Does anyone out there feel neglected?
I was through with Magic a couple of years ago and wished to play a
more refined grown up game. A game that was designed for groups. A
game where there was no such thing as ganging up on people (for the
most part), a game where timing of effects did not require a law
degree to understand. A game where there were no cheap commercialised
expansions. One that could be played for a decent amount of time,
where every game was unique, and tactics changed and evolved
throughout the game. A game whose rules were clearcut and where the
cards did not contradict themselves. A game where people did not need
to spend thousands of dollars on ultra rare cards to win. And didn't
need to keep up with which edition is coming out. Where the cunning
came from within your head and not from within your wallet and a smart
little @#$! can't just pick up the game and win instantly cos he spent
$1000 more than you. Where I could buy a starter deck and not have to
worry about the cards I had becoming obselete. This was the card game
I wanted to play, THIS WAS JYHAD!
I am now disillusioned. Three expansions, a new edition (with a new
name) and 100 rulings later I find my confidence in the perfect game
crushed. With each new profit orientated expansion the game
degenerated. It took me a while to figure out what was happening to
the game but by the time I did it was too late. Too many packs of
ancient hearts and dark soverigns. One month before the sabbat reached
New Zealand* (my desolate hole of a country) I decided enough was
enough.
Each new expansion caused these problems:
1) The vampires were either crap or completely blew away the
competition (eg Muaziz). This was before the sabbat. Each new vampire
in DS and AH was made playable by upping the point system by one. With
the sabbat the points are upped by 2. The next expansion (if there is
one) will result in 4 cap vampires with 3 superior skills. (Why the
hell don't we make them princes too!?)
2) The new clans were so specialised that every card for that clan
must be obtained before a deck could be put together. To any other
player 50% of the cards were worthless. And even then there weren't
even enough vampires of the non-cam clans to fill your standard crypt,
let alone have a crypt full of vampires that were actually useful.
3) The rares completely destroyed the game. The only cards that were
screwy used to be paralyze cards and the monocle. Now we have thoughts
betrayed, kiss of ra, tomb of ramses, return to innocense, banishment,
and those ones that you must have a particular disipline to counter. I
don't know about many of the cards is the sabbat but I dare to think
what else lurks within.
4) After opening your booster and not finding the rares or vampires
you wanted you find useless crap that is only playable once in a blue
moon. (eg that necromancy card only usable for intercept when some one
is diablerising you.)
5) The balance of the game is now completely ruined by giving brujah
and gangrel dominance so that they can kick your ass and bleed you to
death and having so many out of clan skills that you can no longer
describe your deck by clan but by disipline.
6) The result being a complete boycott of the sabbat in my playgroup.
We can no longer trust the balance of the game to be upheld. Just look
at all the confusion over the new clans. Can anyone honestly say they
have seen a kick ass necromancy deck. Or a chimerestry or quietus deck
that didn't require every rare possible. From waht I see in the
newsgroup, the same applies to vissitude<sp>.
The amount of degenerate decks is horrendus. (I'll bleed you with my
IC with RTI for 24, oops conditioning make it 27)
I could go on all day but I am suddenly very depressed. Don't bother
to make a new and interesting thread with which to pick at my
observations just email me with your opinion and I will take a
personal poll of who agrees with me.
Thank you for your time.
Darrel Jackson
Comp. sci. student and disillusioned soul.
djac...@mcs.vuw.ac.nz
*BTW if you are a New Zealander I didn't mean wot I said (re: desolate
hole), I'm just depressed thats all.
Deej
"Did you paint pubic hair on my garden gnomes?"
-Drew Carey Show
(many complaints about the expansions elided)
Clearly the people responsible for expansions and rulings haven't a good
grasp on the nature of the game. I take some satisfaction in that the
blatant attempts to snitch our money haven't been doing too well.
>I could go on all day but I am suddenly very depressed. Don't bother
>to make a new and interesting thread with which to pick at my
>observations just email me with your opinion and I will take a
>personal poll of who agrees with me.
I think issues like this are best discussed in public forums.
Curt Adams (curt...@aol.com)
Bill Jackson wrote:
>
> .... This was the card game> I wanted to play, THIS WAS JYHAD!
>
Exactly!
> I am now disillusioned. Three expansions, a new edition (with a new
> name) and 100 rulings later I find my confidence in the perfect game
> crushed. With each new profit orientated expansion the game
> degenerated. It took me a while to figure out what was happening to
> the game but by the time I did it was too late. Too many packs of
> ancient hearts and dark soverigns. One month before the sabbat reached
> New Zealand* (my desolate hole of a country) I decided enough was
> enough.
>
I know how you feel. Actually I was very happy with the fact that no
expansions were produced for Jyhad (at least for a very long time).
Because this forced us to constantly come up with new and different ways
to use the *same* cards/concepts.
A friend of mine who was (is?) very much into Magic complained about the
lack of expansions for Jyhad back then so we discussed it quite a bit
and I remember arguing that I couldn't see what cards what missing from
the cards as it was. Looking back I believe the game was as its best
when it was only Jyhad.
Despite all this "wisdom" I nevertheless purchased a bunch of DS cards
when they came out and later AH and Sabbat cards ended up in my binders
too. And admitedly I found some of the cards very attractive at first,
but as you point out there are several problems with the expansions.
I think the thing that annoys me the most is the sheer number of cards.
It's getting too much of a task to remember all the cards with
corrections and corrections to corrections etc.
> Each new expansion caused these problems:
>
> 1) The vampires were either crap or completely blew away the
> competition (eg Muaziz). This was before the sabbat. Each new vampire
> in DS and AH was made playable by upping the point system by one. With
> the sabbat the points are upped by 2. The next expansion (if there is
> one) will result in 4 cap vampires with 3 superior skills. (Why the
> hell don't we make them princes too!?)
Actually I think the new clans are too weak (with the possible exception
of some of the Sabbat clans). Strictly speaking they are often
overpowered compared to their camarilla counterparts, but I think this
is done in an attemp to make up for the lack of options left to these
clans.
When making camarilla clan decks I rarely include discipline cards
because I can easily find enough vampires with the desired discilines.
Try to make a Giovanni deck - it really sucks until you beef them up
with the needed disciplines and then it's isn't really that cool. And
this kind of adjustments reduces the number of master cards you can
include, and slows the hole damn thing down.
Another weird thing about the new expansions is how they have affected
politics. Back in the good old Jyhad days politics was hard to come by
because you had to have those Practice Seisures which were kind of hard
to get. Now politics have never been easier to come by. Hell, I can make
a weenie deck and have 10 princes in now time! Whether this is good or
bad is left as an exercise for the reader ;-)
> 2) The new clans were so specialised that every card for that clan
> must be obtained before a deck could be put together. To any other
> player 50% of the cards were worthless. And even then there weren't
> even enough vampires of the non-cam clans to fill your standard crypt,
> let alone have a crypt full of vampires that were actually useful.
I think the trouble is that there are too few cards for the new
disciplines.
> 3) The rares completely destroyed the game. The only cards that were
> screwy used to be paralyze cards and the monocle. Now we have thoughts
> betrayed, kiss of ra, tomb of ramses, return to innocense, banishment,
> and those ones that you must have a particular disipline to counter. I
> don't know about many of the cards is the sabbat but I dare to think
> what else lurks within.
Funny you don't mention AI, since it seems to be on everybody's hate
list, but I actually think it's a neat card which isn't broken at all.
AI was made to whack those pesky Malkavian S+B decks and it will make
your predator's IC wish she never Returned to Innoncense!
Remember, Tomb is a location - steal it!
Banishment is only fun when the target is drained for blood - avoid this
or pay the price if she banished. So what.
Kiss of Ra is limited by Fortitude and it won't work in a blocking
situation since it's an action modifier.
Thoughts Betrayed is a nasty card alright but it won't do no good unless
you also have the cards to do something in the combat.
Basically I don't find these cards broken (as in you can't play with
them). I will admit that they are very good cards, but you're not
guaranteed to win just because you play them. I like to think of them as
a challenge instead.
I don't remember any game night where one of the above mentioned cards
have ruined all games. I do find Majesty, damage prevention cards and an
occasional stealth card or two very annoying on a regular basis but I
don't hear anyone complaining about these cards - and I only complain
when I loose :-)
> 4) After opening your booster and not finding the rares or vampires
> you wanted you find useless crap that is only playable once in a blue
> moon. (eg that necromancy card only usable for intercept when some one
> is diablerising you.)
You won't like Sabbat! I have found that on the average there are 10 old
(i.e. VtES) cards in each booster. That means you pay $3.95 for approx.
18 cards! This must be *the* most expensive booster pack yet to be seen.
I think they should have made Sabbat as an ordinary expansion.
Especially since Sabbat isn't really a stand alone expansion anyway -
you have to own VtES to play it?!
> 5) The balance of the game is now completely ruined by giving brujah
> and gangrel dominance so that they can kick your ass and bleed you to
> death and having so many out of clan skills that you can no longer
> describe your deck by clan but by disipline.
I don't agree at all. Brujahs have always been very potent (no pun
intended) and they still are. Gangrels are getting stronger, but unless
there's some pretty good tricks I don't know of I don't see them as one
of the most powerful clans (their bleeding still sucks). Would you care
to elaborate please?
Ventrues are getting very strong too IMO. With Kiss of Ra they now have
a chance of actually doing something if there political actions are
blocked.
> 6) The result being a complete boycott of the sabbat in my playgroup.
> We can no longer trust the balance of the game to be upheld. Just look
> at all the confusion over the new clans. Can anyone honestly say they
> have seen a kick ass necromancy deck. Or a chimerestry or quietus deck
> that didn't require every rare possible. From waht I see in the
> newsgroup, the same applies to vissitude<sp>.
>
Necromancy / Giovanni - well, except for that neat ash heap trick
there's not much to be said about that.
I used to have a Horrid Reality deck that worked pretty good, but
otherwise you're right - it is easier to make good camarilla decks. The
funny thing is, that if this is true, how can we all complain that the
new clans are too powerful? ;-)
> The amount of degenerate decks is horrendus. (I'll bleed you with my
> IC with RTI for 24, oops conditioning make it 27)
>
Yeah well, I think I will just pass that bleed on to *my* prey and thank
the sorry dude for doing *my* job. With great power comes great risk!
> I could go on all day but I am suddenly very depressed. Don't bother
> to make a new and interesting thread with which to pick at my
> observations just email me with your opinion and I will take a
> personal poll of who agrees with me.
>
Don't be, it's still a great game! If there are cards or rules you don't
like skip them! In my play group we always decide what rulings to use
because sometimes the rule team rulings are just too weird.
E.g. we don't allow multiple Blood Dolls on a minion (I don't know if
this is still allowed but I remember seing it some time ago), we do
allow ammo cards to be used with Zip Guns (WotC support told me this was
not allowed) and if Ghoul Retainer uses a weapon it's a strike like the
equipment cards says it is.
regards
--
Brian Rasmussen
Dansk Data Elektronik A/S Tel.: (+45) 42 84 84 33 (589)
Herlev Hovedgade 199 Fax : (+45) 42 84 52 20
DK-2730 Herlev, Denmark e-mail: b...@dde.dk
Brian Rasmussen wrote:
> If there are cards or rules you don't
> like skip them! In my play group we always decide what rulings to use
> because sometimes the rule team rulings are just too weird.
House rules are common, but just for clarifiction:
> E.g. we don't allow multiple Blood Dolls on a minion (I don't know if
> this is still allowed but I remember seing it some time ago), we do
It is allowed.
> allow ammo cards to be used with Zip Guns (WotC support told me this was
> not allowed)
WotC support has misinformed you. All ammo has always been legal in
a Zip Gun.
--
L. Scott Johnson (vte...@regency.wizards.com)
Official VtES Net.Rep for Wizards of the Coast.
(*) - Subject to review by Rules Team