Balancing Ashur Tablets

The best fix is to randomize the cards that get put back into your deck. It fixes the problem you just mentioned. Result:

1. No more chunk of minutes lost when Ashurs go off as player decides which 13 cards to choose. (Or fewer minutes, if the player is one of those who is not capable of shuffling expeditiously.)

2. No more late-game virtual sideboarding/deck optimization, which breaks a basic paradigm of the CCG genre.

It has always seemed to me that Ashur Tablets were meant to be tech for decks that actually ran out of cards. I think that's reasonable, and needed, especially for combat decks that cycle a lot of red and need a pool boost late in the game. The ability to retune your deck at will late in the game, and burning up precious minutes while you do so, is not reasonable.

I think you should play more AT to see it's drawbacks.

I remember the French Open in 2013. I had a Girls deck as prey and another one as predator (prey Girls + Inners and pred Girls will find aids). They where clearly playing both against me (predator rushed, prey deflected and pooled a lot).

I won the table with 3 VPs and I had no silver bullets against MMPA decks.

I helped ousting both prey and pred and I stayed 1 vs. 1 against... surprise, a Nephandus Ashur + Liquidation deck and I won. The Nephandus deck was on the finals, I won it again and he wans't even close of doing one single VP and he had the best position on the table.

Last French Nationals (the first day's open) I played myself a MMPA deck (Girls + Inners) and I got my ass kicked in 2 out of 3 tables. 3rd table I won and it wasn't that clear (again I stayed 1 vs. 1 against a Nephandus Ashur + Liquidation deck, same deck as the year before but different player).

2nd day of French Nationals I played the deck I won Spanish Nationals with, a Nana&Friends POT/ANI built-in rush deck, with not that good results (I did 2-2,5 VPs on the whole tournament, and I only had another AT deck in one table, Ankha with his Giotto Verducci "Council of Doom" deck).

As I say, if you think a card is broken, you should play it more to have a better opinion about it.

Eventhough, VTES is a 5 player game, so if the table feels you're the BIG threat, you can easily end up playing against 4 players. Even with AT you cannot manage playing against 4 players.

Ashur wrote:

I have played enough both with and against AT to know the card is a) broken and b) boring.

Well, really again no facts for a), being b) a subjective consideration, so not really an argument.

Is it more boring an AT deck or an Una/Madness + Reversal/Mata-Hari 50 freak drives? Again that is a subjective impression.

I have read also a definition of what the resources in a game are, but since there are other cards that allow recursion (Sudario Refraction/WMO etc.) we can estimate it's an extra resource.

There are even other cards that allow some use of other players Ash Heap (Bujo, Daemonic Possession, Trochomancy etc.), that's why there exists a "removed card area".

There is even Reinforcements (Final Nights, accessible to all clans), pretty comparable to AT in terms of cards recovered to your library, with it's advantages and disadvantages.

You can find even vampires with recursion (Undele, Drozodny), having even the advantage of taking the cards back to the hand, playable during the whole game, even when we run out of library (Sudario Refraction is no longer "available" when you run out of cards, for example).

So, the debate shouldn't be if AT is broken or not (since it has it's own way of self-control with other ATs), it should be if recursion is broken or not and, if it is a resource to take into account, under which circumstances should it be legit. Should we stick firmly to the "role" of each clan/discipline or should we allow certain flexibility to have a larger variety of TWDs?

As Ankha pointed out, Villein is a triffle card, played on 47% of the TWDs. Should we ban it given that there's already a card that does a similar effect (Minion Tap)? Comparing to the combination AT + Liquidation, we could compare also Villein + Voter Cap, being the pool reward of Villein + Voter Cap far more unbalancing in most cases than AT + Liquidation.

Which card is mostly played, AT or Deflection? Is it legit to just sit and wait till your pred bleeds you to redirect the bleeds he does to your prey?

Which combo is more broken, a Victor Pelletier that does a Parity Shift for 5 on 2nd turn or no-matter-what AT deck?

As always it depends on the context. It is true that it is a powerful mechanic, but not more than other mechanics in the game.

I still stand firm that girls style mmpa is the broken component here, not the tablets, which are simply very good.

Something being "balanced" by a whole table killing it isnt really balanced. Imbued can in theory be dealt with this way, but sometimez that one player lets them set up a little too much, and then the game is wrecked until 5 turns from the end.
The Nergal storyline deck is even worse about this. And its not tourney legal. So, again, if we have all seen good decks with ashurs still get beaten routinely, but one other style really break things, that sounds like a problem beyond one card.

The table shouldnt have to deal with 50 pool. Mikkel had a Journal of Hrosh deck that gained mad pool that was less a burden than girls mmpa. Unless someones playing gesla harden and kindred spirits to always cross table trochomancy, girls will work and gain pool.

cordovader wrote:

As Ankha pointed out, Villein is a triffle card, played on 47% of the TWDs. Should we ban it given that there's already a card that does a similar effect (Minion Tap)?

Yes!

cordovader wrote:

Comparing to the combination AT + Liquidation, we could compare also Villein + Voter Cap, being the pool reward of Villein + Voter Cap far more unbalancing in most cases than AT + Liquidation.

Voter Cap is also bad, and the issue isn't the pool gain of AT. You've brushed off the recursion aspect by saying, "That should be the debate." The debate isn't whether recursion is bad, the debate is at what scale recursion becomes bad.

Juggernaut1981 wrote:

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.

Keep up with the sycophantic trolling. That seems to be your favorite medium to express your clever ideas.

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.

The card that breaks Ashur Tablets isn't Ashur Tablets. It's Liquidation. A simple first turn Master card that gives 3 pool with almost no drawback is what creates the bloat issues that keeps Girls MMPA decks alive. Successfully popping Ashur Tablets requires 3 MPAs and no "contesting" of the tablets. That's a scarcity issue, not a power issue.

So thank you for confirming it Jeff.

Misreading again, as always.

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.

Claim? Thank you Captain Obvious. Ashur Tablets was clearly designed to allow you to retune your deck from the ash heap.

Sometimes its nice to have a chance to make a smart decision in game that may pay off down the road. Many people would rather have 3x Villein, or 3x Dreams of the Sphinx, or 3x Sudden Reversal than 3x Ashur Tablets in their deck.

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.

Congratulations on discovering the wonders of using Ashur Tablets. Now go proxy some and use them more often and understand their real drawbacks!

AaronC wrote:

1. No more chunk of minutes lost when Ashurs go off as player decides which 13 cards to choose. (Or fewer minutes, if the player is one of those who is not capable of shuffling expeditiously.)

If anything, this is the biggest drawback to Ashur Tablets.

2. No more late-game virtual sideboarding/deck optimization, which breaks a basic paradigm of the CCG genre.

It has always seemed to me that Ashur Tablets were meant to be tech for decks that actually ran out of cards. I think that's reasonable, and needed, especially for combat decks that cycle a lot of red and need a pool boost late in the game. The ability to retune your deck at will late in the game, and burning up precious minutes while you do so, is not reasonable.

The burning up precious minutes may not be reasonable since some players take way too long to sift through their ash heap, especially late in the game. Tuning your deck has been part of the game since Day 1 with Magic of the Smith, Al's Army Apparatus, Arms Dealer, and Vast Wealth. Searching isn't the same as recursion, but it isn't unusual. "The Other Game" had Regrowth and has much more recursion now. Is that a problem?

ReverendRevolver wrote:

The table shouldnt have to deal with 50 pool.

If gaining pool is the real issue, then Ashur Tablets contribution to that issue is minimal and indirect.

cordovader wrote:

As Ankha pointed out, Villein is a triffle card, played on 47% of the TWDs. Should we ban it given that there's already a card that does a similar effect (Minion Tap)?

AaronC wrote:

Yes!

No card that anyone bought from a pack for will ever be banned while the current administration is in charge.