3 successful Master phase actions (no Sudden Reversal or Washes) and no "contesting" of Ashur Tablets is not a huge swing. As a thought experiment, consider this hypothetical card: > > Tablet > Master. > Remove this card from the game as it is played. Gain 1 pool and move up to X cards from your ash heap to your library. Shuffle afterward. > > What is the appropriate value of "X"? > At least 2 cards for it to be useful, but you have to take into account that it has no drawback, son it's way better than AT. More than 3 cards would be an abuse. And that said, that wouldn't avoid many decks of playing that card instead of AT for other sideeffects, but most of the decks would play ordinary tablets instead. And what would you think of a triffle card called "Ashur Tablet Fragments". Same effect as AT, but you need 9 and triffle (or being able to combine it with AT). It would be cool on a new set to balance the fact that AT is not widely available to all players.

I'd say the reasons Ashur Tablets aren't played more is some combination of: 1. Owning them (lack of). 2. Not realizing how to optimally leverage them. 3. Having other things to do. 4. Not needing them to win. Obviously, you can with without them. You can win with all sorts of suboptimal stuff. Now, whether Ashur Tablets are optimal is a function of a particular design. I am inclined to use them when I'm either playing a deck full of one-ofs or a highly redundant deck that blows through lots of cards or a deck like stealth bleed where you want to play with your deck mix during the game. But, I'm not inclined to play with them hardly at all ... because it's boring to suck up 6/7/9/10/12/13/15 slots on the same card. The idea of playing six in every deck is rather unappealing from an aesthetic viewpoint. Now, sure, Blood Doll used to be a five-of in any deck without Minion Tap and WWEF was a six-of in any deck that reacted, but those cards still exist (well, On the Qui Vive exists, WWEF barely does anymore, which is mind-blowing when you think of how powerful it is), so now it's X cards to do one thing, Y cards to do another thing, Z cards to make "broken" decks. Boring. Deck diversity is an essential element to CCGs. There are plenty of cards that could be abused more, not just by ownership of those cards, but simply because of the interest in trying to abuse them. In a two-player CCG, it would happen because you have to build the best decks possible to compete. In a multiplayer CCG, you don't need to build the best decks, so people often don't. V:TES is still playable as a game because it's multiplayer. Every two-player CCG I've played that stopped expanding died. Every multiplayer CCG I've played to any significant level is still quite playable, even one that stopped expanding around a decade ago. In fact, my problem isn't lack of new cards, it's too many existing cards. Aaron mentions my interest in getting rid of certain power cards. There are reasons to do that, though they aren't straightforward at all and may make a game worse - who knows until you do it? But, anyway, for a game that doesn't expand, one way to change the environment is to remove cards. Remove, say, all events from the current environment and the game won't play quite the same way. Given just how large the card pool is, there are plenty of things I'd remove, not just from a power standpoint but from an ease of play standpoint to try to bring in new players and not flood them with a bunch of low value mechanics, like Red List, Slave, Scarce, Blood Cursed, Sterile. Jumping to another point, I have often explained V:TES as a game of small effects ... with exceptions. I could say that I don't mind larger effects from larger efforts, but I don't know that that's true. What's wrong with a game of many interlocking small effects? In general, when I see large effects, I see worse games, whether it was "everyone dies to Return to Innocence" or "I call a vote and burn your vampire" or even just "prevent, Disarm, Decapitate", which is not remotely easy but a potentially massive swing. On the other hand, V:TES goes faster when people lose quicker, so there is an argument for causing people's positions to become suddenly untenable. Complicated stuff because there's no single answer. So many polls or threads are about removing one offending card. I'd like to see a rebuild of the game, weeding out a lot of both "boring power" and worthless junk, try to make the game playable to a new generation. Shadowfist has kind of tried this with the Modern, non-random set format, but it doesn't seem to have made anyone happy (might help to actually market the Modern format), so there may be no good answer. Fortunately, V:TES is quite playable and arguably far less broken than it has been at other times. Traveller Card Game

> ICL wrote: > I'd say the reasons Ashur Tablets aren't played more is some combination of: > > 1. Owning them (lack of). > > 2. Not realizing how to optimally leverage them. > > 3. Having other things to do. > > 4. Not needing them to win. > Yes. And as someone previously said, many players will include 6+ in most of their decks. I guess I fall in category 5 : not liking to play that way. I'm trying them out in a few decks to get the feel of it and have more arguments against them (couldn't put the combo in place last game, and I was doomed there anyway), but I still don't like it. In Heroclix, games used to be with one team of figs against another. Then they invented ressources, which are things you put on top of a fig (like the BatBelt, Rings of the Mandarin of whatever), which went overboard fast and totally broke the game. And now they let out some Entities which can possess your figs and make them even more broken. Result ? In the official tournament format, EVERYONE plays either a Ressource, 2+ entities (they're cheap) or BOTH. Is the game playable ? Sure. Is it enjoyable ? No. Do you HAVE to play that way to win ? YES. So I (and many, many players who feel like me) play only in non-official tournaments which ban all those (Heroclix isn't like VTES in the sense that it can accept easily scenarios where you can't play this or must play that). Do I want VTES to become like this ? FUCK NO ! So yeah, a game where most every deck plays 6+ Ashur Tablets would be boring as hell, and I sure want to avoid getting there (which would be the case if / when the Tablets became widely available without any errata).

> ICL wrote: > Now, whether Ashur Tablets are optimal is a function of a particular design. I am inclined to use them when I'm either playing a deck full of one-ofs or a highly redundant deck that blows through lots of cards or a deck like stealth bleed where you want to play with your deck mix during the game. > > But, I'm not inclined to play with them hardly at all ... because it's boring to suck up 6/7/9/10/12/13/15 slots on the same card. The idea of playing six in every deck is rather unappealing from an aesthetic viewpoint. > Highly redundant decks which blow through a lot of cards can be fun to play and not boring for certain values of "boring." Maybe card limits are the way to go! Playing with your deck mix is of course part of the power of Ashur Tablets. One of my favorite deck types with them is G2/3 Ahrimanes bleed & block. Based on the situation, you get back bleed, stealth, intercept or combat cards. Or... not, if someone else pops the Tablets first. > Deck diversity is an essential element to CCGs. > I find that using Ashur Tablets in almost all my decks actually gives me a lot of flexibility that I wouldn't otherwise have. In particular, the not negligible pool gain may provide a buffer to allow some weaker deck archetypes (e.g. rush combat without bleed bounce) to survive long enough to stabilize when faced with a highly aggressive predator. When I first started packing decks with Tablets, I was one of the only local players do to so. Now more people are doing it and that's a good thing. There are more races to pop them than before. I can't rely on that pool gain buffer like I used to. When a playgroup gets to that critical mass, then you really start to see the whole dynamic as the metagame changes. When you are anvil, be patient; when a hammer, strike. pckvtes.wordpress.com @pckvtes

> Orpheus wrote: > So yeah, a game where most every deck plays 6+ Ashur Tablets would be boring as hell, and I sure want to avoid getting there (which would be the case if / when the Tablets became widely available without any errata). > I can't see anything supporting your prediction (and I don't believe in it a single second) so it's pure speculation. If one day everybody plays with 6 Ashur Tablets, then something will probably be done. Until then... Prince of Paris, France Ratings Coordinator, Rules Director

> Jeff wrote: > There is only so much design space if you limit yourself to effects that provide a bonus of 1 or 2 per card. People complain all the time about the disciplines and clans "losing their identity" as they are granted effects that replicate something another discipline does. Giving Thaumaturgy some damage prevention with Rego Motus wasn't the end of the world. There are many other examples where people fretted about this or that with every expansion. > I think you very successfully attempted to plumb the depths of mediocrity in your own designs, but don't forget, interesting and potentially powerful does not have to break the game or result in power-creep as long as we are adding in a diversity of ways of actually achieving the goal. Danse Macabre had some good examples of that. The risk associated with Ashur Tablets is rather low. Opportunity costs are not huge, and as you said there are relatively few in print for the 'table clear' effect to be frequent and damaging to others Ashur Tablets. And of course the risk-reward equation is in favour of playing them... I'm suggesting the rewards are too good. So thank you for confirming it Jeff. Your reply to ICL just confirms the other claim I made, that it allows in-game sideboarding or as Darby put it Card Probability Set restructuring in game. Another way to put the same idea is that if you built a toolbox, you can now 'un-toolbox' it by redrawing the parts of the toolbox that are more effective in the environment and convert a toolbox into a S&B or Combat Wall or Vote-Push deck during the game. Retired Baron of Sydney, Australia, 418

> Ankha wrote: > > > Orpheus wrote: > > So yeah, a game where most every deck plays 6+ Ashur Tablets would be boring as hell, and I sure want to avoid getting there (which would be the case if / when the Tablets became widely available without any errata). > > > I can't see anything supporting your prediction (and I don't believe in it a single second) so it's pure speculation. If one day everybody plays with 6 Ashur Tablets, then something will probably be done. Until then... > Please see ICL & Kuta's comments that Ashur Tablets are scarce due to limited supply. Also please check ebay. This is why everyone won't be playing with 6... owning six is a challenge of its own. Retired Baron of Sydney, Australia, 418

Here in Brazil we use to play 9 , almost 20% of the players have it. But yes, the value is due to supply, and not specifically power. Roberto Mautone Jr. Praetor

> Juggernaut1981 wrote: > > > Ankha wrote: > > > > > Orpheus wrote: > > > So yeah, a game where most every deck plays 6+ Ashur Tablets would be boring as hell, and I sure want to avoid getting there (which would be the case if / when the Tablets became widely available without any errata). > > > > > I can't see anything supporting your prediction (and I don't believe in it a single second) so it's pure speculation. If one day everybody plays with 6 Ashur Tablets, then something will probably be done. Until then... > > > Please see ICL & Kuta's comments that Ashur Tablets are scarce due to limited supply. Also please check ebay. This is why everyone won't be playing with 6... owning six is a challenge of its own. > It only takes 1 player with broken cards to win tournament more easily, and you can find that type of 1 person in any tournament. So being scarce has no impact on the fact that the card is broken or not (there will be always someone playing it). Yet, I don't see a deck with Ashur Tablets trusting the tournament scene. Villeins on the other hand are in 47% of the TWD and it seems we've get used to people regaining 8 pool with a Trifle. Prince of Paris, France Ratings Coordinator, Rules Director

Ashurs is an enabler of rather powerful strategies, some quite overpowered with only niche cards to counter it. The cons of Ashurs are near non-existant in most playgroups and even tournaments due to scarcity of the card. To me there's no question it needs to be dealt with one way or the other. Since POD is not an option on the short to mid term, errata and/or PDF expansion seems to be the only other options. Errata: - Allow retreival of only combat cards (kills MMPA abuse) Rational: Pro active combat deck that burn a lot of cards can still benefit from Ashurs, perhaps even the only way to play with celerity these days. Explicitly only combat cards since you can still make overpowered combinations when you allow retrieval of minion cards. PDF Expansion: - Bring out a weaker (trifle) version that also removes Ashur's tablet from game when conditions are met or makes Ashur's more painful to play. See also Vessel vs Blooddoll and Villein vs Minion tap tech. Rational: The main reason Ashur's seems overpowered is because it's quite safe to play with no downside whatsoever. This due to scarcity, you could solve that this way. I'd still restrict it to a specific card type though... Even in this form, it's too game changing. --- Thing is, Ashur's not only recycles cards into your deck, but it allows you to customise your deck on the fly and create a more powerful deck during the game that reacts to the meta of the game. In that respect, it's almost as bad as switching seat tech... It allows you to be put in the best position possible , mitigating choice weaknesses. Bleed predator? Recycle redirections, Combat predator? Recycle maneuvers and CE, and so on... And since you can recycle up to 13 cards, that leaves enough room to recycle defense along with ousting strategy. I've only been up against a deck using Ashurs once, a week ago. Another powerful card (pentex) locked me in turn 2 and got bled to death in turn 4, so I got to enjoy spectating the Ashur's deck in ful motion. All he did at first was recycle pentex, telepathic misdirection and Second Tradition, weakening real threats (combat) with pentex and then redirecting the left over bleed decks switching to ousting strategy when it was head to head. Brilliant play, made possible by Ashurs. Thing is, there was nothing people could do about it except keeping me alive, but it was too early in the game to realize that... I don't mind Ashur's that much, since I'll probably only see it played once a few years, but there's no denying it's too powerful as an enabler and meta adapter, but quite balanced for pro active combat decks that need to burn a lot of cards. -1 Strength

The best fix is to randomize the cards that get put back into your deck. It fixes the problem you just mentioned. Result: 1. No more chunk of minutes lost when Ashurs go off as player decides which 13 cards to choose. (Or fewer minutes, if the player is one of those who is not capable of shuffling expeditiously.) 2. No more late-game virtual sideboarding/deck optimization, which breaks a basic paradigm of the CCG genre. It has always seemed to me that Ashur Tablets were meant to be tech for decks that actually ran out of cards. I think that's reasonable, and needed, especially for combat decks that cycle a lot of red and need a pool boost late in the game. The ability to retune your deck at will late in the game, and burning up precious minutes while you do so, is not reasonable.

I think you should play more AT to see it's drawbacks. I remember the French Open in 2013. I had a Girls deck as prey and another one as predator (prey Girls + Inners and pred Girls will find aids). They where clearly playing both against me (predator rushed, prey deflected and pooled a lot). I won the table with 3 VPs and I had no silver bullets against MMPA decks. I helped ousting both prey and pred and I stayed 1 vs. 1 against... surprise, a Nephandus Ashur + Liquidation deck and I won. The Nephandus deck was on the finals, I won it again and he wans't even close of doing one single VP and he had the best position on the table. Last French Nationals (the first day's open) I played myself a MMPA deck (Girls + Inners) and I got my ass kicked in 2 out of 3 tables. 3rd table I won and it wasn't that clear (again I stayed 1 vs. 1 against a Nephandus Ashur + Liquidation deck, same deck as the year before but different player). 2nd day of French Nationals I played the deck I won Spanish Nationals with, a Nana&Friends POT/ANI built-in rush deck, with not that good results (I did 2-2,5 VPs on the whole tournament, and I only had another AT deck in one table, Ankha with his Giotto Verducci "Council of Doom" deck). As I say, if you think a card is broken, you should play it more to have a better opinion about it. Eventhough, VTES is a 5 player game, so if the table feels you're the BIG threat, you can easily end up playing against 4 players. Even with AT you cannot manage playing against 4 players.

> cordovader wrote: > As I say, if you think a card is broken, you should play it more to have a better opinion about it. > > Eventhough, VTES is a 5 player game, so if the table feels you're the BIG threat, you can easily end up playing against 4 players. Even with AT you cannot manage playing against 4 players. > I have played enough both with and against AT to know the card is a) broken and b) boring. Sure, if all players at a table are good players who can judge what is a threat and not, the MMPA-decks aren´t worse than any other strong decks. But the problem is that most games aren´t so. And this game can´t all be about competetive play. Well, at least that is not the intention if you ask the current Design Team. "My strategy? Luck is my strategy, of course."

> Ashur wrote: > I have played enough both with and against AT to know the card is a) broken and b) boring. > Well, really again no facts for a), being b) a subjective consideration, so not really an argument. Is it more boring an AT deck or an Una/Madness + Reversal/Mata-Hari 50 freak drives? Again that is a subjective impression. I have read also a definition of what the resources in a game are, but since there are other cards that allow recursion (Sudario Refraction/WMO etc.) we can estimate it's an extra resource. There are even other cards that allow some use of other players Ash Heap (Bujo, Daemonic Possession, Trochomancy etc.), that's why there exists a "removed card area". There is even Reinforcements (Final Nights, accessible to all clans), pretty comparable to AT in terms of cards recovered to your library, with it's advantages and disadvantages. You can find even vampires with recursion (Undele, Drozodny), having even the advantage of taking the cards back to the hand, playable during the whole game, even when we run out of library (Sudario Refraction is no longer "available" when you run out of cards, for example). So, the debate shouldn't be if AT is broken or not (since it has it's own way of self-control with other ATs), it should be if recursion is broken or not and, if it is a resource to take into account, under which circumstances should it be legit. Should we stick firmly to the "role" of each clan/discipline or should we allow certain flexibility to have a larger variety of TWDs? As Ankha pointed out, Villein is a triffle card, played on 47% of the TWDs. Should we ban it given that there's already a card that does a similar effect (Minion Tap)? Comparing to the combination AT + Liquidation, we could compare also Villein + Voter Cap, being the pool reward of Villein + Voter Cap far more unbalancing in most cases than AT + Liquidation. Which card is mostly played, AT or Deflection? Is it legit to just sit and wait till your pred bleeds you to redirect the bleeds he does to your prey? Which combo is more broken, a Victor Pelletier that does a Parity Shift for 5 on 2nd turn or no-matter-what AT deck? As always it depends on the context. It is true that it is a powerful mechanic, but not more than other mechanics in the game.

I still stand firm that girls style mmpa is the broken component here, not the tablets, which are simply very good. Something being "balanced" by a whole table killing it isnt really balanced. Imbued can in theory be dealt with this way, but sometimez that one player lets them set up a little too much, and then the game is wrecked until 5 turns from the end. The Nergal storyline deck is even worse about this. And its not tourney legal. So, again, if we have all seen good decks with ashurs still get beaten routinely, but one other style really break things, that sounds like a problem beyond one card. The table shouldnt have to deal with 50 pool. Mikkel had a Journal of Hrosh deck that gained mad pool that was less a burden than girls mmpa. Unless someones playing gesla harden and kindred spirits to always cross table trochomancy, girls will work and gain pool.

> cordovader wrote: > > As Ankha pointed out, Villein is a triffle card, played on 47% of the TWDs. Should we ban it given that there's already a card that does a similar effect (Minion Tap)? > Yes! > cordovader wrote: > Comparing to the combination AT + Liquidation, we could compare also Villein + Voter Cap, being the pool reward of Villein + Voter Cap far more unbalancing in most cases than AT + Liquidation. > Voter Cap is also bad, and the issue isn't the pool gain of AT. You've brushed off the recursion aspect by saying, "That should be the debate." The debate isn't whether recursion is bad, the debate is at what scale recursion becomes bad.

> Juggernaut1981 wrote: > I think you very successfully attempted to plumb the depths of mediocrity in your own designs, but don't forget, interesting and potentially powerful does not have to break the game or result in power-creep as long as we are adding in a diversity of ways of actually achieving the goal. Danse Macabre had some good examples of that. > Keep up with the sycophantic trolling. That seems to be your favorite medium to express your clever ideas. > The risk associated with Ashur Tablets is rather low. Opportunity costs are not huge, and as you said there are relatively few in print for the 'table clear' effect to be frequent and damaging to others Ashur Tablets. And of course the risk-reward equation is in favour of playing them... I'm suggesting the rewards are too good. > The card that breaks Ashur Tablets isn't Ashur Tablets. It's Liquidation. A simple first turn Master card that gives 3 pool with almost no drawback is what creates the bloat issues that keeps Girls MMPA decks alive. Successfully popping Ashur Tablets requires 3 MPAs and no "contesting" of the tablets. That's a scarcity issue, not a power issue. > So thank you for confirming it Jeff. > Misreading again, as always. > Your reply to ICL just confirms the other claim I made, that it allows in-game sideboarding or as Darby put it Card Probability Set restructuring in game. > Claim? Thank you Captain Obvious. Ashur Tablets was clearly designed to allow you to retune your deck from the ash heap. Sometimes its nice to have a chance to make a smart decision in game that may pay off down the road. Many people would rather have 3x Villein, or 3x Dreams of the Sphinx, or 3x Sudden Reversal than 3x Ashur Tablets in their deck. > Another way to put the same idea is that if you built a toolbox, you can now 'un-toolbox' it by redrawing the parts of the toolbox that are more effective in the environment and convert a toolbox into a S&B or Combat Wall or Vote-Push deck during the game. > Congratulations on discovering the wonders of using Ashur Tablets. Now go proxy some and use them more often and understand their real drawbacks! When you are anvil, be patient; when a hammer, strike. pckvtes.wordpress.com @pckvtes

> AaronC wrote: > 1. No more chunk of minutes lost when Ashurs go off as player decides which 13 cards to choose. (Or fewer minutes, if the player is one of those who is not capable of shuffling expeditiously.) > If anything, this is the biggest drawback to Ashur Tablets. > 2. No more late-game virtual sideboarding/deck optimization, which breaks a basic paradigm of the CCG genre. > > It has always seemed to me that Ashur Tablets were meant to be tech for decks that actually ran out of cards. I think that's reasonable, and needed, especially for combat decks that cycle a lot of red and need a pool boost late in the game. The ability to retune your deck at will late in the game, and burning up precious minutes while you do so, is not reasonable. > The burning up precious minutes may not be reasonable since some players take way too long to sift through their ash heap, especially late in the game. Tuning your deck has been part of the game since Day 1 with Magic of the Smith, Al's Army Apparatus, Arms Dealer, and Vast Wealth. Searching isn't the same as recursion, but it isn't unusual. "The Other Game" had Regrowth and has much more recursion now. Is that a problem? When you are anvil, be patient; when a hammer, strike. pckvtes.wordpress.com @pckvtes

> ReverendRevolver wrote: > The table shouldnt have to deal with 50 pool. > If gaining pool is the real issue, then Ashur Tablets contribution to that issue is minimal and indirect. When you are anvil, be patient; when a hammer, strike. pckvtes.wordpress.com @pckvtes

> cordovader wrote: > As Ankha pointed out, Villein is a triffle card, played on 47% of the TWDs. Should we ban it given that there's already a card that does a similar effect (Minion Tap)? > > AaronC wrote: > Yes! > No card that anyone bought from a pack for will ever be banned while the current administration is in charge. When you are anvil, be patient; when a hammer, strike. pckvtes.wordpress.com @pckvtes

First: This is a discussion forum, so I guess you have to accept that I use subjective arguments, sorry. Then I´m somewhat confused, why to you compare ANY recursion (like Reinforcements, come on!!) with AT? Like AaronC said: The debate isn't whether recursion is bad, the debate is at what scale recursion becomes bad. I´m not exactely sure if it is AT that is the key broken component here, but with Liquidation and Anthelios it get´s a bit too ugly to be fun. And like ReverendRevolver said: Something being "balanced" by a whole table killing it isnt really balanced. I´m sick and tired over certain decks winning just because good players aren´t good enough players to convince newbies that certain decks are too much of a threat not to gang up on. That kind of games are so incredibly boring (subjetive argument again, sorry!) "My strategy? Luck is my strategy, of course."

> Jeff wrote: > No card that anyone bought from a pack for will ever be banned while the current administration is in charge. > Huh? Finnish Politics!

> Jeff wrote: > > > ReverendRevolver wrote: > > The table shouldnt have to deal with 50 pool. > > > If gaining pool is the real issue, then Ashur Tablets contribution to that issue is minimal and indirect. > Thats what Ive been saying. You play two delay ascendances and then a normal ome to cash in the other two, and an assload of cards. Its the Girls-o-tron 5000(!©) that breaks the whole damn thing. Especially the masters that become a bounce, extra pentex/DI as needed, and so on. The pool reaching 50 happens,when you can golconda and recur said golconda and a villein or six. Magic also had gaeas blessing or whatever for 1G, and if it got milled into your heap, you got to shuffle said heap baxk to your dexk. Also, you lose if unable to draw a card, so its a tad different for us. And I dont even entirely disagree with you, because that opening liquidation is wher AT starts to break stuff, but jabs at the Vekn for not banning cards when people are still pissed about not errataing LB (not from a pack, i concede) is odd. Plainly, they are looking into stuff. Constantly. Its Pascals call, and hes a very thout out decision maker on thwse. Blaming "current administration" here works less well than even normal. Pascal is this vague and malevalent "them" and its freakin Pascal, so hes incredibly nice and tactical about rules decisions.

> Jeff wrote: > > > Juggernaut1981 wrote: > > The risk associated with Ashur Tablets is rather low. Opportunity costs are not huge, and as you said there are relatively few in print for the 'table clear' effect to be frequent and damaging to others Ashur Tablets. And of course the risk-reward equation is in favour of playing them... I'm suggesting the rewards are too good. > > > The card that breaks Ashur Tablets isn't Ashur Tablets. It's Liquidation. A simple first turn Master card that gives 3 pool with almost no drawback is what creates the bloat issues that keeps Girls MMPA decks alive. Successfully popping Ashur Tablets requires 3 MPAs and no "contesting" of the tablets. That's a scarcity issue, not a power issue. > Liquidation is only useful if you need things in your ashheap later (i.e. Corrupt Construction, Vulture's Buffet, Shambling Hordes, etc). Without that need, Liquidation only becomes broken when you be guaranteed to return all those cards and offset the lost-opportunity cost of throwing away the top 7 cards. Ashur Tablets breaks Liquidation, not the reverse. > Jeff wrote: > > > Juggernaut1981 wrote: > > So thank you for confirming it Jeff. > > > Misreading again, as always. > You confirmed my point. It is there in black and white, we said the same thing. We draw different conclusions. > Jeff wrote: > > > Juggernaut1981 wrote: > > Your reply to ICL just confirms the other claim I made, that it allows in-game sideboarding or as Darby put it Card Probability Set restructuring in game. > > > Claim? Thank you Captain Obvious. Ashur Tablets was clearly designed to allow you to retune your deck from the ash heap. > > Sometimes its nice to have a chance to make a smart decision in game that may pay off down the road. Many people would rather have 3x Villein, or 3x Dreams of the Sphinx, or 3x Sudden Reversal than 3x Ashur Tablets in their deck. > So yes, you agree with me that Ashur Tablets allows you to redesign the ratio of cards in your deck while playing the deck. Darby, ICL and myself claim that this card is the equivalent of sideboarding during the game, something never otherwise done in VTES and rarely done even in MtG (AFAIK). > Jeff wrote: > > > Juggernaut1981 wrote: > > Another way to put the same idea is that if you built a toolbox, you can now 'un-toolbox' it by redrawing the parts of the toolbox that are more effective in the environment and convert a toolbox into a S&B or Combat Wall or Vote-Push deck during the game. > > > Congratulations on discovering the wonders of using Ashur Tablets. Now go proxy some and use them more often and understand their real drawbacks! > Used them, I know what they do and I also realise that the opportunity costs of the card are not what you claim even if a large number appeared in circulation. Retired Baron of Sydney, Australia, 418

> Juggernaut1981 wrote: > Liquidation is only useful if you need things in your ashheap later (i.e. Corrupt Construction, Vulture's Buffet, Shambling Hordes, etc). Without that need, Liquidation only becomes broken when you be guaranteed to return all those cards and offset the lost-opportunity cost of throwing away the top 7 cards. Ashur Tablets breaks Liquidation, not the reverse. > Seriously? "Liquidation is only useful if..." You're going to discount the 3 pool gain entirely? I know your judgment is kind of flawed, but wow. 3 pool for a single master card, guaranteed. No questions asked, and a minor restriction. At least Tend the Flock requires a vampire in play and a younger, infernal target. > So yes, you agree with me that Ashur Tablets allows you to redesign the ratio of cards in your deck while playing the deck. Darby, ICL and myself claim that this card is the equivalent of sideboarding during the game, something never otherwise done in VTES and rarely done even in MtG (AFAIK). > Um...again, there's no "claim" to it at all. The card does what it does. You are correct in pointing out something that other people have observed already, many times. Again, so what? Ashur Tablets only brings into sharper focus the cards that are extremely strong, because they get used over and over again during the course of a game. When you are anvil, be patient; when a hammer, strike. pckvtes.wordpress.com @pckvtes

> ReverendRevolver wrote: > Plainly, they are looking into stuff. Constantly. Its Pascals call, and hes a very thout out decision maker on thwse. Blaming "current administration" here works less well than even normal. Pascal is this vague and malevalent "them" and its freakin Pascal, so hes incredibly nice and tactical about rules decisions. > I have said many times that Pascal is one of the hardest working members of the Inner Circle. (And lately Gines, who I'm sure spends more time getting art together than designers spend mulling over cards.) If the decision were solely up to him, I think he'd make the right one. But there are other pressures that will block any decision to ban cards that people have bought out of packs. Those are things beyond Pascal's control. When you are anvil, be patient; when a hammer, strike. pckvtes.wordpress.com @pckvtes

Topic is called "Balancing Ashur Tablets", would be nice if this turned into a constructive thread Liquidation + AT is one gamebreaking combination, it's a prime example on how AT can be abused. Liquidation by itself is not overpowered, burning 7 cards for 3 pool is quite a sacrifice. There's no denying however that AT enables a lot more powerful combinations and it DOES provide an in-game sidedeck, such is the design of the card. The only downside of the card is pulling it off before someone else does. "The only downside of the card is pulling it off before someone else does." Plain and simple, without AT competition, the card is broken. You cannot mitigate this problem with sudden reversals or trochomancy. Well you can with trochomancy, but a player that uses AT can be pretty sure he will see trochomancy against him as often as AT (probably even less so)... I liked Jeff Kuta's idea, "Fragment of Ashur's Tablet" that could return the AT competition. Something along the line of: Fragment of Ashur's Tablet, Master, Trifle Card text: Put this card in play. Remove all Fragment of Ashur's Tablets AND Ashur's Tablet in play from the game when you have 3 Fragments of Ashur's Tablets in play to gain 1 pool and you may select up to 5 cards in your ashheap and reshuffle them into your library. The tech to recycle cards is not flawed, however 13 cards is over the top imho. -1 Strength

> GreyB wrote: > I liked Jeff Kuta's idea, "Fragment of Ashur's Tablet" that could return the AT competition. Something along the line of: > > Fragment of Ashur's Tablet, Master, Trifle > Card text: > Put this card in play. Remove all Fragment of Ashur's Tablets AND Ashur's Tablet in play from the game when you have 3 Fragments of Ashur's Tablets in play to gain 1 pool and you may select up to 5 cards in your ashheap and reshuffle them into your library. > > The tech to recycle cards is not flawed, however 13 cards is over the top imho. > This idea it terrible for two big reasons: 1) It is a silver bullet, right out of the Villein playbook. 2) It doesn't have enough reason for you to play it other than stopping others playing it, which is the main reason why people put Pentex Subversion and Giant's Blood into most decks. Tech to recycle cards has been sitting at: 1) RFG the card you play and it is some form of action. 2) 4 cards at most. 3) No secondary benefit to card recycling. People already object to Anthelios and it is 'trade a Master for a Master'. You rarely see Summon Soul played. Sudario Refraction is not particularly common. Reinforcements is rarely played. Fragment isn't commonly played. WMO is rare, mostly because !Brujah are rare and it is worth its slot when it is drawn early. As a constructive point, we should drop the power of Ashur Tablets. Most common suggestions are: 1) Restrict the cards it can return, let it give you pool. 2) Let it give you unrestricted cards, and no pool. 3) Restrict the cards it can return and no pool. 4) Nerf it to the point where it is banned by proxy (depowered so it is left out of decks) 5) Just ban it outright to avoid the errata problems. "New card solutions" all end up advocating for silver bullets or some form of punitive carpet bomb on MMPA. Retired Baron of Sydney, Australia, 418

> Jeff wrote: > No card that anyone bought from a pack for will ever be banned while the current administration is in charge. > > Jeff wrote: > I have said many times that Pascal is one of the hardest working members of the Inner Circle. (And lately Gines, who I'm sure spends more time getting art together than designers spend mulling over cards.) > How would you know? Stop the unjustified accusations, please, or leave forever and never come back. > Jeff wrote: > If the decision were solely up to him, I think he'd make the right one. But there are other pressures that will block any decision to ban cards that people have bought out of packs. Those are things beyond Pascal's control. > What "other pressures"?? Stop the unjustified accusations, please, or leave forever and never come back. I think that you've caused enough damage around here and your minor contributions are far outweighed by your constant scab-picking and trolling the good, hard-working volunteers or this community. I had thought that MAYBE you had put all of this filth behind you. It saddens me deeply to see that I was wrong. What a shame that you are still mentally ill with lingering paranoia and lashing out at the ones that you believe hurt you with both subtle and unjustified accusations is still your prime motivating factor. MODERATORS: I'm calling for a public forum and serious consideration to ban Jeff Kuta from this website unless a public apology is given from his for his continued unjustified accusations against the various parties involved. His presence HURTS this website and his unjustified accusations are borderline libelous. When one finds cancer, one cuts out the cancer. Jeff Kuta is a cancer on this website and on the game that we all love and his continued actions prove that he cares for neither. 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! vtesville.myminicity.com/ Facebook: www.facebook.com/groups/129744447064017

> KevinM wrote: > > > Jeff wrote: > > No card that anyone bought from a pack for will ever be banned while the current administration is in charge. > > > > Jeff wrote: > > I have said many times that Pascal is one of the hardest working members of the Inner Circle. (And lately Gines, who I'm sure spends more time getting art together than designers spend mulling over cards.) > > > How would you know? Stop the unjustified accusations, please, or leave forever and never come back. > > > Jeff wrote: > > If the decision were solely up to him, I think he'd make the right one. But there are other pressures that will block any decision to ban cards that people have bought out of packs. Those are things beyond Pascal's control. > > > What "other pressures"?? Stop the unjustified accusations, please, or leave forever and never come back. > > I think that you've caused enough damage around here and your minor contributions are far outweighed by your constant scab-picking and trolling the good, hard-working volunteers or this community. I had thought that MAYBE you had put all of this filth behind you. It saddens me deeply to see that I was wrong. > > What a shame that you are still mentally ill with lingering paranoia and lashing out at the ones that you believe hurt you with both subtle and unjustified accusations is still your prime motivating factor. > > MODERATORS: I'm calling for a public forum and serious consideration to ban Jeff Kuta from this website unless a public apology is given from his for his continued unjustified accusations against the various parties involved. His presence HURTS this website and his unjustified accusations are borderline libelous. > > When one finds cancer, one cuts out the cancer. Jeff Kuta is a cancer on this website and on the game that we all love and his continued actions prove that he cares for neither. > Erm... Perhaps you should actually read the quotes you quoted... Seems to me that Jeff said nothing disrespectful nor anything close to an accusation... As someone new to these forums I just have to step back and marvel at these petty squables that make no sense... ps. would be nice if this turned into a constructive thread!!! *HINT HINT* -1 Strength

> Juggernaut1981 wrote: > So yes, you agree with me that Ashur Tablets allows you to redesign the ratio of cards in your deck while playing the deck. Darby, ICL and myself claim that this card is the equivalent of sideboarding during the game, something never otherwise done in VTES and rarely done even in MtG (AFAIK). > Not that rarely done in MtG. At one point there where some decks playing it, being one archetype the most played of the set: gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?action=advanced&name=+[wish]+[wish]&set=+[%22Judgment%22] You have 5 cards that do that, no one complained (AFAIK). > GreyB wrote: > Liquidation + AT is one gamebreaking combination, it's a prime example on how AT can be abused. Liquidation by itself is not overpowered, burning 7 cards for 3 pool is quite a sacrifice. > > There's no denying however that AT enables a lot more powerful combinations and it DOES provide an in-game sidedeck, such is the design of the card. The only downside of the card is pulling it off before someone else does. > And again: which are the facts that back your assessment? ATs have other downsides: -You're stopping playing other master cards (so you're choosing ATs from other masters you could play) -ATs decks have usually a lower proportion of useful cards for the beginning of the game, being this proportion corrected during the game (being slower at the beginning and having a better cardflow towards the end of the game) -Different to MtG, the "silver bullets" are packed inside the deck, so if you draw them and they're no use, you're jamming your hand -Depending on deckbuilding, playstyle and table situation you can arrive to be completely handjammend, with at least 5 masters and being able to do nothing > GreyB wrote: > Fragment of Ashur's Tablet, Master, Trifle > Card text: > Put this card in play. Remove all Fragment of Ashur's Tablets AND Ashur's Tablet in play from the game when you have 3 Fragments of Ashur's Tablets in play to gain 1 pool and you may select up to 5 cards in your ashheap and reshuffle them into your library. > Now that's dumb, it's even a better card than ATs... > Juggernaut1981 wrote: > Tech to recycle cards has been sitting at: > 1) RFG the card you play and it is some form of action. > 2) 4 cards at most. > 3) No secondary benefit to card recycling. > Why should that mean no new cards/designs allowed? As always, no rational argument from your side, just subjective opinions.

> ATs have other downsides: > -You're stopping playing other master cards (so you're choosing ATs from other masters you could play) > -ATs decks have usually a lower proportion of useful cards for the beginning of the game, being this proportion corrected during the game (being slower at the beginning and having a better cardflow towards the end of the game) > -Different to MtG, the "silver bullets" are packed inside the deck, so if you draw them and they're no use, you're jamming your hand > -Depending on deckbuilding, playstyle and table situation you can arrive to be completely handjammend, with at least 5 masters and being able to do nothing > That goes for every single card in the game... Masters can at least be solved by being able to play multiple masters per turn, which is not hard to achieve... Ever had 7 bum's rushes as a starting hand? Any MtG reference is moot, it's another game with another flow and coincidently also a game that addressed massive card recursion back in the 90s if you like to keep on comparing. > Now that's dumb, it's even a better card than ATs... > Yes and no, you sacrifice 3 card slots to return 5 (4 is ok too) cards as opposed to 3 cards to return 13 cards. Easier to play, earn less pool and makes Liquidation + FoAT not that rewarding. Ideal for pro-active combat decks that burn a lot of cards and less ideal for MMPA decks. Both can exists side by side but now with the actual designed downside (as far as I can see). But I leave this up to designers, in any case, the downside of AT needs to return some way or the other. > And again: which are the facts that back your assessment? > Liquidation + AT can function outside of the natural gameflow, you can keep doing this while your vamps work on defense and ousting, which is quite possible without depending on any masters whatsoever. The combination has no effect on the gameflow whatsoever like Villein/Vessel/Minion tap/Blooddol have, those cards pull blood from your vampires to your pool, making the vamps more vulnerable. But poolgain is not the only thing this combination offers, you can recycle cards adjusted to the meta of the game as you go at the same time, so it's pool gain + specialising your deck to beat the meta at the same time. This takes no actions and thus can't be blocked, no disciplines (playable by any deck) and the only means to counter it is a shitload of suddens or some fringe card that hardly gets played. If you see nothing wrong with that... well... Than I doubt any argument ever will convince you... But that's ok, I am not here to win any debate. I just hope designers of the next PDF set will read all arguments for and against and make this game more balanced and fun for all either way -1 Strength

> KevinM wrote: > > > Jeff wrote: > > No card that anyone bought from a pack for will ever be banned while the current administration is in charge. > > > > Jeff wrote: > > I have said many times that Pascal is one of the hardest working members of the Inner Circle. (And lately Gines, who I'm sure spends more time getting art together than designers spend mulling over cards.) > > > How would you know? Stop the unjustified accusations, please, or leave forever and never come back. > > > Jeff wrote: > > If the decision were solely up to him, I think he'd make the right one. But there are other pressures that will block any decision to ban cards that people have bought out of packs. Those are things beyond Pascal's control. > > > What "other pressures"?? Stop the unjustified accusations, please, or leave forever and never come back. > > I think that you've caused enough damage around here and your minor contributions are far outweighed by your constant scab-picking and trolling the good, hard-working volunteers or this community. I had thought that MAYBE you had put all of this filth behind you. It saddens me deeply to see that I was wrong. > > What a shame that you are still mentally ill with lingering paranoia and lashing out at the ones that you believe hurt you with both subtle and unjustified accusations is still your prime motivating factor. > > MODERATORS: I'm calling for a public forum and serious consideration to ban Jeff Kuta from this website unless a public apology is given from his for his continued unjustified accusations against the various parties involved. His presence HURTS this website and his unjustified accusations are borderline libelous. > > When one finds cancer, one cuts out the cancer. Jeff Kuta is a cancer on this website and on the game that we all love and his continued actions prove that he cares for neither. > This post made me laugh outloud

> KevinM wrote: > MODERATORS: I'm calling for a public forum and serious consideration to ban Jeff Kuta from this website unless a public apology is given from his for his continued unjustified accusations against the various parties involved. His presence HURTS this website and his unjustified accusations are borderline libelous. > > When one finds cancer, one cuts out the cancer. Jeff Kuta is a cancer on this website and on the game that we all love and his continued actions prove that he cares for neither. > Kevin, we don't need to do that... and yes, I do realise I am about to defend the existence of Jeff Kuta on this forum.** Jeff plays the vital role of being the example we can hold up, in general, of "How things should not be done". He is the straight-man to our funny-man. He is the clown-car to the lion taming. He is the tragedy face to the comedy face. Without a clear version of things we should not do, we'd be forced to compare people to Nazis and holocaust participants. We would be proving Godwin's law at a far greater pace without Jeff around. We shouldn't ban Jeff Kuta. There are reasons we need him here. **Based on past experience, this may mean that Jeff calls for his own banning himself, purely because I am for the opposite of that. Retired Baron of Sydney, Australia, 418

> cordovader wrote: > > > Juggernaut1981 wrote: > > Tech to recycle cards has been sitting at: > > 1) RFG the card you play and it is some form of action. > > 2) 4 cards at most. > > 3) No secondary benefit to card recycling. > > > Why should that mean no new cards/designs allowed? > > As always, no rational argument from your side, just subjective opinions. > That's because this isn't an argument but a statement of the situation. If you remove Ashur Tablets from the cards you consider, then all other cards that return cards from the ashheap to the library meet the above three criteria. Don't accuse me of making a subjective opinion when I'm making an observation of the state of card design. Retired Baron of Sydney, Australia, 418

> GreyB wrote: > I liked Jeff Kuta's idea, "Fragment of Ashur's Tablet" that could return the AT competition. Something along the line of: > > Fragment of Ashur's Tablet, Master, Trifle > Card text: > Put this card in play. Remove all Fragment of Ashur's Tablets AND Ashur's Tablet in play from the game when you have 3 Fragments of Ashur's Tablets in play to gain 1 pool and you may select up to 5 cards in your ashheap and reshuffle them into your library. > > The tech to recycle cards is not flawed, however 13 cards is over the top imho. > The general idea for Fragment of Ashur's Tablet was cordovader's, put out in a response to my thought experiment. 13 cards was chosen for Ashur Tablets because there are 13 major clans/antediluvians. Changing it would break some flavor of the game. For your card above, I'd go with zero pool gain and 7 cards from ash heap into library--7 naturally because, just like Trochomancy which also uses 13, there were 7 original Camarilla clans before the Gangrel left. Yes, numerology does and should exist in VtM/VtES. Juggernaut is right to call this proposal a silver bullet because it is targeted in reaction to a single strong card, but he also calls Villein a silver bullet, so I'm not sure what he's getting at there. That's my only objection to it. I think the proposal is fairly balanced overall. And if there's a thread to include proposals, this is certainly the right spot. When you are anvil, be patient; when a hammer, strike. pckvtes.wordpress.com @pckvtes

> GreyB wrote: > Erm... Perhaps you should actually read the quotes you quoted... Seems to me that Jeff said nothing disrespectful nor anything close to an accusation... As someone new to these forums I just have to step back and marvel at these petty squables that make no sense... > > ps. would be nice if this turned into a constructive thread!!! *HINT HINT* > Yeah, well there is a *lot* of history here. KevinM and I have met a few times in real life and got along great--I went to his hometown of Las Vegas for business a few times, he drove me around town, I bought him dinner on my company's dime, saw his house, played VtES at a mutual friend's. Then I think (?) I said something he didn't like (I still have no idea what this may be, but possibly something related to politics) on facebook and he unfriended me. I only mention this because it is an act he took, for whatever reason. I guess it's easy come, easy go there. And then the shit hit the fan a couple years back with the first incarnation of the Design Team. And it hit badly. Really badly. The posts are still on the forum. Go find the most read ones in history if you want to see it all. I'm not gonna rehash it again. Anyway, KevinM now seems to jump all over threads where I say anything about the current Inner Circle and Design Team. Just like any group, people's contributions vary. If my time "on the inside" is any indication of how things go currently, then my observations are valid. I also base my statements on the output I have seen. I just gave my perspective, and he doesn't like it, so he calls me a cancer that should be excised. Whatever. Some people have an odd relationship with maintaining the status quo and shielding those in power from criticism. When you are anvil, be patient; when a hammer, strike. pckvtes.wordpress.com @pckvtes

> Juggernaut1981 wrote: > **Based on past experience, this may mean that Jeff calls for his own banning himself, purely because I am for the opposite of that. > Look in the mirror. When you are anvil, be patient; when a hammer, strike. pckvtes.wordpress.com @pckvtes

> Jeff wrote: > Look in the mirror. > As someone who hasn't been at the core of whatever went on, I can say only one thing, in all objectivity. Vampires don't reflect in mirrors. I know, in VTES it's only Lasombras, but then aren't we all ? Now back to the main topic...

> cordovader wrote: > Now that's dumb, it's even a better card than ATs... > > GreyB wrote: > Yes and no, you sacrifice 3 card slots to return 5 (4 is ok too) cards as opposed to 3 cards to return 13 cards. Easier to play, earn less pool and makes Liquidation + FoAT not that rewarding. Ideal for pro-active combat decks that burn a lot of cards and less ideal for MMPA decks. Both can exists side by side but now with the actual designed downside (as far as I can see). But I leave this up to designers, in any case, the downside of AT needs to return some way or the other. > Plus, FoAT doesn't give you the immediate 1 card back for use. It is all randomly shuffled into the library. 3 cards to get back 5 isn't really a great deal IMO, should be 7. YMMV, but there's obviously a continuum when you talk about numbers. > And again: which are the facts that back your assessment? > > GreyB wrote: > Liquidation + AT can function outside of the natural gameflow, you can keep doing this while your vamps work on defense and ousting, which is quite possible without depending on any masters whatsoever. > It is debatable whether master phase actions are to be considered outside of or separate from the natural gameflow. I think there were some attempts back in the day to make 100% master card tournament winning decks when Anarch Revolt was still unaltered. Don't recall if any were every successful. When you are anvil, be patient; when a hammer, strike. pckvtes.wordpress.com @pckvtes

> Jeff wrote: > It is debatable whether master phase actions are to be considered outside of or separate from the natural gameflow. I think there were some attempts back in the day to make 100% master card tournament winning decks when Anarch Revolt was still unaltered. Don't recall if any were every successful. > I seem to recall that some decks with nearly only Masters, with Anson as their spearhead, wrecked more than a few tables at that time.

> Jeff wrote: > 13 cards was chosen for Ashur Tablets because there are 13 major clans/antediluvians. Changing it would break some flavor of the game. > > For your card above, I'd go with zero pool gain and 7 cards from ash heap into library--7 naturally because, just like Trochomancy which also uses 13, there were 7 original Camarilla clans before the Gangrel left. Yes, numerology does and should exist in VtM/VtES. > The most stupid thing I´ve heard today. Why should numerology exist in VtES? "My strategy? Luck is my strategy, of course."

> Ashur wrote: > The most stupid thing I´ve heard today. Why should numerology exist in VtES? > Because the milieu of the card game is derived from a gothic fantasy role-playing game where Methuselahs who are thousands of years old battle for supremacy using any means at their disposal, and where their childer are taught truth, lies, conspiracies or nothing and often must discover their own undead identity from rumor, hearsay, myth, legend and storytelling? When you are anvil, be patient; when a hammer, strike. pckvtes.wordpress.com @pckvtes

13 is a good number. Add in the word "minion" between that number and the word "cards" and we end up better off. By "we" I mean players tired of burning the same damn pentex 6 turns in a row due to anthelios and ashurs then still having to oust a girls deck. I'll pack 2 fames and not need to recur with tablets. Also, people tired of hearing about old beef between Jeff and others. To his credit, he no longer reminds me of the guy on Idiocracy who keeps saying "Brought to you by Carls Jr" but thats probably temporary....... Also, Id like to think that we have moved on, since seriously NOBODY CARES and the other two members of PCK havent kept this up. Jeffs not a bad player, nominally as far as I know hes not a bad guy. But its almost like whenever anything about IC or DT function is brought up, magically Jeff appears to to point fingers with an occasional conspiracy theory to keep us awake. Its like when Id say something and Ohlmann(where the hell did he go?) Would of course contradict. I posted card ideas JUST to see what hed tear at, because I knew any real problems EVER would get noticed. Crazy. But, I still dig numerology. Note that old as hell vampires probably are crazy enough to have counting compulsions, and OCPD in cases.

> Jeff wrote: > > > Ashur wrote: > > The most stupid thing I´ve heard today. Why should numerology exist in VtES? > > > Because the milieu of the card game is derived from a gothic fantasy role-playing game where Methuselahs who are thousands of years old battle for supremacy using any means at their disposal, and where their childer are taught truth, lies, conspiracies or nothing and often must discover their own undead identity from rumor, hearsay, myth, legend and storytelling? > You can´t be serious? Do you think numerology should be taken into account when designing balanced cards for a a card game? What also, Jahve and chemtrails? "My strategy? Luck is my strategy, of course."

> Jeff wrote: > It is debatable whether master phase actions are to be considered outside of or separate from the natural gameflow. > Depends on what "natural game flow" is. To me it's what you and others do with their minions and cards that affect them. This flow is the heart of VTES and one should not diverge much from it (imo). Villein, vessel and suchlike affect game flow directly, you gain pool but leave your vamp more vulnerable. There's a (theoretical) tradeoff. AT and Liquidation are odd design wise, they don't interact with minions. Hence I view them to be outside of the natural game flow. In a game where the nitty gritty revolves around minions, cards like these can easily offset balance. This is all academic mumbo jumbo however... Cards like AT are in the game and I agree that they should not be banned or errata-ed. Which leaves mitigation by adding cards that reduce their playability as originally designed. If a card has no direct interaction with minions, there should be direct interaction with other methuselahs, which means in the case of AT a race to get 3 on the table first. -1 Strength

> Ashur wrote: > You can´t be serious? Do you think numerology should be taken into account when designing balanced cards for a a card game? What also, Jahve and chemtrails? > When appropriate, why not? You can design from a desired cost or a desired effect, one of which can be a target number that has some significance in the World of Darkness. When you are anvil, be patient; when a hammer, strike. pckvtes.wordpress.com @pckvtes

> GreyB wrote: > > > Jeff wrote: > > It is debatable whether master phase actions are to be considered outside of or separate from the natural gameflow. > > > Depends on what "natural game flow" is. To me it's what you and others do with their minions and cards that affect them. This flow is the heart of VTES and one should not diverge much from it (imo). > > Villein, vessel and suchlike affect game flow directly, you gain pool but leave your vamp more vulnerable. There's a (theoretical) tradeoff. > > AT and Liquidation are odd design wise, they don't interact with minions. Hence I view them to be outside of the natural game flow. In a game where the nitty gritty revolves around minions, cards like these can easily offset balance. > > This is all academic mumbo jumbo however... Cards like AT are in the game and I agree that they should not be banned or errata-ed. Which leaves mitigation by adding cards that reduce their playability as originally designed. If a card has no direct interaction with minions, there should be direct interaction with other methuselahs, which means in the case of AT a race to get 3 on the table first. > Not all master cards interact with minions, that's why they are called "master" cards. Ascendance is just one of many examples.

i see a lot of arguments and suggestions. but as i see most common concern is for 'almost endless recycling' and 'endless while in game adjusted' library. keep liquidation as it is. it's needed for a quite more deck than just one or two Cybele versions. Adjust the Ashur tablets - simply let triggered ashurs remove all cards in the asheap except of those magic 13 cards. and them with 15 cards gone and 13 returned you might not be a complete winner. assholepopulation.com/ Did u saw one today?

> Asnek wrote: > i see a lot of arguments and suggestions. but as i see most common concern is for 'almost endless recycling' and 'endless while in game adjusted' library. > > keep liquidation as it is. it's needed for a quite more deck than just one or two Cybele versions. > > Adjust the Ashur tablets - simply let triggered ashurs remove all cards in the asheap except of those magic 13 cards. and them with 15 cards gone and 13 returned you might not be a complete winner. > Spot on about arguments, but...... Earlier (675 pages ago?) This thread, I weeded through the TWDA for non-ashurs decks using liquidation. There were a few shabmbler decks, a few sudario decks, some that used both in concert, a big IC vote deck and one gangrel deck with one copy. Comparatively, there were about 14 billion ashurs decks using it. Its an Ashur enabler, but Ashurs are more broken, for sure. The same logic proving its only broken with ashurs prove its only broken with ashurs. So, Ashurs recurring masters is a problem. Id kinda support it nuking ashheaps, but they still recur stuff like masters and events. Killimg whole heap helps some, but not completely. To stop saying the same thing over and over again, maybe tablets either atay at 3 and dissallow playing more for that methuselah, or when one person hits 3, remove all other copies from play, leave the 3, and if you have 3 you cant play more (so, if someone else pops 3, yours burn and you can play more). Just an idea.

> ReverendRevolver wrote: > [Liquididation] is an Ashur enabler, but Ashurs are more broken, for sure. The same logic proving its only broken with ashurs prove its only broken with ashurs. > > So, Ashurs recurring masters is a problem. > May I borrow your reasoning by replacing "Ashur Tablets" by "MMPA decks" and "Liquidation" by "Ashur Tablets"? "Ashur Tablets are MMPA decks enabler, but MMPA decks are more broken, for sure. The same logic proving they're only broken with MMPA decks prove they're only broken with MMPA decks. So, MMPA deck recurring masters is a problem." I didn't grap all your concepts, but the root of the problem is MMPA decks, not Ashur. Prince of Paris, France Ratings Coordinator, Rules Director

> Jeff wrote: > > > ReverendRevolver wrote: > > Plainly, they are looking into stuff. Constantly. Its Pascals call, and hes a very thout out decision maker on thwse. Blaming "current administration" here works less well than even normal. Pascal is this vague and malevalent "them" and its freakin Pascal, so hes incredibly nice and tactical about rules decisions. > > > I have said many times that Pascal is one of the hardest working members of the Inner Circle. (And lately Gines, who I'm sure spends more time getting art together than designers spend mulling over cards.) If the decision were solely up to him, I think he'd make the right one. But there are other pressures that will block any decision to ban cards that people have bought out of packs. Those are things beyond Pascal's control. > Interesting. So you think that things haven't changed because people didn't want them to change? What if I don't want them to change, but they want? It doesn't matter anyways - Ashur's Tablet's cardtext is what it is. I do have ideas on what to change on them. One of those I particularly like is: "Put this card in play. If you have three copies in play, remove all copies in play (even controlled by other Methuselahs) from the game to gain 3 pool, and select randomly up to 13 cards from your ash heap. Show the chosen cards to all players, move one to your hand, and shuffle the others into your library."

> Pascal wrote: > Interesting. So you think that things haven't changed because people didn't want them to change? > What if I don't want them to change, but they want? > My initial response was specific to AaronC's suggestion to ban Ashur Tablets. I don't think that any card bought from a pack will be banned. It's untenable and unconscionable. And because of that, any discussion about banning cards has been rendered moot. Maybe there's room for a change or errata, and I have full confidence that you would make a good decision, but in my opinion, I don't see it for this particular card. When you are anvil, be patient; when a hammer, strike. pckvtes.wordpress.com @pckvtes

I've already made my decision over Ashur Tablets. And over many other cards. My decision is: As long as we can't have reprints, we'll stick to whatever unbroken text we have. For broken texts, we have two options: either ban the card (see Lilith's Blessing), or change the text (see Villein). I have taken a decision on Ashur Tablets 2 years ago.

> Pascal wrote: > I've already made my decision over Ashur Tablets. > And over many other cards. > > My decision is: As long as we can't have reprints, we'll stick to whatever unbroken text we have. > For broken texts, we have two options: either ban the card (see Lilith's Blessing), or change the text (see Villein). > > I have taken a decision on Ashur Tablets 2 years ago. > Thank you for that answer Pascal. Here's hoping, then, that there will be reprints, and that when there are you will consider errating a bit this card to make it less "necessary".

> Orpheus wrote: > Thank you for that answer Pascal. > > Here's hoping, then, that there will be reprints, and that when there are you will consider errating a bit this card to make it less "necessary". > What do you think of the proposition above?

@PB: Revealing the cards is unecessary, they are all "known" because of the rules on ash heaps. Fine with it being random cards and not chosen cards, it's better than before. It would be good to hear what Darby and ICL would suggest about both of those. I don't think they should give pool. Card recycling is powerful enough. It depends on the purpose you want them to play in the game PB... are they to help combat wall decks, combat rush decks, Bleed & Bash... that will help restrict the cardset Ashur Tablets can recur into the library. @Ankha: As shown by TWDA stats... Liquidation rarely sees play outside an Ashur Tablets deck because you gain for the Liquidation, remove the 'price' of Liquidation later AND get 3 extra pool for removing the 'price' you paid for Liquidation. Those that do play Liquidation and not Ashurs do so to put cards into the ashheap to be converted to other things (i.e. Shambler Decks). Retired Baron of Sydney, Australia, 418

> "Put this card in play. If you have three copies in play, remove all copies in play (even controlled by other Methuselahs) from the game to gain 3 pool, and select randomly up to 13 cards from your ash heap. Show the chosen cards to all players, move one to your hand, and shuffle the others into your library." > > Pascal wrote: > What do you think of the proposition above? > I think it's great.

> Pascal wrote: > > > Orpheus wrote: > > Thank you for that answer Pascal. > > > > Here's hoping, then, that there will be reprints, and that when there are you will consider errating a bit this card to make it less "necessary". > > > What do you think of the proposition above? > The problem is that it breaks a BIG part of the utility of Ashur Tablets. I know you hate the time loss generated by Ashur Tablets, but I would be more into a silver bullet-card (As Fragment of Ashur Tablets) than an errata. I've played them several times myself and I'm really fast choosing the cards (I know my decks from A to Z) and I think we should be aiming that people don't lose time during the games... Anyway, that would break all the Liquidation + Ashur Tablets decks, and this is a personal point of view, but I don't consider them broken, it's just a matter of knowing how to oust them. You have to consider that it would also break several decks using Ashur Tablets and that aren't abusing of the combo, for example my last TWD: www.secretlibrary.info/index.php?deck=view&id=16435 Ashur Tablets, no Liquidation and need to take the precise cards. If not I guess it won't work at all as expected. Played by myself and other players in different games/tournaments and I can guarantee it's solid, but not broken at all (and it's a MMPA-deck).

I think that changing ashurs to get back cards on random is not a good idea. It would make it a weak card, in most cases unworthy of putting into deck. IMO we should think about the errata that would make it a little weaker, but still good. Don't forget that this card alone is great enabler for many decks that were not existent before ashurs. Such little tweaks could be: - remove giving pool - remove option of taking one of the cards to your hand - make it possible to play only one ashur per turn - make it possible to take back only minion cards - reduce number of cards that can be put back into the deck f.e. to the 7 cards - ban anthelios

And this? Following Alek's proposal. > Ashur Tablets > > Master. > Put this card in play. If you have three copies in play, remove all copies in play (even controlled by other Methuselahs) from the game to gain 3 pool and choose up to thirteen cards from your ash heap. Move one of those cards to your hand and shuffle the others into your library. Only one Ashur Tablets may be played each turn. > This way MMPA decks and non-MMPA decks would be in equality towards racing for Ashur Tablets and the "self-controlling" effect of Ashur Tablets would be more accurate. I'm not a big fan of errata on Ashur Tablets, but I guess it would be the errata that would solve the problem the most. It won't disable actual game mechanics and it would enable use of Ashur Tablets on other decks making them able to compete with MMPA decks.

> cordovader wrote: > You have to consider that it would also break several decks using Ashur Tablets and that aren't abusing of the combo, for example my last TWD: > www.secretlibrary.info/index.php?deck=view&id=16435 > > Ashur Tablets, no Liquidation and need to take the precise cards. If not I guess it won't work at all as expected. Played by myself and other players in different games/tournaments and I can guarantee it's solid, but not broken at all (and it's a MMPA-deck). > I'm not so sure. If I read your deck list, you have : 30 masters : 22 will stay in play (or be removed from the game) 5 are "transient" : dream's, fame, pentex, tension, wider view (yes, I consider you play fame on your prey and you oust him/her) 3 will go in the ash heap when played 5 other permanents (2 event, well marked and 2 raven spy) and then you have 5 reactions and 35 combat cards and with ashur, what you wan back in your deck ? I guess combat, reaction and transient masters Of course you will not be able to tune your proportion so finely than before but you will still choose 1 card to put in your hand.

> Timo wrote: > > > cordovader wrote: > > You have to consider that it would also break several decks using Ashur Tablets and that aren't abusing of the combo, for example my last TWD: > > www.secretlibrary.info/index.php?deck=view&id=16435 > > > > Ashur Tablets, no Liquidation and need to take the precise cards. If not I guess it won't work at all as expected. Played by myself and other players in different games/tournaments and I can guarantee it's solid, but not broken at all (and it's a MMPA-deck). > > > I'm not so sure. > > If I read your deck list, you have : > > 30 masters : > 22 will stay in play (or be removed from the game) > 5 are "transient" : dream's, fame, pentex, tension, wider view (yes, I consider you play fame on your prey and you oust him/her) > 3 will go in the ash heap when played > > 5 other permanents (2 event, well marked and 2 raven spy) > > and then you have 5 reactions and 35 combat cards > > and with ashur, what you wan back in your deck ? > > I guess combat, reaction and transient masters > > Of course you will not be able to tune your proportion so finely than before but you will still choose 1 card to put in your hand. > Mainly I take back combat and reactions, yes, adapting the proportions depending on metagame. I don't really adapt much, I usually take 2x Carrion + 2x Torn Signpost + 2x Immortal Grapple + 2x Taste of Vitae and refill with some maneuvers + Drawing out the Beast and/or reactions. During French Nationals (I played the deck) I took only reactions and ToV back when I was facing 1v1 Orian with his Eldest are Kholo Ravnos swarm deck. It finished with time limit, with me with no cards on library and 1 card in hand and him with no blood on his vamps except 1. Transient masters are usually taken back with Anthelios and or Ashur Tablets if needed.

My point is : it doesn' breack your deck, you just have to adapt your way to build it and play it but not much). In combat deck, I think, the decks which will be most (negatively) impacted would be CEL gun. Because you will refill your deck with conceal weapons without anymore .44 (which sucks a lot). Another great impact this errata will have is the power level of rochomancy against ashur decks. For now, trochomancy is great, with this, it will be devastating meaning the ashur user will not be able to choose between the remaining good cards and will have to either chose randomly 1 card (and will be able to discard it immediately if it is crap) or risk to reshuffle a lot of crap for "some" good cards ^^

> alek wrote: > - remove giving pool > there are already too many options how to gain pool. concerning loquidation+ashur combo for pool gain is not fastest as well not most effective combo. Mition tap/villein + Voter cap is little bit more conditional but most of the time more effective. and it does cost less cards to play. pool gain was never the real problem of ashurs. when you play 3 times ascendance you got same effect. recuring cards bonus is the break point inwhole proces > alek wrote: > - remove option of taking one of the cards to your hand > and this should help your prey not getting pentex while there is no anthelios on the table, right? there are only few cards you will consider to put into your hand and 80% of them are master cards you intent to use in next MPA afere resolving tablets. combination of these cards in you ashep and ashurs dig to hand seems to be powerfull, but you can count cards that you would consider for this on one hand - pentex, golconda, villein, liquidation and something depending on your deck. and on the other hand when there is a Anson deck behind you with pentex in asheap and anthelios on the table you would expect to get that pentex again, right? so why does it surprise you when same effect happens after ashurs are triggered? > alek wrote: > - make it possible to play only one ashur per turn > - this one might be in fact interesting. unfortunately it automatically created premise first play first use. i'm afraid that in final result this will just aggravate problem when two players with ashurs do meet from current 'we are upset for seating' to new state 'we are screwed by seating'. > alek wrote: > - make it possible to take back only minion cards > i have never tested this one so it's hard to evaluate just by reading. it's truth that usualy i do return more than minion cards and few times we all saw nana to dig out dragonbound for prey oust... > alek wrote: > - reduce number of cards that can be put back into the deck f.e. to the 7 cards > - 7 cards might too few for 3 MPAs. this way you will in fact get only 4 cards for you library as you already removed 3 of them to magicaly swap them for 3 returned cards. > alek wrote: > - ban anthelios > - don;t believe so. there are too many deck runnign it and by default it's nto bad card it just get's too powerfull once you have 2 MPAs and petnex in asheap. see anson example above EDIT: corercted few typos assholepopulation.com/ Did u saw one today?

> Ankha wrote: > > > ReverendRevolver wrote: > > [Liquididation] is an Ashur enabler, but Ashurs are more broken, for sure. The same logic proving its only broken with ashurs prove its only broken with ashurs. > > > > So, Ashurs recurring masters is a problem. > > > May I borrow your reasoning by replacing "Ashur Tablets" by "MMPA decks" and "Liquidation" by "Ashur Tablets"? > > "Ashur Tablets are MMPA decks enabler, but MMPA decks are more broken, for sure. The same logic proving they're only broken with MMPA decks prove they're only broken with MMPA decks. > So, MMPA deck recurring masters is a problem." > > I didn't grap all your concepts, but the root of the problem is MMPA decks, not Ashur. > You are realistically not wrong. Ive said before mmpa decks, specifically from the Girls family of WTF nonsense, are stupidly efficient, and thats the problem period. The part you rearranged was me saying that liquidation is seldom used wihout ashers, so banning liquidation isnt a sound decision. Girls are more a problem than Anson even, so maybe its so many mpas tjat breaks. Errataing mpa generaters may work. Add (you may get an extra mpa from only one non trifle source each turn) ?

> Pascal wrote: > > > Orpheus wrote: > > Thank you for that answer Pascal. > > > > Here's hoping, then, that there will be reprints, and that when there are you will consider errating a bit this card to make it less "necessary". > > > What do you think of the proposition above? > The one by Ankha ? Well it certainly reduces the later recycling part : you don't get one in had right away and for the rest it random, so I guess that combat decks would maybe benefit more than Girlz, who probably need to be more chosy. I think I like that.

> Pascal wrote: > > > Orpheus wrote: > > Thank you for that answer Pascal. > > > > Here's hoping, then, that there will be reprints, and that when there are you will consider errating a bit this card to make it less "necessary". > > > What do you think of the proposition above? > I think it´s a good solution.But then again I ask you Pascal: wich problem exactly we're trying to fix? what's wrong, especifically, with AT? IMHO, ashur empowers MMPA decks, an archetype usually abused that do not need help, so it should be tuned down. Therefore the mentioned solution works just fine for me: it hurts MMPA decks just enough and still enable combat-heavy fast cycling decks. Keep walking...

I don't really understand the fuzz of "balancing" a game that is really unbalanced in it's core mechanics. One thing is banning/errating a card than completely breaks game mechanics, one other thing is trying to seek for "balance". A 5-player game where seating matters, archetypes matter, silver bullets matter, negotiation matters... Don't think it is really logical to eternally search for perfect "balance".

Having read through all the thread i feel that people who dislike ashur tablet are very outspoken about it (which is their natural right) but i haven't heard much from people who like ashur tablets and want to keep them the way they are. I feel ashur tablet were the most innovative thing that has happend in vtes for a long time and i do like the mechanic and the new archetypes they enable very much. Decks that enable you to use your "vtes skill" (whatever that is) are much more apealing to me than decks in which your path to victory is paved from the start. (e.g. Toolbox vs. DEM bleed). Also in the last 2 years I have encountered very few stale mate tables or situations where one player is sitting on an insane amount of pool and can thus never be ousted. I have no precise numbers but I would guess that around 80% of my tournament games ended before the time limit and I do not share the feeling that ashur/mmpa decks are ruining the game for the rest of the table. If by some coincidence there is a girls mmps deck in front of you that your deck is not fit to oust the situation is not much different from having weenie potence or tupdog torp all your vamps the turn they are brought out. You simple accept defeat and move on or change your decks accordingly. I cannot distant myself from the feeling that some people that bash the ashur tech are so set in their ways of how vtes should be played that they are unable or unwilling to change their strategies to deal with the new challenges. If there were things i could change about vtes, ashur tablets would certainly not make the top of my list but rather reversal of fortune madness network or una or the imbued as a whole. Just my 2 cents

> Ankha wrote: > ...but the root of the problem is MMPA decks, not Ashur. > Assuming that's the case, would banning Anthelios suitably rein in MMPA decks? In conversations with players I've had in both Europe and North America about Pentex Subversion and Ashur Tablets, I've often heard that part of their frustration with those cards is that they're recurred by Anthelios in MMPA decks. Obvious counters such as Sudden Reversal and Wash are made significantly less effective as a result of MMPAs + Anthelios.

> BenPeal wrote: > Assuming that's the case, would banning Anthelios suitably rein in MMPA decks? In conversations with players I've had in both Europe and North America about Pentex Subversion and Ashur Tablets, I've often heard that part of their frustration with those cards is that they're recurred by Anthelios in MMPA decks. Obvious counters such as Sudden Reversal and Wash are made significantly less effective as a result of MMPAs + Anthelios. > Current text: Once each master phase, a Methuselah can use a master phase action to exchange a master card in his or her hand for one in his or her ash heap. Vague suggestion, which you could iterate on: Once each master phase, a Methuselah can use a master phase action to exchange a master card in his or her hand for one in his or her ash heap. When a master card is cancelled as it is played, remove it from the game.

Hey Ben, James. I'm not sure Pentex and Ashur would be fixed if Anthelios was. Everybody would still ahve to include 2 Pentex, as for Ashurs see the rest of the thread. I believe that those cards need to be dealt separately. This being said, Anthelios abuse is another problem, and the proposition below would be a nice card text change.

> Zoroh wrote: > I think it´s a good solution.But then again I ask you Pascal: wich problem exactly we're trying to fix? what's wrong, especifically, with AT? > My issue with AT: It takes forever(*) to resolve 3. And some tables resolve 9. (*) forever = more than 10 seconds. From what I've seen, between 1 and 2 minutes.

> Pascal wrote: > > > Zoroh wrote: > > I think it´s a good solution.But then again I ask you Pascal: wich problem exactly we're trying to fix? what's wrong, especifically, with AT? > > > My issue with AT: It takes forever(*) to resolve 3. > And some tables resolve 9. > > (*) forever = more than 10 seconds. From what I've seen, between 1 and 2 minutes. > Well in that case we should ban: -all swarm decks because turns take ages -all vote decks because voting takes ages -all combat decks because combats take ages -and so on... We would remain with bleed decks and tables would last 1h. 1-2 minutes seems pretty fair to me, since MMPA decks (what we're talking about) usually play mid/high-cap vamps.

> BenPeal wrote: > Assuming that's the case, would banning Anthelios suitably rein in MMPA decks? In conversations with players I've had in both Europe and North America about Pentex Subversion and Ashur Tablets, I've often heard that part of their frustration with those cards is that they're recurred by Anthelios in MMPA decks. Obvious counters such as Sudden Reversal and Wash are made significantly less effective as a result of MMPAs + Anthelios. > I take it this is a question for everybody. I think the problem is that different people have different ideas of what suitably rein in means. I don't find MMPA decks to be disproportionately winning tables or tournaments. I'd still have banned Anson ages ago and never made any other vampire with a similar ability. I get into the underlying reasons why I'm so against MMPA these days, here: iclee.wordpress.com/2012/01/28/you-there-in-the-woods/ "Administrative functions", whether they be returning Conviction to play, playing masters, searching, or whatever that doesn't involve any other player, are something to be minimized. Interacting with other players should take up most of the time in a game simply because games like this one are experiences where other players matter. If someone wants to spend four hours deciding what opening hand to play with in a CCG where you choose your opening hand prior to play, great, whatever. Meanwhile, when you sit at a table with other people, everyone should be as involved as possible in what is going on. Doing 12 things before you get to your minion phase is not quality time for anyone besides the person whose turn it is, even then might end up being a chore performing the functions. It's not just more and more masters getting played, it's all of the additional untap effects, that the discard phase is more active, that there are more options with transferring. The minion phase should be the focus of the game, with everything else being support. MMPA has additional issues beyond this "only one player is doing stuff" issue, but that was the case when I saw someone play Anson in a Jyhad deck as an eight-cap with no other relevant abilities than his special. What I see with the game has been a movement toward numerous administrative functions that lack value to producing a quality multiperson experience. Traveller Card Game

> Orpheus wrote: > Hey Ben, James. > > I'm not sure Pentex and Ashur would be fixed if Anthelios was. Everybody would still ahve to include 2 Pentex, as for Ashurs see the rest of the thread. > Should I see the rest of your posts in the thread, or all of the posts in the thread? If I read all of the posts, then it seems there isn't a consensus that something is wrong with Ashur Tablets. > I believe that those cards need to be dealt separately. > The cards don't exist separately and can't be dealt with separately. You can't fix/ban Pentex in isolation without considering Una, Ankara Citadel, and Freak Drive. You can't fix/ban Ashur Tablets in isolation without considering Anthelios. I'm also not suggesting that banning or changing Anthelios is the only fix for the game - I'm putting it out there as a possibility towards addressing MMPA decks. Maybe it's a way, or one of a few ways, to address them. Maybe it's not. Maybe MMPA decks aren't a problem after all.

> ICL wrote: > > > BenPeal wrote: > > Assuming that's the case, would banning Anthelios suitably rein in MMPA decks? In conversations with players I've had in both Europe and North America about Pentex Subversion and Ashur Tablets, I've often heard that part of their frustration with those cards is that they're recurred by Anthelios in MMPA decks. Obvious counters such as Sudden Reversal and Wash are made significantly less effective as a result of MMPAs + Anthelios. > > > I take it this is a question for everybody. > It is. > I think the problem is that different people have different ideas of what suitably rein in means. > > I don't find MMPA decks to be disproportionately winning tables or tournaments. I'd still have banned Anson ages ago and never made any other vampire with a similar ability. > The question assumes that MMPA decks are disproportionately winning tables at tournaments. If you disagree with that assumption, then that's fine and valid. > I get into the underlying reasons why I'm so against MMPA these days, here: iclee.wordpress.com/2012/01/28/you-there-in-the-woods/ > > "Administrative functions", whether they be returning Conviction to play, playing masters, searching, or whatever that doesn't involve any other player, are something to be minimized. Interacting with other players should take up most of the time in a game simply because games like this one are experiences where other players matter. > I've had this very conversation with you in person and I'm in complete agreement with you about it. I also highly recommend that people read the article you've linked to.

> BenPeal wrote: > > > Ankha wrote: > > ...but the root of the problem is MMPA decks, not Ashur. > > > Assuming that's the case, would banning Anthelios suitably rein in MMPA decks? In conversations with players I've had in both Europe and North America about Pentex Subversion and Ashur Tablets, I've often heard that part of their frustration with those cards is that they're recurred by Anthelios in MMPA decks. Obvious counters such as Sudden Reversal and Wash are made significantly less effective as a result of MMPAs + Anthelios. > The root of the problem is MMPA decks, not Anthelios Why do I think it's the root of the problem? Because it makes all kind of master card problematic. Master cards have powerful effects due to the fact they are usually limited to once per turn, and they don't interact with other Methuselah (apart of a Sudden/Wash). Being able to play 3 master cards in a row (and I'm not speaking here of any kind of recursion) is the problem as it means 3 powerful effects that can't be blocked. Some years ago, one could play almost only master cards (namely Anarch Revolt) and win. Anthelios without MPA wouldn't be a problem: you recurse a card that you can't play until your next turn. Seat-changing cards weren't banned because they were winning tournaments, but because they ruined a core aspect of the game, the "prey-predator relationship". Though not so extreme, MMPA ruin the interaction part of the game. Prince of Paris, France Ratings Coordinator, Rules Director

> Ankha wrote: > The root of the problem is MMPA decks, not Anthelios > Why do I think it's the root of the problem? Because it makes all kind of master card problematic. Master cards have powerful effects due to the fact they are usually limited to once per turn, and they don't interact with other Methuselah (apart of a Sudden/Wash). > Being able to play 3 master cards in a row (and I'm not speaking here of any kind of recursion) is the problem as it means 3 powerful effects that can't be blocked. Some years ago, one could play almost only master cards (namely Anarch Revolt) and win. > Anthelios without MPA wouldn't be a problem: you recurse a card that you can't play until your next turn. > So what do you propose?

I have no well-tried solution, but apart a silver-bullet like those that were submitted (here's mine ), a change in the rules could solve some problems: - a Methuselah can't play more than 2 master cards each turn - or a Methuselah can't play more than 1 trifle master cards and 1 master card (or 2 trifle) each turn The remaining MPAs could be used for other effects (Anthelios, getting pool from investment cards and so on). Prince of Paris, France Ratings Coordinator, Rules Director

> Ankha wrote: > I have no well-tried solution, but apart a silver-bullet like those that were submitted (here's mine ), a change in the rules could solve some problems: > - a Methuselah can't play more than 2 master cards each turn > - or a Methuselah can't play more than 1 trifle master cards and 1 master card (or 2 trifle) each turn > > The remaining MPAs could be used for other effects (Anthelios, getting pool from investment cards and so on). > Or ban every card that grants an additional non-trifle master phase action.

just a thought, but Huitzilopochtli's special might offer a solution for all MMPA-enabling vampires... He never felt as mad as Anson or the Girls even though his discipline spread is certainly powerful. Huitzilopochtli Independent: During your master phase, you may pay a pool to gain a master phase action if Huitzilopochtli is ready. +1 bleed. Infernal.

Oooh! Or de-power every master card so that it's ok to play multiple master cards in a turn.

> BenPeal wrote: > Oooh! Or de-power every master card so that it's ok to play multiple master cards in a turn. > You like heavy work it seems

About MMPA deck : How about rewording every MPA enable with the same template as Anson, Nana and Rumors of Gehenna, so that they don't stack with each other ? That is : Cybele Independent: If Cybele is untapped during your master phase, you get an 2 master phase actions (instead of one). Cybele may bleed at +2 bleed as action that costs 1 blood. Infernal. Huitzilopochtli Independent: During your master phase, you may pay a pool to get 2 master phase actions (instead of one). +1 bleed. Infernal. Isanwayen Sabbat: While ready, Isanwayen may tap for you to get 2 master phase actions (instead of one). Rescuing him from torpor costs an additional blood. Cold iron vulnerability. The Parthenon cost : 2 pool Master: unique location. You have 2 master phase actions (instead of one). Weird thing is when you number of MPA is reset during your master phase. Would it need more rewording ?

> FrançoisV wrote: > About MMPA deck : > > How about rewording every MPA enable with the same template as Anson, Nana and Rumors of Gehenna, so that they don't stack with each other ? > > That is : > Cybele > Independent: If Cybele is untapped during your master phase, you get an 2 master phase actions (instead of one). Cybele may bleed at +2 bleed as action that costs 1 blood. Infernal. > > Huitzilopochtli > Independent: During your master phase, you may pay a pool to get 2 master phase actions (instead of one). +1 bleed. Infernal. > > Isanwayen > Sabbat: While ready, Isanwayen may tap for you to get 2 master phase actions (instead of one). Rescuing him from torpor costs an additional blood. Cold iron vulnerability. > > The Parthenon > cost : 2 pool > Master: unique location. > You have 2 master phase actions (instead of one). > > Weird thing is when you number of MPA is reset during your master phase. Would it need more rewording ? > I agree that maybe Cybele, Nana and Anson have to be "retuned" (to not say nerfed), but what's the point in nerfing Isanwayen, since it has to tap to get the extra MPA? Or Huitzilopochtli, since you need to pay pool for it. For Parthenon I don't see the point either, since it is commonly contested. With that change you give too much benefit to decks not playing MMPA vamps (that means MMPA vamps will stop playing it, so ordinary decks won't be contesting it). Rumors of Gehenna is a political action. It can be blocked, DTd, voted against and you can negociate the extra MPA with other players. Don't see the point either.

Actually, errattas being problematic due to the lack of possible reprint (as today), it would be smoother to make a rule change which would have the exact same effect : > 5 Master phase > You receive master phase actions during your master phase. A master phase action represents your personal activity during the turn as a Methuselah. > > By default, you receive only one master phase action, {} some cards may change this amount {but never to exceed 2}. You may use a master phase action to play a master card, and some cards can give you alternate ways to use your master phase actions. For example, you can use a master phase action to mark a Red List minion (see section 11). If you've played an out-of-turn master card against this master phase (even if it was cancelled), then you gain one fewer master phase actions than normal (see Master Cards, sec. 1.6.2). > > If other effects happen during your master phase, you choose the order in which these effects and your master phase actions are performed. > You cannot save master phase actions for later; master phase actions not used during this phase are lost. > > Trifle: Some master cards are identified as trifles. When a Methuselah plays a trifle {for the first time this turn} (and it isn't canceled), {it doesn't use a master phase action} > I tried to avoid any loop hole but I may have miss some.

@Cordovader : the point is to enforce a "no more than 2 mpa per turn" by card text rather than a ruling. So that it is not possible to have more than 2 mpa per master phase, period (barring trifles and Not to Be), whatever the cost (tapping or extra pool or nothing) of the extra mpa. @Timo : I think not having to tap Parthenon only matters with PB: Savannah right now (or maybe a future steal location effect that happens during the master phase). I don't see a great impact right now but I could be wrong. It is also possible to implement this by ruling but I find card text clearer because I find the "effect that grant additional mpa/change the mpa amount" formulation clunky (personal taste I guess) I would word your trifle bit of rule this way : "playing a trifle does not spend a master phase action unless you played a trifle since the beginning of your last minion phase". Because of Wash and other out-of-turn trifles I forgot to mention Synesios and Sarrasine as effects that give extra master phase actions.

> BenPeal wrote: > > > Orpheus wrote: > > Hey Ben, James. > > > > I'm not sure Pentex and Ashur would be fixed if Anthelios was. Everybody would still have to include 2 Pentex, as for Ashurs see the rest of the thread. > > > Should I see the rest of your posts in the thread, or all of the posts in the thread? If I read all of the posts, then it seems there isn't a consensus that something is wrong with Ashur Tablets. > I'm not saying there's a consensus at all, just that I have said already what I thought on the subject. > > I believe that those cards need to be dealt separately. > > > The cards don't exist separately and can't be dealt with separately. You can't fix/ban Pentex in isolation without considering Una, Ankara Citadel, and Freak Drive. You can't fix/ban Ashur Tablets in isolation without considering Anthelios. > Well maybe, but the problem I see people having with Pentex has nothing to do with recursivity, although of course it is made way worse by it ! The trouble is that when you get a Pentex on your first vamp, especially when it's a big one, it's going to cost you one turn or reacting and one turn of acting, at least. That's already a drastic effect. Then, if the player who put it in game can intercept / fight, of threaten the table in any way, or if you're perceived a a table threat, it might stay a few turns longer. That is potentially game-killing for you, and I believe that's the problem players have with this card (and why you need to play 2 yourself, at least to counter it if it's played on you). > I'm also not suggesting that banning or changing Anthelios is the only fix for the game - I'm putting it out there as a possibility towards addressing MMPA decks. Maybe it's a way, or one of a few ways, to address them. Maybe it's not. Maybe MMPA decks aren't a problem after all. > I rather like any solution saying that no more than 2 Master PHASES can be had outside of trifle, which can give ONE MORE.

> Ankha wrote: > The root of the problem is MMPA decks, not Anthelios > Why do I think it's the root of the problem? Because it makes all kind of master card problematic. > Since this debate has raged for ages, I sit in the diametrically opposite camp. Leave the multiple MPAs alone and get rid of Anthelios. It then become deckbuilding decisions and cardflow. If you plan to play 3 masters a turn, then your deck will need around 30 Master cards which means you are likely to do heaps in your Master Phase and little at other times in the game. It becomes a decision about which phase you are going to prioritise. I can't see many non-MMPA decks be drastically hurt by Anthelios leaving the game. Combat decks aren't likely to use it because the only things they are likely to want to recurse are Fame or maybe Frontal Assault... or the odd Blood Doll someone blew up cross-table. Making an errata that basically makes all "additional MPAs" be "have 2 MPAs" is okay, but it still doesn't stop the potential of silly things like Golconda every master phase on your prey or Pentex reappearing frequently. At least while Anthelios is around. Retired Baron of Sydney, Australia, 418

IMO, the best solution, which doesn't require any errata on existing cards, is to bring change to the core rules that no more than two master cards can be played in a turn (including trifle) or that you can't have more than two master phase actions.

> cordovader wrote: > > > Pascal wrote: > > > > > Zoroh wrote: > > > I think it´s a good solution.But then again I ask you Pascal: wich problem exactly we're trying to fix? what's wrong, especifically, with AT? > > > > > My issue with AT: It takes forever(*) to resolve 3. > > And some tables resolve 9. > > > > (*) forever = more than 10 seconds. From what I've seen, between 1 and 2 minutes. > > > Well in that case we should ban: > > -all swarm decks because turns take ages > -all vote decks because voting takes ages > -all combat decks because combats take ages > -and so on... > > We would remain with bleed decks and tables would last 1h. > > 1-2 minutes seems pretty fair to me, since MMPA decks (what we're talking about) usually play mid/high-cap vamps. > I can't think of any one-card non-interactive effect that takes as long as the third Ashur Tablets. Swarm decks' turns take long, but each action doesn't. ("Embrace bleeds for 2. Embrace bleeds for 2. Tumnimos bleeds for 2.") Vote decks do take a long time - well, some referendums take long. But that's because several people have their opinion to express. Combat can take a long time, but I have never seen 10 seconds of combat without a card being player. Ashur Tablets is *really* "I could have made my choices earlier, but thanks for waiting till my master phase. Now, I wonder what's in my ash heap." The only other card that does that (often) is the Heart of Nizchetus. And the end of turn Dreams. Basically, some players take too long to make choices. And since choices is the basis of this game (should I hunt? should I attempt to block? should I fool him and bleed for 1 to get blocked so that the next bleed can be a GTU bleed? ...), I like the idea of shortening non-interactive choices. For instance, suppose Dreams of the Sphinx read "During your discard phase, discard down at random." I'm quite sure this would definitely save some time. It would also kill some players ("OOps, there goes my Deflection"), so it's probably not the thing to do, but it's something I keep (amongst many other) in mind.

What it really annoys me about all this discussion is that people that are for Ashur Tablets mechanics usually provide subjective and/or objective reasons why they like Ashur Tablets and why they think they're "balanced" in current game situation (avoiding the "no availability" arguments, which I think is the main reason why some players have that impression). I have also the impression that players against Ashur Tablets have the impression that something is wrong for them, but that they don't have clear in their minds what's exactly wrong with them and why. Maybe not being able to counter them? Maybe not being enough played by themselves? Maybe more than one situation where another player seemed invulnerable and he played Ashur Tablets? Since the first page of this thread there have been multiple arguments against Ashur Tablets: -Decks containing Ashur Tablets win too many tournaments: which is false, unless we have a defining criteria of what means "too many". Going a little bit further, we could discuss other cards being present on TWDs (as Pentex Subversion). -Ashur Tablets provide too much pool: false again, given that Ashur Tablets provide 3 pool for the cost of 3 MPAs and only of no one plays them before. The core problem is the combo Villein/Golconda/Giant's Blood (as masters) and Taste of Vitae/Voter Cap as minion cards (I'm letting out obvious cards as Abactor with Ariadne and similar stuff). -Anthelios is the problem, since it allows you to take back whatever master card: false again, since there are some ally decks (for example), using Anthelios and not Ashur Tablets (for exemple Shamblings). -Liquidation is the problem, since it gives 3 free pool: false again, since you have the downside of not replacing (I've played a lot Liquidation myself and I can tell you that sometimes not replacing makes the difference between killing or not one given turn) and the downside of discarding 7 cards from your deck (sometimes and advantage, for example for shamblers, and only without downside in the whole Ashur Tablets/Liquidation/Anthelios combo). -Liquidation + Ashur Tablets is the problem, since it allows you to sideboard your deck during the game and perfectly predict your draws: again false, unless you have no deck remaining and you take back 12 identical copies of the same card, which is a really marginal situation, for not saying completely unrealistical. Other cards allow you to readjust not your deck, but your hand's proportions (Heart of Nizchetus, Nehemiah, Nicomedes, Blackhorse Tanner...). No arguments against that kind of mechanics. -MMPA decks are the problem, since you cannot compete with them in winning the Ashur Tablets race so they auto-regulate themselves: well, this is not entirely false and not entirely true. I've been myself playing during games with Ankha (with his Giotto Verducci "Council of Doom" which uses Ashur Tablets) and he's won me the Ashur Tablets race with only one MPA and me having 3. Discarding (for example via Giotto's special, Ira River's special or The Barrens) also enables getting the Ashur Tablets before. It's true that having MMPA is an advantage, but not definitive. -Ashur Tablets are bad, because they take too much time to resolve and there's no interaction between players: well, there's no interaction with other players in searching the cards, at least always. And if you asked "do you want me to take back X card so I cand do this and that for you in exchange for something else?", well, that's an interaction. Anyway, there are players that are experts in loosing time for their own advantage (for example Mr. Kamel Senni, french players know him well), that simply talk about negotiating or whatever without even having the card in hand and that makes part of the game. Just for notice, as always, the fact of loosing time or not depends on the player. I think that I myself rarely loose time with Ashur Tablets, thinking of what I would take back the turn before and doing all stuff as fast as I can (if it's necessary for the game, something different is that you're already on 1 vs. 1 and you have 1 hour remaining). There are people that take more searching for something with Magic of the Smith or an Alastor, than me resolving Ashur Tablets. That means it's not the card that has a problem, but that it's heavily depending on who plays what and how. PD: Orpheus, I'll gladly lend you one of my Ashur Tablets decks for the next tournament, so you can experience yourself what that is about. I have my Girls + Inner Circles deck and my Nana&Friends POT/ANI rush, so you can choose your playstyle.

Cordovader: Rather than blending together all the arguments... try this. It should be clear enough. These are my arguments, based on things from ICL and Darby. 1) Ashur Tablets are un-interactive and therefore bad cards by design (ICL's blog). This can be caused by 'wasting time', 'unable to be stopped' or various phrases saying the same core idea: This card does not interact with my game, they are playing solitaire over there. 2) Ashur Tablets allow in-game sideboarding, this is not really done in CCGs and comparing to MtG (i.e. MtG does it so we should) is bone-headed. Deck design is meant to be a significant part of VTES. 3) Ashur Tablets mitigate the costs of other cards (Liquidation and Anthelios being obvious examples) because cards you discard are brought back at a greater rate than lost. 4) Ashur Tablets individual effects may not be off the top of the power curve for sensible VTES design, but in combination they are. 5) Ashur Tablets aggravates the problems already caused by Anthelios, Liquidation and the MMPA archetype. They were problems before, but with Ashur Tablets in the game they have become larger problems. 6) Managing decreasing resources is a major component of VTES, other cards that either eliminate or generate large changes in resource are also problematic... Ashur Tablets is just getting more attention since it is more recent and less accepted due to familiarity. 7) You provide as many subjective and low-baseline statistics as you claim others do. Your comments about how long it takes you to resolve Ashur Tablets are unhelpful to a wider discussion about how long MOST people take to resolve the card. Retired Baron of Sydney, Australia, 418

Ive said before that changing the 5 brown backed cards and 2 green backed ones that gives extra masters to not stack is a solition. Also, one trifle a turn as well. So...... SCIENCE! test one variable at a time, document so results can be replicated and tested again by others. Lets call the erratta of rules/the 7 cards giving extra mpas one variable, since they all stab at the root of the problem. Thats test 1. Lets test Anthelios changed and or Ashurs not picking up masters, or being random as test 2, 2.1, 2.2 and 2.3 for 2.1+2, and 2.4 for 2.2+2. Test Ashurs pickinv up fewer cards as test 3. Test Liquidation banned from setup as 4. Loquidation removing cards from game also falls here, but we can assume rfg cards dont matter for recursion amd bloat. Test Anthelios banned as test 5. Once we get that worked out, i think we know where the speedbump is. Villeins changed (for the better), and Lilliths is banned. We can test these variables/roots to stop further arguments on banning components of mmpa decks. Im still a fan of the erratta of the 7 cards giving additional mpas and also trifle once a turn\since last untap. So, once its deturmined that such a fix works we can look at each part. Huitzl may be tested. Isonwyn as well. Thing to remember is H is a 10 cap infernal minion with no built in multiact, so hes less aggro than the rest. Iso is a small vamp compared to the rest, even if he does tap, so thats debateable. Anson(my favorite, since hes the star of the first deck I really built) is kinda strong too, so limit on him makes snse. Nana amd Cybele are of coirse the problem poster children. Parthenon stacks to anything, so its probably on the chopping block. Ans year of fortune is a vote, so debatable as well I guess. Thoughts?

> ReverendRevolver wrote: > Ive said before that changing the 5 brown backed cards and 2 green backed ones that gives extra masters to not stack is a solition. Also, one trifle a turn as well. > > So...... > > SCIENCE! > > test one variable at a time, document so results can be replicated and tested again by others. > > Lets call the erratta of rules/the 7 cards giving extra mpas one variable, since they all stab at the root of the problem. > > Thats test 1. > > Lets test Anthelios changed and or Ashurs not picking up masters, or being random as test 2, 2.1, 2.2 and 2.3 for 2.1+2, and 2.4 for 2.2+2. > > Test Ashurs pickinv up fewer cards as test 3. > > Test Liquidation banned from setup as 4. Loquidation removing cards from game also falls here, but we can assume rfg cards dont matter for recursion amd bloat. > > Test Anthelios banned as test 5. > > Once we get that worked out, i think we know where the speedbump is. > > Villeins changed (for the better), and Lilliths is banned. We can test these variables/roots to stop further arguments on banning components of mmpa decks. > > Im still a fan of the erratta of the 7 cards giving additional mpas and also trifle once a turn\since last untap. > > So, once its deturmined that such a fix works we can look at each part. Huitzl may be tested. Isonwyn as well. Thing to remember is H is a 10 cap infernal minion with no built in multiact, so hes less aggro than the rest. Iso is a small vamp compared to the rest, even if he does tap, so thats debateable. Anson(my favorite, since hes the star of the first deck I really built) is kinda strong too, so limit on him makes snse. Nana amd Cybele are of coirse the problem poster children. Parthenon stacks to anything, so its probably on the chopping block. Ans year of fortune is a vote, so debatable as well I guess. > > Thoughts? > The problem about Nana and Cybele is that they share 2 disciplines. Anyway, if you compare Nana and Anson I think they're pretty balanced: -Nana Buruku: 3 disciplines at superior (including ANI and PRE, which is good), 2 MPAs, +1 hand size -Anson: 2 disciplines at superior and 2 at inferior (including PRE, dom and aus, which is not bad at all), 2 MPAs and prince I would even say Anson is better than Nana Buruku, giving him acess to both Second Tradition and Parity Shift (among other Prince cards) and all Toreador stuff, having PRE for vote decks and CEL for cept/combat decks. PD: I will answer Juggernaut in another post, since I guess it will take me more time.

> Juggernaut1981 wrote: > 1) Ashur Tablets are un-interactive and therefore bad cards by design (ICL's blog). This can be caused by 'wasting time', 'unable to be stopped' or various phrases saying the same core idea: This card does not interact with my game, they are playing solitaire over there. > All master cards fit your description (unable to be stopped, no interacting with my game). As for wasting time, one have to choose 13 cards. It usually longer than choosing one card, but not 13 times that longer. Anayway, the players are more to blame than the card. > Juggernaut1981 wrote: > 2) Ashur Tablets allow in-game sideboarding, this is not really done in CCGs and comparing to MtG (i.e. MtG does it so we should) is bone-headed. Deck design is meant to be a significant part of VTES. > Side-boarding means you bring cards that weren't present in the deck in the first place, with has nothing to do with recursion (the card must be in the deck, and it must have been already played). Plus you just can't add Ashur to a deck without any careful deckbuilding beforehand. > Juggernaut1981 wrote: > 3) Ashur Tablets mitigate the costs of other cards (Liquidation and Anthelios being obvious examples) because cards you discard are brought back at a greater rate than lost. > I can't see the link with Anthelios. As for Liquidation, yes it couterbalance the cards removed. Is it an unbalanced combo? Maybe. But it needs more ground before being judged "unbalanced". > Juggernaut1981 wrote: > 4) Ashur Tablets individual effects may not be off the top of the power curve for sensible VTES design, but in combination they are. > Apart from Liquidation+AT which is a pool-gaining combo (just like Villein + Giant's Blood), I can't see another plain combo. Anyway, is there anything wrong with combos in VTES? > Juggernaut1981 wrote: > 5) Ashur Tablets aggravates the problems already caused by Anthelios, Liquidation and the MMPA archetype. They were problems before, but with Ashur Tablets in the game they have become larger problems. > Any master aggravates MMPA-related problems. > Juggernaut1981 wrote: > 6) Managing decreasing resources is a major component of VTES, other cards that either eliminate or generate large changes in resource are also problematic... Ashur Tablets is just getting more attention since it is more recent and less accepted due to familiarity. > Less accepted by some people, apparently. Others either don't care or accept it. It can't be a criteria. > Juggernaut1981 wrote: > 7) You provide as many subjective and low-baseline statistics as you claim others do. > Everyone is subjective, it's not a problem. "Partial" is what you probably meant. Do you provide any proof that "Ashur Tablets is just getting [...] less accepted due to familiarity." ? Prince of Paris, France Ratings Coordinator, Rules Director

> Pascal wrote: > For instance, suppose Dreams of the Sphinx read "During your discard phase, discard down at random." I'm quite sure this would definitely save some time. It would also kill some players ("OOps, there goes my Deflection"), so it's probably not the thing to do, but it's something I keep (amongst many other) in mind. > That is an awesome template for a card.

> Ankha wrote: > All master cards fit your description (unable to be stopped, no interacting with my game). As for wasting time, one have to choose 13 cards. It usually longer than choosing one card, but not 13 times that longer. Anayway, the players are more to blame than the card. > Remove the card you remove the problem of players not making quick decisions. Yes, a lot of masters are that way, BUT most of them are fast to resolve and don't cause long delays in the Master Phase. That is kind of the point people have been making about MMPA decks for a while... they play the Master Phase and basically nothing else, making them uninteractive and boring (See ICL's Blog Post) > Ankha wrote: > Side-boarding means you bring cards that weren't present in the deck in the first place, with has nothing to do with recursion (the card must be in the deck, and it must have been already played). Plus you just can't add Ashur to a deck without any careful deckbuilding beforehand. > Others are suggesting that almost any deck can include 3x Ashur Tablets. On that basis, I doubt there is as much care. Also you are sideboarding in the sense that you are modifying the deck while it is in play. Recurring cards has the same effect as additional copies of the cards. There is no difference between putting an extra 13 cards which are already included in the deck in a pile before the game, and Ashur Tablets with the small exception that if they are one-copy-cards you might not have seen them yet. > Juggernaut1981 wrote: > 3) Ashur Tablets mitigate the costs of other cards (Liquidation and Anthelios being obvious examples) because cards you discard are brought back at a greater rate than lost. > I can't see the link with Anthelios. As for Liquidation, yes it couterbalance the cards removed. Is it an unbalanced combo? Maybe. But it needs more ground before being judged "unbalanced". > Juggernaut1981 wrote: > 4) Ashur Tablets individual effects may not be off the top of the power curve for sensible VTES design, but in combination they are. > Apart from Liquidation+AT which is a pool-gaining combo (just like Villein + Giant's Blood), I can't see another plain combo. Anyway, is there anything wrong with combos in VTES? > Ankha wrote: > Any master aggravates MMPA-related problems. > And? Is that an agreement, a complaint or something else? > Ankha wrote: > Less accepted by some people, apparently. Others either don't care or accept it. It can't be a criteria. > Of course it can. And of course it is. You have to decrease your personal resources to gain resources of vampires and spend your entire time making sure your resources don't run out before your prey's resources. That is management of declining resources. > Ankha wrote: > Everyone is subjective, it's not a problem. "Partial" is what you probably meant. > Do you provide any proof that "Ashur Tablets is just getting [...] less accepted due to familiarity." ? > No, what I mean is... cordovera provides anecdotes about himself and complains about others doing the same. He can't hold up his own anecdotes as factual universal evidence and shoot down others for doing similar. My comment about the familiarity of VC, Minion Tap and so is just that... a comment or conjecture. I am saying that because VC, Giants Blood and Pentex have been around for a long time, people are more familiar and because of that they are less likely to get the kind of scrutiny that Ashur Tablets has... despite how much they may be highly similar in their effect on over-all game resources. As an exercise in creating a comparison... If we attempted to swap the pool and card effects of Ashur Tablets, would people see that as still a fair card? And by swap I mean allow them to effectively increase the resources by a percentage not a hard number swap. 3x Ashur Tablets = +10% of starting pool and at worst a +14% increase in library. So, lets swap them... +10% of maximum library size and +14% of starting pool. Would people be fine if Ashur Tablets instead did: Tablets of Ashur Master Put this card in play. If you have three copies in play, remove all copies in play (even controlled by other Methuselahs) from the game to gain 4 pool and choose up to nine cards from your ash heap. Move one of those cards to your hand and shuffle the others into your library. Retired Baron of Sydney, Australia, 418

For the sake om simplicity, would the followig be a viable solution? Liquidation: Only usable once per methuselah Ashur tablets: becomes a master-out-of turn It deals with pool spamming with liquidation and makes the ashur race fair between MMPA and non-MMPA decks.

> Juggernaut1981 wrote: > > > Ankha wrote: > > Everyone is subjective, it's not a problem. "Partial" is what you probably meant. > > Do you provide any proof that "Ashur Tablets is just getting [...] less accepted due to familiarity." ? > > > No, what I mean is... cordovera provides anecdotes about himself and complains about others doing the same. He can't hold up his own anecdotes as factual universal evidence and shoot down others for doing similar. My comment about the familiarity of VC, Minion Tap and so is just that... a comment or conjecture. I am saying that because VC, Giants Blood and Pentex have been around for a long time, people are more familiar and because of that they are less likely to get the kind of scrutiny that Ashur Tablets has... despite how much they may be highly similar in their effect on over-all game resources. > Lol, I'm not Miguel Cordovera, the Tremere ! Anyway, I provide anecdotes of myself, since some of the people that are against ATs have done the same, to put facts in perspective. What I want to say is that we're not having an objective discussion here. Whether to know if the archetype is as unbalanced as you claim, we should do the following excercise, in my opinion: -Choose one Ashur Tablets archetype that has won more than 1 tournament (for example Girls will find AIDS) -Choose 4 different powerful deck archetypes, ideally trying to balance the types of decks: Lasombra nocturn S&B + Ventrue 4-5 Lawfirm + Ahrimane block/fight + Warghoulator -Pick 4 players with similar skill -Do all the possible seating combinations (I think there are 120) -Repeat with other deck archetypes containing Ashur Tablets Apparently there are 2 main POSSIBLE problems that have to be handled with Ashur Tablets, arriving at this point of the discussion, are: -Power: are they really overpowered? -Time: are they more a time loss factor than other cards? (I'll drop the "fun" factor because it's too subjective. I have a lot of fun with Ashur Tablets, for example.) The power has to be tested, because tournament representativity is not, in my opinion, a factor to determine the power of a deck/card. Now, if ATs decks were winning most of big tournaments, that could be a more accurate indicator, but I guess it's not the case. TWDs depend extremely on local metagame, local taste for archetypes and several other factors (like the type of archetypes attending to a precise tournament). You cannot confirm that Ashur Tablets are broken (or even the Ashur Tablets and Liquidation combo) till you do a serious test. Talking about time loss, well in that case you would have to take a look at all cards that allow tutoring: -Alastor -MotS -Mistress Fanchon ...

> M.Schumacher wrote: > Ashur tablets: > becomes a master-out-of turn > Aieeee. Play it during someone else's turn, then fret about what cards you want to get back, to wind down the clock to deny a player a lunge VP in the last minute or two of a game. That's going to get very controversial, very quickly - and as Pascal points out, decisions regarding Ashur Tablets are often relatively prolonged without actually being time-wasting (in the cheating sense).

> jamesatzephyr wrote: > > > M.Schumacher wrote: > > Ashur tablets: > > becomes a master-out-of turn > > > Aieeee. Play it during someone else's turn, then fret about what cards you want to get back, to wind down the clock to deny a player a lunge VP in the last minute or two of a game. That's going to get very controversial, very quickly - and as Pascal points out, decisions regarding Ashur Tablets are often relatively prolonged without actually being time-wasting (in the cheating sense). > I knew someone would bring up this point. Yes, if u can ashur during someone elses turn u can interrupt an action, but the overall incidence of triggering ashurs per game will significantly reduced, since u will need at least 9 turns to ashur 3 times, while right now u can ashur every turn or at least every other turn in an mmpa deck. So while the moment of game delay is moved, the overall time for ashur procedures will decrease. Might as well make it "Only one Ashur tablet may be played per turn" but thats a longer addition to the text.

> cordovader wrote: > What I want to say is that we're not having an objective discussion here. Whether to know if the archetype is as unbalanced as you claim, we should do the following excercise, in my opinion: > > -Choose one Ashur Tablets archetype that has won more than 1 tournament (for example Girls will find AIDS) > -Choose 4 different powerful deck archetypes, ideally trying to balance the types of decks: Lasombra nocturn S&B + Ventrue 4-5 Lawfirm + Ahrimane block/fight + Warghoulator > -Pick 4 players with similar skill > -Do all the possible seating combinations (I think there are 120) > -Repeat with other deck archetypes containing Ashur Tablets > This would be a cumbersomely large task to perform. While it is far easier, and potentially more comprehensive to see the performance of these deck types across large numbers of metagames and the response over time. To a certain extent the metagame can be treated like an evolutionary system where a species may gain dominance, but unless it has the kind of edge that causes it to exterminate all other options, then other species will evolve and displace it from its position of dominance. So, the question then becomes, have we enough evidence in large-scale samples (i.e. EC, NAC, etc) of the dominance of [insert archetype here] decks? Has the metagame ecosystem evolved a competitor or does the [insert archetype here] Deck got such a significant metagame dominance that only an external change** will topple it? **external change in this scenario would be any or all of errata, new cards, card banning, rule modifications. > cordovader wrote: > Apparently there are 2 main POSSIBLE problems that have to be handled with Ashur Tablets, arriving at this point of the discussion, are: > > -Power: are they really overpowered? > -Time: are they more a time loss factor than other cards? > (I'll drop the "fun" factor because it's too subjective. I have a lot of fun with Ashur Tablets, for example.) > That's basically Darby and ICL right there... Darby = recurring that volume of cards is too powerful ICL = increasing "solitaire-like" phases of the game makes it less enjoyable for others, so does causing interactive phases to be more solitaire. > cordovader wrote: > The power has to be tested, because tournament representativity is not, in my opinion, a factor to determine the power of a deck/card. Now, if ATs decks were winning most of big tournaments, that could be a more accurate indicator, but I guess it's not the case. > > TWDs depend extremely on local metagame, local taste for archetypes and several other factors (like the type of archetypes attending to a precise tournament). You cannot confirm that Ashur Tablets are broken (or even the Ashur Tablets and Liquidation combo) till you do a serious test. > A single TWD is local metagame dependent. A large number of players aggregated from a broad number of playgroups removes that local-metagame variability and approaches a more global-metagame state. So you can either: - segregate results smaller tournaments to isolate out local metagames and see if they are not evolving then use that to exclude their data from the main group OR - use large aggregate data to remove the local metagame variations (similar to losing outliers through large sample averaging) > cordovader wrote: > Talking about time loss, well in that case you would have to take a look at all cards that allow tutoring: > -Alastor > -MotS > -Mistress Fanchon > ... > Most of those cards are not considered to be a problem because they occur during the more interactive parts of the game and provide 1 to 2 cards (with Reinforcements being the oddity at 4 cards). That's most of why people aren't looking at them. Retired Baron of Sydney, Australia, 418

> Juggernaut1981 wrote: > > > cordovader wrote: > > Apparently there are 2 main POSSIBLE problems that have to be handled with Ashur Tablets, arriving at this point of the discussion, are: > > > > -Power: are they really overpowered? > > -Time: are they more a time loss factor than other cards? > > (I'll drop the "fun" factor because it's too subjective. I have a lot of fun with Ashur Tablets, for example.) > > > That's basically Darby and ICL right there... > Darby = recurring that volume of cards is too powerful > ICL = increasing "solitaire-like" phases of the game makes it less enjoyable for others, so does causing interactive phases to be more solitaire. > Stating that "recurring that volume of cards is too powerful" it's not just an opinion. It's Darby's interpretation of "what the game should be" and not "what the game is". As we're comparing Ashur Tablets vs. Reinforcements, this is the actual state of things: -Reinforcements takes back 3 cards -Ashur Tablets takes back 4 cards (I'm eliminating from the equation the "to your hand" clause on ATs) -Reinforcements gives no pool -Ashur Tablets gives 1 pool per card played -Reinforcements is a political action (possibility of blocking, DI, DT, voted against) -Ashur Tablets is a master (possibility of Sudden and similar stuff) -Reinforcement has no downside, except losing the action -Ashur Tablets have 2 downsides, the MPA (usually more valuable than an action, except playing with high-cap vamps), and the "autoregulation clause" -Reinforcements effect triggers when referendum passes -Ashur Tablets effect triggers when 3 cards are sucessfully played (that's why the "autoregulation clause" is so important) -Ashur Tablets have the obvious benefit of taking back a card to your hand If banning or errating Ashur Tablets, why not ban or errata Reinforcements? For me they seem pretty balanced. Again Reinforcements is limitative for the "titled vampire" clause. If not I guess it would be more played by weenie vote decks. Not by high-caps of course (usually the titled vamps), because losing an action is a too high oportunity cost for them. By the way, I agree with ICL's impression about "solitaire-like" play. I think anyway that, for that matter, there are way worse cards (i.e. Heart of Nizchetus). The problem about time loss is that some players deliberatly choose to "lose time" searching to do the GW (mainly on finals, to win the tournament by first seed). In my opinion that's not a problem of a single card, there are many cards that "allow" "time loss" and it's a problem due to tournament rules and basic game mechanics ("wait, let me think, should I play my DI or not?"). > cordovader wrote: > Talking about time loss, well in that case you would have to take a look at all cards that allow tutoring: > -Alastor > -MotS > -Mistress Fanchon > ... > Most of those cards are not considered to be a problem because they occur during the more interactive parts of the game and provide 1 to 2 cards (with Reinforcements being the oddity at 4 cards). That's most of why people aren't looking at them.[/quote] Card power is an issue (if confirmed), time loss another different one. If we're discussing time loss it would be nice to stick to it, not going back to talk about number of cards. Number of cards is independent of how much time does a given card take to resolve, independently of which game phase are we talking about.

> cordovader wrote: > Stating that "recurring that volume of cards is too powerful" it's not just an opinion. It's Darby's interpretation of "what the game should be" and not "what the game is". > > As we're comparing Ashur Tablets vs. Reinforcements, this is the actual state of things: > > -Reinforcements takes back 3 cards > -Ashur Tablets takes back 4 cards (I'm eliminating from the equation the "to your hand" clause on ATs) > -Reinforcements gives no pool > -Ashur Tablets gives 1 pool per card played > -Reinforcements is a political action (possibility of blocking, DI, DT, voted against) > -Ashur Tablets is a master (possibility of Sudden and similar stuff) > -Reinforcement has no downside, except losing the action > -Ashur Tablets have 2 downsides, the MPA (usually more valuable than an action, except playing with high-cap vamps), and the "autoregulation clause" > -Reinforcements effect triggers when referendum passes > -Ashur Tablets effect triggers when 3 cards are sucessfully played (that's why the "autoregulation clause" is so important) > -Ashur Tablets have the obvious benefit of taking back a card to your hand > 3 Ashur Tablets requires: 3 MPAs 4 cards from the hand (one discarded at/after resolution) 3 Ashur Tablets gives: 12 cards to library 1 card from ashheap to hand 3 pool 3 Ashur Tablets provides as a net benefit: +3 pool +9 cards to the library for the cost of 3 MPAs Reinforcements requires: 1 Action 1 Card A majority of votes Reinforcements provides: 4 cards to then chosen Methuselahs (assuming a 'me' focused view, cards to others may be a price for 'A majority of votes and aren't accounted for) Reinforcements net benefits: +3 cards to the library if a majority of votes can be gained. > cordovader wrote: > If banning or errating Ashur Tablets, why not ban or errata Reinforcements? For me they seem pretty balanced. Again Reinforcements is limitative for the "titled vampire" clause. If not I guess it would be more played by weenie vote decks. Not by high-caps of course (usually the titled vamps), because losing an action is a too high oportunity cost for them. > Your 'for me' opinion is subjective. The reasons for why I think Reinforcements should be left alone are simply: 4 cards is not a large change in card resources AND it is a highly interactive way to gain those resources. > cordovader wrote: > The problem about time loss is that some players deliberatly choose to "lose time" searching to do the GW (mainly on finals, to win the tournament by first seed). In my opinion that's not a problem of a single card, there are many cards that "allow" "time loss" and it's a problem due to tournament rules and basic game mechanics ("wait, let me think, should I play my DI or not?"). > Call a judge each and every time. If they seem to be taking an unreasonable amount of time, call a judge. > cordovader wrote: > Card power is an issue (if confirmed), time loss another different one. > > If we're discussing time loss it would be nice to stick to it, not going back to talk about number of cards. Number of cards is independent of how much time does a given card take to resolve, independently of which game phase are we talking about. > The time loss for choosing a single card, by name or by search, during the turn is likely to be less than choosing 13 cards purely because the choice itself is simpler. MotS limits the possible choices by its text, so does Fanchon, Alastor, etc. They all instruct the player to "Search for a card that meets Criteria X" so they're options are reduced and the time delay would also be significantly reduced. Retired Baron of Sydney, Australia, 418

> M.Schumacher wrote: > Might as well make it "Only one Ashur tablet may be played per turn" but > thats a longer addition to the text. > If it's a choice between "Master: Out-of-turn" purely to make it once per go round the table and "You can only play one per turn", I'd go with the latter, no question. I'm not commenting on the desirability of the overall change one way or the other. But if you want one Ashur per player per turn tops, it's much, much, much less annoying this way.

> Juggernaut1981 wrote: > > > cordovader wrote: > > Stating that "recurring that volume of cards is too powerful" it's not just an opinion. It's Darby's interpretation of "what the game should be" and not "what the game is". > > > > As we're comparing Ashur Tablets vs. Reinforcements, this is the actual state of things: > > > > -Reinforcements takes back 3 cards > > -Ashur Tablets takes back 4 cards (I'm eliminating from the equation the "to your hand" clause on ATs) > > -Reinforcements gives no pool > > -Ashur Tablets gives 1 pool per card played > > -Reinforcements is a political action (possibility of blocking, DI, DT, voted against) > > -Ashur Tablets is a master (possibility of Sudden and similar stuff) > > -Reinforcement has no downside, except losing the action > > -Ashur Tablets have 2 downsides, the MPA (usually more valuable than an action, except playing with high-cap vamps), and the "autoregulation clause" > > -Reinforcements effect triggers when referendum passes > > -Ashur Tablets effect triggers when 3 cards are sucessfully played (that's why the "autoregulation clause" is so important) > > -Ashur Tablets have the obvious benefit of taking back a card to your hand > > > 3 Ashur Tablets requires: > 3 MPAs > 4 cards from the hand (one discarded at/after resolution) > > 3 Ashur Tablets gives: > 12 cards to library > 1 card from ashheap to hand > 3 pool > > 3 Ashur Tablets provides as a net benefit: > +3 pool > +9 cards to the library > for the cost of 3 MPAs > > Reinforcements requires: > 1 Action > 1 Card > A majority of votes > > Reinforcements provides: > 4 cards to then chosen Methuselahs (assuming a 'me' focused view, cards to others may be a price for 'A majority of votes and aren't accounted for) > > Reinforcements net benefits: > +3 cards to the library if a majority of votes can be gained. > > > cordovader wrote: > > If banning or errating Ashur Tablets, why not ban or errata Reinforcements? For me they seem pretty balanced. Again Reinforcements is limitative for the "titled vampire" clause. If not I guess it would be more played by weenie vote decks. Not by high-caps of course (usually the titled vamps), because losing an action is a too high oportunity cost for them. > > > Your 'for me' opinion is subjective. The reasons for why I think Reinforcements should be left alone are simply: 4 cards is not a large change in card resources AND it is a highly interactive way to gain those resources. > > > cordovader wrote: > > The problem about time loss is that some players deliberatly choose to "lose time" searching to do the GW (mainly on finals, to win the tournament by first seed). In my opinion that's not a problem of a single card, there are many cards that "allow" "time loss" and it's a problem due to tournament rules and basic game mechanics ("wait, let me think, should I play my DI or not?"). > > > Call a judge each and every time. If they seem to be taking an unreasonable amount of time, call a judge. > > > cordovader wrote: > > Card power is an issue (if confirmed), time loss another different one. > > > > If we're discussing time loss it would be nice to stick to it, not going back to talk about number of cards. Number of cards is independent of how much time does a given card take to resolve, independently of which game phase are we talking about. > > > The time loss for choosing a single card, by name or by search, during the turn is likely to be less than choosing 13 cards purely because the choice itself is simpler. MotS limits the possible choices by its text, so does Fanchon, Alastor, etc. They all instruct the player to "Search for a card that meets Criteria X" so they're options are reduced and the time delay would also be significantly reduced. > You realize that 12/3 makes 4 right? Not counting the Ashur you lose due to it's use. In that case it's 9/3 make 3 per played Ashur Tablet.

> Juggernaut1981 wrote: > 3 Ashur Tablets requires: > 3 MPAs > 4 cards from the hand (one discarded at/after resolution) > > 3 Ashur Tablets gives: > 12 cards to library > 1 card from ashheap to hand > 3 pool > > 3 Ashur Tablets provides as a net benefit: > +3 pool > +9 cards to the library > for the cost of 3 MPAs > > Reinforcements requires: > 1 Action > 1 Card > A majority of votes > > Reinforcements provides: > 4 cards to then chosen Methuselahs (assuming a 'me' focused view, cards to others may be a price for 'A majority of votes and aren't accounted for) > > Reinforcements net benefits: > +3 cards to the library if a majority of votes can be gained. > how did you get to 4 cards provided for methuselah in reinforcment? using same math as you used for ashurs you would gain ONLY 2 cards not 4. returning 3 cards at cost of 1 card. ashurs do have slightly better results when you count that they do return 13 card for cost of 3.5 cards. yes in fact it's 3.5 card and not a whole card as you have suggested. many times you simply drop duplicity from your hand or card you know would not be needed around the table. in such cases you are in card benefit and not in card lose!!! another fact you definitively need to take in acount is that Reinforcment is an action not master. any moron around the table might be able to simply throw away telepatic misdirection (that is played in like 1/3-1/4 of decks) and screw whole your gain. how many deck do intentonaly play suddens and/or washes? i believe it would be much lower number. > Juggernaut1981 wrote: > Call a judge each and every time. If they seem to be taking an unreasonable amount of time, call a judge. > hey judge it takes him 2 minutes to choose 13th card that should go to his hand and while judge walks to you table he is done or he will reply that he needs to calculate amount of cards in his asheap to decide what to dig in... so what should i do as a judge now? pick up 13th card at random? smash playeers on hands when they do chose cards for longer than 3 minutes? what is suitable time for choosing 13 cards out of 70 in my asheap? next time recepie for hot water PLEASE (and yes this sentence was supposed to be ironical and offensive if you want to take it this way) > Juggernaut1981 wrote: > > > cordovader wrote: > > Card power is an issue (if confirmed), time loss another different one. > > If we're discussing time loss it would be nice to stick to it, not going back to talk about number of cards. Number of cards is independent of how much time does a given card take to resolve, independently of which game phase are we talking about. > > > The time loss for choosing a single card, by name or by search, during the turn is likely to be less than choosing 13 cards purely because the choice itself is simpler. MotS limits the possible choices by its text, so does Fanchon, Alastor, etc. They all instruct the player to "Search for a card that meets Criteria X" so they're options are reduced and the time delay would also be significantly reduced. > you can't separate these two as you are trying to suggest. time loss is equal to quantity of cards you need to find and fact you are searching for more cards does not help. you still need to find those 3 majesty in your asheap. you still need to dig throu 40-50 cards. when you are searching for single card you play in multiple copies any 'open' search like alastor or MOS will be done by finding first card... searching for all majestys in my asheap can take even 2-3 minutes while searching for one can takes 10-20 seconds. once you simply need to go through WHOLE your library/asheap time consumption will raise definitively. playing 3 MOS in one turn will consume more time than playing only 1. as this one is usually used to dig in single copy card from your deck it's quite time consuming. yes heart of cheating fall out of this equation as it does not search in library so this one might be only card in concern that in fact fills in your point of view. while alastor are quite quick as you usually play only one/two type of equips it's simple find first helicopter or assault rifle. Fanchon lady is more complicated but not a lot. usualy after 5-10 games you know your setup good enough that you have 'order' of cards you go for and in 80% of cases you stick to it. yes searching for final anarchist uprising to kill prey might be out of standard, but it won't take more than minute. you completely missed Erycies fragment. searching you prey's asheap for cards you might be able to play can be more time consuming than any ashurs we have ever seen. i heard this complain for playing ashurs a lot and as i'm only one here around who own enough of them and play them regularly i received it most of the time. trying to fix this i have started to prepare cards for ashurs in advance. surprise surprise... moment i touched my asheap outside of my turn all remaining players knew right away what is going to happen. simple scenario description. who did not see it before? player puts 3rd ashur on the table. next 15-30 seconds he is explaining to whole table what will happen. then he chose 7-9 cards right away in another 30 seconds, but choice for remaining 4-5 cards takes another 3-5 minutes as he is checking card counts and deck situation and his hand few more times. assholepopulation.com/ Did u saw one today?

Never understood why it would take longer than 2 minutes to resolve ashurs. Play third tablet. Picl up ash heap. Pile cards you want back. Count them. If less than 13, add more or dont, pick one for hand. If more, remove some. Put one in hand. Put 12 or less in deck and shuffle. Offer cut. Discard down. If nothing else, it says "up to" so decide or dont. Just figure it out. Its as bad as imbued. If you play imbued, you know you want conviction, so freaking find one for each imbued and get on with it. No, I do not think people need to take 7 hours to decide on cards. If I play MotS or Alastor, I may take 1minute 30 seconds to decide flamethrower or assault rifle or bowl or bow. But if you build the deck, you know whats in it. I have lapses where I forget, but I still pick an equipment and go. There is no reason to draw out choices lile you are refinancing your house. Pick cards. If you cant pick them, ahsurs says "up to" so shuffle what you have and get it over with. Ive not seen "Ashur Stall" but Ilbued stall is annoying, so I assume its similar. Seriously, why does it happen?

> ReverendRevolver wrote: > Never understood why it would take longer than 2 minutes to resolve ashurs. > ... > Ive not seen "Ashur Stall" but Ilbued stall is annoying, so I assume its similar. Seriously, why does it happen? > Short version: games are complicated. Imagine that you are told you can see exactly what everyone else is playing on the table in front of you, then side-board your deck to take that information into account. (It's not quite side-boarding, but it's close.) In games that allow it, side-boarding is often a difficult skill to master, and requires a non-zero amount of time between rounds. Longer version: You have 13 cards to put back in your library. If you're like (quite a few) Ashur decks, that's a fairly hefty amount of your current library. 9 Ashur Tablets in a 70-75 card library is probably a little towards the 'extreme' end, but far from unthinkable. e.g. www.veknfrance.com/decks/twd.htm#2013wone2 has 9 in 69. So you play the first Ashur set with 23 cards down - 46 left, with 13 being added back in. That's 59 in your deck. Get through roughly half of those to get the next three out. So say you're down to about 25-30 cards. 13 cards going into that is a third to half your deck. Now imagine you're playing, say, a fairly naive stealth and bleed deck. Say you have roughly 30-40 cards in your ash heap at this point. (Some cards have probably gone in play, like the occasional Villein or Blood Doll or whatever.) You might have the option of choosing from: - a bunch of stealth - a clutch of bleed action modifiers - a handful of bleed actions - a smattering of wake/bounce - a dash of transient masters, like Sudden or DI Looking at the table: - you can probably oust your prey fairly swiftly, though he's shown an annoying tendency to cling on with some blood gain and Villein - digging through your grand-prey's ash heap, she played a smattering of Second Traditions early in the game though nothing much since. Is that a lucky/unlucky shuffle, or has she been hoarding them to use against you? - your predator is a vote-y deck, so your bleed bounce hasn't been that useful to you - your grand-predator is making inroads into your predator, but it's slow work, mostly because your predator is generating a lot of pool with Voter Cap and friends. But if / when she does get through to you, your grand-pred is showing quite a lot of bleed, and your bounce might be more useful to you. Now decide what you want to get back, taking everything into account. Do you go all bleed mod and bounce, to find yourself with a grand-prey who's now walling up with those Seconds and you wish you had more stealth, while your predator still won't budge so that bounce is pointless? Do you mix in mostly stealth with some bleed mods? Can you remember what's left in your library - is it a lot of stealth, bleed, bounce, something else - so you can get the ratios right? Now imagine you're playing a much more intricate deck. Now imagine you're playing a much more intricate deck, and the outcome of this table will very likely decide whether you get into the tournament finals or not. Now imagine you're playing a much more intricate deck, and this is the final round of a Continental Championship.

To solve the timing issue: how about having a 1 turn delay on Ashur? You play your third Ashur, you gain the pool right away, but the cards are only shuffled back at your next untap phase. Now you have one full table turn to think about it

> jamesatzephyr wrote: > Now imagine you're playing a much more intricate deck. > > Now imagine you're playing a much more intricate deck, and the outcome of this table will very likely decide whether you get into the tournament finals or not. > > Now imagine you're playing a much more intricate deck, and this is the final round of a Continental Championship. > so... rationalization and making excuses all around? intense situations happen all the time, man. haggling over price doesn't get us anywhere if goalposts are going to be moved depending on the situation. How long is too long to be futzing around with tablets? "well, it depends!" is a pretty awful answer. I can understand having greater sympathy for time taken when the stakes get high, but that doesn't seem to be that high of a complaint that i've noticed in this thread. i'm probably wrong though. in a way, this whole thing reminds me of an argument i once had with someone about a table-top wargame. the point of contention was where the burden of playing fair lay: with the player, to not play like an asshole and do assholish things with the available options, or with the designer whose job it was to nominally ensure a level playing field and keep all the obviously shitty situations out of reach of the player. if you've got a situation in your game where the designer goes "well who plays like that?" you're looking at poor design.

I shpuld re-word my statements: I never umderstood why people take 15 minutes to resolve ashurs when: A. Theyve been at the table all game, and even if they misses important plays amd discards may look at any other players {at the table, obviously} asheap whenever they want, as often as they want. B. They have very solid knowledge of at LEAST 8-10 cards they want back, since they've been playing or discarding the cards in the ash heap to begin with {or fed them to liquidation and still SAW them go in there} and should know on q strategic basis the basics of A. C. Have at the absolute least some idea of WHEN they will play an Ashur. If you have 2 out and one in hand, why the hell arent the gears turning? {If something happens during other players turns, MAYBE you change something, but still not a reason to spend 20 minutes contemplating if 4 grapples is a knee-jerk reaction to scary grand predators bleed of 12. You need it or not.} In mmpa decks, assume you can play 3. If you dont have 13 worth taking, either dont play them or take less than 13. If you had 2 out and topdexk one off of a villein, the idea shouldve been planted. Its not some "oh shit, I forgot what the third tablet did" thing. If you played it, there shoulda been some forethought. On "Ashur stalling" Ive seen tablets take 16 minutes to resolve, and almost fell asleep and drooled on the table. I have NOTseen somebody deliberately stalling oit tablets to be a prick for an in game advantage or for the sake of being a prick. Yet. But since I have seen somebody take stupid long just to be "TACTICAL" Id probably come unglued if someone stalled it further deliberately. Ive used Tablets in Anson second trad guns since I got 4 of them, which was whem KoT was still easily obtainable in shops and on WW website. I always wanted more tastes, pursuits, DI, dreams, and sexond trads. Id often want more blurs, rushes, sideslips, and haven uncovereds. Sometimes Id pick up fames, tension, or enchamt kindred/Aire of elation. Never did I take >3 minutes to decide what was happening. Id say on a scale of 1-5 of complexity, with1 being stealthbleed, 2 weenie potence, 3 being imbued, 4 being girls and 5 being purgr combo based on bookkeeping and being attentive, Anson second trad is around 3 ish. Theres more complex and less complex stuff out there. Ive used tablets in KS decks, DBR decks, and weenie for+pre flash grenades and still taken ~3 minutes tops to decide. If it takes that much time to decide stuff to shuffle in, how much time should it take to decide to block? Or to debate bleeding out of fear of bounce? Theres tboughtful, then theres calculating, then theres "are we even still playing?" Edit: Self Biased, were you playing with 40k Chaos Rhino-rush, Fantasy "Hero-Hammer" or the later"I have 6 Hydras" darkelves/"I kill you, ressurrect you, you amd I kill you" VC? I once got the Nigjt goblin initiative check vortex dropped on Saurus. Yea, initiative 2. Lotsa dead lizards. I dont think me taking 6 Salamanders compares to someone stalling out or just being disrespectfully slow about resolving tablets. Una is a perfect example of "blame players v. Designers" debates though. Maybe girls decks in general as well......

> Asnek wrote: > how did you get to 4 cards provided for methuselah in reinforcment? using same math as you used for ashurs you would gain ONLY 2 cards not 4. returning 3 cards at cost of 1 card. > ashurs do have slightly better results when you count that they do return 13 card for cost of 3.5 cards. > yes in fact it's 3.5 card and not a whole card as you have suggested. many times you simply drop duplicity from your hand or card you know would not be needed around the table. in such cases you are in card benefit and not in card lose!!! > > another fact you definitively need to take in acount is that Reinforcment is an action not master. any moron around the table might be able to simply throw away telepatic misdirection (that is played in like 1/3-1/4 of decks) and screw whole your gain. how many deck do intentonaly play suddens and/or washes? i believe it would be much lower number. > Apologies, I had it in mind that Reinforcments returned 4 cards... which just means that it is worse than before with the comparison and pushes Ashur Tablets further above the 'general card recursion point'. Ashur Tablets makes you discard a card by over-sizing your hand. The card chosen might be less valuable at that time due to other factors, but the simplest cost is "1 card". Attempting to put a more elegant cost on a card requires the kind of modelling and actuarial work I couldn't be bothered doing concretely. If there is an actuary out there who feels like they want to put actuarial coefficients on the various possible card discards after drawing the "one card" of Ashur Tablets... I'm all for it. While you are at it, please give approximate pool and blood costs of all minion actions at all points in the game. It's about the same level of complexity and work required. I never claimed Reinforcements couldn't be stopped, in fact I've usually said it is far easier to stop and provides only marginally better benefits from its required setup (i.e. title, majority referendum, not being blocked) than other action-based recursion. Again, Ashur Tablets is a less interactive master card play and is more likely to be achieved; its 'setback cost' of the triggering event is made less of an issue due to card scarcity, but it is also not a particularly strong penalty for what would appear to be easier to accomplish than 4 unblocked referendums by a titled vampire. > Asnek wrote: > hey judge it takes him 2 minutes to choose 13th card [...]recepie for hot water PLEASE > Or you could just say "Judge can you stop the clock for our table, this guy seems to be wasting time making a decision." > Asnek wrote: > you can't separate these two as you are trying to suggest. time loss is equal to quantity of cards you need to find and fact you are searching for more cards does not help.[...] you might be able to play can be more time consuming than any ashurs we have ever seen. > Duh, playing 3 MotS takes more time than playing 1 MotS. Eating 3 sandwiches takes more time than eating one. But in the end, MotS limits you to one equipment card... so that means you can ignore any non-equipment card in your library AND you are probably doing this action with the item of equipment already in mind. My claim on time loss is that time lost is increased by the number of cards chosen AND the number of cards which are valid choices AND it's probably not a straight multiplier of those two factors (i.e. choosing 2 cards from 4 cards is probably going to be longer than twice the time of choosing 1 card from 4 cards). I am saying that MotS will have a shorter search time than for instance Spirit Summoning Chamber (burn a blood to search for a THA card). I am also saying that the search Alastor will have a similar time than MotS because Alastor has the same choice limits AND like the MotS case you have probably already got a shorter list of choices out of the possible choices (i.e. you are choosing between Helicopter and Assault Rifle for your Alastor but ignoring the Sports Bikes, Ankara Citadel and Palatial Estates). What makes playing Ashur Tablets far longer is that you must first choose 13 cards and then choose 1 to go to your hand. Because there are two sets of choices and both of them are made on reasonably large numbers of cards. If you have the problem that you telegraph to your opponents that you are planning to play your 3rd Ashur Tablets by looking at your ashheap, then look at it more often so they can't tell when you are playing it. That's just bad tactics on your part. > Asnek wrote: > simple scenario description. who did not see it before? > player puts 3rd ashur on the table. next 15-30 seconds he is explaining to whole table what will happen. then he chose 7-9 cards right away in another 30 seconds, but choice for remaining 4-5 cards takes another 3-5 minutes as he is checking card counts and deck situation and his hand few more times. > That is my point about the decisions being more complex and taking more time the greater the size of the groups and number of choices to be made. Retired Baron of Sydney, Australia, 418

> Pascal wrote: > > > Zoroh wrote: > > I think it´s a good solution.But then again I ask you Pascal: wich problem exactly we're trying to fix? what's wrong, especifically, with AT? > > > My issue with AT: It takes forever(*) to resolve 3. > And some tables resolve 9. > > (*) forever = more than 10 seconds. From what I've seen, between 1 and 2 minutes. > Then the solution you propose seems to fix it alright. Any chance it will see day light anytime soon? Or it sits in the 'not broken' mechanics that will wait printing? Keep walking...

> ReverendRevolver wrote: > Edit: Self Biased, were you playing with 40k Chaos Rhino-rush, Fantasy "Hero-Hammer" or the later"I have 6 Hydras" darkelves/"I kill you, ressurrect you, you amd I kill you" VC? I once got the Nigjt goblin initiative check vortex dropped on Saurus. Yea, initiative 2. Lotsa dead lizards. I dont think me taking 6 Salamanders compares to someone stalling out or just being disrespectfully slow about resolving tablets. Una is a perfect example of "blame players v. Designers" debates though. Maybe girls decks in general as well...... > i was thinking about the 3.5 dual lash Prince/thousand sons fiasco, where allessio allegedly uttered that phrase followed by "but that's not what I meant!"

> Juggernaut1981 wrote: > > > Asnek wrote: > > how did you get to 4 cards provided for methuselah in reinforcment? using same math as you used for ashurs you would gain ONLY 2 cards not 4. returning 3 cards at cost of 1 card. > > ashurs do have slightly better results when you count that they do return 13 card for cost of 3.5 cards. > > yes in fact it's 3.5 card and not a whole card as you have suggested. many times you simply drop duplicity from your hand or card you know would not be needed around the table. in such cases you are in card benefit and not in card lose!!! > > > > another fact you definitively need to take in acount is that Reinforcment is an action not master. any moron around the table might be able to simply throw away telepatic misdirection (that is played in like 1/3-1/4 of decks) and screw whole your gain. how many deck do intentonaly play suddens and/or washes? i believe it would be much lower number. > > > Apologies, I had it in mind that Reinforcments returned 4 cards... which just means that it is worse than before with the comparison and pushes Ashur Tablets further above the 'general card recursion point'. > > Ashur Tablets makes you discard a card by over-sizing your hand. The card chosen might be less valuable at that time due to other factors, but the simplest cost is "1 card". Attempting to put a more elegant cost on a card requires the kind of modelling and actuarial work I couldn't be bothered doing concretely. If there is an actuary out there who feels like they want to put actuarial coefficients on the various possible card discards after drawing the "one card" of Ashur Tablets... I'm all for it. While you are at it, please give approximate pool and blood costs of all minion actions at all points in the game. It's about the same level of complexity and work required. > > I never claimed Reinforcements couldn't be stopped, in fact I've usually said it is far easier to stop and provides only marginally better benefits from its required setup (i.e. title, majority referendum, not being blocked) than other action-based recursion. Again, Ashur Tablets is a less interactive master card play and is more likely to be achieved; its 'setback cost' of the triggering event is made less of an issue due to card scarcity, but it is also not a particularly strong penalty for what would appear to be easier to accomplish than 4 unblocked referendums by a titled vampire. > > > Asnek wrote: > > hey judge it takes him 2 minutes to choose 13th card [...]recepie for hot water PLEASE > > > Or you could just say "Judge can you stop the clock for our table, this guy seems to be wasting time making a decision." > > > Asnek wrote: > > you can't separate these two as you are trying to suggest. time loss is equal to quantity of cards you need to find and fact you are searching for more cards does not help.[...] you might be able to play can be more time consuming than any ashurs we have ever seen. > > > Duh, playing 3 MotS takes more time than playing 1 MotS. Eating 3 sandwiches takes more time than eating one. But in the end, MotS limits you to one equipment card... so that means you can ignore any non-equipment card in your library AND you are probably doing this action with the item of equipment already in mind. > > My claim on time loss is that time lost is increased by the number of cards chosen AND the number of cards which are valid choices AND it's probably not a straight multiplier of those two factors (i.e. choosing 2 cards from 4 cards is probably going to be longer than twice the time of choosing 1 card from 4 cards). I am saying that MotS will have a shorter search time than for instance Spirit Summoning Chamber (burn a blood to search for a THA card). I am also saying that the search Alastor will have a similar time than MotS because Alastor has the same choice limits AND like the MotS case you have probably already got a shorter list of choices out of the possible choices (i.e. you are choosing between Helicopter and Assault Rifle for your Alastor but ignoring the Sports Bikes, Ankara Citadel and Palatial Estates). > > What makes playing Ashur Tablets far longer is that you must first choose 13 cards and then choose 1 to go to your hand. Because there are two sets of choices and both of them are made on reasonably large numbers of cards. > > If you have the problem that you telegraph to your opponents that you are planning to play your 3rd Ashur Tablets by looking at your ashheap, then look at it more often so they can't tell when you are playing it. That's just bad tactics on your part. > > > Asnek wrote: > > simple scenario description. who did not see it before? > > player puts 3rd ashur on the table. next 15-30 seconds he is explaining to whole table what will happen. then he chose 7-9 cards right away in another 30 seconds, but choice for remaining 4-5 cards takes another 3-5 minutes as he is checking card counts and deck situation and his hand few more times. > > > That is my point about the decisions being more complex and taking more time the greater the size of the groups and number of choices to be made. > assholepopulation.com/ Did u saw one today?

It certainly should not take five minutes to choose 4-5 cards after you have chosen most of your cards. But, in competitive play, there are other distractions - your prey may "harass" you with talking, or your cross table "buddies" may give "friendly" advice. Everything depends on how the game is evolving and what position you are in. Since stalling in general in unsportsmanshiplike (is that a real word), you can either choose or not choose to play your game fast or not. For example, if I had 3 vps already, and there is just about 5 minutes left to play, and my last opponent has a good chance to oust me, how fast I should choose 13 cards after playing 3rd ashur tablets? If I haste, I might make a bad decision and my opponent ousts me, I might not get in to finals. If I choose well, I might have a chance to oust my opponent and win 5 victory points and even get to finals with first seed. There are lots of things to consider when playing Ashur Tablets, but there are lots of other things to consider when playing V:tES as well. If Ashur Tablets are such a problem, they should be banned. If they are not banned, then they are considered fine and you just need to live with them. If it takes a lot of time to for someone to play Ashur Tablets, consider this: Does that player play slowly in general, if yes, does that player win games more than you, if yes, then maybe you should think more and rant less so you might win games as well. ---- Banging trashcans, breaking windows We'll wake you up tonight We like the good time, we scream and shout And that's what fun's about

I didnt deal much with tablets this year at the NAC to give a picture of how tablets are being playes globally, but the only player in Ohio I recall taking excessively long to decide tablets uptake (who no longer plays) was an infamous net-decker who barely grasp how to play a girls deck (still won with them, because those decks are that stupid-strong) and seriously re-read half his ash heap. If we base time required upon players who win or dont, we end up with variants of "the Angseesing Clock" where of you take 5 or more seconds longer than Hugh, you are doing it wrong. So, maybe the problem is some players overthinking the game upsets players who are internally screaming "pick up the F@#%@ing DI and shuffle!" When its plainly what to do, but some folks pretend to overthink just to stall, since girls mmpa do nothing but gain pool and not die, and of course gain that 2 hour single vp. Its not a playstyle issue, as Ive seen, its a lack of preperation. Yes, another player may play a single card and reshape what yoi plan on doing, but tablets should take no longer than backing up and refiguring a turn if you already have any part of a plan.

I agree, that playing tablets is a playing style issue, but everything else is that in v:yes as well. It's unfortunate that one person literally delays the game by being ill prepared. On the other hand I don't think girls deck is so strong that one can win with it without studying it... Well, perhaps a stealth & bleed variant. Regardless, perhaps those who play with this kind of person and know what they are playing need to think their own play style - and just cruelly oust them. ---- Banging trashcans, breaking windows We'll wake you up tonight We like the good time, we scream and shout And that's what fun's about

Ive had a Gisella Harden, the Winnower kindred spirits/trochomancy half built for awhile, incase Girls mmpa get stupid popular again. I also had a Santaleous wall with 4XSantaleous and 3X Asguresh, where I splashed fragmentand trochomancy. Never got to use it against girls decks though.

> ReverendRevolver wrote: > Ive had a Gisella Harden, the Winnower kindred spirits/trochomancy half built for awhile, incase Girls mmpa get stupid popular again. I also had a Santaleous wall with 4XSantaleous and 3X Asguresh, where I splashed fragmentand trochomancy. > > Never got to use it against girls decks though. > At one moment there were so many Ashur decks that i used to run in one or two of them every game. that forced me to build anti-ashur DEM bleed running trochonacies with Sargon's fragment... bleed you cross table with kindred spirits just inferior for 1 is enough. and before bounce i will increase bleed by inferior necromancy version on trochomancy. why i don't want more bleed? because this way i remove 13 cards not only 7... after few games ashur decks started to oust me cross table if possible... assholepopulation.com/ Did u saw one today?

> Asnek wrote: > > > ReverendRevolver wrote: > > Ive had a Gisella Harden, the Winnower kindred spirits/trochomancy half built for awhile, incase Girls mmpa get stupid popular again. I also had a Santaleous wall with 4XSantaleous and 3X Asguresh, where I splashed fragmentand trochomancy. > > > > Never got to use it against girls decks though. > > > At one moment there were so many Ashur decks that i used to run in one or two of them every game. that forced me to build anti-ashur DEM bleed running trochonacies with Sargon's fragment... bleed you cross table with kindred spirits just inferior for 1 is enough. and before bounce i will increase bleed by inferior necromancy version on trochomancy. why i don't want more bleed? because this way i remove 13 cards not only 7... > after few games ashur decks started to oust me cross table if possible... > Ha! That showed them alright! ---- Banging trashcans, breaking windows We'll wake you up tonight We like the good time, we scream and shout And that's what fun's about

> Jussi wrote: > > > Asnek wrote: > > > > > ReverendRevolver wrote: > > > Ive had a Gisella Harden, the Winnower kindred spirits/trochomancy half built for awhile, incase Girls mmpa get stupid popular again. I also had a Santaleous wall with 4XSantaleous and 3X Asguresh, where I splashed fragmentand trochomancy. > > > > > > Never got to use it against girls decks though. > > > > > > > > At one moment there were so many Ashur decks that i used to run in one or two of them every game. that forced me to build anti-ashur DEM bleed running trochonacies with Sargon's fragment... bleed you cross table with kindred spirits just inferior for 1 is enough. and before bounce i will increase bleed by inferior necromancy version on trochomancy. why i don't want more bleed? because this way i remove 13 cards not only 7... > > after few games ashur decks started to oust me cross table if possible... > > > Ha! That showed them alright! > Its all salt. There is no immidiate strategic advantage to ousting crosstable. Or backwards. Vp is to the left. Everyone has probably convinced a new player to go backwards with some KS bleeds, but bottomline is you are playing a deck that does something other than try to directly win. So, why do it? The Santaleous deck, like many walls, wins in the "eventually" timeframe. So, stopping masters, gaining pool, shooting up Aksynia are all ways to overcome the fact that by lategame most decks have 10 ish pool but girls have 30 something. Gisella deck is unfinished because a sabbat toolbox with dem and fortitude isnt as good as tons of other stuff (could look at under siege now i guess). If you cockroaxh because nobody else can kill the girls deck, awesome. He trouble is being a commodity that depends on girls decks or imbued scaring a table means those decks have to be there to run "right" Still says something that players build decks to kill the poisonous archetype being discussed.

Every "tier 1" deck, like Girls, Speed Shamblers, and many others are rotten hard to oust. Girls deck does not have much ability to protect pool other than Aksinya. Hence, that deck needs to generate pool like hell to survive. All good decks need means to survive and to oust. Things like delivery mechanism (stealth, combat) or defense mechanism like bleed redirection, pool gain, intercept support the initial concept. I've played in tables where all decks are variants of different strong archetypes. Sometimes table timeouts, but often there are ousts and game wins. And sometimes decks that are not of those variants manage to win. So... V:tES as a game is more often a game of player against player rather than deck against deck. ---- Banging trashcans, breaking windows We'll wake you up tonight We like the good time, we scream and shout And that's what fun's about

> Jussi wrote: > Every "tier 1" deck, like Girls, Speed Shamblers, and many others are rotten hard to oust. Girls deck does not have much ability to protect pool other than Aksinya. Hence, that deck needs to generate pool like hell to survive. > > All good decks need means to survive and to oust. Things like delivery mechanism (stealth, combat) or defense mechanism like bleed redirection, pool gain, intercept support the initial concept. > > I've played in tables where all decks are variants of different strong archetypes. Sometimes table timeouts, but often there are ousts and game wins. And sometimes decks that are not of those variants manage to win. So... > > V:tES as a game is more often a game of player against player rather than deck against deck. > As it should be. But some decks create large imbalances that make the player less important than the deck. Thats the primary complaint I hear with Una decks, and my gripe with girls mmpa. A few years back at a WoN tournament, a player was drunk to the point of not walking safely, and still made final table with a girls deck. You have to have a loose grasp of what you are doing in a vaccuum, and interaction matters substantially less. Its the opposite of alot of Jay Kristoffs older decks, like gargoyles and Anatole variants. Hes built decks anyone couod win with as well, but some stuff, like his !gangrel, are tailored to his playstyle and many players wouldnt be able to win a table, let alone a tournament with them. So, I still feel the point of this thread is "Ashurs with girls style mmpa is a problem, and we all have opinions on the extent"

> ReverendRevolver wrote: > Its all salt. There is no immidiate strategic advantage to ousting crosstable. Or backwards. Vp is to the left. Everyone has probably convinced a new player to go backwards with some KS bleeds, but bottomline is you are playing a deck that does something other than try to directly win. > > So, why do it? The Santaleous deck, like many walls, wins in the "eventually" timeframe. So, stopping masters, gaining pool, shooting up Aksynia are all ways to overcome the fact that by lategame most decks have 10 ish pool but girls have 30 something. > > Still says something that players build decks to kill the poisonous archetype being discussed. > you misunderstood me i belive. my aim was to out them cross table not event put them into position when thei predator can take advantage and kill them. but from strategical point of view. if you do this once and by any accident are able to remove 2 or more ashurs from his asheap it's quite fair chance that you have just killed one of his tablet sets. as an addition you may remove some other cards player would dig back to library. strategicaly from loong term perspective you are lowering his chances to win whole game = increasing your own. it's true that girl do have better situation in late game due to higher pool, but it's not the case all the time. i have notice when you put constant and slowly increasing pressure with low amount bleeds (1-2) in high quantities (3+ minions) you can kill girls easily whole it's just question of time. once you get him under 15 pool he will most probably not influence out new wamps due to average capacity 9,5 and he can't villien one cybele/aksinya indefinitely. assholepopulation.com/ Did u saw one today?

All discussions here about any broken anavailable card degrade into repeating same arguments over and over. Booooring. My 2 cents anyway - obviously ashurs + MMPA are broken and we need to deal with one or other. In this case I prefer "only one non-trifle master card can be played during master phase" ICL/Pascal are also right - choosing 13 cards takes too long. I think we just need to lower this number to 3 (for the sake of minimizing changes as well as simmetry - 3 tablets/3 pull/ 3 cards). I think then it will be on the acceptable power level comparing with the other recurion cards. All other "swingy" cards are bad too and I'm convienced that the game will become better if we ban/errata them. NC Russia

I don't see Ashurs taking that long in most cases. But sure, it CAN be used for playing time. Same could be said for Vaticination, Heart of Nizchetus, discarding after Dreams etc etc. Finnish Politics!

> Lönkka wrote: > I don't see Ashurs taking that long in most cases. But sure, it CAN be used for playing time. > > Same could be said for Vaticination, Heart of Nizchetus, discarding after Dreams etc etc. > Sennadurek, Troglodytia, Auger, Deep cover agent, celestial harmony, forsee, etc COULD take a long time as well, Making "decisions" is the ouch part. Pascals idea mirrors the handling of discards with Fear the void below, Maqsue of judas, border skirmish, sudario, etc, where yoi simply point your hand, face down, at the table, shuffle, and let someome pick what goes (hypnotic spectre style). Theres a mechanical sort of quality to it, and its not time consuming like choice is, and adds more interesting randomness to the game. I ran Fear the void and Masque of judas in a Petaniqua deck once, and two randoms averaged 50% less time consuming than discards from DotS at end of turns. We migjt need to impose a limit. Add in "you may remove any number of cards in your ash heap from the game, then shuffle you ash heap. Remove up to 13 cards at random from yoir ash heap, and shuffle them into you library." Maybe even a clause where your ash heap gets rfg after. So, random mostly, nothing to hand. No decision, other than removing cards from game, which could be edited to like 5 cards (so the non girls decks dont have to choke on junk because girls decks ruined the card) Also, itd probably help timeout i guess.

> ReverendRevolver wrote: > and adds more interesting randomness to the game. > Please develop. I can't see why picking cards at random would be interesting in that case. Basically, you can order choices by ascending effectiveness: "opponent chooses the card" < "the card is chosen randomly" < "you choose the card" For Fear of the Void Below, discarding randomly is better than letting the opponent choose the card. But for Ashur, choosing randomly the cards is far worse than choosing them: you can't build a reliable strategy on randomness. Muse of the Flame doesn't provide an "interesting" randomness for instance. Prince of Paris, France Ratings Coordinator, Rules Director

> Lönkka wrote: > I don't see Ashurs taking that long in most cases. But sure, it CAN be used for playing time. > > Same could be said for Vaticination, Heart of Nizchetus, discarding after Dreams etc etc. > Two minutes doesn't seem like a long time to resolve a card, but it can be. When designing cards, I have to keep in mind a card's resoultion time. As an extreme example, suppose every card that was played took two minutes to resolve. In a tournament game, a total of 60 cards could be played, totalling 120 minutes and averaging 12 cards per player. Playing 12 cards isn't a satisfying game of V:TES. It's ok if there are a few such cards. To paraphrase Ankha, it's ok to have a piece of chocolate once in a while, but if we ate chocolate all the time we'd get sick. Ashur Tablets is very much a piece of chocolate in my mind.

For the same reason Ozzy hydewhite is hard to build with, 13 cards at random, without removing some, wpuld be nearly useless. But removing some from the game is how to set it up (and i admit could end up making it take almost as long, but the up in the air about 3 cards as #13 is solved) and then randomness. Flavor-wise, random should be to offset stuff, like sudario, or anarchy, like skirmish and constant revolution. Or malk. My origional suggestion is still my favorite, being only minion cards. Ben, you have so far not allowed stuff to time out tables more to exist. But on an unrelated note, why arent archonsfrom origins posted?

> ReverendRevolver wrote: > Ben, you have so far not allowed stuff to time out tables more to exist. But on an unrelated note, why arent archonsfrom origins posted? > Lack of bribes.

Ok, Origins archons uploaded and approved. Lemme know if there are any issues.

> BenPeal wrote: > > > ReverendRevolver wrote: > > Ben, you have so far not allowed stuff to time out tables more to exist. But on an unrelated note, why arent archonsfrom origins posted? > > > Lack of bribes. > Im so broke that (insert joke here) but if you insist, I can bri g you a few copies of the card Bribes. Figured youd own enough by now......

> BenPeal wrote: > It's ok if there are a few such cards. > No, it's not. One problem with most of card balance talks - everybody try to speak from high-level tournament perspective, so any discussion became void, cause high-level tournaments (or just games when whole table consists of experienced players) are generally fine (exept mentioned earlier villein in half the decks, which must have be banned couple of years ago, but was not because of strange idea, that playing with shitty big caps is good). But the main real problems of vtes now are, in the order of importance: 1. new players, 2. length of game and 3. card availability. And from this perspective AT, as vell as several other mentioned cards (heart, dreams e t.s.) are really bad. NC Russia

> elotar wrote: > > > BenPeal wrote: > > It's ok if there are a few such cards. > > > No, it's not. > I was speaking only from the perspective of cards that take a lot of time to resolve. There are time-intensive cards which are quite common and available, such as political actions or cards with search effects such as Waters of Duat. > One problem with most of card balance talks - everybody try to speak from high-level tournament perspective... > I disagree. Whether a card is fun, whether a card is readily understandable, and whether a card causes gameflow disruption are often talked about in discussions about card balance and card design. One example is discussions about events, particularly some of the original Gehenna events. A lot of complaints about those cards have to do with them not being fun, having a lot of card text, and how much of a hassle they are with respect to performing normal game functions. These issues are separate and distinct from their power level. Readability, simplicity, and brevity are talked about a lot within the Design Team when we're designing cards. Here's a Designer's Diary entry where we talk about card text length: vekn.net/designers-diary/219-playtest-concluded-thoughts-on-design-and-card-text > But the main real problems of vtes now are, in the order of importance: 1. new players, 2. length of game and 3. card availability. > I'd say the #1 problem of V:TES is that it is currently out of print.

> BenPeal wrote: > I was speaking only from the perspective of cards that take a lot of time to resolve. There are time-intensive cards which are quite common and available, such as political actions or cards with search effects such as Waters of Duat. > Yea, and all those cards are a problem. Political actions, maybe, not so much, cause their time-use is sort of meaningful, but search effects are just waisted time for all involved. > BenPeal wrote: > Readability, simplicity, and brevity are talked about a lot within the Design Team when we're designing cards. > Kudos 4 u, but I was talking about this forum discussions, where we can see such gems as "I don't see Ashurs taking that long in most cases". Holy crap, we got players who are stopping to think after each draw of replasement card, choosing of 13 cards will comatose them for a 5-10 minutes! > BenPeal wrote: > I'd say the #1 problem of V:TES is that it is currently out of print. > Returning to print will solve problem with card availability (or maybe not, like with parity shift), maybe solve problems with new players (if there will be some advertisemen/support), but still won't solve problem with too long play time. NC Russia

> elotar wrote: > Returning to print will solve problem with card availability (or maybe not, like with parity shift), maybe solve problems with new players (if there will be some advertisemen/support), but still won't solve problem with too long play time. > But banning (or heavily modifying) Ashur and similar cards will do little to solve that. Games have pretty much always timed out in tournament play, and I don't just mean super-competitive NAC type tournaments but also your local 10 player get-together. The basic problem is that V:TES games can take a very long time, irrespective of individual card plays. Ban any time-drain cards and you still have options to - for example - generate an absolute ton of pool, making it extremely hard for all but the most aggressive of decks to oust you. Between a variety of strong blood gain options like Voter Cap and Giant's Blood (plus many more), Villein, breed boon etc., it's entirely possible to gain absolutely absurd amounts of pool. Pool gain isn't the only option. I've seen a large number of games time out because one player at the table is trying to control everything way too much - stopping anyone else ousting their prey in the honest belief that they can sweep the table, that sort of thing. And the whole table slows down like hell. Doing some nasty things with Baltimore Purge is one particular case I remember. Similarly, table-control wall decks - what can feel like every single moderately controversial action, you get to negotiate with your grand-predator's threat of Eagle Sight (or equivalent). Or a massive Folderol deck. You can ban Ashur, and there will still be players on the table taking huge amounts of time to do stuff, with games timing out. Fundamentally, V:TES isn't a quick game. If players are looking for a reliably medium-length game (say, 45-60 minutes), V:TES is probably a poor choice for them.

> jamesatzephyr wrote: > You can ban Ashur, and there will still be players on the table taking huge amounts of time to do stuff, with games timing out. Fundamentally, V:TES isn't a quick game. If players are looking for a reliably medium-length game (say, 45-60 minutes), V:TES is probably a poor choice for them. > Obviously by banning/errating ashurs we'll not solve all problems of the game and we can't reach reliable 45 min. length for 5-men tables, but I think it's not a reason to drop the problem of long to execute cards altogether. NC Russia

> elotar wrote: > > > BenPeal wrote: > > I was speaking only from the perspective of cards that take a lot of time to resolve. There are time-intensive cards which are quite common and available, such as political actions or cards with search effects such as Waters of Duat. > > > Yea, and all those cards are a problem. Political actions, maybe, not so much, cause their time-use is sort of meaningful, but search effects are just waisted time for all involved. > Sure, nobody is interested in watching someone shuffle their deck over and over again. Like I said, they're pieces of chocolate. I do not agree with the assertion that they are 100% bad, 100% of the time. > > BenPeal wrote: > > Readability, simplicity, and brevity are talked about a lot within the Design Team when we're designing cards. > > > Kudos 4 u, but I was talking about this forum discussions, where we can see such gems as "I don't see Ashurs taking that long in most cases". Holy crap, we got players who are stopping to think after each draw of replasement card, choosing of 13 cards will comatose them for a 5-10 minutes! > There's also Ian Lee's (ICL's) post in this thread regarding time taken by "administrative functions": vekn.net/forum/41-card-balance-a-strategy-discussion/63590-balancing-ashur-tablets?limit=10&start=140#64403 Again, I highly recommend that everyone read the blog article he links to. > > BenPeal wrote: > > I'd say the #1 problem of V:TES is that it is currently out of print. > > > Returning to print will solve problem with card availability (or maybe not, like with parity shift), maybe solve problems with new players (if there will be some advertisemen/support), but still won't solve problem with too long play time. > Nothing short of a full-blown revision of the game will accomplish that.

> elotar wrote: > Obviously by banning/errating ashurs we'll not solve all problems of the game and we can't reach reliable 45 min. length for 5-men tables, but I think it's not a reason to drop the problem of long to execute cards altogether. > Sure, but don't expect to see Waters of Duat banned.

> elotar wrote: > Kudos 4 u, but I was talking about this forum discussions, where we can see such gems as "I don't see Ashurs taking that long in most cases". Holy crap, we got players who are stopping to think after each draw of replasement card, choosing of 13 cards will comatose them for a 5-10 minutes! > Since you have a problem like that in Moscow, and we in Helsinki (for example don't), the cards need to be banned. Obviously schooling the local players to just play their Ashur choosings quicker ain't an option... Finnish Politics!

> BenPeal wrote: > Sure, but don't expect to see Waters of Duat banned. > Nobody expects Waters of Duat to be banned. My chief weapon is surprise, surprise and fear.. fear and surprise.

> Lönkka wrote: > schooling the local players > Like this wording. Very graphically. I prefer other ways. NC Russia

> Orpheus wrote: > Now : how ? > > Sol. 1 : ban it outright. For me this should always be a last resort, I believe there are many better things to do. > > Sol. 2 : Ashur was the Cappadocian antediluvian. If Ashur Tablets required a Harbinger of Skulls I think it would balance it way more. Hell, I'm pretty sure some decks would include one HoS just for that purpose ! > Ban the card is a good idea. Is so expensive, rare and disbalanced that... is just not fair for the game and people that want to make it competitive now. The second idea is super creative and I love it, though forceofpersonality.blogspot.com

> Kerath wrote: > > > Orpheus wrote: > > Now : how ? > > > > Sol. 1 : ban it outright. For me this should always be a last resort, I believe there are many better things to do. > > > > Sol. 2 : Ashur was the Cappadocian antediluvian. If Ashur Tablets required a Harbinger of Skulls I think it would balance it way more. Hell, I'm pretty sure some decks would include one HoS just for that purpose ! > > > Ban the card is a good idea. Is so expensive, rare and disbalanced that... is just not fair for the game and people that want to make it competitive now. > > The second idea is super creative and I love it, though > Availability is a matter of being reprinted, banning cog, cvs, and fn rares falls into rational with this approach. Limiting recurrance to minion cards or random makes more sense