Balancing Ashur Tablets

I don't see Ashurs taking that long in most cases. But sure, it CAN be used for playing time.

Same could be said for Vaticination, Heart of Nizchetus, discarding after Dreams etc etc.

Lönkka wrote:

I don't see Ashurs taking that long in most cases. But sure, it CAN be used for playing time.

Same could be said for Vaticination, Heart of Nizchetus, discarding after Dreams etc etc.

Sennadurek, Troglodytia, Auger, Deep cover agent, celestial harmony, forsee, etc COULD take a long time as well,

Making "decisions" is the ouch part.

Pascals idea mirrors the handling of discards with Fear the void below, Maqsue of judas, border skirmish, sudario, etc, where yoi simply point your hand, face down, at the table, shuffle, and let someome pick what goes (hypnotic spectre style). Theres a mechanical sort of quality to it, and its not time consuming like choice is, and adds more interesting randomness to the game. I ran Fear the void and Masque of judas in a Petaniqua deck once, and two randoms averaged 50% less time consuming than discards from DotS at end of turns.

We migjt need to impose a limit. Add in "you may remove any number of cards in your ash heap from the game, then shuffle you ash heap. Remove up to 13 cards at random from yoir ash heap, and shuffle them into you library." Maybe even a clause where your ash heap gets rfg after. So, random mostly, nothing to hand. No decision, other than removing cards from game, which could be edited to like 5 cards (so the non girls decks dont have to choke on junk because girls decks ruined the card)

Also, itd probably help timeout i guess.

Lönkka wrote:

I don't see Ashurs taking that long in most cases. But sure, it CAN be used for playing time.

Same could be said for Vaticination, Heart of Nizchetus, discarding after Dreams etc etc.

Two minutes doesn't seem like a long time to resolve a card, but it can be. When designing cards, I have to keep in mind a card's resoultion time. As an extreme example, suppose every card that was played took two minutes to resolve. In a tournament game, a total of 60 cards could be played, totalling 120 minutes and averaging 12 cards per player. Playing 12 cards isn't a satisfying game of V:TES.

It's ok if there are a few such cards. To paraphrase Ankha, it's ok to have a piece of chocolate once in a while, but if we ate chocolate all the time we'd get sick. Ashur Tablets is very much a piece of chocolate in my mind.

For the same reason Ozzy hydewhite is hard to build with, 13 cards at random, without removing some, wpuld be nearly useless. But removing some from the game is how to set it up (and i admit could end up making it take almost as long, but the up in the air about 3 cards as #13 is solved) and then randomness.

Flavor-wise, random should be to offset stuff, like sudario, or anarchy, like skirmish and constant revolution. Or malk.

My origional suggestion is still my favorite, being only minion cards.

Ben, you have so far not allowed stuff to time out tables more to exist. But on an unrelated note, why arent archonsfrom origins posted?

ReverendRevolver wrote:

Ben, you have so far not allowed stuff to time out tables more to exist. But on an unrelated note, why arent archonsfrom origins posted?

Lack of bribes.

Ok, Origins archons uploaded and approved. Lemme know if there are any issues.

BenPeal wrote:

ReverendRevolver wrote:

Ben, you have so far not allowed stuff to time out tables more to exist. But on an unrelated note, why arent archonsfrom origins posted?

Lack of bribes.

Im so broke that (insert joke here) but if you insist, I can bri g you a few copies of the card Bribes. Figured youd own enough by now......

BenPeal wrote:

It's ok if there are a few such cards.

No, it's not.

One problem with most of card balance talks - everybody try to speak from high-level tournament perspective, so any discussion became void, cause high-level tournaments (or just games when whole table consists of experienced players) are generally fine (exept mentioned earlier villein in half the decks, which must have be banned couple of years ago, but was not because of strange idea, that playing with shitty big caps is good).

But the main real problems of vtes now are, in the order of importance: 1. new players, 2. length of game and 3. card availability.

And from this perspective AT, as vell as several other mentioned cards (heart, dreams e t.s.) are really bad.

elotar wrote:

BenPeal wrote:

It's ok if there are a few such cards.

No, it's not.

I was speaking only from the perspective of cards that take a lot of time to resolve. There are time-intensive cards which are quite common and available, such as political actions or cards with search effects such as Waters of Duat.

One problem with most of card balance talks - everybody try to speak from high-level tournament perspective...

I disagree. Whether a card is fun, whether a card is readily understandable, and whether a card causes gameflow disruption are often talked about in discussions about card balance and card design. One example is discussions about events, particularly some of the original Gehenna events. A lot of complaints about those cards have to do with them not being fun, having a lot of card text, and how much of a hassle they are with respect to performing normal game functions. These issues are separate and distinct from their power level.

Readability, simplicity, and brevity are talked about a lot within the Design Team when we're designing cards. Here's a Designer's Diary entry where we talk about card text length:

vekn.net/designers-diary/219-playtest-concluded-thoughts-on-design-and-card-text

But the main real problems of vtes now are, in the order of importance: 1. new players, 2. length of game and 3. card availability.

I'd say the #1 problem of V:TES is that it is currently out of print.