Thinking about it for a some time now.
Just let at influence phase to choose:
1) move vampire from crypt to ready filling him with blood from pool
2) pay 1 to see one
3) use 2 transfers, in which case transfers means only "move blood from uncontrolled to pool"
It will change effects of some cards, but it's not so important.
Much more important will be it's effect on beginning of the game timing and relative usability of different capacity vampires(big ones will stop to be slow, and weenies will be slower).
Don't know, will this suggestion be good for the game, but have to share it
NC Russia
> elotar wrote:
> 3) use 2 transfers, in which case transfers means only "move blood from uncontrolled to pool"
>
You don't need that. Back transfer is required in the main rules because one might start influencing a CAP>4 vampire, then have to change one's mind, and that pool cannot remain immobilized. That does not happens in your system, so back transfer would only help bloat, which should not be in the core rules. If you want such an effect, then make cards for it.
Besides, one vampire per turn effectively kills weenie decks and gives too much of a boost to the first player. I would rather do: first player can get one vampire out, 2nd player 2, 3rd player 3, 4th player 4, and from then it is unlimited.
> Non-existant user wrote:
> You don't need that. Back transfer is required in the main rules because one might start influencing a CAP>4 vampire, then have to change one's mind, and that pool cannot remain immobilized.
>
Not entirely. Consider a situation in which you bring out Anson who is on, say, 7 blood by the time it gets to my turn. I Banish your Anson and bring out my own. What now?
Although situations like that would probably be fairly rare, it would be quite painfully random when it happened.
> elotar wrote:
> Much more important will be it's effect on beginning of the game timing and relative usability of different capacity vampires(big ones will stop to be slow, and weenies will be slower).
>
I fear that under the system you describe, weenies would be pretty useless. Being able to flip them out quickly is what makes them attractive when they maybe only have one discipline you want. Why not just go straight for a bigger vampire with all the disciplines you need, with Fortitude, who can Freak Drive and act several times in their first turn, rather than just once with an inferior discipline?
If you want to slow down weenies without killing them, I'd recommend investigating the suggestion from some years back known as the "Kuta Transfer Rules". ( Relevant Google search .)
Basically, instead of getting 4 transfers per phase, we go up to 5. Influencing pool to and from minions carries on the same as now, but flipping a full minion from uncontrolled to controlled costs a transfer. So weenies are still quicker, but you can't flip out 4 one-cap Pander/Caitiff in your first turn because flipping that many vampires would cost 4 transfers. In the usual implementation, such as that tried out in a JOL tournament , pulling a card from your crypt uses 5 transfers, not 4 (i.e. "maximum" transfers).
It also has the side benefit, mentioned in that JOL tournament announcement, that the player going fifth has a slight benefit over the player going fourth - the first player to get 5 transfers, the first player who can pull a vampire from their crypt if necessary etc. Currently, the playing going fifth (on a five player table) tends to feel a bit short-changed compared to the player going fourth.
There are obviously many tweaks you could make, but it's an interesting starting point.
The whole point of this idea is to make weenies useless - vampire for 1 musbe 11 times less useless than IC, not generally better because of speed.
BtB suggestion to move more vampires for second ets players will nullify it a little.
Bloating is part of the game, maybe it's not really needed, but it's kind of different question.
Other approaches, like 5 transfers, are fine too, as I said - got no idea, how our all will change the game. Mine is better in the part, that New transfers are much easier to explain for a new player.
NC Russia
> elotar wrote:
> The whole point of this idea is to make weenies useless - vampire for 1 musbe 11 times less useless than IC, not generally better because of speed.
>
Then your idea is fundamentally awful, and executed badly. To accomplish what you want, don't tinker with the rules, just admit what you're doing and ban all weenies. You are, by your own admission, trying to make them "useless", so why clog up the rules with fiddly changes when you can just ban them? Same result, simpler, more honest.
If your issue is that (some) big vampires are weak, make them better, don't make other decks useless. There are, however, plenty of decks based around medium-big vampires that do well, which would continue to do well. The fact that someone can't play weenie DEM doesn't that an Arika deck, a Girls deck, a Nergal bleedzooka, a Euro-Brujah deck etc. won't still do well. The Gratiano breed-boon deck will still be pretty tasty. They already do well with weenies as a playable strategy, they'll do pretty much fine afterwards. It won't, however, mean that a crappy tier three deck will suddenly do better - the threats it'll face on a table will be different (the DEM player switches to Ventrue Lawfirm, the weenie PRE player switches to a Ravnos clown car etc.), but it'll still have to put up a fight against decks that want to kill it dead with ruthless efficiency.
But:
- you've just killed a variety of decks, such as the star vampire + weenie horde deck. Tool up a good star, and have some weenies to help out with things like rescuing him/her from torpor, or playing supporting cards like Toreador Grand Ball, or Anima Gathering
- you've done a lot of harm to a number of combat strategies, because more than a few take advantage of small vampires to make up for the fact that their pool gain options are very limited (e.g. weenie Pot/Cel). Weenies aren't just Dom, Dem and Pre weenies!
- you've harmed the options available to anarchs a lot, through Anarch Convert. The Red Question is a good alternative, but people don't necessarily want to be drawing into that in the late game (when they can't play it), so a mix with AC is something to consider. But under your change, you fundamentally can't ever bring a vampire and an AC out in the same turn. (By contrast, the KTR changes mean that you have three transfers to spend on pool, when bringing out a vampire plus an AC, down from four - annoying, but not fatal.)
So, deck diversity is harmed a lot, without really meaning that any currently crappy decks are made better. They're still crappy decks, they're still going to get bled and voted out of existence hard by the decks that are already very solid.
4 small vampires can take 4 actions and/or block 4 times. 1 large vampire can only do it once.
This article is quite interesting:
vtesone.wordpress.com/2016/03/02/vtes-history-the-sheldon-situation-the-challenge-of-playing-large-vampires/
Prince of Paris, France
Ratings Coordinator, Rules Director
> Ankha wrote:
> 4 small vampires can take 4 actions and/or block 4 times. 1 large vampire can only do it once.
>
That's why the utility of large vampires is often heavily skewed towards those who can multi-act well.(*) This has long been a significant problem for the game, as it means that there are a bunch of fairly large vampires who don't happen to have a good multi-acting option, or another similar way of making themselves better. Making weenies "useless", however, won't suddenly make an unplayable 8 cap vampire into gold, because Arika and Queen Anne still team up to be terrifying (now on turn 2) throwing out bleeds, votes, Mind Rapes, Voter Caps etc., while the unplayable 8 cap is still unplayable. Yes, there is a card cost to this, but in most decks, most of the time, that's not a huge issue - running out of cards is rare.
That's why improving the lot of 'bad' big vampires is a better option. They currently can't compete against weenies or good big vampires. They still won't be able to compete against good big vampires.
Multi-acting is a potent option, and so it might be worth looking around and seeing whether there are key discipline combinations (or clans, or sects, or traits) it might be worth giving an untap to. It doesn't have to be that. It might be to make one action better or multi-functional. It might be to give them access to bloat of some kind (so they sort-of cost less than their printed cost) - vampires like Nikolaus Vermeulen or Saqqaf are good to learn from here. Taking blocking, it might be to give them access to 'free' block attempts - tech that means a currently poor vampire gets to block twice before tapping, or gets some benefit for blocking?
You obviously want to make sure that any such improvements don't help the already great decks significantly, which requires careful thought, design and playtesting. There are ways of accomplishing this, whether with a sledgehammer or more subtly. e.g. you can find dual discipline combinations that support some bad vampires, while not being available to many good vampires, and similar with clan/sect tech; you can have explicit "Cannot be played if you play Freak Drive" text or you can do something that means it doesn't combo with other cards; you make a card that is good but not quite at the top of the power curve, so the great deck continues playing Freak Drive (because it's better) and the currently bad vampire plays the weaker-but-still-good alternative, elevating her from lining the hamster cage to maybe within sight of some regular final table spots.
(*) Obviously, this is not the only way for big vampires to be good. But it is a very common one.