Revisiting Alastors

Ashur wrote:

Because it helps you draw the cards you want to draw. But of course, if you tend to deck yourself out of the game it´s not good. But people seldom do that, and yet they build 90 card decks all the time. No idea why.

I've been wondering about the Brazilian meta as it seems that vast majority of tournament winning decks from there seem to be 90 card decks. Or few cards below.

It would be interesting to hear do all the players there play with such decks.
(One would assume that a "properly" thinned down deck, a Swedish style one if you will, would wreck havoc in that kind of environment)

Lönkka wrote:

Ashur wrote:

Because it helps you draw the cards you want to draw. But of course, if you tend to deck yourself out of the game it´s not good. But people seldom do that, and yet they build 90 card decks all the time. No idea why.

I've been wondering about the Brazilian meta as it seems that vast majority of tournament winning decks from there seem to be 90 card decks. Or few cards below.

It would be interesting to hear do all the players there play with such decks.
(One would assume that a "properly" thinned down deck, a Swedish style one if you will, would wreck havoc in that kind of environment)

It could, but the Brazilian meta seems to be possessing variables that other metas do not:
I see large player count often in the tournament reports.
I see a diverse style splattering of decks
I don't have details on the decks that didn't win.

So, it's easy to see twd reports and deduce "that shit would get WRECKED in ("Finnish politics" meta, Texas meta, Newark OH meta)" but in practice, nothing is a garuntee.

A streamlined deck is never not more efficient than it's clunky counterpart, so it would be interesting to see someone in such a meta lean that direction and either make a dent in deck building theory or keep running out of cards and go back to bigger decks.

Ashur wrote:

Because it helps you draw the cards you want to draw. But of course, if you tend to deck yourself out of the game it´s not good. But people seldom do that, and yet they build 90 card decks all the time. No idea why.

In a game where there is a limit to how many copies of a single card you can put in a deck, the advice "play with as small deck as possible to maximize your chance of drawing your key cards" is indeed true. For example Magic the gathering, where it is extremely rare to see a tournament deck go over the legal minimum of 60 cards.

In VTES however, there is no such limit, therefore having a larger deck does not automatically mean your chances of drawing your 'key' cards would be smaller; You just need to increase the number of said key cards to maintain the ratio of 'key cards' vs 'other cards'.

Statistically you are not forced to keep your deck as small as possible in VTES, as long as you make the necessary adjustments in deck building. It might even increase your chances of drawing the key cards depending on how many copies you run.

What I'm saying here is: its not automatically bad to run a larger deck. I have found its really difficult to keep the deck small because you are often forced to cut some versatility off the deck.

edit: As an example, I have been perfectly happy with my Unnamed deck, which Ashur got to see in action on the final round of Ropecon tourney, and which runs the maximum of 90 cards (and is not a combat deck btw). I designed the deck to have a strong flow of cards and basically play minimum of 2 cards every turn regardless what the other players are doing (greater curse + sense the sin). Having stealth in the bleed card means I don't need to run as many actual stealth cards and thus suffer from "clots of stealth cards" in my hand when stealth is not necessary. Of course, I'm not really that experienced player with only couple years of active play.

ps. Now if only I could master the art of "not appearing as a table threat"...

I feel combos and stealth bleed need slimmer decks.

In regards to this alastor deck, 60 is bad since it's both a combo and combat.

I've ran 90 card combat decks with ashur tablets and actually needed the tablets to keep drawing combat. Not every game, but it's happened. Walls and combat like not running out of cards. Stealth bleed wants to not choke on stealth but always have it, so low is good.

All depends on the deck. My ghoulet satyr and Henry Taylor "infinite Earth meld" deck is a roughly 80 card wall and works well as such. I like 88 for most blocky combat, because those last 2 cards end up being junk I don't need most of the time anyway.

But size goes by deck, and lower count tends to help combos and hurt other things.

ReverendRevolver wrote:

It could, but the Brazilian meta seems to be possessing variables that other metas do not:
I see large player count often in the tournament reports.

Sometimes they have large number of players (like 30 or so) but, off head, quite often the reports are for a dozen or so people...

Bloodartist wrote:

Ashur wrote:

Because it helps you draw the cards you want to draw. But of course, if you tend to deck yourself out of the game it´s not good. But people seldom do that, and yet they build 90 card decks all the time. No idea why.

In a game where there is a limit to how many copies of a single card you can put in a deck, the advice "play with as small deck as possible to maximize your chance of drawing your key cards" is indeed true. For example Magic the gathering, where it is extremely rare to see a tournament deck go over the legal minimum of 60 cards.

In VTES however, there is no such limit, therefore having a larger deck does not automatically mean your chances of drawing your 'key' cards would be smaller; You just need to increase the number of said key cards to maintain the ratio of 'key cards' vs 'other cards'.

It is not about ratios, it is about card flow. The bigger the deck, the more likely it is to jam. Let us say your deck is 50% black cards and 50% white cards. You need both, that's why they are in the deck. The probability to jam on your starting hand (i.e. 100% white or 100% black) is 1.05% with a 60 card deck but jumps to 1.2% with a 90 card deck. Of course, those numbers are small because this is a toy example. They increase when the deck has more moving parts and one wants to avoid jamming over a whole game, not just in the starting hand.