Balancing Ashur Tablets

ReverendRevolver wrote:

Scarcety is a huge problem, and hopefully Steve Weick helps with that

How ?

jamesatzephyr wrote:

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.

Thank you for developping your argument thus, very interesting.

As for that last point : Ashur isn't a special tech per se, as it doesn't create a combo in and by itself, it reinforces existing combos and makes them available at the right time (for instance if you need 2 cards at a given time and have only one in hand). So you don't need to counter it and can win without it, but so many decks are just made way better by it ! If impossible or even improbable decks can becomre viable as Ankha said, it can also make already good decks rather broken.

As for the percentages, they're pretty high, but you'll recall that even at the heighth of Succubus Club not everyone played it. But the players who did play it and knew how were nigh invincible. This had to be proven by S. Lavrut and some others, because the international community didn't think it was that good, and despite being broken enough to need a ban I don't think that more then 1 player in 5 or 6 actually had one in his deck. I know I didn't (disapproved the whole thing, and maybe wasn't adept enough at using it). Still broken, though.

Orpheus wrote:

ReverendRevolver wrote:

Scarcety is a huge problem, and hopefully Steve Weick helps with that

How ?

He is (again) negotiating to print.

Since current meta is all about great cards in the >$5 range, its a good thing. Deep song, eyes of argus, rego motus, target vitals and mots are in the price range and you run 3-10 in a deck most of the time.

Ashurs are in the higher $15-20s range, with preturnatural strength, touch of clarity, mind rape, purge, villein, and jake washington. Problem is Ashurs you nees in higher quantity than the rest of pricerange.

The whole thing takea away 2 attractive parts of vtes,to nwebies and outsiders: our low cost effective decks get less diverse if kep cheap, and it makes it too expensive to keep 12+ decks assembled at once.

These arent fixable things even with erratta, though, so we just keep the game ok until we get printed

ReverendRevolver wrote:

Ashurs are in the higher $15-20s range...

Ashur Tablets are more than $40 each now.

Orpheus wrote:

Why did you play it ? In which type of deck ?

I used it in a deck that had Necromancy and some Auspex to boot.

It is a +1/+2 bleed modifier that doesn't cost blood. Which by itself is nice. What makes it golden is that is nicely usable against the recursion decks, but we all knew that. (and everything else I said in thsi message).

Orpheus wrote:

As for that last point : Ashur isn't a special tech per se, as it doesn't create a combo in and by itself, it reinforces existing combos and makes them available at the right time (for instance if you need 2 cards at a given time and have only one in hand). So you don't need to counter it and can win without it, but so many decks are just made way better by it !

Erm, that's true of a lot of powerful, tier one cards - especially those that don't have significant requirements or are generally playable. Dreams of the Sphinx is a great card. It makes lots of decks better. Blood Doll is a great card. It makes lots of decks better. Various media locations make decks better. JS Simmons and Tasha Morgan make lots of decks better. Cameraphone makes lots of decks better. Perfectionist is a good card that makes lots of decks better. One way of dealing with Dreams of the Sphinx is to play your own, contesting it - just like you could play your own Ashur, to explode it. Or you could play Sudden, Wash etc. (Oh look, more cards that are attractive to a lot of decks and make them better.) Or you could decide to just bleed the crap out of your prey instead.

But "being good" and "making decks better" and "being attractive to players" is not a problem for play. In some implementations, it can be a problem for design - Perfectionist, above, is a design issue in my opinion, in that it cramps out most of the other archetypes by being just a little too good. Ditto, some of the Target cards (Head/Vitals) - not overpowered in themselves, but they're cramping the design space for combat a bit. Every time I come up with a possible combat card that has some +damage on it, my brain goes "Why wouldn't I play Target H/V instead?" But that's not a balance problem for play.

Orpheus wrote:

AIf impossible or even improbable decks can becomre viable as Ankha said, it can also make already good decks rather broken.

Of the 16 decks using it, could you point to the ones that are broken by it?

Orpheus wrote:

As for the percentages, they're pretty high, but you'll recall that even at the heighth of Succubus Club not everyone played it. But the players who did play it and knew how were nigh invincible. This had to be proven by S. Lavrut and some others, because the international community didn't think it was that good, and despite being broken enough to need a ban I don't think that more then 1 player in 5 or 6 actually had one in his deck. I know I didn't (disapproved the whole thing, and maybe wasn't adept enough at using it). Still broken, though.

This is a totally, totally, totally different thing, though.

Succubus Club caused many problems. It facilitated potentially collusive behaviour. It undermined the predator/prey dynamic, in a similar way to the seat switchers - you have the power of two predators, and my predator can't put enough pressure on me to stop me.

Ashur hopefully gives me some pool. It also hopefully gives me some cards back. If a deck is on the table that isn't expecting me to gain pool, that player is doing something wrong. If a deck is on the table not expecting me to have and play cards, that player is doing something wrong. This is totally unlike a situation where cards undermine the fundamental mechanic of "My predator started with 30 pool" becomes "My predator started with 60 pool and could bring out vampires twice as quickly. Wheee!"