Balancing Ashur Tablets

First, why ? Well, I believe that right now this card is way too strong, and it is also rare and expensive.

It is a card that is present in maybe 50% of the winning decks right now, which says a lot about it (and it's not a Blood Dool type of card either).

Recursion is the stronger mechanism in the game. It should be restricted to Necromancers and users of Temporis. With Ashur anyone can have it, and it makes the multiple Master decks even stronger than they are, and they didn't need that.

Now : how ?

Sol. 1 : ban it outright. For me this should always be a last resort, I believe there are many better things to do.

Sol. 2 : Ashur was the Cappadocian antediluvian. If Ashur Tablets required a Harbinger of Skulls I think it would balance it way more. Hell, I'm pretty sure some decks would include one HoS just for that purpose !

Sol. 3 : Create a card that trumps it. For example an event stating that no card allowing a card to be taken back from the Ash Heap can be played, except through Necromancy, Temporis, or a Giovanni of HoS clan card. The theme of the event would be that the necromancers take back the control of the otherworld. Hell, it could even be a Gio / HoS card.
Note that this also trumps Anthelios, and that can't be bad in my book.

Another way to do that could be a Master or an action that can destroy all cards in play "not on a vampire" with the same name, with cost equal to the cards destroyed. So one Dreams would cost 1 pool, 4 Ashur (played by various Methuselahs) would cost 0. This could need to be balanced but you get the general idea.

Sol. 4 : tune down the card somehow (the card in hand + cards in deck + pool gain is way too much).

Thoughts and comments welcome.

Solution five: Make it so it's only possible to shuffle back MINION cards.

It's a solution, but do you think the cycling of the Master cards is the worst thing you can do with Ashur ? Many decks will get minion cards back and win thus (Tupdogs for instance).

There's no point in doing that.

Ashur Tablets auto-regulate themselves. If everyone plays Ashur Tablets, the guys playing them will break themselves their Ashur Tablets respectively.

And if that's not the case, that means Ashur Tablets aren't that much played.

Anyway if that anoys you just play Trochomancy.

Well sure there is.

When the only / best way to counter a card / strategy is to adopt the same one, that card / strategy is bad for the game. In any game. Always has been, always will be.

And not "everyone" plays Ashur. Not that many players in fact, compared to the number of decks with Ashur that actually WIN ! Which shows how broken that card is.

@Trocho.

Iwas about to request data to bqack up Orpheus' claim ("a card that is present in maybe 50% of the winning decks right now") but Ankha managed to beat me to it by supllying the said data.

Don't see the problem (unless we're talking about the scarcity of the Ashur Tablets among the playerbase) since, like cordovader said, playing Trochomancy trows a nice wrench in the Ashur machine.


All being said and done, I also am somewhat peeved by the fact that with Ashurs previously rare recursion has become a free for all. Tough!

Ok, so I was off on the numbers (not so much in Marseille numbers) , at least in the 100 last ones.

Nearly 1 in 5 is still a LOT !! Means on average nearly one in every final. And I'm under the impression it's played much more in France than in other places.

The card is anything but fine. If it allows some cards / strategies to be played, it also reinforces other much too powerful ones.

Discarding a Dragonbound in the early game and getting it back with Ashur Tablets seems ok to me.

First, the choice in your example is game-changing. Second, it's not even the worst possible case. Third, it's fine if you have access to recursion, which should be a rare mechanism reserved to some clans / disciplines with the restrictions it entails. And last, but not least, the game is based around difficult choices, the idea that you sometimes must hold on to some cards that might jam your hand riht away but be useful later (or in this case play a card that can hinder you too). There are exceptions to this but they should stay rare (and in my opinion, thematic).

Taking back a Pentex Subversion in hand isn't a problem, even for MMPA decks because they could use Anthelios anyway.

Citing an overpowered card has never made another overpowered card right.

Don't see the problem (unless we're talking about the scarcity of the Ashur Tablets among the playerbase) since, like cordovader said, playing Trochomancy trows a nice wrench in the Ashur machine.

How often do you see Trochomancy played ?! SO everyone should play Nec or at least Aus just to trump Ashur decks ? That's preposterous. Not to mention that, in order to work, the guy will have at least succeeded once in playing his combo. Seeing as some decks play "only" 6-9 Ashur, you wouldn't really jam his way to victory.

Yes, the scarcity of Ashur is also an issue. But if it wasn't that rare even more players would play it. No way is that good for the game.

All being said and done, I also am somewhat peeved by the fact that with Ashurs previously rare recursion has become a free for all. Tough!

Tough ? The most powerful mechanism of the game (of most CCGs actually) becomes available to all types of decks, yes, that's bad !! The HoS sure need some help to win more games. Anson, Nana Buruku and so may others don't !!

As always I'm not advocating a change based on what I have or not, play or not. For me this card, as is, is a really bad card for the game.

Orpheus wrote:

When the only / best way to counter a card / strategy is to adopt the same one, that card / strategy is bad for the game. In any game. Always has been, always will be.

Erm, sort of.

It is definitely the case that if a strategy is incredibly strong and the only way to survive is either to play it yourself or to play explicitly to counter it, something is probably amiss. For example, 1996 era turbo-Tomb+Soul Gem+RTI combos of hideousness basically required you to either play that (hoping to get it off faster) or to explicitly play to counter it. And the problem with playing to counter it was that that was moderately hard because bounce passed the problem to someone else, rather than actually neutering it (in the way that the errata was clearly intended to).

If a particular strategy is relatively insular in terms of its moving parts, it may also be the case that you need to either play that strategy or deliberately select cards to interact with it. For example, my long-standing grumble about Events is that there's too little tech to interact with them, like there might be if they were - say - a special type of master card, or had actions on them to burn them, or there were more cards with levels that touch events. I like interactivity, I like decks being able to bump up against each other in ways that cause interesting table dynamics, and in ways that let people trade favours. My prince in my not-a-vote deck will lend you his incidental votes. My vampire will rescue my cross-table buddy's vampire. That sort of thing is cool when you don't need special tech.

However, needing special tech is only a particular problem if you need to directly interact with that tech to do well, though. Do you need to be playing Ashur or anti-Ashur to win? Apparently 84% of tournament winning decks believe not.

Orpheus wrote:

Nearly 1 in 5 is still a LOT !!

Actually 16% is almost exactly one in six, not five...

Orpheus wrote:

How often do you see Trochomancy played ?!

Saw some played in last Sunday's tournament.

Use if quite often myself too.