Balancing Ashur Tablets

Jeff wrote:

AaronC wrote:

Perhaps the debate then becomes "Should VTES be a game with huge swings in resources?" If the answer is 'No', then it's hard to argue that cards such as Ashur's Tablets aren't unbalanced.

The retort is "Should VTES be a game with powerful cards?" That answer to that must be "Yes" or else the appeal of the game would be greatly diminished.

There is only so much design space if you limit yourself to effects that provide a bonus of 1 or 2 per card. People complain all the time about the disciplines and clans "losing their identity" as they are granted effects that replicate something another discipline does. Giving Thaumaturgy some damage prevention with Rego Motus wasn't the end of the world. There are many other examples where people fretted about this or that with every expansion.

But if there are to be powerful cards, some of them must have inherent risks associated with playing them. Ashur Tablets has a very big one built in. You can be totally screwed over if you lose the race to pop them. It is balanced by it being self-limiting. The main problem with Ashur Tablets is that KoT wasn't a big enough print run (could have easily been 2x as large), and now many printed common cards are effectively super rare and expensive.

If you want to really see how balanced or imbalanced Ashur Tablets are, play them in *every* deck. I use 6 of them in 95% of my decks, and all of my decks have 66 or fewer cards. I only own 6, but we allow proxies in casual play, and Ascendance is a good proxy card for AT.

It's obvious that I think the risk of playing with Ashur Tablets is well worth the reward. But many, many other people don't. Maybe they fear MMPA decks. Maybe they play 90 card decks so the random factor is too much for them. Maybe they don't proxy. Who knows? I think most likely the cost ($50+ per Tablet now) is prohibitive, and I also think this kind of anti-Mr.Suitcase sentiment is a subtext that isn't acknowledged with respect to expensive power cards. I know I wish I could afford to buy 3x Enkil Cog for all my large-cap decks.

Back to huge swings...
IMO the effect you get for 3 successful Master phase actions (no Sudden Reversal or Washes) and no "contesting" of Ashur Tablets is not a huge swing. As a thought experiment, consider this hypothetical card:

Tablet
Master.
Remove this card from the game as it is played. Gain 1 pool and move up to X cards from your ash heap to your library. Shuffle afterward.

What is the appropriate value of "X"?

At least 2 cards for it to be useful, but you have to take into account that it has no drawback, son it's way better than AT.

More than 3 cards would be an abuse.

And that said, that wouldn't avoid many decks of playing that card instead of AT for other sideeffects, but most of the decks would play ordinary tablets instead.

And what would you think of a triffle card called "Ashur Tablet Fragments". Same effect as AT, but you need 9 and triffle (or being able to combine it with AT). It would be cool on a new set to balance the fact that AT is not widely available to all players.

I'd say the reasons Ashur Tablets aren't played more is some combination of:

1. Owning them (lack of).

2. Not realizing how to optimally leverage them.

3. Having other things to do.

4. Not needing them to win.

Obviously, you can with without them. You can win with all sorts of suboptimal stuff.

Now, whether Ashur Tablets are optimal is a function of a particular design. I am inclined to use them when I'm either playing a deck full of one-ofs or a highly redundant deck that blows through lots of cards or a deck like stealth bleed where you want to play with your deck mix during the game.

But, I'm not inclined to play with them hardly at all ... because it's boring to suck up 6/7/9/10/12/13/15 slots on the same card. The idea of playing six in every deck is rather unappealing from an aesthetic viewpoint. Now, sure, Blood Doll used to be a five-of in any deck without Minion Tap and WWEF was a six-of in any deck that reacted, but those cards still exist (well, On the Qui Vive exists, WWEF barely does anymore, which is mind-blowing when you think of how powerful it is), so now it's X cards to do one thing, Y cards to do another thing, Z cards to make "broken" decks. Boring. Deck diversity is an essential element to CCGs.

There are plenty of cards that could be abused more, not just by ownership of those cards, but simply because of the interest in trying to abuse them. In a two-player CCG, it would happen because you have to build the best decks possible to compete. In a multiplayer CCG, you don't need to build the best decks, so people often don't.

V:TES is still playable as a game because it's multiplayer. Every two-player CCG I've played that stopped expanding died. Every multiplayer CCG I've played to any significant level is still quite playable, even one that stopped expanding around a decade ago.

In fact, my problem isn't lack of new cards, it's too many existing cards. Aaron mentions my interest in getting rid of certain power cards. There are reasons to do that, though they aren't straightforward at all and may make a game worse - who knows until you do it? But, anyway, for a game that doesn't expand, one way to change the environment is to remove cards. Remove, say, all events from the current environment and the game won't play quite the same way.

Given just how large the card pool is, there are plenty of things I'd remove, not just from a power standpoint but from an ease of play standpoint to try to bring in new players and not flood them with a bunch of low value mechanics, like Red List, Slave, Scarce, Blood Cursed, Sterile.

Jumping to another point, I have often explained V:TES as a game of small effects ... with exceptions. I could say that I don't mind larger effects from larger efforts, but I don't know that that's true. What's wrong with a game of many interlocking small effects? In general, when I see large effects, I see worse games, whether it was "everyone dies to Return to Innocence" or "I call a vote and burn your vampire" or even just "prevent, Disarm, Decapitate", which is not remotely easy but a potentially massive swing. On the other hand, V:TES goes faster when people lose quicker, so there is an argument for causing people's positions to become suddenly untenable. Complicated stuff because there's no single answer. So many polls or threads are about removing one offending card. I'd like to see a rebuild of the game, weeding out a lot of both "boring power" and worthless junk, try to make the game playable to a new generation.

Shadowfist has kind of tried this with the Modern, non-random set format, but it doesn't seem to have made anyone happy (might help to actually market the Modern format), so there may be no good answer. Fortunately, V:TES is quite playable and arguably far less broken than it has been at other times.

ICL wrote:

I'd say the reasons Ashur Tablets aren't played more is some combination of:

1. Owning them (lack of).

2. Not realizing how to optimally leverage them.

3. Having other things to do.

4. Not needing them to win.

Yes. And as someone previously said, many players will include 6+ in most of their decks.

I guess I fall in category 5 : not liking to play that way. I'm trying them out in a few decks to get the feel of it and have more arguments against them (couldn't put the combo in place last game, and I was doomed there anyway), but I still don't like it.

In Heroclix, games used to be with one team of figs against another.

Then they invented ressources, which are things you put on top of a fig (like the BatBelt, Rings of the Mandarin of whatever), which went overboard fast and totally broke the game.

And now they let out some Entities which can possess your figs and make them even more broken.

Result ? In the official tournament format, EVERYONE plays either a Ressource, 2+ entities (they're cheap) or BOTH. Is the game playable ? Sure. Is it enjoyable ? No. Do you HAVE to play that way to win ? YES.

So I (and many, many players who feel like me) play only in non-official tournaments which ban all those (Heroclix isn't like VTES in the sense that it can accept easily scenarios where you can't play this or must play that).

Do I want VTES to become like this ? FUCK NO !

So yeah, a game where most every deck plays 6+ Ashur Tablets would be boring as hell, and I sure want to avoid getting there (which would be the case if / when the Tablets became widely available without any errata).

ICL wrote:

Now, whether Ashur Tablets are optimal is a function of a particular design. I am inclined to use them when I'm either playing a deck full of one-ofs or a highly redundant deck that blows through lots of cards or a deck like stealth bleed where you want to play with your deck mix during the game.

But, I'm not inclined to play with them hardly at all ... because it's boring to suck up 6/7/9/10/12/13/15 slots on the same card. The idea of playing six in every deck is rather unappealing from an aesthetic viewpoint.

Highly redundant decks which blow through a lot of cards can be fun to play and not boring for certain values of "boring." Maybe card limits are the way to go!

Playing with your deck mix is of course part of the power of Ashur Tablets. One of my favorite deck types with them is G2/3 Ahrimanes bleed & block. Based on the situation, you get back bleed, stealth, intercept or combat cards. Or... not, if someone else pops the Tablets first.

Deck diversity is an essential element to CCGs.

I find that using Ashur Tablets in almost all my decks actually gives me a lot of flexibility that I wouldn't otherwise have. In particular, the not negligible pool gain may provide a buffer to allow some weaker deck archetypes (e.g. rush combat without bleed bounce) to survive long enough to stabilize when faced with a highly aggressive predator.

When I first started packing decks with Tablets, I was one of the only local players do to so. Now more people are doing it and that's a good thing. There are more races to pop them than before. I can't rely on that pool gain buffer like I used to. When a playgroup gets to that critical mass, then you really start to see the whole dynamic as the metagame changes.

Jeff wrote:

There is only so much design space if you limit yourself to effects that provide a bonus of 1 or 2 per card. People complain all the time about the disciplines and clans "losing their identity" as they are granted effects that replicate something another discipline does. Giving Thaumaturgy some damage prevention with Rego Motus wasn't the end of the world. There are many other examples where people fretted about this or that with every expansion.

I think you very successfully attempted to plumb the depths of mediocrity in your own designs, but don't forget, interesting and potentially powerful does not have to break the game or result in power-creep as long as we are adding in a diversity of ways of actually achieving the goal. Danse Macabre had some good examples of that.

The risk associated with Ashur Tablets is rather low. Opportunity costs are not huge, and as you said there are relatively few in print for the 'table clear' effect to be frequent and damaging to others Ashur Tablets. And of course the risk-reward equation is in favour of playing them... I'm suggesting the rewards are too good. So thank you for confirming it Jeff.

Your reply to ICL just confirms the other claim I made, that it allows in-game sideboarding or as Darby put it Card Probability Set restructuring in game.

Another way to put the same idea is that if you built a toolbox, you can now 'un-toolbox' it by redrawing the parts of the toolbox that are more effective in the environment and convert a toolbox into a S&B or Combat Wall or Vote-Push deck during the game.

Ankha wrote:

Orpheus wrote:

So yeah, a game where most every deck plays 6+ Ashur Tablets would be boring as hell, and I sure want to avoid getting there (which would be the case if / when the Tablets became widely available without any errata).

I can't see anything supporting your prediction (and I don't believe in it a single second) so it's pure speculation. If one day everybody plays with 6 Ashur Tablets, then something will probably be done. Until then...

Please see ICL & Kuta's comments that Ashur Tablets are scarce due to limited supply. Also please check ebay. This is why everyone won't be playing with 6... owning six is a challenge of its own.

Here in Brazil we use to play 9 , almost 20% of the players have it.

But yes, the value is due to supply, and not specifically power.

Ashurs is an enabler of rather powerful strategies, some quite overpowered with only niche cards to counter it. The cons of Ashurs are near non-existant in most playgroups and even tournaments due to scarcity of the card. To me there's no question it needs to be dealt with one way or the other.

Since POD is not an option on the short to mid term, errata and/or PDF expansion seems to be the only other options.

Errata:
- Allow retreival of only combat cards (kills MMPA abuse)

Rational:
Pro active combat deck that burn a lot of cards can still benefit from Ashurs, perhaps even the only way to play with celerity these days. Explicitly only combat cards since you can still make overpowered combinations when you allow retrieval of minion cards.

PDF Expansion:
- Bring out a weaker (trifle) version that also removes Ashur's tablet from game when conditions are met or makes Ashur's more painful to play. See also Vessel vs Blooddoll and Villein vs Minion tap tech.

Rational:
The main reason Ashur's seems overpowered is because it's quite safe to play with no downside whatsoever. This due to scarcity, you could solve that this way. I'd still restrict it to a specific card type though... Even in this form, it's too game changing.

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Thing is, Ashur's not only recycles cards into your deck, but it allows you to customise your deck on the fly and create a more powerful deck during the game that reacts to the meta of the game. In that respect, it's almost as bad as switching seat tech... It allows you to be put in the best position possible , mitigating choice weaknesses. Bleed predator? Recycle redirections, Combat predator? Recycle maneuvers and CE, and so on... And since you can recycle up to 13 cards, that leaves enough room to recycle defense along with ousting strategy.

I've only been up against a deck using Ashurs once, a week ago. Another powerful card (pentex) locked me in turn 2 and got bled to death in turn 4, so I got to enjoy spectating the Ashur's deck in ful motion. All he did at first was recycle pentex, telepathic misdirection and Second Tradition, weakening real threats (combat) with pentex and then redirecting the left over bleed decks switching to ousting strategy when it was head to head. Brilliant play, made possible by Ashurs. Thing is, there was nothing people could do about it except keeping me alive, but it was too early in the game to realize that...

I don't mind Ashur's that much, since I'll probably only see it played once a few years, but there's no denying it's too powerful as an enabler and meta adapter, but quite balanced for pro active combat decks that need to burn a lot of cards.