Newsletter Invitation

As we enter a new year, I will put out the call again for new Vampire: Elder Kindred Network Newsletter Writers. We had 6 clans represented in October, 8 in November, but only 6 again in December. To see an archive of newsletters, go to: http://www.thelasombra.com/ClanPages/ If your favorite clan does not currently have a newsletter being written, or if it has never had a newsletter written for it, consider becoming an editor/creator/writer. To see the newsletters archived by month, go here: http://www.thelasombra.com/newsletter.htm Frequently Asked Questions about the Clan Newsletters: Q) What clan can I write for? A) Currently, lots of clans are in need of attention. It has been 3 or more months since the last newsletter for the following clans: Camarilla Caitiff Gangrel Malkavian Tremere Ventrue Independent Assamite Baali Daughters of Cacophony Followers of Set Giovanni Nagaraja Ravnos Salubri Samedi True Brujah Sabbat Blood Brothers Brujah Antitribu Harbingers of Skulls Kiasyd Lasombra Nosferatu Antitribu Pander Tzimisce Ventrue Antitribu Q) Can I contribute to a newsletter for a clan already taken? A) Yes, simply email the appropriate editor with your material, and it can be included in an appropriate issue. Q) Who has recently written a newsletter for my clan? Camarilla Brujah - Skaffen Amtiskaw - www.8ung.at/colddawn Nosferatu - Peter D. Bakija - www.myplanet.net/pdb6/vtes.html Toreador - Sten During Independent Gargoyles - Norman S. Brown, Jr. - archonoftheswamp.tripod.com Sabbat Ahrimanes - Alexander Gyhlesten - www.rack.tk Gangrel Antitribu - Legbiter - legbiter.tripod.com Malkavian Antitribu - Oscar Garza - texas.vekn.org Salubri Antitribu - Atrovent the German Chainsaw Toreador Antitribu - Ethan Burrow - texas.vekn.org Tremere Antitribu - Halcyan 2 Q) What content can be included in a V:EKN Clan Newsletter? A) Just about anything on the topic of your clan or the game. Some of the things that have been included in past newsletters include: -Vampire fiction -Deck designs -Clan strategy -Discipline overviews -Library Card overviews -Crypt Card overviews Q) What has to be included in a V:EKN Clan Newsletter? A) You are free to write anything you want about your clan of choice, as long as it is interesting and entertaining. As official representitives of V:TES, however, you should keep your Newsletters intelligent, on topic, and in support of the official rules (i.e. no Newsletter tirades regarding how you hate errata or how you think the game is best played with a one card limit). Variant rules and ideas are fine, but please keep in mind that you are a representitive of the V:TES community as a whole. Q) How should I publish my Clan newsletter? A) Post your Newsletters to the Usenet newsgroup rec.games.trading-cards.jyhad. As the Clan Newsletters are primarily a function of usenet, please always post your Newsletter on rec.games.trading-cards.jyhad (the official V:TES newsgroup). Alternately, you can post them to the White Wolf Forums, and they will be transferred to the newsgroup for you. Some folks post their newsletters on personal web pages, and there are some unofficial web sites that archive Clan Newsletters, but these are run and managed privately -- the VEKN takes no responsibility in archiving or posting Clan Newsletters on the web. Q) How often should I publish a Clan newsletter? A) As often as you are inspired. If a newsletter goes into a remission of 3 months, new editors will be solicited. Q) Is there any sort of renumeration available as a Newsletter Editor? A) Only the respect and admiration of your peers. Q) Who do I ask questions of about becoming a newsletter editor or about my newsletter before I publish it? A) Direct questions about clan reservations to Peter Bakija, and you may also ask questions of him or of the other newsletter editors if you want to clarify a rules situation or card combo before publishing. [www.myplanet.net/pdb6/vtes.html] Q) Isn't this FAQ self-important, self-righteous and obnoxious? A) No, only the FAQ Compiler is self-righteous and obnoxious. Q) Does the FAQ Compiler have anything to do with producing these newsletters? A) Not in the slightest. Currently, I archive, and nothing more. Q) If I don't care to pay too much attention to the newsgroup, can I sign up somewhere to have the VEKN Newsletters emailed to me? A) Yes. You can access it here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/VTES-Newsletters The official word follows: http://www.myplanet.net/pdb6/newsleters.html http://www.myplanet.net/pdb6/veknfaq.html So you want to write a VTES Clan newsletter? Here is what is involved: A) Pick a clan. Many clans are already claimed, although most folks (including me) have been slacking off of late. Anyway, pick one you like, and e-mail me to see if it available. B) Write Newsletters. The content can be anything you want. Some suggestions: -Vampire fiction -Deck designs -Clan strategy -Discipline overviews -Card overviews You are free to write anything you want about your clan of choice, as long as it is interesting and entertaining. As official representitives of VTES, however, you should keep your Newsletters intelligent, on topic, and in support of the official rules (i.e. no Newsletter tirades regarding how you hate errata or how you think the game is best played with a one card limit). Variant rules and ideas are fine, but please keep in mind that you are a representitive of the VTES community as a whole. C) Post your Newsletters. As the Clan Newsletters are primarily a function of usenet, please always post your Newsletter on rec.games.trading-cards.jyhad (the official VTES newsgroup). How often you post them is up to you. The original plan was to post a new one every month, but after four years, things get slack.

"The Lasombra" <thela...@hotmail.com> wrote > > Independent > > Followers of Set 'Vermillian' submitted a FoS newsletter sometime within the past few weeks... not sure when exactly. Although I am still the 'official FoS newsletter editor', Claus Staal, Vermillian and I have been treating the newsletters as more of a communal effort (though Claus has since disappeared). I'm still pumping them out but much slower than I used to. Unfortunately, I rarely get to play the game anymore except on JOL so it's not often that I feel the inspiration to write anything. Same goes for the newsgroup itself. I still lurk here but that's about it. It's a shame really... I think that the newsletters are a great institution, although I do feel that monthly is a bit too frequent for most editors to maintain. Judging by the dearth of newsletters of late, it seems that the idea has been faltering of late, though I'm always impressed by the steadfast contributions of Legbiter, Skaffen, Peter Bakija and Sten who always seem to come up with something each month when no other clans are represented. And with the exception of Skaffen, they're each writing about a crappy clan too! :) Kudos to each of you. I had intended to write a newsletter a few weeks ago but then Vermillian beat me to it and I decided that two in one month would be too much for the Dark God's followers to digest. I'll try to get another of my own FoS newsletters out for y'all soon as I get back from my little vacation this week. In the meantime, please don't rush to replace me :) Cheers, WES

> It's a shame really... I think that the newsletters are a great institution, > although I do feel that monthly is a bit too frequent for most editors to > maintain. Agreed. And for most readers to digest too. I'd say one every 2/3 months would be a good rate. Orpheus

The Lasombra wrote: > If your favorite clan does not currently have a newsletter being > written, or if it has never had a newsletter written for it, > consider becoming an editor/creator/writer. Those of you out there writing newsletters, or checking to see if there is a newsletter taken, or checking to see if you are a newlsetter writer of a particular clan: There is a list of "active" newsletter writers somewhere (my web site? the FAQ?), and while it exists, it is mostly wrong, if not completely irrelevant. While a small handfull of folks are fairly consistient with wirting newsletters, most people who get involved do so for a short period of time, usually writing one or two newsletters and then moving on--this isn't a bad thing (it is better for folks to write something once or twice than to never write anything at all), but makes keeping track of who is writing what very difficult, to the point that I completely game up even trying at some point. Feel free to drop me a line if you are interested in a particular clan, but in reality, the best thing to do is to check out the Lasombra's archives, see if a particular clan has had a newsletter in the last 3 or 4 months, and if not, feel free to write one. In the best situation, you are going to post something interesting and fun to read. In the worst situation, you are going to post something interesting to read that will be redundant with something someone else writes (but if a newsletter hasn't been published for a multitude of months, it seems unlikely that one will show up at the same time as a new one). If someone does post a newsletter for a clan that you already "own", and this is problematic, send me an e-mail, and I'm sure we can work something out. The Most Active newsletters of late have been: !Gangrel (4 in last 4 months) Toreador (4 in last 4 months) Nosferatu/!Nosferatu (3 in last 4 months) Brujah (3 in last 4 months) Ahrimanes (2 in last 4 months) !Toreador (2 in last 4 months) And then a bunch of clans that have been published once in the last 4 months. Assume that if a newsletter has been published in the last 4 months, that clan is "taken"--if you still want to write for it, drop an e-mail to the author and see if you can work something out. Regardless, if you are interested in writing a newsletter for posting on this newsgroup, archiving on a web site and/or distributing through the newsletter list serve, check out the FAQ (on my or the Lasombra's web site), read some old newsletters, write something interesting, and post away. Peter D Bakija PD...@bigplanet.com http://www.myplanet.net/pdb6 "she tore down Paris on the tail of Thom Paine but the left wing's broken and the right's insane" -Bowie

> 'Vermillian' submitted a FoS newsletter sometime within the past few > weeks... not sure when exactly. Although I am still the 'official FoS > newsletter editor', Claus Staal, Vermillian and I have been treating the > newsletters as more of a communal effort (though Claus has since > disappeared). > > > It's a shame really... I think that the newsletters are a great institution, > although I do feel that monthly is a bit too frequent for most editors to > maintain. Judging by the dearth of newsletters of late, it seems that the > idea has been faltering of late, though I'm always impressed by the > steadfast contributions of Legbiter, Skaffen, Peter Bakija and Sten who > always seem to come up with something each month when no other clans are > represented. And with the exception of Skaffen, they're each writing about a > crappy clan too! :) Kudos to each of you. > > I had intended to write a newsletter a few weeks ago but then Vermillian > beat me to it and I decided that two in one month would be too much for the > Dark God's followers to digest. what about newsletters with 2 editors each? i know this can/will cause some confusion but with 2 editors around it could increase the chances of seeing a newsletter come out on a more monthly schedule

>what about newsletters with 2 editors each? i know this can/will cause >some confusion but with 2 editors around it could increase the chances >of seeing a newsletter come out on a more monthly schedule While it might work in a few cases (especially with concerted coordination), I think it would cause more confusion than good. Especially if editors start overlapping and repeating things. Halcyan 2

[ quoted text not captured ] Hell, if more people would submit contributions to the existing editors they'd be more likely to have more frequent releases. I have another issue of the Picayune to publish, and as Editor I'd be a lot more motivated getting them out on schedule if more feedback were given. It's like a roommate of mine from college that we'd always asked if he wanted to join us for "x" activity, and then bitched when we stopped asking (because he always declined joining us in the past). The Path of Blood and Necromancing the Bones sites are probably a better example of what a Clan specific editor should strive for. Too bad WW doesn't have a full-time web person to make VTES look like something other than a player-ran organization. Have you seen the royal treatment other games get? http://www.decipher.com/ http://www.pojo.com/ http://www.brainburst.com/ http://www.wizkidsgames.com/ Makes me wonder who heads up Marketing strategy at WW? Considering how many of the VTES players have been keeping the game active for so long, it's like they adopted the strategy of "Why buy the cow if you're getting the milk for free?". Their website has a problem dealing with firewall software as well. It's a real treat having to disable my firewall to access their forums or generate a list of players/princes. Well, it seems like the cow's dried up, ain't no corn in the field, the chicken is only laying an egg a day, and the bank is about to foreclose on the farm. I had high-hopes that at least one website would become a player focal point where everyone could gather. There are some good sites out there (RustWurk, Lasombra's, VEKN Texas, etc..) not one has really become a national hotspot for VTES collaboration and gathering. The existing long-term playerbase is faltering as the old-timers are moving on to other things, and not much influx of new players to speak of. At least from what I've seen in Michigan and on the NG. Perhaps my worldview on this may/may not accurately reflect other folks areas, but that's how it feels to me regardless. There are so many ways that WW could persue expanding their CCG playerbase, if they wanted to invest the effort (and in some cases, money). Okay, I'm done griping for today :-P I now return you back to the regular NewsGroup threads, all 6 or 7 of them.. BernieTime Lansing, Michigan

Halcyan 2 wrote: > While it might work in a few cases (especially with concerted coordination), I > think it would cause more confusion than good. Especially if editors start > overlapping and repeating things. That, and we are probably better off with 2 people working with two clans than 2 people working with one clan. [ quoted text not captured ]

<snip> > Well, it seems like the cow's dried up, ain't no corn in the field, the > chicken is only laying an egg a day, and the bank is about to foreclose > on the farm. > > I had high-hopes that at least one website would become a player focal > point where everyone could gather. There are some good sites out there > (RustWurk, Lasombra's, VEKN Texas, etc..) not one has really become a > national hotspot for VTES collaboration and gathering. > > The existing long-term playerbase is faltering as the old-timers are > moving on to other things, and not much influx of new players to speak > of. At least from what I've seen in Michigan and on the NG. > Perhaps my worldview on this may/may not accurately reflect other folks > areas, but that's how it feels to me regardless. > > There are so many ways that WW could persue expanding their CCG > playerbase, if they wanted to invest the effort (and in some cases, > money). > > Okay, I'm done griping for today :-P > > I now return you back to the regular NewsGroup threads, all 6 or 7 of > them.. This is exactly what I have been picking up on lately. OK, festive season breeds apathy 'n all, but this has been going on for about 2 months now. Where HAS everybody gone? V:TES' stock has fallen dramatically lately - not just the newsgroup, but local play has been much quieter, other forums have been similarly silent, and looking at eBay, the price of cards has plummeted. Is this the end of part 2? DH

"hamdamcwa" <dave...@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:9e10847c.03010...@posting.google.com... > > I now return you back to the regular NewsGroup threads, all 6 or 7 of > > them.. > > This is exactly what I have been picking up on lately. OK, festive > season breeds apathy 'n all, but this has been going on for about 2 > months now. > Where HAS everybody gone? V:TES' stock has fallen dramatically lately > - not just the newsgroup, but local play has been much quieter, other > forums have been similarly silent, and looking at eBay, the price of > cards has plummeted. We took a big hit after GenCon and the Week of Nightmares in Los Angeles. Had our lowest tournament attendance ever, only a few players showing-up to local play outings, etc. I'm also thinking that the CE was ignored by enough locals to basically leave us feeling like Bloodlines was the last time the game received a shot in the arm with some new cards. For us, we just don't have any tournaments to attend until February and we *were* just kinda burned out after GenCon. The prices dropping is somewhat expected. When WW intentionally reprints difficult to find cards as somewhat commmon cards, that'll happen. > Is this the end of part 2? Not yet. :) More recently, we've had lots of new players in the local games and we are again getting excited about playing. Worldwide, we also had very successful storyline attendance. I'm sure things will pick-up. Another storyline event next year, qualifiers, The Anarchs... Naw. We're not dead yet. -Robert Robert Goudie rob...@vtesinla.org http://vtesinla.org

[ quoted text not captured ] I see the burden on the writers, but digesting a newsletter is rarely challenging.

>Hell, if more people would submit contributions to the existing editors >they'd be more likely to have more frequent releases. Yeah. But, the editors tend to be the editors because they are passionate about something. Personally, I'm not passionate about clans, so I don't think about how anything I might do might help a newsletter, even at those times when I hyperfocus on a clan for some reason. >I have another issue of the Picayune to publish, and as Editor I'd be a >lot more motivated getting them out on schedule if more feedback were >given. People suck at giving feedback. But, then, this game (or gaming, which is for me) aren't necessarily the most important thing in people's lives. >The Path of Blood and Necromancing the Bones sites are probably a better >example of what a Clan specific editor should strive for. Yes. To me, the key element to the newsletters is that they are a form of organized analysis which are productively archived (don't have to do a tedious Google search or something). Sites can do the organization part even better. >Too bad WW doesn't have a full-time web person to make VTES look like >something other than a player-ran organization. >Have you seen the royal treatment other games get? > >http://www.decipher.com/ >http://www.pojo.com/ >http://www.brainburst.com/ >http://www.wizkidsgames.com/ I'm only somewhat familiar with Magic sites; they can be written off due to the money nature of the game. Though, almost in a similar way, any two player CCG can instill greater interest in analysis due to being inherently more competitive. Babylon 5 (multiplayer), which had a lot of tournaments, but was more of a social game had horrible analysis. Wheel of Time (two player) with a tiny player base did better in the analysis department. >Makes me wonder who heads up Marketing strategy at WW? One of a dozen employees? WW dabbles in CCGs. Really a RPG company and RPGs struggle to make money in the best of times, so I wouldn't be surprised if they had a small number of employees. >Considering how many of the VTES players have been keeping the game >active for so long, it's like they adopted the strategy of "Why buy the >cow if you're getting the milk for free?". Sure, but it's probably a situation where they are busy trying to do the things that directly impact the bottom line. >Their website has a problem dealing with firewall software as well. >It's a real treat having to disable my firewall to access their forums >or generate a list of players/princes. > >Well, it seems like the cow's dried up, ain't no corn in the field, the >chicken is only laying an egg a day, and the bank is about to foreclose >on the farm. > >I had high-hopes that at least one website would become a player focal >point where everyone could gather. There are some good sites out there >(RustWurk, Lasombra's, VEKN Texas, etc..) not one has really become a >national hotspot for VTES collaboration and gathering. Newsgroup makes it difficult. I tried keeping up with RustWurk's forums once upon a time, but I got tired of the posts. With it being slightly more effort than reading the newsgroup, lost interest in expending the energy. The key with good Magic sites I've seen is contribution. How many people contribute now outside of their local site? >The existing long-term playerbase is faltering as the old-timers are >moving on to other things, and not much influx of new players to speak >of. At least from what I've seen in Michigan and on the NG. >Perhaps my worldview on this may/may not accurately reflect other folks >areas, but that's how it feels to me regardless. Not how it feels to me, however ... (pick up in the earlier response to this). >There are so many ways that WW could persue expanding their CCG >playerbase, if they wanted to invest the effort (and in some cases, >money). Not sure there are "so many". The CCG industry isn't doing that well from what I see. There's lots of competition. V:TES has a high initial learning curve and is time consuming. I'm all for looking at ways to expand the player base. For one thing, one can hope it reduces the short term sales gimmicks. But, I don't see it being easy with likely the most productive way to get new players in is simply by having visible and regular group play around those who might be interested. [ quoted text not captured ]

>We took a big hit after GenCon and the Week of Nightmares in Los Angeles. >Had >our lowest tournament attendance ever, only a few players showing-up to local >play outings, etc. I'm also thinking that the CE was ignored by enough >locals >to basically leave us feeling like Bloodlines was the last time the game >received a shot in the arm with some new cards. For us, we just don't have >any tournaments to attend until February and we *were* just kinda burned out >after GenCon. I would point out that a well supported CCG has expansions at least every 6 months. The reason for such support is to hold certain people's interest. Not everyone is a diehard. Lot of fickle CCGers. I don't see how an expansion every 9 months does anything to expand the player base; just caters to the existing "I have tons of cards and lots of ideas I haven't gotten around to" crowd. >The prices dropping is somewhat expected. When WW intentionally reprints >difficult to find cards as somewhat commmon cards, that'll happen. > >> Is this the end of part 2? > >Not yet. :) More recently, we've had lots of new players in the local games >and we are again getting excited about playing. Worldwide, we also had very >successful storyline attendance. I'm sure things will pick-up. Another >storyline event next year, qualifiers, The Anarchs... Naw. We're not dead >yet. Storylines would tend to indicate interest. Our player base appears to be growing as we keep capturing old players willing to get back into the game. I really don't want to dwell on this too much, but I'm eager for an expansion. I don't subscribe to the theory that a set has to be played until it's stale which is what I see as the natural result of examining a set "completely" or whatever word people have been using.

"Curevei" <cur...@aol.commetal> wrote in message news:20030103115040...@mb-cg.aol.com... > I would point out that a well supported CCG has expansions at least every 6 > months. The reason for such support is to hold certain people's interest. Not > everyone is a diehard. Lot of fickle CCGers. I don't see how an expansion > every 9 months does anything to expand the player base; just caters to the > existing "I have tons of cards and lots of ideas I haven't gotten around to" > crowd. I see your point. On the flip side of that, though: is there enough ability to create good expansions for VTES every six months? I could be wrong, but it seems to me like it'd be a lot more burden on the playtesters. Having tested one set myself, I don't feel, at least at this instant, up to being in "permanent playtest" mode, which it seems like every-6-months would require, or else a much larger, more "revolving" set of playtesters than I have the impression exists. > I really don't want to dwell on this too much, but I'm eager for an expansion. > I don't subscribe to the theory that a set has to be played until it's stale > which is what I see as the natural result of examining a set "completely" or > whatever word people have been using. That seems true too, but then the question is (or has been), will the game gain enough sales to people who'd otherwise get bored of the game and stop buying compared to what it loses from people who can't afford to spend as much on new sets every 6 months? I don't know the answer to that, but if WW does, maybe they could enlighten us. :-) Josh un supported

dave...@hotmail.com (hamdamcwa) wrote in message news:<9e10847c.03010...@posting.google.com>... [ quoted text not captured ] Blame it on CE. :P After raving for a month or two about it after it's release, players around here couldn't care less. Not to take anything away from a great release... it certainly didn't set the VTES world on it's head with new deck concepts and playstyles... I'm curious - for those that have the luxury of actually playing recently, have you seen any vampires out of CE really fundamentally shift your metagame and deck creation - like a Tariq did... or Gabrin? Or Matthias, Ian forestal, Arika, etc? What about the new malk Justicar? If i had one gripe about CE, it would be that (for me) there were no real "Obscene standout vampire" like Beast, or Dragos... that would force players to rethink their old decks and playstyles to deal with the new threat(s). Was there a vampire(s) that did that for/TO you? jds > DH

freak...@ponymail.com (freakdrivr) wrote in message news:<fc6a5b20.03010...@posting.google.com>... [ quoted text not captured ] i beg to differ. Weenies with guns and Deranging Malkavians are VERY powerful new deck concepts. As for alarming new vampires, Virstania the Earth Mother, Tyler and Oliver Thrace spring INSTANTLY to my still-befuddled mind. O, and happy new year, in case i forgot to say that already.

Curevei wrote: > I would point out that a well supported CCG has expansions at least every 6 > months. By your definition of "well-supported CCG", maybe. An equally valid claim (using a different, equally valid, definition) would say "at least every <time peroid>", where <time period> is whatever you like. > I really don't want to dwell on this too much, but I'm eager for an expansion. > I don't subscribe to the theory that a set has to be played until it's stale > which is what I see as the natural result of examining a set "completely" or > whatever word people have been using. ? People at WW don't subscribe to such phrasology, either. If the plan was to wait until a set is completely stale or examined completely, Bloodlines would not yet be released. (And, by the revelation of Archon repeatability, arguably not even Sabbat War would be released yet.) -- LSJ (vte...@white-wolf.com) V:TES Net.Rep for White Wolf, Inc. Links to V:TES news, rules, cards, utilities, and tournament calendar: http://www.white-wolf.com/vtes/

Curevei wrote: > I would point out that a well supported CCG has expansions at least every 6 > months. The reason for such support is to hold certain people's interest. > Not everyone is a diehard. Lot of fickle CCGers. I don't see how an > expansion every 9 months does anything to expand the player base; just caters > to the existing "I have tons of cards and lots of ideas I haven't gotten > around to" crowd. That's not it at all. The feedback White Wolf consistently received was that the player base would feel financially overwhelmed by having to keep current with expansions at a rate faster than once every 9 months. Rather than alienate the existing (and purchasing) player base, potentially causing the player base to decrease, White Wolf decided to go with a schedule of an expansion every nine months. - Ben Peal, Prince of Boston fu...@mindstorm.com

In message <20030103115040...@mb-cg.aol.com>, Curevei <cur...@aol.commetal> writes: >I would point out that a well supported CCG has expansions at least every 6 >months. Why? A CCG could have expansions released every 6 months. But it could then also sacrifice card quality (in terms of design, balance). Or it could sacrifice any attempt at rules consistency. And if you're talking at least every six months, what are we doing? 3 a year? 4 a year? Assume that the V:TES expansions were being done every 6 months. Playtesting and such like generally takes several months, then that has to be fed back into the design process at the end, then final editing. If you're doing those every three months, or every four months, there's a lot of overlap. Would it be fair for people to playtest The Camarilla Edition without even knowing what's in Bloodlines, or vaguely how it works? Is that "well supported"? Speed of production doesn't mean it's well supported. On the contrary, it could be just as indicative of an exploitative company with a cash cow mentality. Screw the players, up the power levels, twist the thumb screws. Good for a short burst of publicity, cash and interest. For the long haul, not a good idea. For a company which has a reputation of giving a shit about its products and its players, also quite likely not a good idea. (For example, White Wolf had a fair amount of demand for a Mage Mind's Eye Theatre set, but didn't release one until they had one they were *happy* with. That's a very different business ethos to one which drops products out left, right and centre on the premise that people will keep buying them.) >The reason for such support is to hold certain people's interest. Not >everyone is a diehard. Lot of fickle CCGers. This is different from an arbitrary definition of a well-supported CCG. What this is is a CCG that has identified a 'niche' market of people who will buy lots of cards, but only if there's a continual chase for new cards. Magic, Pokémon and Harry Potter each identify well with a young market - look around at a Magic convention tournament, and the average age is much less than that of V:TES. And try to identify any card games *outside* of the obvious Hasbro/Wizards set that release at least every six months that have any longevity. I'd struggle to name many. So V:TES plays to a different brand of players. Why bother competing in the hugely overcrowded 14yo's who won't care about your game without a truck of marketing when your other markets are ticking over very nicely? And why piss off your other markets when it's a very risky business trying to take on Hasbro head to head over huge media extravaganza card games? Very easy to get burned. >I don't see how an expansion >every 9 months does anything to expand the player base; just caters to the >existing "I have tons of cards and lots of ideas I haven't gotten around to" >crowd. What's three months? People who are so fickle that three months is sufficient to drop them from the game are possibly going to drop it *anyway*. And how many of the existing player base are you going to push away by dropping three expansions a year? Lots of people *don't* play Magic or Star Trek and similar, because they don't like the games that force you to shit money. And without the existing player base, how are you going to expand the game? Who's going to give the demos, when the game's dead? And who's going to buy a game when everyone they know who plays it has just quit? Also, bear in mind that V:TES expansions recently have been rather large. Bloodlines was a small expansion, yet also a huge one at the same time. The fallback levels of cards mean that some cards are two different cards - some of the fallback levels are *really* good. And the extra nuance of the dual-discipline cards and so forth is extra tricky. It's certainly more cards than the actual numbers say, if you see what I mean. These aren't small expansions. There's a lot of cards to buy. If you want it split up into two lots of 100, there's not a lot of difference. Sure, you get a new box on the shelf - but at the same time, you create another problem for retailers of "Do I buy this one or this one?" and more headaches with printing and distributing. Even if you print two expansions at once, we've already seen the trouble that some printers give in terms of card separation - how do you cope when instead of three cards dropping into a handful of boosters (Xavier, Wind Dance, Eye of Hazimel) it's actually 100 cards dropping into a lot more? You're still not someone with the might of Hasbro to spank printers, you're working with far smaller numbers. >I really don't want to dwell on this too much, but I'm eager for an expansion. >I don't subscribe to the theory that a set has to be played until it's stale >which is what I see as the natural result of examining a set "completely" or >whatever word people have been using. There's a difference between "stale" and actually getting to look at a set and use it a bit. Each V:TES set so far under White Wolf has been very different from the last. This isn't Magic where the whole year is themed on Weatherlight or Ice Age or somesuch, and so you can just pick up brand new cards and they're just like the last lot. Sabbat War was a straight reprint for much of it, with some additions. Final Nights introduced a slew of new cards. Bloodlines was one of the kookiest expansions (in a good way) ever released for a CCG that I've come across. (Magic Unglued does not count. Kooky in a useful way.) The Camarilla Edition introduced some serious new mechanics (Grouping). Drop those in two or three times a year and who can keep up? -- James Coupe PGP Key: 0x5D623D5D EBD690ECD7A1F She twirled a lock of hair around her forefinger and smiled B457CA213D7E6 faintly. "Actually, I'd settle for a small Greek." 68C3695D623D5D

"James Coupe" <ja...@zephyr.org.uk> wrote in message news:28vYTIDO...@gratiano.zephyr.org.uk... > > Would it be fair for people to playtest The Camarilla > Edition without even knowing what's in Bloodlines, or vaguely how it > works? Is that "well supported"? I'm not sure I see your point here. I didn't think it was fair when I was asked to playtest a set and was not given the cards from the set before, even though the set before had already gone to print and was due in less than a month. I think it's pretty easy to say that I could have been a better playtester if I *had* been given that information, yet I see why that decision was not made. I'd still say that we playtesters were "well supported" by WW, just "not as well supported as we could have been". > -- > James Coupe Kevin M., Prince of Henderson, NV (USA) "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

In message <kTPR9.45038$L61.3...@news1.west.cox.net>, Kevin M. <you...@imaspammer.org> writes: > >"James Coupe" <ja...@zephyr.org.uk> wrote in message news:28vYTIDOT3F+E >w...@gratiano.zephyr.org.uk... >> >> Would it be fair for people to playtest The Camarilla >> Edition without even knowing what's in Bloodlines, or vaguely how it >> works? Is that "well supported"? > >I'm not sure I see your point here. A "well supported" game definition such as "at least every six months for expansions" takes the quality of the cards out of the definition. If expansions are being dropped every four months, a great deal of time and effort is needed to thoroughly playtest these things. This splits off into two distinct areas. Either you playtest, say, Final Nights as a whole, and then release it 'Magic style' (possibly closer to some of the Five Rings Publishing storyline boxes) with a themed set over the year, or you're still releasing the same number of cards. In the former instance, cost is upped (fewer economies of scale) or the whole thing is printed at once - leading to the obvious potential problems with Wind Dance et al, but on a bigger scale. 100 extra cards knocking around to accidentally find their way into boosters. In the latter instance, the expansions are pumped out at a break-neck pace. Huge expansions are playtested with no knowledge at all of what has preceded them. How do you anticipate 300 new cards that you've never seen when, due to the time limits, you have to have your report in exactly when it's released. Imagine a time-scale of Bloodlines being released in January this year and the Camarilla Edition going out in late April/early May. For final re-edits, design, printing, testing, distribution, publicity, you're barely going to get chance to see Bloodlines, let alone figure out its impact on the cards you're playtesting. ("Oh my God, look at that Temporis card! That fallback level is exactly what we were saying the new Brujah shouldn't have access to when we showed how broken this new card was!") That might be a game that falls under a definition of "well supported" that only caters to "rapid expansion release", but it could also be a game with a poor quality control process - which wouldn't exactly be "well supported" under a quality-oriented definition. >I didn't think it was fair when I was asked to playtest a set and was >not given the cards from the set before, even though the set before had >already gone to print and was due in less than a month. I think it's >pretty easy to say that I could have been a better playtester if I >*had* been given that information, yet I see why that decision was not >made. As far as I can recall, each set so far has had at least some not insignificant portion of the proofing and playtesting take place after the release of the previous set. Sabbat War obviously did (no new cards immediately prior to it). I know that The Camarilla Edition did. [ quoted text not captured ]

"James Coupe" <ja...@zephyr.org.uk> wrote in message news:m7ssiAJN...@gratiano.zephyr.org.uk... [ quoted text not captured ] I don't think the above is necessarily true. M:tG has people that are FULL TIME playtesters. If WW did this -- not that they should, but IF they did -- then putting out expansions every 6 months would be fine, quality-wise. You could be right, too, I don't know. :P > >I didn't think it was fair when I was asked to playtest a set and was > >not given the cards from the set before, even though the set before had > >already gone to print and was due in less than a month. I think it's > >pretty easy to say that I could have been a better playtester if I > >*had* been given that information, yet I see why that decision was not > >made. > > As far as I can recall, each set so far has had at least some not > insignificant portion of the proofing and playtesting take place after > the release of the previous set. Sabbat War obviously did (no new cards > immediately prior to it). I know that The Camarilla Edition did. Not for the set I playtested. But all good points, in any case. [ quoted text not captured ]

In message <9F3S9.55477$L61.3...@news1.west.cox.net>, Kevin M. <you...@imaspammer.org> writes: >> That might be a game that falls under a definition of "well supported" >> that only caters to "rapid expansion release", but it could also be a >> game with a poor quality control process - which wouldn't exactly be >> "well supported" under a quality-oriented definition. > >I don't think the above is necessarily true. M:tG has people that are >FULL TIME playtesters. If WW did this -- not that they should, but IF >they did -- then putting out expansions every 6 months would be fine, >quality-wise. You could be right, too, I don't know. :P This comes under the problem that was mentioned previously: And try to identify any card games *outside* of the obvious Hasbro/Wizards set that release at least every six months that have any longevity. I'd struggle to name many. What applies to other games simply isn't feasible to other, smaller games. Every six months? Every four months? The designers don't even necessarily know what's in Bloodlines, because it hasn't been sent to press and is still in playtesting, and they're already having to design The Camarilla Edition. They don't know how grouping has faired under playtesting, but they're already having to design (potentially) Group 3 Gangrel. Sure, if your game is going to sell millions of cards and you can count on profit margins that will allow for a full time school of playtesters, designers, artists, web designers, customer liaisons and so on, you can generate things a lot faster, more reliably, more stably and so on. There's also the fact that someone like Hasbro could afford full/part- time playtesters as a matter of course because they have sufficient card games that they'd never be idle. You spend a few weeks testing the new Harry Potter expansion to oblivion, then while the designers are reworking it, you get them working on some Magic re-writes for the next DCI errata list. But with games that are orders of magnitudes smaller, that's simply unfeasible. It is also useful to examine what Wizards of the Coast have managed with a rapid production schedule in the past. Certainly, many broken cards have been generated, many concepts tested insufficiently. The number under a slower schedule, per White Wolf? There have been a number of cards where people have gone "Ugh, I don't like that" - Meddling of Semsith is a classic example. Some people just don't like the mechanic. Not a lot you can do about that. But the number of power rares? The number of must have cards? The number of times something like Necropotence dominance has been forced onto the V:TES scene? Bear in mind that WotC managed Thoughts Betrayed, Tomb of Rameses III, Return to Innocence and so forth under their system. Is a game that generates b0rked cards from a design team acting rapidly useful under terms such as "well supported"? It's rapidly supported, but "well" tends to imply some measure of quality. If they're to do something "well", it coming out good in the end is useful. So rapid expansion certainly has an interesting track record. The history suggests that doing things "well" isn't always what happens. >> As far as I can recall, each set so far has had at least some not >> insignificant portion of the proofing and playtesting take place after >> the release of the previous set. Sabbat War obviously did (no new cards >> immediately prior to it). I know that The Camarilla Edition did. > >Not for the set I playtested. It's worth pointing out that not all playtesting will, of necessity, always involve all persons at all times, with all cards. Some playtesters may well also come across from previous playtesting, whilst others will not, who will have different knowledge levels. Such diversity of timing and people can provide multiple different view- points, reflecting different styles and so forth. One important point is that the designers can also be playtesting concepts themselves, amongst themselves and their playgroups, which also facilitates different views. -- James Coupe PGP Key: 0x5D623D5D EBD690ECD7A1FB457CA2 Hi! I'm Nancy Drew! You must be the Hardy Boys! 13D7E668C3695D623D5D

"James Coupe" <ja...@zephyr.org.uk> wrote in message news:MRBG4Pf7...@gratiano.zephyr.org.uk... > > It is also useful to examine what Wizards of the Coast have managed with > a rapid production schedule in the past. Certainly, many broken cards > have been generated, many concepts tested insufficiently. The number > under a slower schedule, per White Wolf? There have been a number of > cards where people have gone "Ugh, I don't like that" - Meddling of > Semsith is a classic example. Some people just don't like the mechanic. > Not a lot you can do about that. But the number of power rares? The > number of must have cards? The number of times something like > Necropotence dominance has been forced onto the V:TES scene? Bear in > mind that WotC managed Thoughts Betrayed, Tomb of Rameses III, Return to > Innocence and so forth under their system. > > Is a game that generates b0rked cards from a design team acting rapidly > useful under terms such as "well supported"? It's rapidly supported, > but "well" tends to imply some measure of quality. If they're to do > something "well", it coming out good in the end is useful. > > So rapid expansion certainly has an interesting track record. The > history suggests that doing things "well" isn't always what happens. Of course, their VTES playtest system ASSUMED 4CL and did NOT have a dedicated playstaff (they were also playtesting M:tG at the same time), so this is more like comparing apples & oranges. > It's worth pointing out that not all playtesting will, of necessity, > always involve all persons at all times, with all cards. Some > playtesters may well also come across from previous playtesting, whilst > others will not, who will have different knowledge levels. Such > diversity of timing and people can provide multiple different view- > points, reflecting different styles and so forth. One important point > is that the designers can also be playtesting concepts themselves, > amongst themselves and their playgroups, which also facilitates > different views. This is absolutely correct, although I still marvel at the fact that in the first two weeks after CE was released, the "Tyler" deck was created almost simultaneously on two different continents, in three different playgroups (that I know of), and not a *single* playtester thought of it. <sigh> [ quoted text not captured ]

In message <Bu5S9.56803$L61.3...@news1.west.cox.net>, "Kevin M." <you...@imaspammer.org> mumbled something about: >This is absolutely correct, although I still marvel at the fact that in the first two weeks after CE was released, the "Tyler" deck was created almost simultaneously on two different continents, in three different playgroups (that I know of), and not a *single* playtester thought of it. <sigh> The Tyler deck isn't broken. -- "There's no gray. There's just white that's got grubby." -- T.P.

Kevin M. wrote: > "James Coupe" wrote in message > news:m7ssiAJN...@gratiano.zephyr.org.uk... > > >>I didn't think it was fair when I was asked to playtest a set and was > >>not given the cards from the set before, even though the set before had > >>already gone to print and was due in less than a month. I think > > > >As far as I can recall, each set so far has had at least some not > >insignificant portion of the proofing and playtesting take place after > >the release of the previous set. Sabbat War obviously did (no new cards > >immediately prior to it). I know that The Camarilla Edition did. > > > Not for the set I playtested. If the impending set was due 'in less then a month' when playtesting began, I fail to see how 'some not insignificant portion of the proofing and playtesting' could not take place after the release, unless the playtesting was done in only a month or so (which I find highly unlikely). Flux

Derek Ray wrote: :: In message <Bu5S9.56803$L61.3...@news1.west.cox.net>, :: "Kevin M." <you...@imaspammer.org> mumbled something about: :: ::: This is absolutely correct, although I still marvel at the fact ::: that in the first two weeks after CE was released, the "Tyler" ::: deck was created almost simultaneously on two different ::: continents, in three different playgroups (that I know of), and ::: not a *single* playtester thought of it. <sigh> :: :: The Tyler deck isn't broken. I'll second that =) But how does Kevin know that not any single playtester tried the simple Tyler + Archon combo ? even under the old NRA it was still worth it =)

"Ben Peal" <fu...@optical.mindstorm.com> wrote in message news:bf72a12e.0301...@posting.google.com... [ quoted text not captured ] Right. If I remember correctly, WW mentioned 9 months as a compromise. Many players were even asking for a year or more between sets. -Robert -- Robert Goudie Chairman, V:EKN rob...@vtesinla.org

Derek Ray <lor...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:<p5ph1vct5pbkuad84...@4ax.com>... > In message <Bu5S9.56803$L61.3...@news1.west.cox.net>, > "Kevin M." <you...@imaspammer.org> mumbled something about: > > >This is absolutely correct, although I still marvel at the fact that in the first two weeks after CE was released, the "Tyler" deck was created almost simultaneously on two different continents, in three different playgroups (that I know of), and not a *single* playtester thought of it. <sigh> > > The Tyler deck isn't broken. Maybe not broken, as it relies on many different cogs working together, all of which are fairly easily jammable. However, having playing against Rob Treasure's version a couple of weeks ago, I can tell you it's certainly abusive. DH

> Was there a vampire(s) that did that for/TO you? Most of the Tremere and Nossies kicked ass! Zagreb (8 cap justicar with built in minor theft) Lucas Whatsisface (10 cap prince with built in Cat's Guidance and CEL) That dude with built in S:CE Hoser. Casino Reeds (Prince with built in 4th Tradition and minor increased strength for all ranged strikes) Cock Robin (Sheldon for one more pool, but with a reasonable special and +1 Hand) Admittedly, the Toreador fairly sucked and the Malks became a bit weaker due to the whole DOM / DEM split, but I had no quibble per se with the vampires. DH

"Derek Ray" <lor...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:p5ph1vct5pbkuad84...@4ax.com... > In message <Bu5S9.56803$L61.3...@news1.west.cox.net>, > "Kevin M." <you...@imaspammer.org> mumbled something about: > > >This is absolutely correct, although I still marvel at the fact that in the first two weeks after CE was released, the "Tyler" deck was created almost simultaneously on two different continents, in three different playgroups (that I know of), and not a *single* playtester thought of it. <sigh> > > The Tyler deck isn't broken. I'm confused. I don't recall either James or I talking about how the Tyler deck was broken. [ quoted text not captured ]

"Flux" <fl...@netc.pt> wrote in message news:avavve$d2t88$1...@ID-121674.news.dfncis.de... [ quoted text not captured ] I'm wrong then, since the entire playtest didn't take place in a month, obviously. Maybe it was two months. All I'm saying is that when I playtested the set I was given -- and I was there through the entire playtest -- I was not given any of the previous set, even though it was due in "a few months", and that even though I understand why that choice was made, I'm *positive* that I would have been a better playtester if I had been given that previous set. > > Flux [ quoted text not captured ]

In message <p5ph1vct5pbkuad84...@4ax.com>, Derek Ray <lor...@yahoo.com> writes: >In message <Bu5S9.56803$L61.3...@news1.west.cox.net>, >"Kevin M." <you...@imaspammer.org> mumbled something about: > <line length fixed> >>This is absolutely correct, although I still marvel at the fact that >>in the first two weeks after CE was released, the "Tyler" deck was >>created almost simultaneously on two different continents, in three >>different playgroups (that I know of), and not a *single* playtester >>thought of it. <sigh> > >The Tyler deck isn't broken. Nor does it seem terribly likely that no playtester, including designers, thought of decks focused on Tyler. That the card exists in the game in a usable form doesn't mean it wasn't thought of. Perhaps it was demonstrated to be balanced. Perhaps it wasn't demonstrated to be problematic to a level the Design Team thought to be problematic. Perhaps it was thought of, but the relevant playtester didn't write it up sufficiently, or at all. Whatever. Tyler is certainly a good vampire, asking to be used for *something*. And with those disciplines (Fortitude complimenting the multiple actions, for instance), a powerful vampire. Leaving the specials to one side, that's 9 points of disciplines, and 9 points of pretty good disciplines. Reasonable co-operation, ugh, synergy. "dom" provides a useful piece of co-operation with the Euro-Brujah, for instance. For and Obf aren't bad at all, For for the extra, extra untaps. Primogen, not bad, but on a 9 capacity vampire, it's not a Prince or Justicar. Good enough? If you're going for a focused Tyler deck, you're missing out on Fifth Tradition, Second Tradition and so on - useful cards all. The +1 bleed or additional vote is excellent, but costed. So, it's certainly not 1.5 points for the bleed, and a vote is considered to be 0.5 points, and we're not going to the level of Prince (the extra useful cards). A vampire with the text Primogen, casts 2 votes (instead of one), wouldn't *really* be worth the whole 1 point of a Prince, would it? So you run off into a few things like Command of the Harpies as a Prince (Primogens get Beyond Reproach as a downside), it's generally not going to be as good as a Praxis to yourself. So that can't really be half a point (Primogen->Prince = 0.5 point), and with the cost on the +1 bleed, that goes down to, say, a point. 1 + 0.25 (vote) + 0.25 (increased flexibility) goes to 1.5, say. 9 points, + 1.5 + 0.5 = 11 Then there's the diablerie special. Now, Tyler, primogen. The Primogen contributes to avoiding a Blood Hunt, as can the extra vote special. But you still have to get someone in torpor first, so you can use Amaranth or commit diablerie. Now, that's not impossible, of course - but you're using a big vampire like Tyler. You need multiple actions, and a rush action may be blocked (so you can't use Freak Drive). So you need to pull off the Amaranth in combat to guarantee that. Without extra actions, you're at a capacity deficit - the weenie decks can push four actions a turn through, you get one. And if you are going for the multiple untap, Amaranth special, you have to be careful about defending Tyler too. It's such a pain trying to craft multiple action generation, torporisation (rush + combat), a good flow of Amaranth *and* the defence against the Blood Hunts. A good political deck on the table screws you, if you can't survive the Blood Hunts. And a canny political deck is going to be worried about you. You have a lot of combat savvy, which is going to whittle him down. Or you get several people on the table with a few votes. You've spent 9 points on a Primogen, so you're not exactly swimming in pool. None of the obvious Princes have any stealth, so Fifth Tradition is difficult with them. (Jaroslav, Justicar, so the same benefits - 2nd, 5th, etc. - has Obf at 10 capacity.) Minion Tap/Taste of Vitae is a good, and well documented, alternative avenue. But you still have the action deficit, even with a greater pool flow, and more delicate problems with card flow. And a bloody big target sign on Tyler's head if you *do* pull it off. Not a lot for the playtesters to spot, really. If Tyler looked a lot different in playtest, it got caught well, and the resulting vampire is really rather well balanced. The blood and untap come from a really risky situation of diablerie - certainly something that happens infrequently in most games I've seen, unless/until someone has real vote dominance. I couldn't put it at more than a point, which leaves my costing at 12 points max, and probably less than that. 11.5 say. And for a vampire who's supposed to be 11 points ish (9+2), that works out not badly, I'd say, given that the line for exploitation is a tricky one. [ quoted text not captured ]

In message <nOcS9.63606$L61.4...@news1.west.cox.net>, Kevin M. <you...@imaspammer.org> writes: >and I was there through the entire playtest Can I ask how you know this? And can I ask how you know what playtesting was done in addition to the playtesters signed up, by White Wolf staff, LSJ, the Design Team and so on? -- James Coupe PGP Key: 0x5D623D5D [ quoted text not captured ]

"Kevin M." wrote: > I still marvel at the fact that in the first two weeks after CE was released, the "Tyler" deck was created almost simultaneously on two different continents, in three different playgroups (that I know of), and not a *single* playtester thought of it. <sigh> You and I have been over this before. The revelation that Archon rush was repeatable did not come until after CE was released. Some playtesters surely thought of it and then dismissed at as not possible, as you and I have been over already. [ quoted text not captured ]

"Kevin M." wrote: > > Kevin M. wrote: > > > "James Coupe" wrote in message > > > >As far as I can recall, each set so far has had at least some not > > > >insignificant portion of the proofing and playtesting take place after > > > >the release of the previous set. Sabbat War obviously did (no new cards > > > >immediately prior to it). I know that The Camarilla Edition did. > > > > > > Not for the set I playtested. > > All I'm saying is that when I playtested the set I was given -- and I was there through the entire playtest -- I was not given any of the previous set, even though it was due in "a few months", ... and you and your group are representative of every playtest group? Or did you just mean your group, and not the set in general, when you tried to counter James's assertion, despite James's use of "not insiginificat portion" to cover exactly that situation? > and that even though I understand why that choice was made, I'm *positive* that I would have been a better playtester if I had been given that previous set. ... despite having to then divide your attention between the cards you were supposed to be playtesting and the cards that were largely immaterial to the cards that you were supposed to be playesting? Interesting. So, for example, which card or cards from the previous set cause which card from the set you playtested to be unbalanced in a way that couldn't have been seen using only cards from sets other than the one set you didn't get? [ quoted text not captured ]

In message <9e10847c.03010...@posting.google.com>, dave...@hotmail.com (hamdamcwa) mumbled something about: [ quoted text not captured ] Why didn't you block the Archon vote? For the Tyler deck to run, it requires: Tyler (9-cap) successful equip action on the Rowan Ring Prince or Justicar (minimum 5-cap) That P/J to call the Archon vote That P/J to pass the Archon vote The deck to not get the Archon immediately voted away Opposing combat decks that cannot kill Tyler These are Brujah. They are not stealth monsters. No, it's not pretty if you let it get up and running, because the first thing she probably does is Amaranth all the opposing voters. But I can name any number of decks that get ugly if you sit and let them get wound up -- my old POT/THA/DOM deck that put Rutor's Hand on people, for example. Stop the Hands or the rescue, the deck flops. Don't do either, the deck goes zoom. Anyway. :) [ quoted text not captured ]

In message <JGcS9.63508$L61.4...@news1.west.cox.net>, "Kevin M." <you...@imaspammer.org> mumbled something about: >"Derek Ray" <lor...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:p5ph1vct5pbkuad84...@4ax.com... >> In message <Bu5S9.56803$L61.3...@news1.west.cox.net>, >> "Kevin M." <you...@imaspammer.org> mumbled something about: >> >> >This is absolutely correct, although I still marvel at the fact that in the first two weeks after CE was released, the "Tyler" deck was created almost simultaneously on two different continents, in three different playgroups (that I know of), and not a *single* playtester thought of it. <sigh> >> >> The Tyler deck isn't broken. > >I'm confused. I don't recall either James or I talking about how the Tyler deck was broken. If the Tyler deck were broken, that would be indicative that no playtester thought of it, because playtesters are supposed to spot and catch that sort of thing. Since it's not broken, how do you know no playtester thought of it? [ quoted text not captured ]

legb...@mailandnews.com (legbiter) wrote in message news:<22fea992.03010...@posting.google.com>... [ quoted text not captured ] You're right on both those new deck concepts. I guess it's the metagame, but tyler hasn't made a dent here at all - Oliver thrace kick ass, yes. Everytime he comes out tho, i see his ass handed to him over and over again... same with tyler As for the weenies with guns, yes they changed the game around here big time until everyone started packing obediences again...(i'm getting old, or smoking way too much crack) desperately seeking the anarchs... (Ok enough lame 80's movie references) jds

"Robert Goudie" <rrgo...@earthlink.net> wrote in message news:aK8S9.18049$9N5.1...@newsread2.prod.itd.earthlink.net... > > "Ben Peal" <fu...@optical.mindstorm.com> wrote in message > news:bf72a12e.0301...@posting.google.com... > > That's not it at all. The feedback White Wolf consistently received > > was that the player base would feel financially overwhelmed by having > > to keep current with expansions at a rate faster than once every 9 > > months. Rather than alienate the existing (and purchasing) player > > base, potentially causing the player base to decrease, White Wolf > > decided to go with a schedule of an expansion every nine months. > > Right. If I remember correctly, WW mentioned 9 months as a compromise. Many > players were even asking for a year or more between sets. We really don't know how the number of people who we heard from here on the newsgroup (who wanted sets a year apart or more) compares to the number of people buying cards (or who *would* buy more cards) who *aren't* on the newsgroup and would like sets more frequently, though. That's the problem with populations that you aren't reaching: you have no good way of knowing how big they would be if you could reach them. Josh every sip's running through my eyes and up into my brain

In message <hn8j1vkm5smgv8h1m...@4ax.com>, Derek Ray <lor...@yahoo.com> writes: >Why didn't you block the Archon vote? > >For the Tyler deck to run, it requires: > >Tyler (9-cap) >successful equip action on the Rowan Ring Well, that's not entirely necessary. Other options involving combat could be used. Of course, Rowan Ring is a good option. It's also notable that use of Rowan Ring runs counter to obvious Brujah pro-combat strategies. To avoid Majesty and Strike: Combat Ends in general, Dodge and various scary fight back scenarios, you use IG - you can't Breath of the Dragon under Immortal, for instance. Obviously, there are a few steal/destroy equipment cards, but most of them can be ignored for now - they're usually not worth the card slots, so you can't really suggest them as a useful option for decks, though Anarch Troublemaker could be of use. Most of the anti-equipment cards aren't that great usually, though. Things change, of course, and various pro-equipment strategies could make them a lot more playable. Fat Al's does have its advantages here - but that can get burned, too. >Prince or Justicar (minimum 5-cap) Or another vote. Tyler could make herself a Prince if you were really desperate. I'd probably include one or two PSes just in case. It's also worth noting that if you *do* use a real Prince, or one who's been around for a turn or two (say, you call Brujah Justicar on a small vampire whilst you're getting Tyler out), the moment Tyler comes out (Influence phase) there's a whole turn around the table for people to say "Bugger" and run for cover/attempt to take one of them out. >That P/J to call the Archon vote >That P/J to pass the Archon vote Obvious strategy here isn't blocking the vote, though that definitely works, but to cancel it. Delaying Tactics is excellent, providing another turn around the table to attack the vampire or whatever counter strategy you see fit. If a deck can't take out a key voting vampire, can't defend against votes (intercept), can't defend against votes (counter votes/vote cancellation) or similar, it's going to get screwed by a voting deck - at which point, it becomes its own fault anyway. >The deck to not get the Archon immediately voted away Well, this is ever so slightly less true. If you put two vampires out at once, and the other vampires calls the Archon, it could be called first. Of course, if you get screwed by card flow, you can find yourself without anything/much to do, and you have to go round the table, and the Archon can be got rid of then. >Opposing combat decks that cannot kill Tyler This is the general problem for the Brujah. They're much better at taking out non-combat/low-combat decks than others, but they're pretty bad at taking it from other combat decks. [ quoted text not captured ]

legb...@mailandnews.com (legbiter) wrote in message news:<22fea992.03010...@posting.google.com>... > freak...@ponymail.com (freakdrivr) wrote in message news:<fc6a5b20.03010...@posting.google.com>... > > dave...@hotmail.com (hamdamcwa) wrote in message news:<9e10847c.03010...@posting.google.com>... > > > <snip> > > > > The existing long-term playerbase is faltering as the old-timers are > > > > moving on to other things, and not much influx of new players to speak > > > > of. At least from what I've seen in Michigan and on the NG. > > > > Perhaps my worldview on this may/may not accurately reflect other folks > > > > areas, but that's how it feels to me regardless. > > > > > > > > There are so many ways that WW could persue expanding their CCG > > > > playerbase, if they wanted to invest the effort (and in some cases, > > > > money). > > > > > > > Where HAS everybody gone? V:TES' stock has fallen dramatically lately > > > - not just the newsgroup, but local play has been much quieter, other > > > forums have been similarly silent, and looking at eBay, the price of > > > cards has plummeted. > > > > > Blame it on CE. :P > > > > After raving for a month or two about it after it's release, players > > around here couldn't care less. Not to take anything away from a > > great release... it certainly didn't set the VTES world on it's head > > with new deck concepts and playstyles... > > > i beg to differ. Weenies with guns and Deranging Malkavians are VERY > powerful new deck concepts. As for alarming new vampires, Virstania > the Earth Mother, Tyler and Oliver Thrace spring INSTANTLY to my > still-befuddled mind. O, and happy new year, in case i forgot to say > that already. I agree with the last statement. People around here (San Francisco) are definitely experimenting with the new vampires. We also seem to be having somewhat of a resurgence in interest in VTES (or perhaps it's just that the scene is defragmenting in a manner of speaking). I don't think that entirely new archtypes are appearing overnight (I consider the Concealed Weapon change to just make weapons decks more viable, which is an old archetype), but people are certainly seeing what subtle tweaks they can do with their favorite clans. I did a quick check on the TWD list and of the 9 tournaments that were reported, 3 of them used vampires from CE and 3 used library cards that were new or functionally different in CE. It will be a gradual process for the CE vampires and library cards to filter in to local metagames and become competitive. It is happening, slowly but surely.

"James Coupe" <ja...@zephyr.org.uk> wrote in message news:u5lOyS7o...@gratiano.zephyr.org.uk... > In message <hn8j1vkm5smgv8h1m...@4ax.com>, Derek Ray > <lor...@yahoo.com> writes: > >Why didn't you block the Archon vote? > > > >For the Tyler deck to run, it requires: > > > >Tyler (9-cap) > >successful equip action on the Rowan Ring > > Well, that's not entirely necessary. Other options involving combat > could be used. Of course, Rowan Ring is a good option. Rowan Ring is probably the ideal option, because it reduces your "necessary combat combo" to one card (Amaranth) and is only foiled by Dodge and S:CE (not damage prevention, and Dodge can be re-foiled by additional strikes). Making your combat that non-card-intensive is hugely useful. > It's also notable that use of Rowan Ring runs counter to obvious Brujah > pro-combat strategies. To avoid Majesty and Strike: Combat Ends in > general, Dodge and various scary fight back scenarios, you use IG - you > can't Breath of the Dragon under Immortal, for instance. I don't think Brujah combat is really relevant here. Only Tyler is important. She can deal with Breath of the Dragon (or aggropoke or whatever) with her Fortitude. She can Psyche against S:CE instead of Grappling. > Obviously, there are a few steal/destroy equipment cards, but most of > them can be ignored for now - they're usually not worth the card slots, > so you can't really suggest them as a useful option for decks, though > Anarch Troublemaker could be of use. Most of the anti-equipment cards > aren't that great usually, though. Things change, of course, and > various pro-equipment strategies could make them a lot more playable. They are becoming much more playable, mostly because of Concealed Weapon, which has had a very large impact on tournament environments in my experience. There have been other pro-weapon cards going around before that too, but Concealed is the big one. Anarch Troublemaker is now, I think, a decent idea in any deck that can afford the master card slot - maybe even two of them. > Fat Al's does have its advantages here - but that can get burned, too. > > >Prince or Justicar (minimum 5-cap) > > Or another vote. Tyler could make herself a Prince if you were really > desperate. I'd probably include one or two PSes just in case. Or, for super-tech action, Tyler does: Will of the Council, Freak Drive, Archon herself. Freak Drive, Rowan Ring, Freak Drive, go to town. Best-case scenario, of course. > If a deck can't take out a key voting vampire, can't defend against > votes (intercept), can't defend against votes (counter votes/vote > cancellation) or similar, it's going to get screwed by a voting deck - > at which point, it becomes its own fault anyway. Against "normal" vote decks, though, you have the whole game to defend - you don't have to have it This Turn Or You're Done. > >The deck to not get the Archon immediately voted away > > Well, this is ever so slightly less true. Yeah, this shouldn't be an issue most of the time, since presumably Tyler's first rampage will be to eat all the opposing voters. > >Opposing combat decks that cannot kill Tyler > > This is the general problem for the Brujah. They're much better at > taking out non-combat/low-combat decks than others, but they're pretty > bad at taking it from other combat decks. Again, Tyler is much better than "the Brujah" at taking it. I haven't seen a Tyler/RowanRing/Archon deck actually played yet, but it does look pretty nasty to me. Yeah, I doubt that it's actually "broken", it does have weak points, but I don't think it can be easily dismissed either. If all else fails, you could Daring the Dawn with Tyler on the "equip Rowan Ring" action, rescue with a Fortitude weenie + Daring the Dawn, and then your opponents are no longer in a "just block Tyler" situation. Josh

Derek Ray <lor...@yahoo.com> wrote: > my old POT/THA/DOM deck that put Rutor's Hand on people, for > example. Stop the Hands or the rescue, the deck flops. Don't do > either, the deck goes zoom. Derek Ray, you truly are the king of kings. :) I can never get my version of that deck running right. I'll get an oust or two, but I can never pull off the table win. It's driving me crazy. Gah! Xian crazy like a fox!

Joshua Duffin wrote: > Robert Goudie wrote: > > Ben Peal wrote: > > > That's not it at all. The feedback White Wolf consistently received > > > was that the player base would feel financially overwhelmed by having > > > to keep current with expansions at a rate faster than once every 9 > > > months. Rather than alienate the existing (and purchasing) player > > > base, potentially causing the player base to decrease, White Wolf > > > decided to go with a schedule of an expansion every nine months. > > > > Right. If I remember correctly, WW mentioned 9 months as a compromise. > > Many players were even asking for a year or more between sets. > > We really don't know how the number of people who we heard from > here on the newsgroup (who wanted sets a year apart or more) > compares to the number of people buying cards (or who *would* > buy more cards) who *aren't* on the newsgroup and would like > sets more frequently, though. > > That's the problem with populations that you aren't reaching: > you have no good way of knowing how big they would be if you > could reach them. At the same time, White Wolf was acting on the information they did have, rather than on information they didn't have. It's possible that there's a large portion of the V:TES community that would want every future expansion to prominently feature burritos, but we've yet to see the Chimichangas expansion. - Ben Peal, Prince of Boston fu...@mindstorm.com

"Derek Ray" <lor...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:j59j1v4k5k2egeeuj...@4ax.com... [ quoted text not captured ] LSJ stated that no one had started to use Archon in the way that the "Tyler" deck uses it until CE was released to the public. [ quoted text not captured ]

"LSJ" <vte...@white-wolf.com> wrote in message news:3E197C03...@white-wolf.com... > "Kevin M." wrote: > > I still marvel at the fact that in the first two weeks after CE was released, the "Tyler" deck was created almost simultaneously on two different continents, in three different playgroups (that I know of), and not a *single* playtester thought of it. <sigh> > > You and I have been over this before. Yes, of course we have. :) > The revelation that Archon rush was repeatable did not come until after CE was released. > Some playtesters surely thought of it and then dismissed it as not possible, as you and I have been over already. OK, then "No one *correctly* thought of it until..." The fact that they dismissed it as not possible isn't relevant, nor am I making a moral judgement call on the issue. I'm just saying I wouldn't have expected it (the whole Archon "revelation") to happen the way that it did, that's all. No big deal. > LSJ (vte...@white-wolf.com) V:TES Net.Rep for White Wolf, Inc. > Links to V:TES news, rules, cards, utilities, and tournament calendar: > http://www.white-wolf.com/vtes/ Kevin M., Prince of Henderson, NV (USA) [ quoted text not captured ]

"James Coupe" <ja...@zephyr.org.uk> wrote in message news:Lg7XU5zR...@gratiano.zephyr.org.uk... > In message <nOcS9.63606$L61.4...@news1.west.cox.net>, Kevin M. > <you...@imaspammer.org> writes: > >and I was there through the entire playtest > > Can I ask how you know this? And can I ask how you know what > playtesting was done in addition to the playtesters signed up, by White > Wolf staff, LSJ, the Design Team and so on? Jeez! This could go on forever! :) I believe that, when my playgroup was asked to be part of that playtest, that we were asked at the beginning, since, to us, based on the communication we were receiving, it surely seemed that we were there at the beginning and, based on the communication we were receiving, that we were there at the end. It's certainly POSSIBLE that we either weren't there at the actual beginning of playtesting, or there at the actual end of playtesting, or both. It just didn't seem that way to us at all. Perhaps our inexperience with playtesting a WW product caused us to have misperceptions of what constituted the beginning and/or the ending of the "playtesting" part of the process. > > James Coupe [ quoted text not captured ]

"LSJ" <vte...@white-wolf.com> wrote in message news:3E197E3B...@white-wolf.com... > "Kevin M." wrote: > > > Kevin M. wrote: > > > > "James Coupe" wrote in message > > > > >As far as I can recall, each set so far has had at least some not > > > > >insignificant portion of the proofing and playtesting take place after > > > > >the release of the previous set. Sabbat War obviously did (no new cards > > > > >immediately prior to it). I know that The Camarilla Edition did. > > > > > > > > Not for the set I playtested. > > > > All I'm saying is that when I playtested the set I was given -- and I was there through the entire playtest -- I was not given any of the previous set, even though it was due in "a few months", > > ... and you and your group are representative of every playtest group? > > Or did you just mean your group, and not the set in general, when you tried > to counter James's assertion, despite James's use of "not insiginificat > portion" to cover exactly that situation? See my response to James further up this thread for more specific information. In that "All I'm saying..." statement, I probably should have said "--and I *believe* I was there through the entire playtest--". Bad English. My mistake. It was not my intention to step on anyone's toes here, with regards to playtesting or anything. All I was saying is that I (and my playgroup) believed that we were there throughout the entire playtesting period. > > and that even though I understand why that choice was made, I'm *positive* that I would have been a better playtester if I had been given that previous set. > > ... despite having to then divide your attention between the cards you were > supposed to be playtesting and the cards that were largely immaterial to > the cards that you were supposed to be playesting? > > Interesting. > > So, for example, which card or cards from the previous set cause which card > from the set you playtested to be unbalanced in a way that couldn't have been > seen using only cards from sets other than the one set you didn't get? I don't believe it is immaterial to the cards that I am supposed to be playtesting to consider, say, how a vampire from the previous set would interact with the cards I am supposed to be playtesting. For example, there were certain cards (very few, mind you) that we were playtesting which we felt that, assuming the card was published as-is, were wallpaper *unless* a vampire(s) from the previous set was created a certain way, with these certain cards in mind. I'm sure this is possible, since I'd guess that you [LSJ] are probably thinking of the upcoming set(s) when you create the current set. It just didn't seem to be that way to us, and in all of those "certain cards" instances, I'd say we were proved correct, based upon my current perception of the current use of, and attitudes towards, those cards. In one other case (that I can think of), the card that we were playtesting was wallpaper unless another *card* from the previous set was created a certain way, with this card in mind. This didn't happen, and it seems that particular card is now wallpaper (with my caveat, above). FYI: I'd just like to say how *amazed* I am at how this discussion -- at least my part of it, anyway -- has caused such strong responses. Not that I'm bothered the strong discussion, not at all. Knock some sense into my head, I guess, if I need it. How wonderful that I live in such interesting times! ;) > LSJ (vte...@white-wolf.com) V:TES Net.Rep for White Wolf, Inc. > Links to V:TES news, rules, cards, utilities, and tournament calendar: > http://www.white-wolf.com/vtes/ Kevin M., Prince of Henderson, NV (USA) [ quoted text not captured ]

In message <dbc1153.03010...@posting.google.com>, xb...@qwest.net (Xian) mumbled something about: >Derek Ray <lor...@yahoo.com> wrote: >> my old POT/THA/DOM deck that put Rutor's Hand on people, for >> example. Stop the Hands or the rescue, the deck flops. Don't do >> either, the deck goes zoom. > >Derek Ray, you truly are the king of kings. Me three kings of Orient is? (note: i was born on 12/25/19xx... be careful where you throw that =) >I can never get my version of that deck running right. I'll get an >oust or two, but I can never pull off the table win. It's driving me >crazy. Gah! I couldn't either. Mostly because people kept taking offense to the Rutor's Hand action, as taken by Theo Bell with a THA skill card. Can't see why. One rush, one bleed, right? How is that abusive? ;) [ quoted text not captured ]

On 6 Jan 2003 14:26:56 -0800, fu...@optical.mindstorm.com (Ben Peal) wrote: [ quoted text not captured ] IT'S NOT A CHALUPA!! B.

<Snip> >In one other case (that I can think of), the card that we were = >playtesting was wallpaper unless another *card* from the previous set = >was created a certain way, with this card in mind. This didn't happen, = >and it seems that particular card is now wallpaper (with my caveat, = >above). Don't feel too bad Kevin, we're still waiting to see the point of Cold Iron Vulnerability as a game mechanic (rather than a 1 card mechanic). >FYI: I'd just like to say how *amazed* I am at how this discussion -- at = >least my part of it, anyway -- has caused such strong responses. Not = >that I'm bothered the strong discussion, not at all. Knock some sense = >into my head, I guess, if I need it. How wonderful that I live in such = >interesting times! ;) > >> LSJ (vte...@white-wolf.com) V:TES Net.Rep for White Wolf, Inc. >Kevin M., Prince of Henderson, NV (USA) BernieTime Lansing, Michigan

In message <avcklo$e2i73$1...@ID-121616.news.dfncis.de>, Joshua Duffin <jtdu...@yahoo.com> writes: >Rowan Ring is probably the ideal option, because it reduces >your "necessary combat combo" to one card (Amaranth) and >is only foiled by Dodge and S:CE (not damage prevention, and >Dodge can be re-foiled by additional strikes). Making your >combat that non-card-intensive is hugely useful. and >I don't think Brujah combat is really relevant here. Only >Tyler is important. She can deal with Breath of the Dragon >(or aggropoke or whatever) with her Fortitude. She can >Psyche against S:CE instead of Grappling. Well, this is the problem. You can be screwed by multiple different combat strategies. Not that all of them will necessarily kill you, of course, but they'll be doing things you can't predict. Counter-maneuvers is the popular 'good player' move against combat decks - particularly the Brujah. The combo now needs Archon rush, secure close range, don't get dodged/S:CE-ed. Of course, Psyche! is always an option - but if you're having to secure close range, it's a harder one, because you now need this *and* this. Intercept is also a good option here. The action doesn't succeed - even if you end up in combat - so Freak Drive isn't playable, so you *have* to get the diablerie. If anti-equipment combat is on the rise - which it mostly should be - you then have that problem, too. I don't think the combos can be easily brought down to Rowan Ring/Amaranth. >> Obviously, there are a few steal/destroy equipment cards, but most of >> them can be ignored for now - they're usually not worth the card slots, >> so you can't really suggest them as a useful option for decks, though >> Anarch Troublemaker could be of use. Most of the anti-equipment cards >> aren't that great usually, though. Things change, of course, and >> various pro-equipment strategies could make them a lot more playable. > >They are becoming much more playable, mostly because of >Concealed Weapon, which has had a very large impact on >tournament environments in my experience. There have been >other pro-weapon cards going around before that too, but >Concealed is the big one. Anarch Troublemaker is now, I >think, a decent idea in any deck that can afford the master >card slot - maybe even two of them. Well, it's been a good card for the tap-n-bleed lot for a while now, it just hasn't seen huge amounts of play. It'd be nice to see more of it. >> Or another vote. Tyler could make herself a Prince if you were really >> desperate. I'd probably include one or two PSes just in case. > >Or, for super-tech action, Tyler does: Will of the Council, Freak >Drive, Archon herself. Freak Drive, Rowan Ring, Freak Drive, go to >town. Best-case scenario, of course. True. The problem with all the actions is the need for Freak Drive. How many are in the deck? Assuming Will of the Council, Archon with a single vote push (Bewitching, say) and Rowan Ring, you have four cards, plus three freaks. Assuming that we're talking first ten cards here (three discards on the three turns to get Tyler out, assuming no speed ups - but then the speed up gets you to about ten cards), that's approximately three tenths of the deck being Freak Drive. Say 25% with a lucky draw. That's still, what, 22 cards. Even at 20%, that's 18 cards. How many of those are being drawn instead of your Psyche!, or your Amaranth? That's a lot of cards to get rid of. Additionally, unlike a (picking a random deck archtype) generic Brujah combat deck with a large combo, you need all the pieces here in pretty much the right order. Brujah combat can cope without an Undead Strength, maybe pulling one after it plays the Blur and putting in on additional strikes. Ventrue votes can cope without Kindred Restructure now, and Kine Resources instead. On such decks, Direct Intervention isn't that good an option - Boohoohoo, I didn't play Bum's Rush, I'll play Computer Hacking instead. This deck is more vulnerable to single card targeting with DI, significantly so, I'd say. >> If a deck can't take out a key voting vampire, can't defend against >> votes (intercept), can't defend against votes (counter votes/vote >> cancellation) or similar, it's going to get screwed by a voting deck - >> at which point, it becomes its own fault anyway. > >Against "normal" vote decks, though, you have the whole game to >defend - you don't have to have it This Turn Or You're Done. I'm still unsure that it's ever going to consistently be One Turn Or DEI!!! All decks get lucky breaks and sweep tables, so perfect scenarios are slightly less relevant - unless the perfect scenario can be easily achieved. You need a Prince or a Justicar. That's an investment in a Praxis Seizure/Brujah Justicar. That's an investment in Will of the Council. That's an investment in another vampire. In the first two instances, that's an action to block. In the third, that's a vampire to target *and* a delay on Tyler. In the third instance, the idea that you can just rely on Tyler isn't an option. You need that Prince out to call the Archon. The rush deck on the table is going to hit Volker as hard as it damn well can, Tyler's Fortitude be damned. (And if you're playing Flash/Rowan Ring/Blur (anti-Dodge)/Psyche! as your major combat cards, Volker can't do anything too flash.) In the first two, you have some problems. As Derek Ray points out, the Brujah are not stealth monsters. +1 stealth is all they can expect, +2 with Alacrity. (Alas, none of these actions are bleed actions, so Carthage Remembered is not an option.) In the instance of a vote, you need to pass the vote. How are you doing this? Vote push? More tech. (Though Oxford University (*spit*), England is potentially a good option.) If you're not using vote push tech, how are you passing Archon? True, you have a Prince (however you've done it, eventually) and so have the options of Closed Session but, even so, not fun. Additionally, compare having two vampires out bleeding heavily. Laptop/Freak/Govern the Unaligned/Command of the Beast/Conditioning, twice. 1 + 1 (laptop) + 2 (Govern) + 1 (CotB) + 3 (Conditioning). The Laptop is at +1 stealth, just like the vote or Will of the Council. If we can say that Will of the Council/PS/BruJus gets through due to lack of intercept, we can say the same about the equip, right? And since we're not throwing a vote push, let's stick Lost in Crowds in there. DOM/For/Obf with Catherine du Bois, 5 cap. If you're happy going with Dom/For/Obt (switch your stealth modifier over), you've got Gerard, Aurora and Kassiyim at 5 and 6 cap. Only 7 bleed. Stick a Pentex (tm) Loves You in, maybe. If you can guarantee as smooth a ride of Freak Drives as the Tyler deck, you've even got some blockers free at the end. And you're bringing out a five and a six. With Tyler plus a Fortitude weenie (your idea, below) or Tyler plus a Prince (e.g. Volker), you're still level in terms of transfers - Zillah's Valley could make a difference, due to your mid-range capacity. Of course, somehow, you get Will of the Council, Archon, a vote push, Rowan Ring and three Freak Drives in hand (not necessarily all at once) without getting choked by the Psyche! and Amaranth you're putting in. If you want to be consistently pulling those, and you're not going to be playing many cards per combat, how many have you got in? And how many of those aren't sitting in your hand now? We're down to, say, 15 cards, and we've got the 7 above. By your alternative scenarios, you've got a couple of Daring the Dawn, too. Where's the Amaranth? And what are you doing with it when it's preventing your combo from going off? >> >The deck to not get the Archon immediately voted away >> >> Well, this is ever so slightly less true. > >Yeah, this shouldn't be an issue most of the time, since presumably >Tyler's first rampage will be to eat all the opposing voters. Well, additionally, if you're packing sufficient Archon to pull one sufficiently early, you'll be able to call it again. >> >Opposing combat decks that cannot kill Tyler >> >> This is the general problem for the Brujah. They're much better at >> taking out non-combat/low-combat decks than others, but they're pretty >> bad at taking it from other combat decks. > >Again, Tyler is much better than "the Brujah" at taking it. It does rather depend on how directly you construct the deck. If you're using additional vampires to call/pass the vote, they need to survive too. If you're not, you're eating up your library with copies of Bewitching Oration to get a fighting chance of passing it. A 9 cap vampire having three votes from PS/Will of the Council+special (maybe four, if you bleed/freak drive in the middle of the combo to get the edge) trying to pass a critical political action card, so 4 (5) votes in play, is going to find some opposition to itself quickly. 4 votes at that point? It's certainly findable. Indeed, voting strategies have been gradually empowered over a few sets - Free States Rant, Baltimore Purge and so on are good votes. So you're missing intercept for the actions, you're missing specific vote defence, you're missing combat defence, you're missing anti-equipment cards. What is the deck or, indeed, any deck on the table defending itself with? And Tyler has been out a turn, you've had a turn of play. Empty your hand, no matter how stupidly, draw into your defence. >If all else fails, you could Daring the Dawn with Tyler on the >"equip Rowan Ring" action, rescue with a Fortitude weenie + >Daring the Dawn, and then your opponents are no longer in a >"just block Tyler" situation. What about the Will of the Council and the Archon? Sure, you can get round some problems. But if you get out Will of the Council *and* the Archon by using Daring the Dawn, you're going very slowly. And again, we've got a hand of seven cards and we're, let's say, 15 cards in. 2 copies of Daring the Dawn? That's 12 per deck (or similar style tech, Day Operation etc.). Along with some of the Freak Drives from earlier, we're taking up a lot of the deck with Fortitude action modifiers. Here again, Direct Intervention is a good option. If you throw it on Daring the Dawn, they can't repeat that - the action modifier has been played, just to no effect. And DI isn't an uncommon card to find thrown around in a game, it's just this deck is so vulnerable to card flow. [ quoted text not captured ]

In message <xCnS9.66219$L61.4...@news1.west.cox.net>, Kevin M. <you...@imaspammer.org> writes: >It's certainly POSSIBLE that we either weren't there at the actual >beginning of playtesting, or there at the actual end of playtesting, or >both. It just didn't seem that way to us at all. <horrendous line length fixed> I would be very surprised if the DT weren't playtesting as late as possible. Wouldn't you? [ quoted text not captured ]

In message <3e1a5eb3....@netnews.attbi.com>, berni...@attbi.comHOLDLeSPAM writes: >Don't feel too bad Kevin, we're still waiting to see the point of Cold >Iron Vulnerability as a game mechanic (rather than a 1 card mechanic). It doesn't strike me that it's supposed to be one. The Kiasyd are one of the more viable clans in Bloodlines, with 5 vampires, akin to the Ahrimanes, say. The Scarce vampires get some really neat special abilities to compensate their serious flaw, and some rather good discipline cards. Some of the MYT cards are good, but none of them feel quite as good as, say, Rewind Time. The Infernal vampires similarly get some powerful abilities too. By contrast, the Kiasyd get Beatrice - 5 capacity, 5 points. Kassiyim, 6 capacity, 6 points of disciplines, minor special. Julia Prima, 7 capacity, 6 points of disciplines (including DOM OBT), omni-directable bleed (very good bargaining tool), optional +1 bleed. Say, 0.75 to a point for the bleed bonus (it's burn a blood), and another bit for the omni-directable bleed. 7 capacity, supposed to be 8 points. Certainly a good 7-7.5. Bartholomew - 8 capacity, 8 points of discs, including MYT and a good cross-over with the Nagaraja, too. Built in Hunting Ground. Good vampire, probably worth about the 9 points he's supposed to be. Marconius, 7 points of disciplines, +1 strength (1.5 points), so 8.5 points so far. 1 point for the title, 9.5 points. 1 blood reduction on Myt cards which isn't great - though his pot/MYT/blood reduction goes nicely for Basilisk's touch. What are we talking, 10 points? Sounds about right. 9 point vampires balance around 11 points, so we're not far off - and we are only a blood-line, after all. <http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=3DA457CF.760FEFF9%40white-wolf.com> As a result, what does Cold Iron Vulnerability need to do as a serious disadvantage? Not a great deal. So it only being a one card game mechanic doesn't seem too problematic, with a little flavour. Unlike other, previously discarded, corner case rules - Prince/Archbishop not contesting but rushing, Paralyse - it's not a difficult rule. Cold Iron + Vulnerability = agg damage. [ quoted text not captured ]

"James Coupe" <ja...@zephyr.org.uk> wrote in message news:2BoIsRWc...@gratiano.zephyr.org.uk... > In message <avcklo$e2i73$1...@ID-121616.news.dfncis.de>, Joshua Duffin > <jtdu...@yahoo.com> writes: > >I don't think Brujah combat is really relevant here. Only > >Tyler is important. She can deal with Breath of the Dragon > >(or aggropoke or whatever) with her Fortitude. She can > >Psyche against S:CE instead of Grappling. > > Well, this is the problem. You can be screwed by multiple different > combat strategies. Not that all of them will necessarily kill you, of > course, but they'll be doing things you can't predict. Yes. There's always a counter to every deck. Whether it's something that fits into decks that are actually tournament worthy themselves, or likely to show up in tournaments, isn't as certain... > Counter-maneuvers is the popular 'good player' move against combat decks > - particularly the Brujah. The combo now needs Archon rush, secure > close range, don't get dodged/S:CE-ed. Of course, Psyche! is always an > option - but if you're having to secure close range, it's a harder one, > because you now need this *and* this. That's why it's good that Rowan Ring/Amaranth reduces the *necessary* part of the combat combo so much: it leaves you a lot of room for things like Psyche and Pursuit (probably the best anti-go-to-long option for Tyler since it can also be used for anti-Dodge and is very easily tossable if necessary (strike hands, Pursuit, Rowan Ring)). > Intercept is also a good option here. The action doesn't succeed - even > if you end up in combat - so Freak Drive isn't playable, so you *have* > to get the diablerie. Sure. There should be a lot of Amaranth in the deck though, and each time an Amaranth goes off, you have one less person who can try to block things... > I don't think the combos can be easily brought down to Rowan > Ring/Amaranth. No, what I'm saying is, that's all you *have* to have, once you have the Rowan Ring, is an Amaranth. This is orders of magnitude less card-intensive for its nastiness in combat than "traditional" Brujah combat using, say, Torn Signpost, Immortal Grapple, Undead Strength, Taste of Vitae. > >Or, for super-tech action, Tyler does: Will of the Council, Freak > >Drive, Archon herself. Freak Drive, Rowan Ring, Freak Drive, go to > >town. Best-case scenario, of course. > > True. The problem with all the actions is the need for Freak Drive. > How many are in the deck? Assuming Will of the Council, Archon with a > single vote push (Bewitching, say) and Rowan Ring, you have four cards, > plus three freaks. Assuming that we're talking first ten cards here > (three discards on the three turns to get Tyler out, assuming no speed > ups - but then the speed up gets you to about ten cards), that's > approximately three tenths of the deck being Freak Drive. Say 25% with > a lucky draw. That's still, what, 22 cards. Even at 20%, that's 18 > cards. All true. But see where I said "best case scenario"? That's not something I'd *expect* to happen, it's just *possible*. :-) > Additionally, unlike a (picking a random deck archtype) generic Brujah > combat deck with a large combo, you need all the pieces here in pretty > much the right order. Brujah combat can cope without an Undead > Strength, maybe pulling one after it plays the Blur and putting in on > additional strikes. Ventrue votes can cope without Kindred Restructure > now, and Kine Resources instead. On such decks, Direct Intervention > isn't that good an option - Boohoohoo, I didn't play Bum's Rush, I'll > play Computer Hacking instead. This deck is more vulnerable to single > card targeting with DI, significantly so, I'd say. In actual play, probably not that much. You're going to have plenty of copies of Archon and Amaranth just to be able to draw them enough, and either plenty of Rowan Ring or Vast Wealths for them (Vast Wealthed Rowan Ring isn't DIable). Yeah, when people foil you with some method (eg blocking the equip) and you use Neet Tech to counter-foil them, your counter-foil is vulnerable to DI. But people won't even try to foil you all the time, and how many DI can they realistically pack? Not that many. > I'm still unsure that it's ever going to consistently be One Turn Or > DEI!!! All decks get lucky breaks and sweep tables, so perfect > scenarios are slightly less relevant - unless the perfect scenario can > be easily achieved. Sure. But this one, if you get the Archon and Rowan Ring on, the next turn Tyler may be able to eat as many vampires as she has Amaranths for. With no more cards played. That's the turn on which it becomes Have The Defense Now Or Cry. > In the third instance, the idea that you can just rely on Tyler isn't an > option. You need that Prince out to call the Archon. The rush deck on > the table is going to hit Volker as hard as it damn well can, Tyler's > Fortitude be damned. (And if you're playing Flash/Rowan Ring/Blur > (anti-Dodge)/Psyche! as your major combat cards, Volker can't do > anything too flash.) What rush deck on the table? Have you seen the EC results? ;-) > In the first two, you have some problems. As Derek Ray points out, the > Brujah are not stealth monsters. +1 stealth is all they can expect, +2 > with Alacrity. (Alas, none of these actions are bleed actions, so > Carthage Remembered is not an option.) In the instance of a vote, you > need to pass the vote. How are you doing this? Vote push? More tech. > (Though Oxford University (*spit*), England is potentially a good > option.) If you're not using vote push tech, how are you passing > Archon? True, you have a Prince (however you've done it, eventually) > and so have the options of Closed Session but, even so, not fun. What intercept? Have you seen the EC results? ;-) Look. I know this isn't the end-all and be-all of vampire deck tech. Nothing is, or ever can be, since DI and Sudden Reversal exist. All I'm saying is, it's probably real nasty, and not every environment is going to consistently have the things that foil it at the right time, and because of the way it operates, if you don't have it at the right time you might as well not have it at all. > Of course, somehow, you get Will of the Council, Archon, a vote push, > Rowan Ring and three Freak Drives in hand (not necessarily all at once) > without getting choked by the Psyche! and Amaranth you're putting in. > If you want to be consistently pulling those, and you're not going to be > playing many cards per combat, how many have you got in? And how many > of those aren't sitting in your hand now? We're down to, say, 15 cards, > and we've got the 7 above. By your alternative scenarios, you've got a > couple of Daring the Dawn, too. Where's the Amaranth? And what are you > doing with it when it's preventing your combo from going off? The deck probably doesn't have to be, and probably usually won't be, a Super-Turbo-Tyler-Killz-All deck. It can more realistically use a "voting Brujah" module as support, and "only" eat a bunch of opposing vampires when the right cards eventually show up. > >If all else fails, you could Daring the Dawn with Tyler on the > >"equip Rowan Ring" action, rescue with a Fortitude weenie + > >Daring the Dawn, and then your opponents are no longer in a > >"just block Tyler" situation. > > What about the Will of the Council and the Archon? Sure, you can get > round some problems. But if you get out Will of the Council *and* the > Archon by using Daring the Dawn, you're going very slowly. No, see, in this "all else fails" scenario, you'd be getting the Rowan Ring first, and then people can't cavalierly block your Will or Archon actions, cause Tyler has a Rowan Ring. Sure, she might not be willing to Amaranth before she becomes an Archon, but unless you've got good combat defense you'd at least be going to torpor for your block. It's only another silly idea anyway, I doubt that most Tyler decks would go to the trouble of playing significant numbers of Daring the Dawn and Fortitude weenies. :-) But if they did, it'd get around one of the more substantial "key vulnerabilities" of the deck. Josh hey! who keyed my vulnerabilities?

> For example, there were certain cards (very few, mind you) that we were > playtesting which we felt that, assuming the card was published as-is, > were wallpaper *unless* a vampire(s) from the previous set was created a > certain way, with these certain cards in mind. I'm sure this is > possible, since I'd guess that you [LSJ] are probably thinking of the > upcoming set(s) when you create the current set. It just didn't seem to > be that way to us, and in all of those "certain cards" instances, I'd > say we were proved correct, based upon my current perception of the > current use of, and attitudes towards, those cards. > Though I didn't take part in playtesting, an sample combo that appears to be strong and was unexpected would be : Stanislava + Beast Meld + Baltimore's Purge Emmanuel

"Emmanuel Martin" <e...@boursorama.com> wrote in message news:10c2c156.03010...@posting.google.com... [Kevin wrote] [ quoted text not captured ] This one should have been knowable (though I don't know if it was looked at) by playtesters, since Beast Meld came out in Bloodlines in Dec 2001, and playtesting for Camarilla certainly wasn't over by Dec 2001. (OK, not "certainly" since I wasn't a CE playtester, but given that CE didn't come out till Aug 2002, I feel pretty sure that CE playtesting ran at least as late as, say, Feb 2002, six months before release, at which point any Baltimore Purge playtesters should have at least have been aware of the existence of Beast Meld.) I don't mean this to detract from the point that it's useful for playtesters to know what's in the set about to come out when they're going to start testing the one after that. I do think it's useful - no matter whether it would break anything, you can more accurately assess new cards' viability when you actually know the texts on all the other cards they'll be able to interact with. Just that in this example, I think they did have that knowledge. Josh doesn't like wallpaper either

On Tue, 7 Jan 2003 15:48:27 +0000, James Coupe <ja...@zephyr.org.uk> wrote: >In message <3e1a5eb3....@netnews.attbi.com>, >berni...@attbi.comHOLDLeSPAM writes: >>Don't feel too bad Kevin, we're still waiting to see the point of Cold >>Iron Vulnerability as a game mechanic (rather than a 1 card mechanic). > >It doesn't strike me that it's supposed to be one. The Kiasyd are one of >the more viable clans in Bloodlines, with 5 vampires, akin to the >Ahrimanes, say. > >The Scarce vampires get some really neat special abilities to compensate >their serious flaw, and some rather good discipline cards. Some of the >MYT cards are good, but none of them feel quite as good as, say, Rewind >Time. The Infernal vampires similarly get some powerful abilities too. Snip: stats on Kyasid ><http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=3DA457CF.760FEFF9%40white-wolf.com> > >As a result, what does Cold Iron Vulnerability need to do as a serious >disadvantage? Not a great deal. So it only being a one card game >mechanic doesn't seem too problematic, with a little flavour. Unlike >other, previously discarded, corner case rules - Prince/Archbishop not >contesting but rushing, Paralyse - it's not a difficult rule. Cold Iron >+ Vulnerability = agg damage. Good points all. I was taking a pot shot at Cold Iron Vulnerability [CIV] as it created a mulititude of unneccessary text on 6 cards and the rulebook (5 vamps and Poker). It would be a little easier to understand CIV as a game mechanic if it wasn't relegated to a single card (poker). Hopefully we'll see some new Cold Iron stuff in the future to warrant the apparent waste of ink that was used in Bloodlines on CIV. Not a difficult rule by any means. The question is, did it really need to come into existence? >James Coupe BernieTime Lansing, Michigan

Derek Ray <lor...@yahoo.com> wrote: > Xian wrote: > >Derek Ray, you truly are the king of kings. > > (note: i was born on 12/25/19xx... be careful where you throw that =) I was kind of pulling from the Simpsons, a la Mr. Burns, but it's all good. > >I can never get my version of that deck running right. I'll get an > >oust or two, but I can never pull off the table win. It's driving me > >crazy. Gah! > > I couldn't either. Mostly because people kept taking offense to the > Rutor's Hand action, as taken by Theo Bell with a THA skill card. Ah, so when you said that "the deck goes zoom" you were neglecting to mention that you've never actually got it to *go* zoom? :) > Can't see why. One rush, one bleed, right? How is that abusive? ;) Yeah, I don't see anything wrong with that. Also, one bleed, remain untapped to deflect is good too. I don't know why people get their panties in a bunch. So far, I think I've managed to get Astrid and Theo out every game. Man, that's some sweet sweet mojo. Xian

In message <3e1b288b....@netnews.attbi.com>, berni...@attbi.comHOLDLeSPAM writes: >Good points all. I was taking a pot shot at Cold Iron Vulnerability >[CIV] as it created a mulititude of unneccessary text on 6 cards and the >rulebook (5 vamps and Poker). It would be a little easier to understand >CIV as a game mechanic if it wasn't relegated to a single card (poker). Were it me designing Bloodlines right this second, I'd probably change Poker to "Cold Iron Poker" and add a line: "Cold Iron Poker's damage is aggravated if dealt to Kiasyd vampires." and drop all the text from the Kiasyd. And possibly one of those cute, annoying quotes. "Ouch, that smarts" - Marconius >Hopefully we'll see some new Cold Iron stuff in the future to warrant >the apparent waste of ink that was used in Bloodlines on CIV. > >Not a difficult rule by any means. The question is, did it really need >to come into existence? Flavour, I'm guessing. It's good for White Wolf's marketing to the RPG lot, and not an inconvenience to the card game lot. Understandable corner cases can also be fun, if for nothing else than the situations where they *do* occur. "Remember that game where you drew the Poker for your combat defence and blocked Beatrice and played it with a Concealed Weapon and he just looked gob-smacked?" I'm still not sure that Poker isn't pretty much out-classed by Weighted Walking Stick, though. [ quoted text not captured ]

"James Coupe" <ja...@zephyr.org.uk> wrote in message news:ghINkBXe...@gratiano.zephyr.org.uk... > In message <xCnS9.66219$L61.4...@news1.west.cox.net>, Kevin M. > <you...@imaspammer.org> writes: > >It's certainly POSSIBLE that we either weren't there at the actual > >beginning of playtesting, or there at the actual end of playtesting, or > >both. It just didn't seem that way to us at all. > <horrendous line length fixed> > > I would be very surprised if the DT weren't playtesting as late as > possible. Wouldn't you? I don't know how WW playtests, so I don't have enough information to answer. You're probably right, I guess. [ quoted text not captured ]

In message <dbc1153.0301...@posting.google.com>, xb...@qwest.net (Xian) mumbled something about: >Derek Ray <lor...@yahoo.com> wrote: >> >> I couldn't either. Mostly because people kept taking offense to the >> Rutor's Hand action, as taken by Theo Bell with a THA skill card. > >Ah, so when you said that "the deck goes zoom" you were neglecting to >mention that you've never actually got it to *go* zoom? :) Well, it had a few turns of zoom at one point. Then it had a few turns of people torporizing my vampires and eating them. And then Ben Mind Raped my rescue-weenie. =) >> Can't see why. One rush, one bleed, right? How is that abusive? ;) > >Yeah, I don't see anything wrong with that. Also, one bleed, remain >untapped to deflect is good too. I don't know why people get their >panties in a bunch. So far, I think I've managed to get Astrid and >Theo out every game. Man, that's some sweet sweet mojo. I lean more towards Marianna and Ambrogino. mmmmm. Lots of superiors. [ quoted text not captured ]

Emmanuel Martin wrote: :: Though I didn't take part in playtesting, an sample combo that :: appears to be strong and was unexpected would be : :: :: Stanislava :: + Beast Meld :: + Baltimore's Purge Replace Beast Meld by horrific Countenance for the same result. Replace Beast Meld by Forgotten Labyrinth +Elder Impersonation (with,say, Arika or Leandro) for a very similar result. I don't understant where the "too strong" part is. reyda

"James Coupe" <ja...@zephyr.org.uk> wrote in message news:33wohDu+...@gratiano.zephyr.org.uk... > I'm still not sure that Poker isn't pretty much out-classed by Weighted > Walking Stick, though. It is permanent, which is nice sometimes. And free, which is nice vs Meat Cleaver/Bastard Sword. For, say, Concealed Weapon + Renegade Garou, I've thought of using Poker rather than Weighted Walking Stick, since a Garou would break the Stick in a single round. Josh of course, garou with a cane is even funnier than garou with a poker...

In message <avf1gu$f0ebc$1...@ID-121616.news.dfncis.de>, Joshua Duffin <jtdu...@yahoo.com> writes: >"James Coupe" <ja...@zephyr.org.uk> wrote in message news:2BoIsRWcFvG+E >w...@gratiano.zephyr.org.uk... >> In message <avcklo$e2i73$1...@ID-121616.news.dfncis.de>, Joshua Duffin >> <jtdu...@yahoo.com> writes: > >> >I don't think Brujah combat is really relevant here. Only >> >Tyler is important. She can deal with Breath of the Dragon >> >(or aggropoke or whatever) with her Fortitude. She can >> >Psyche against S:CE instead of Grappling. >> >> Well, this is the problem. You can be screwed by multiple different >> combat strategies. Not that all of them will necessarily kill you, of >> course, but they'll be doing things you can't predict. > >Yes. There's always a counter to every deck. Whether it's something >that fits into decks that are actually tournament worthy themselves, >or likely to show up in tournaments, isn't as certain... Well, Strike: Combat Ends is still pretty tournament worthy. Guns are showing up more and more, as we both note. Both are viable forms of combat defence, and both are fairly popular. (S:CE is not a no-brainer, as in years gone by, but it is still certainly viable.) Other pro-combat decks turn up a fair bit, and are often seen in finals of tournaments, from the reports I read. It would be an unusual, or very un/lucky, tournament where at least a couple of strong pro-combat decks weren't around, I'd've thought. >> Counter-maneuvers is the popular 'good player' move against combat decks >> - particularly the Brujah. The combo now needs Archon rush, secure >> close range, don't get dodged/S:CE-ed. Of course, Psyche! is always an >> option - but if you're having to secure close range, it's a harder one, >> because you now need this *and* this. > >That's why it's good that Rowan Ring/Amaranth reduces the *necessary* >part of the combat combo so much: it leaves you a lot of room for >things like Psyche and Pursuit (probably the best anti-go-to-long >option for Tyler since it can also be used for anti-Dodge and is very >easily tossable if necessary (strike hands, Pursuit, Rowan Ring)). It's less certain that that. You need to get the Rowan Ring in hand, and you need to get it out. It's the general problem of uniques clogging up a deck. To get one in hand early, you're probably going to want 6 or 7 in a deck. Even with a couple of Fat Al's, you're locking up deck space for it. Along with the Will of the Council (again, half a dozen copies) and the Archon (again, have a dozen copies), in a 90 card deck, you'll have 6 of these turning up in your first thirty cards. Along with the Freak Drives, to make it a one turn scenario, you'll need, say, 18 Freak Drive in the deck (going for the low end of the maths previously). Another 6 in the first 30. You need some vote push tech. Again, to draw early, you need several. Let's say 4 Bewitching Oration (or similar) and 2 Oxford University. Another 2. That's 2 Rowan Ring, maybe 1 Fat Al's, 2 Will of the Council, 2 Archon, 6 Freak Drive, 2 Bewitching Oration/Oxford University. 15 cards so far. The other 15 could be pro-combat and/or defence. But at the same time as you're playing those, you're continually drawing into repeats of the action cards you've just played. You can't play the Rowan Rings (contest), you can't play the Will of the Council (no more Primogen), you could play the Archon I guess which would allow the Bewitching Oration. Maybe there's an Elysium: The Arboretum on hand to burn and use the Bewitching Oration. But it's starting to clog. Now, you can go down to smaller numbers, of course, and try to cycle more. But until you can get those cards, you haven't really got the killer combo off. And if we're down to taking the actions over several turns, because the Freak Drives aren't turning up, then the One Turn or DEI premonitions aren't relevant - it's not happening in one turn. >> Intercept is also a good option here. The action doesn't succeed - even >> if you end up in combat - so Freak Drive isn't playable, so you *have* >> to get the diablerie. > >Sure. There should be a lot of Amaranth in the deck though, How much? And how much is going to push the Will of the Council/Rowan Ring/Archon/Freak Drive pieces out of hand? >and each >time an Amaranth goes off, you have one less person who can try to >block things... Again, you do need the Amaranth to go off, though. Decks without combat defence are always going to get screwed by combat, that's simply a given. And decks with combat in them are almost certain to turn up in a tournament. >> I don't think the combos can be easily brought down to Rowan >> Ring/Amaranth. > >No, what I'm saying is, that's all you *have* to have, once you have >the Rowan Ring, is an Amaranth. This is orders of magnitude less >card-intensive for its nastiness in combat than "traditional" Brujah >combat using, say, Torn Signpost, Immortal Grapple, Undead Strength, >Taste of Vitae. That's true, but, unlike many permanent vs transient situations, you can't cycle these out - and you have to take an action. In the first instance, of transient card intensity, we can break a Brujah combat deck down to Bum's Rush, Flash, Torn Signpost, Immortal Grapple, Undead Strength, Taste of Vitae - with a few Computer Hackings, a few Minion Taps/Blood Dolls (depending on the deck) and a small clutch of Haven Uncovered. What happens when our card flow sucks? I draw Bum's Rush, a Torn Signpost and a Taste of Vitae, and happen to have Computer Hacking, another Bum's Rush, Haven Uncovered and maybe a Potence master. But I can still play my cards - Bum's Rush is fine. Torn Signpost is fine. I can have a go with Taste of Vitae, though it might not do much. And I'll draw into some more cards. In the instance of other permanent cards, we might be playing .44 Magnum. These have the advantage of not needing Fortitude to bring out (they're available with Concealed Weapon), so we can play with multiple vampires and none of them are so key. I can play multiples, cycling to avoid hand sticking, which Rowan Ring can't. If we're going for single vampire Tyler, we can't play multiple Will of the Council. If we're not going for SVT, the obvious companions are a Prince (who couldn't play WotC, at which point you might not be putting it in the deck but then expose yourself to other problems) or a weenie for the scenarios you suggest. Can't cycle there. It's not actually Unique (other people can play it), but to most intents and purposes, it'll conflict with itself in your deck just as much as Rowan Ring. Two cards that are just going to eat discards. *And* you're vulnerable to card flow. As a transient combat deck, a Bum's Rush or a blocked action is fine by me, and there are a few useful built in rush vampires (mostly ignorable, however). You don't *need* Flash before Undead Strength is playable. You don't *need* Torn Signpost before Taste of Vitae is playable. Sure, you might have to cycle uselessly to get to your cards, but they can all work on their own. Rowan Ring is playable at any point in the combo. But Will of the Council is needed *before* Archon - no blocked actions for me. You need Archon and some vote tech if you're going to guarantee it - but at the same time, you need little enough that they don't stuff your hand full. And you can't easily cope with Will of the Council, Archon, Bewitching Oration, Amaranth, Amaranth, Rowan Ring, Psyche! in hand. No freak drives, no Single Turn Or DEI. >> >Or, for super-tech action, Tyler does: Will of the Council, Freak >> >Drive, Archon herself. Freak Drive, Rowan Ring, Freak Drive, go to >> >town. Best-case scenario, of course. >> <snip - my problems> > >All true. But see where I said "best case scenario"? That's not >something I'd *expect* to happen, it's just *possible*. :-) But that's the trick. This is the best case action for a Tyler deck going for a single Tyler. (Not relying on Volker to call an action etc.) The best case scenario is *very* tricky to pull off. And if the problem is, as you say, that: "Against "normal" vote decks, though, you have the whole game to defend - you don't have to have it This Turn Or You're Done." then it's not a single turn. And you have the whole set-up time to defend against it. And against "normal" vote decks, you could be in a similar position. Three turns, say, to bring out a couple of vampires. Maybe four. (Three turns minimum for Tyler, with no transfer tech.) They pull a Ventrue Headquarters, a Directorate Assembly or similar. You've done similar. You're at, what, 15, 16 pool, maybe, if you've gone for another vampire too. But in any case, two Parity Shifts could do a lot of damage. If you go for weenie-ish voters with Presence push, you could get hit with 3, 4, 5 KRCs. Now, in this single turn of death, you can only defend with intercept or anti-vote. Against the Tyler deck, you've had a previous turn at least where Tyler was the obvious vampire to take on - multiple vampire decks can "afford" to lose one or two, in that they won't just flollop as a result. You can intercept any of the actions (or you're going for nasty Daring the Dawn situations). You can vote down the vote. You can cancel the vote. You can block the combat. You can block the equipment. You can defend in the combat. You can fight back in the combat (can't Amaranth if you're going to torpor). There are many defences available in the game. The most generic action wise is intercept. Specifically, you can get anti-vote (Delaying Tactics, vote cancellers, vote gainers) and anti-bleed (bounce, reduction etc.) In combat, you can get combat defence, or outside combat you could try Obedience (not good against Tyler). So you haven't got any intercept - general action defence. The vote has got through, so you haven't got any vote defence. The combat happens, and you haven't got any combat defence. The only major defence you haven't had a chance to use is bleed defence. You've had a similar amount of time to attack the vampires - and he only has one vampire to take out. So, in one turn, you need intercept (multiple times), or combat, or vote defence. Against the weenie voters, you need intercept or vote defence, nothing else will work - but other sources work against Tyler (pro- combat, anti-combat, anti-equipment for instance). Yet that can be just as One Turn Or DEI. And the Tyler deck may well have been going over several turns, not one, because of the Freak Drives. >> Additionally, unlike a (picking a random deck archtype) generic Brujah >> combat deck with a large combo, you need all the pieces here in pretty >> much the right order. Brujah combat can cope without an Undead >> Strength, maybe pulling one after it plays the Blur and putting in on >> additional strikes. Ventrue votes can cope without Kindred Restructure >> now, and Kine Resources instead. On such decks, Direct Intervention >> isn't that good an option - Boohoohoo, I didn't play Bum's Rush, I'll >> play Computer Hacking instead. This deck is more vulnerable to single >> card targeting with DI, significantly so, I'd say. > >In actual play, probably not that much. You're going to have plenty >of copies of Archon and Amaranth just to be able to draw them enough, Plentiful copies of Archon isn't always a good thing. Where/how do you ditch them? >and either plenty of Rowan Ring or Vast Wealths for them (Vast Wealthed >Rowan Ring isn't DIable). Yes, one of the fun bits of Vast Wealth. :) To get out Vast Wealth, you also need plentiful copies of that. Competes for Master slots, and if you're going for Minion Tap as pool gain... >Yeah, when people foil you with some method (eg blocking the equip) >and you use Neet Tech to counter-foil them, your counter-foil is >vulnerable to DI. But people won't even try to foil you all the >time, and how many DI can they realistically pack? Not that many. No, true. I wouldn't posit DI as a counter defence to all systems. But a number of decks pack a few as a "If something nasty happens, I have..." sort of defence. Against many decks, it is definitely as you suggest. Play it on the Freak Drive in the middle of the set-up and the action modifier has been played and *it doesn't matter* if they have another one. It's been played on that action. http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=3CF28DC8.7F0482B1%40white-wolf.com >> I'm still unsure that it's ever going to consistently be One Turn Or >> DEI!!! All decks get lucky breaks and sweep tables, so perfect >> scenarios are slightly less relevant - unless the perfect scenario can >> be easily achieved. > >Sure. But this one, if you get the Archon and Rowan Ring on, the next >turn Tyler may be able to eat as many vampires as she has Amaranths >for. With no more cards played. That's the turn on which it becomes >Have The Defense Now Or Cry. No, that's the turn on which it becomes "Have Some Defence Of One Of Several Types For The Past Three Turns Or So or DEI." Tyler comes out, whole turn to take action against her. Will of the Council, Freak Drive, Archon. Lots of options there. Whole turn to take action against her. Rowan Ring comes out (some options here). Maybe we Freak here, and let Archon go off. Lots of combat options. If you're still dying, you've had three turns to do something about it. I'm not sure how that's significantly different to many decks. I bleed you, I bleed you, I bleed you. My Lasombra or Malkavian example is using similarly intense amount of cards, each of which it can reuse when it draws them - unlike the use this deck has for excess Rowan Ring and Will of the Council. And if we have three turns to bleed, that's 21 bleed. Now, if you say "But I could intercept or bounce or...", well, what's the problem with having defence (or pro-active take out actions) against the Tyler deck? And since it's three turns to bring out Tyler, a faster deck can already do significant damage to the deck - with votes (oops, is that a problem for passing Archon?), with bleed (no vampires to defend? shame), with a pro-active rush immediately (oh, you've got Rowan Ring and Amaranth in your hand, what a pity), with a Pentex Subversion (this seemed to go through a renaissance a couple of years ago, and then die) or any other card suitable for single vampire scariness. >> In the third instance, the idea that you can just rely on Tyler isn't an >> option. You need that Prince out to call the Archon. The rush deck on >> the table is going to hit Volker as hard as it damn well can, Tyler's >> Fortitude be damned. (And if you're playing Flash/Rowan Ring/Blur >> (anti-Dodge)/Psyche! as your major combat cards, Volker can't do >> anything too flash.) > >What rush deck on the table? Have you seen the EC results? ;-) (Joke noted, but addressing the point seriously, too.) Metagames always shift to compensate for new deck styles. Any unaccounted for deck type will do well in a virgin area. If the area has shifted towards uber-Free States Rant/Baltimore Purge politics and no combat, a strong combat deck will of course do well. Combat is a perfect playable archetype, and it doesn't have to be solely combat. Bruise and bleed is a valid archetype, for instance, and I've long noted that having a rush or five in a bruise and bleed deck is an excellent option. That some areas get skewed into situations that perfectly valid and playable and well-used (elsewhere) decks don't occur isn't a wonderfully valid argument for action. The obvious example of such in the past is any xCL argument that revolves around "We do it to make bleed less powerful" and, similarly, "Ban this card because I can't stop it." I'd much prefer to see Tyler's strengths seriously tested before any real action is taken. >> In the first two, you have some problems. As Derek Ray points out, the >> Brujah are not stealth monsters. +1 stealth is all they can expect, +2 >> with Alacrity. (Alas, none of these actions are bleed actions, so >> Carthage Remembered is not an option.) In the instance of a vote, you >> need to pass the vote. How are you doing this? Vote push? More tech. >> (Though Oxford University (*spit*), England is potentially a good >> option.) If you're not using vote push tech, how are you passing >> Archon? True, you have a Prince (however you've done it, eventually) >> and so have the options of Closed Session but, even so, not fun. > >What intercept? Have you seen the EC results? ;-) So people are only playing stealth and bleed and get screwed by a deck that effortlessly exploits the holes in stealth and bleed. Sux2bethem. Bear in mind that, of the combat/vote/bleed triumvirate, we've just wiped out combat, we've wiped out intercept as a by-line and that any political decks on the table stand a good chance of trouncing the Archon vote. So this environment has to be only bleed or screwball. It may be surprising, but I don't believe in balancing decks or cards because of an environment where only bleed and screwball decks are played. >Look. I know this isn't the end-all and be-all of vampire deck tech. >Nothing is, or ever can be, since DI and Sudden Reversal exist. All >I'm saying is, it's probably real nasty, and not every environment is >going to consistently have the things that foil it at the right time, The same can be said of *any* good deck. This environment might have no bleed bounce and so I screw everyone with my super stealth and bleed deck. >and because of the way it operates, if you don't have it at the right >time you might as well not have it at all. But unless the deck is on a stupid streak of luck (by your own admission), you've had multiple turns. If your deck has defence that you can't access when you have warning, you've either had a supremely had shuffle (all decks have that) or you've made a deck that can't access its defence. What are you going to do when my 3 dom weenies bleed you for 4 each? And next turn? >> Of course, somehow, you get Will of the Council, Archon, a vote push, >> Rowan Ring and three Freak Drives in hand (not necessarily all at once) >> without getting choked by the Psyche! and Amaranth you're putting in. >> If you want to be consistently pulling those, and you're not going to be >> playing many cards per combat, how many have you got in? And how many >> of those aren't sitting in your hand now? We're down to, say, 15 cards, >> and we've got the 7 above. By your alternative scenarios, you've got a >> couple of Daring the Dawn, too. Where's the Amaranth? And what are you >> doing with it when it's preventing your combo from going off? > >The deck probably doesn't have to be, and probably usually won't be, >a Super-Turbo-Tyler-Killz-All deck. At which point, what's the problem? >It can more realistically use >a "voting Brujah" module as support, Which provides many avenues for exploitation by opposing players. *And* any cards you do put in for Tyler's benefit (Fortitude, primarily) aren't hugely playable by that module. (No Princes with Fortitude for the Brujah. 10 cap Justicar.) And if you're now putting less Fortitude in, how does Tyler defend himself against fight back? Hit me, I hit back, both go to torpor and, hmm, nice here, isn't it? >and "only" eat a bunch of >opposing vampires when the right cards eventually show up. Erm, isn't that precisely what any combat deck does? And usually with a little more regularity. >> >If all else fails, you could Daring the Dawn with Tyler on the >> >"equip Rowan Ring" action, rescue with a Fortitude weenie + >> >Daring the Dawn, and then your opponents are no longer in a >> >"just block Tyler" situation. >> >> What about the Will of the Council and the Archon? Sure, you can get >> round some problems. But if you get out Will of the Council *and* the >> Archon by using Daring the Dawn, you're going very slowly. > >No, see, in this "all else fails" scenario, you'd be getting the >Rowan Ring first, and then people can't cavalierly block your >Will or Archon actions, cause Tyler has a Rowan Ring. They don't need to be cavalier. If a single piece of equipment can completely flummox a deck's ability to defend, hasn't something gone rather wrong? And wouldn't it be somewhat better to 'cavalier'ly sacrifice a blocker now, than have all your vampires eaten later? It might be just me but 1 dead vampire vs lots of dead vampires strikes me as the better option. And in the end, if you do die, you lose all your vampires anyway. It's unlikely to make the situation any worse. [ quoted text not captured ]

"James Coupe" <ja...@zephyr.org.uk> wrote in message news:hBdN8k$OPFH...@gratiano.zephyr.org.uk... Um, no offense intended James, but have you ever heard that brevity is the soul of wit? Not that I haven't been writing a lot too, of course. But 22k? :-) > I'd much prefer to see Tyler's strengths seriously tested before any > real action is taken. Well of course. I'm not suggesting banning Tyler or anything like that. I'm just saying, her with Rowan Ring plus Archon really is a really nasty combo with repeat-Archon-rush, and I don't think it's as easily dismissable with "well any strong deck can do things that nasty" as you do. Yes, of course aggressive bleed and aggressive vote decks can victimize their preys at least as much as this can, and you've pointed to a lot of the most powerful cards still in the game in your examples. (Parity Shift, KRC, Govern/Conditioning with [dom] weenies.) > >The deck probably doesn't have to be, and probably usually won't be, > >a Super-Turbo-Tyler-Killz-All deck. > > At which point, what's the problem? That Tyler can, once set up as a Rowan Ringed Archon, eat any number of vampires in one turn by playing (potentially) nothing more than one Amaranth per combat. The repeat-Archon-rush is already on the list for review, though, so there's probably not really much need to beat the concept totally to death. :-) > >It can more realistically use a "voting Brujah" module as support, > > Which provides many avenues for exploitation by opposing players. *And* > any cards you do put in for Tyler's benefit (Fortitude, primarily) > aren't hugely playable by that module. (No Princes with Fortitude for > the Brujah. 10 cap Justicar.) Here's Rob Treasure's storyline-legal version. Crypt: (12 cards, Min: 13, Max: 36, Avg: 6.00) ---------------------------------------------- 1 Antoinette DuChamp (Caitiff 1, cel pre) 1 Brachah (Brujah 5, CEL for PRE) 1 Ira Rivers (Toreador 7, ani AUS CEL pre, Prince) 1 Jimmy Dunn (Pander 4, CEL for POT) 1 Mazz (Brujah 3, cel pre) 1 Pug Jackson (Brujah 6, CEL for POT pre, Primogen) 4 Tyler (Brujah 9, CEL dom for obt POT PRE, Primogen) 2 Volker (Brujah 5, CEL pot, Prince) Library: (91 cards) - take out a card of your choice fair reader :o) ------------------- Master (14 cards) 1 Creepshow Casino 1 Depravity 1 Dreams of the Sphinx 1 Elysium: The Palace of Versailles 2 Fortitude 1 Giant's Blood 4 Minion Tap 3 Vast Wealth Action Modifier (12 cards) 2 Awe 1 Bewitching Oration 2 Closed Session 7 Freak Drive Political Action (10 cards) 5 Archon 3 Brujah Justicar 1 Praxis Seizure: Amsterdam 1 Praxis Seizure: Rome Reaction (7 cards) 7 Second Tradition: Domain, The Combat (44 cards) 5 Acrobatics 8 Amaranth 3 Disarm 2 Hidden Strength 9 Psyche! 7 Pursuit 6 Sideslip 4 Skin of Steel Equipment (4 cards) 1 .44 Magnum 1 Ivory Bow 2 Rowan Ring Looks pretty reasonable to me. The vote push (2 Awe 1 Bewitching 2 Closed Session 1 Elysium Palace of Versailles) probably wouldn't be enough for all environments but apparently it worked for him. 3 Vast Wealth 2 Rowan Ring 1 Ivory Bow seems decent; you could stick in a Sengir Dagger too if you wanted even more non-same-unique redundancy. 8 Amaranths and 7 Freaks means you probably aren't going to eat every vampire on the table. But you will probably get several "eat multiple vampires" turns on which your victims will have a hard time defending themselves with maneuvers, S:CE, Dodges, or blocking. You could also build something along these lines (and it's probably the way I would go) with some or all of Jaroslav Pascek (CEL POT for obf PRE), Lucinde Alastor (pot FOR obf PRE DOM), Francois Villon (pot CEL obf PRE), Klaus van der Veken (CEL obf PRE), Marcus Vitel (FOR OBF PRE DOM), Queen Anne (FOR obf PRE DOM). In that case, the Obfuscatey guys can not only get you stealth on your votes, they can also Disguise out weapons to get them into play unblockably if you want (and then transfer to Tyler if you like, or make them Archons too and have more than one nasty-eaty-vamp). Support your big-vampiness with Parity Shifts. Should be nasty. > >and "only" eat a bunch of > >opposing vampires when the right cards eventually show up. > > Erm, isn't that precisely what any combat deck does? And usually with a > little more regularity. A lot of combat decks don't actually burn their victims. You normally either have to go to some trouble to do it with agg, or risk blood hunt votes. Recovering from torped vamps is a lot easier than recovering from burned vamps, which is why the ones that try to burn go to the effort. Josh cutting down the forest for the trees

Incidentally, although the "Will of the Council for Archon" idea is just a silly throwaway (I think), here's a sketch of a deck that tries to do that with Tyler. It'll be funny, if it works. crypt: 6 Tyler 1 Aaron Duggan, Cameron's Toady 1 Mitchell the Headhunter 1 Smudge the Ignored 1 March Halcyon 1 Antoinette Duchamp 1 Nik library (90 cards): 2 Obtenebration 3 Vast Wealth 3 Dreams of the Sphinx 1 Fragment of the Book of Nod 1 The Barrens 2 Visit from the Capuchin 3 Storage Annex 7 Will of the Council 7 Archon 3 Rowan Ring 1 Ivory Bow 1 Sengir Dagger 7 Freak Drive 4 Awe 3 Bewitching Oration 3 Shadow Play 3 Shroud of Night 3 Shroud of Absence 3 Stone Travel 15 Amaranth 9 Pursuit 9 Psyche! 7 Skin of Steel The Freak Drive count is low enough that you probably won't be able to Rowan, Freak, Will, Freak, Archon, Freak, demolish. But it's high enough that you should have a decent chance of doing it in two turns. (like Rowan, Freak, Will; next turn Archon, Freak, demolish.) Another way to go would be grafting Obfuscate onto Tyler and then Disguising out the weapon (could then also use some Obf stealth for the actions). I figured she already has Obten, though, so why not just use that. You could also skip the Will angle and just do Brujah Justicar, which has the benefit of giving you +1 vote on passing itself, or more if you happen to have whipped out a Brujah weenie or two. That precludes doing Archon the same turn, but that's not always going to happen even with the Will angle. The Will way is funnier, though. :-) Josh anyone tried something like this yet?

<snip> > >> The Tyler deck isn't broken. > > > >Maybe not broken, as it relies on many different cogs working > >together, all of which are fairly easily jammable. > > > >However, having playing against Rob Treasure's version a couple of > >weeks ago, I can tell you it's certainly abusive. > > Why didn't you block the Archon vote? > > For the Tyler deck to run, it requires: > > Tyler (9-cap) > successful equip action on the Rowan Ring > Prince or Justicar (minimum 5-cap) > That P/J to call the Archon vote > That P/J to pass the Archon vote > The deck to not get the Archon immediately voted away > Opposing combat decks that cannot kill Tyler > > These are Brujah. They are not stealth monsters. > > No, it's not pretty if you let it get up and running, because the first > thing she probably does is Amaranth all the opposing voters. But I can > name any number of decks that get ugly if you sit and let them get wound > up -- my old POT/THA/DOM deck that put Rutor's Hand on people, for > example. Stop the Hands or the rescue, the deck flops. Don't do > either, the deck goes zoom. > > Anyway. :) Nearly missed this reply completely! Excuses: 1) I had a super-shitty predator that was doing the old THAU / DOM / FOR gig, power bleeding and if blocked, Dawn Op + Weather Control. Of course, the star player was Muaziz and her "eat everyone" approach that got at least one of my vamps. **Grrrr...** As such, I ended up having to go backwards for most of the game leaving Rob alone. 2) I was playing Blood Brothers with only a few bits of intercept in the deck. Rob tooled with Vast Wealth. Block? He winds combat about (going to long, dodging, etc). He can then equip next turn. 3) Using Volker and Rake, Rob turned Brachah into a Justuicar. He had 8 - 10 votes on a non-voting table. 4) Shit deck. Nuff said. DH

In message <avhnfr$fjc1o$1...@ID-121616.news.dfncis.de>, Joshua Duffin <jtdu...@yahoo.com> writes: >Well of course. I'm not suggesting banning Tyler or anything >like that. I'm just saying, her with Rowan Ring plus Archon >really is a really nasty combo with repeat-Archon-rush, and >I don't think it's as easily dismissable with "well any strong >deck can do things that nasty" as you do. But isn't that what makes strong decks strong? The Malkavian Madness Network deck can do similar nastiness, out of turn, for instance. Indeed, if you take Dave's run through of what went wrong for him, he does point out the utility of Vast Wealth - another go round the table next time, and it's there. Now, of course, you can't easily get rid of Vast Wealth, but it does tend to point to a situation where players simply aren't capitalising on the time they have. Strong combos are hideous - but only if you give them the time. Similarly, you can point to the fact that he was getting Rake and Volker and Brachah and Tyler out, and there were no votes on the table - and he was allowed that much pool gain (that's 25 pool of vampires, I think). The other decks really should be packing vote defence - and vote defence has the extra advantage that the political action card goes away. (Save for the likes of Reinforcements, or Waste Management etc., which isn't terribly significant here.) On a table with no other votes, of course a deck with voting angles is going to have a free ride, at least with those aspects of the deck. Vote deck winning on table without vote defence unshocker. Additionally, if your grand-predator is completely tying up your predator, it's up to the predator to a) get him to back off, b) show him why, c) explain that you need to take out the deck or it'll roll the table (this may be a lie, but can be convincingly backed up), d) other forms of diplomacy. The Tyler deck archetype is undoubtedly powerful, if played well and with, of course, the addition of a little luck (which we all need). And with good players behind flexible, powerful decks, they'll do well. But if the rest of the table isn't including votes or vote defence, and your predator and grand-predator are fighting amongst themselves without putting any pressure on you (which may occur via subtle diplomacy, manipulation and so on), of course a deck is going to go well. [ quoted text not captured ]

>"Joshua Duffin" jtdu...@yahoo.com wrote: >crypt: > >6 Tyler >1 Aaron Duggan, Cameron's Toady >1 Mitchell the Headhunter >1 Smudge the Ignored >1 March Halcyon >1 Antoinette Duchamp >1 Nik > >library (90 cards): > >2 Obtenebration >3 Vast Wealth >3 Dreams of the Sphinx >1 Fragment of the Book of Nod >1 The Barrens >2 Visit from the Capuchin >3 Storage Annex > >7 Will of the Council >7 Archon >3 Rowan Ring >1 Ivory Bow >1 Sengir Dagger Are these for the weenies? I would be tempted to replace them with an IR goggles and a Black Metamorphosis to make Tyler even scarier. Maybe even 2 or 3 BMs, not sure what to take out for those though. [snip rest of deck] Jason Babbitt

"Joshua Duffin" <jtdu...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:avhp71$fnhb3$1...@ID-121616.news.dfncis.de... > Incidentally, although the "Will of the Council for Archon" idea > is just a silly throwaway (I think), here's a sketch of a deck > that tries to do that with Tyler. It'll be funny, if it works. > > crypt: > > 6 Tyler > 1 Aaron Duggan, Cameron's Toady > 1 Mitchell the Headhunter > 1 Smudge the Ignored > 1 March Halcyon > 1 Antoinette Duchamp > 1 Nik This is an illegal crypt. Tyler can not be in the same crypt as Nik and Smudge. -- Comments Welcome, Norman S. Brown, Jr. XZealot Archon of the Swamp

"XZealot" <x_ze...@cox-internet.com> wrote in message news:v264u9d...@corp.supernews.com... > > "Joshua Duffin" <jtdu...@yahoo.com> wrote in message > news:avhp71$fnhb3$1...@ID-121616.news.dfncis.de... > > Incidentally, although the "Will of the Council for Archon" idea > > is just a silly throwaway (I think), here's a sketch of a deck > > that tries to do that with Tyler. It'll be funny, if it works. > > > > crypt: > > > > 6 Tyler > > 1 Aaron Duggan, Cameron's Toady > > 1 Mitchell the Headhunter > > 1 Smudge the Ignored > > 1 March Halcyon > > 1 Antoinette Duchamp > > 1 Nik > > This is an illegal crypt. Tyler can not be in the same crypt as Nik and > Smudge. Doh! Stupid group rule! :-) Here's a legal crypt that's almost as good. (I'd had Nik and Smudge because their disadvantages seemed like the least disadvantageous. But a lot of the Pander/Caitiff disads are not too likely to matter much, so...) 6 Tyler 1 Aaron Duggan, Cameron's Toady 1 Mitchell the Headhunter 1 March Halcyon 1 Antoinette Duchamp 1 Huang, Blood Cultist 1 Franciscus Josh gotta put this deck together sometime