file Recruitment Exercise - Good for the Black Hand?

22 Nov 2013 19:36 #56911 by jamesatzephyr

If the goal was to "make the weak bh guys good", then this card really fails to do that. All it does is turn every Black Hand deck into a crypt machine, especially coupled with Reunion Kamut.


I am curious as to how you believe that's the goal of the card. Since it can be played by any Black Hand vampire, if it's worth playing, you can play it with a good one. If it's not worth playing and you're playing with a weak BH guy, then, uh, it's not worth playing and you're playing it with a weak BH guy.

There are, of course, ways that you can exclude cards from being played by vampires who are already solid (e.g. picking weird disciplines or clans or traits, adding weird restrictions), but that's not the case here.

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22 Nov 2013 20:46 #56915 by Jeff Kuta
Some points:

One piece of Unique Equipment (e.g. Guarded Rubrics) and the reliance on untap, even if permanent like Tattoo Signal, does not make for good bleed tech, even with multiple copies of the unique card. I will point out that Martin Schumacher's deck only had a single copy of Guarded Rubrics in the deck list, and not a single Heidelberg Castle. Bleeding for 1 with 6 or 7 minions at +1 stealth due to Watchtower: The Wolves Feed is pretty strong, and that is clearly the objective of Martin's deck most of the time. I suspect that was also the case with Guilhem's deck in practice, though he did have more bleed modifiers available.

Klaital opines that Reunion Kamut is better. I think that Recruitment Exercise is too similar to Reunion Kamut. I think it interesting that when Martin won, he had already nearly won a tournament with the deck while using Effective Management to draw more vampires from his crypt. Clearly Recruitment Exercise dramatically increased the power of this type of crypt machine.

Leave it to Juggernaut to intentionally (?) miss the point of my post entirely and focus on something else. Clearly, meaningful statistics can't be determined, but the anecdotal evidence is critical. There have been only six tournaments since DM was tourney legal and two of them have Recruitment Exercise! Sure, it's not 50 tournaments, but the explosion of this new card onto the tournament scene needs to be closely watched, if it doesn't already suggest that the card was a bad idea from the start.

Keep in mind that Recruitment Exercise is a *library* card and not a crypt card. One of the easiest things for players to do when a new set comes out is to simply use a new crypt with their existing libraries, and maybe change a handful of cards. The disciplines generally match for a given clan across groupings, so when Lodin shows up in a bunch of decks quickly, that's not a big surprise. Besides, individual vampires, with the possible exception of Una, don't really make a huge impact on the game, mainly due to contesting and Pentex Subversion. Library cards have significant, immediate and unpredictable impacts on the game. Maybe the Black Hand crypt machine was expected, but I don't see this as being a good thing for V:tES.

Regarding the identify of Black Hand: I just hope that Recruitment Exercise/Reunion Kamut/swarm bleed doesn't subsume all other possible identities. It's not just about swarm bleeding either. I've heard many people out there, especially some members of the VEKN Inner Circle and Design team, say that bloating is bad for the game. It slows down games, leads to table timeouts, causes all sorts of problems. Guilhem's deck could gain 46 pool and 40 transfers (actually 10 decrypts outside the influence phase, which is probably even better than 4 transfers) from RE/RK alone. Martin's deck could gain 60 pool and 40 transfers! Compare that to Better Gents with Sticks which gains 39 pool and 39 transfers with Govern the Unaligned at a cost of 13 blood (scale it up to ~45 pool/45 transfers if a 90 card deck costing 15 blood).

Did someone on the VEKN design team do this kind of analysis with the cards? Seriously, did someone do this kind of analysis of the cards? PCK does.

As for the goal of the card being "make the weak bh guys good", I was just quoting Reverend Revolver. But the effect of the card is exactly what a crypt machine wants: draw a new vamp and put blood on that vampire. It's an action so the machine keeps feeding itself--there is almost no need for the master phase or influence phase at all, except to bring out the new vampires which might already be full.

As an analogy, why would a Dominate deck play with anything other than the best toys it has? There are so many unused Dominate cards and strategies because the best ones are just so overwhelmingly good. Recruitment Exercise just did that for the Black Hand. I see them all becoming crypt machine bleed swarms with almost no disciplines. Maybe Ke will prove otherwise with his new deck.

Recruitment Exercise is not just an evolution, it's a revolution. I don't see that as good for the game.

When you are anvil, be patient; when a hammer, strike.
:CEL::DOM::OBF::POT::QUI:
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22 Nov 2013 21:22 #56916 by jamesatzephyr

Did someone on the VEKN design team do this kind of analysis with the cards? Seriously, did someone do this kind of analysis of the cards? PCK does.


Given that you entirely failed to notice that Fiendish Tongue interacts with Sabbat Intrigue to make disciplineless stealth bleed much more efficient than it already was, I submit that it doesn't matter what the PCK thinks it does - it's really, really bad at it.

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22 Nov 2013 21:49 #56918 by Juggernaut1981
Your extensive analytical methods seem to be flawed. I cite my own comment about your statistic and your own comment about preference for anecdotal (and thereby scientifically unreliable) evidence over waiting for real statistics/evidence. Here is another persons's reasoning for why your anecdotal evidence is useless



1) James' Fiendish Tongue argument
2) The first published edition of Blessings of Cagn foiled one of its own mechanics. Apparently it passed your analysis and playtesting and proofreading before it was fixed.
3) The suite of Skin of the King cards require setups to trot out the benefits of other cards that always exist.
4) The suite of cards between the Inquisitor Set and the Laibon Set from PCK which mimic Computer Hacking or Camera Phone as a "utility option".


If you would like some help from someone who is fairly strong at the basics of statistical analysis, I'd be happy to help you refine your techniques to the point where they provide scientifically reliable and scientifically valid results.

:bruj::CEL::POT::PRE::tha: Baron of Sydney, Australia, 418

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22 Nov 2013 21:58 #56919 by M.Schumacher

Some points:

I think it interesting that when Martin won, he had already nearly won a tournament with the deck while using Effective Management to draw more vampires from his crypt. Clearly Recruitment Exercise dramatically increased the power of this type of crypt machine.


Just my 2 cents:
I did win the Belgian NC pre-DM with the deck when it played 6 effective management and 4 clothos gift. It didnt get into the TWDA because we were
9 players. Also i played 2GW and 7 in the Dutch NC and lost in the finals
due to 2 daring the dawn bleeds in 1 round.
So yes, recruitment exercise does help the deck in the sense that it makes room for about 5 additional cards, which i used to add seraph second.
Before DM i played 30 Reunions, 6 Effective Managments and 4 Clothos gift
Now i play 25 Reunions, 10 RE and 6 Seraph Second, and i dont have to play
obf anymore. And btw, back then Liliths Blessing was legal, which was a monster in this deck.
So i think RE is a good card, it helps the deck, but it is in no way necessary
to play the deck. It was a good deck 1 year ago but just stayed below the radar of the tournement scene. Very often when cards come out, they are either
regarded as wall paper (everyone bitches about them) or they are very strong (lots of people bitch about them). DM had to have some impact on the game,
otherwise it would have been a complete waste of time. So in summary ithink its a well balanced card, and nowhere near the power level of, lets say, govern or parity shift
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22 Nov 2013 22:08 #56921 by Klaital
So if you don't use any obfuscate it in anymore, does it mean that you are now just relying on getting everything through with 1 stealth?

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