Balancing Ashur Tablets

BenPeal wrote:

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.

Yea, and all those cards are a problem. Political actions, maybe, not so much, cause their time-use is sort of meaningful, but search effects are just waisted time for all involved.

BenPeal wrote:

Readability, simplicity, and brevity are talked about a lot within the Design Team when we're designing cards.

Kudos 4 u, but I was talking about this forum discussions, where we can see such gems as "I don't see Ashurs taking that long in most cases". Holy crap, we got players who are stopping to think after each draw of replasement card, choosing of 13 cards will comatose them for a 5-10 minutes!

BenPeal wrote:

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

Returning to print will solve problem with card availability (or maybe not, like with parity shift), maybe solve problems with new players (if there will be some advertisemen/support), but still won't solve problem with too long play time.

elotar wrote:

Returning to print will solve problem with card availability (or maybe not, like with parity shift), maybe solve problems with new players (if there will be some advertisemen/support), but still won't solve problem with too long play time.

But banning (or heavily modifying) Ashur and similar cards will do little to solve that. Games have pretty much always timed out in tournament play, and I don't just mean super-competitive NAC type tournaments but also your local 10 player get-together.

The basic problem is that V:TES games can take a very long time, irrespective of individual card plays. Ban any time-drain cards and you still have options to - for example - generate an absolute ton of pool, making it extremely hard for all but the most aggressive of decks to oust you. Between a variety of strong blood gain options like Voter Cap and Giant's Blood (plus many more), Villein, breed boon etc., it's entirely possible to gain absolutely absurd amounts of pool.

Pool gain isn't the only option. I've seen a large number of games time out because one player at the table is trying to control everything way too much - stopping anyone else ousting their prey in the honest belief that they can sweep the table, that sort of thing. And the whole table slows down like hell. Doing some nasty things with Baltimore Purge is one particular case I remember. Similarly, table-control wall decks - what can feel like every single moderately controversial action, you get to negotiate with your grand-predator's threat of Eagle Sight (or equivalent). Or a massive Folderol deck.


You can ban Ashur, and there will still be players on the table taking huge amounts of time to do stuff, with games timing out. Fundamentally, V:TES isn't a quick game. If players are looking for a reliably medium-length game (say, 45-60 minutes), V:TES is probably a poor choice for them.

jamesatzephyr wrote:

You can ban Ashur, and there will still be players on the table taking huge amounts of time to do stuff, with games timing out. Fundamentally, V:TES isn't a quick game. If players are looking for a reliably medium-length game (say, 45-60 minutes), V:TES is probably a poor choice for them.

Obviously by banning/errating ashurs we'll not solve all problems of the game and we can't reach reliable 45 min. length for 5-men tables, but I think it's not a reason to drop the problem of long to execute cards altogether.

elotar wrote:

BenPeal wrote:

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.

Yea, and all those cards are a problem. Political actions, maybe, not so much, cause their time-use is sort of meaningful, but search effects are just waisted time for all involved.

Sure, nobody is interested in watching someone shuffle their deck over and over again. Like I said, they're pieces of chocolate. I do not agree with the assertion that they are 100% bad, 100% of the time.

BenPeal wrote:

Readability, simplicity, and brevity are talked about a lot within the Design Team when we're designing cards.

Kudos 4 u, but I was talking about this forum discussions, where we can see such gems as "I don't see Ashurs taking that long in most cases". Holy crap, we got players who are stopping to think after each draw of replasement card, choosing of 13 cards will comatose them for a 5-10 minutes!

There's also Ian Lee's (ICL's) post in this thread regarding time taken by "administrative functions":

vekn.net/forum/41-card-balance-a-strategy-discussion/63590-balancing-ashur-tablets?limit=10&start=140#64403

Again, I highly recommend that everyone read the blog article he links to.

BenPeal wrote:

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

Returning to print will solve problem with card availability (or maybe not, like with parity shift), maybe solve problems with new players (if there will be some advertisemen/support), but still won't solve problem with too long play time.

Nothing short of a full-blown revision of the game will accomplish that.

elotar wrote:

Obviously by banning/errating ashurs we'll not solve all problems of the game and we can't reach reliable 45 min. length for 5-men tables, but I think it's not a reason to drop the problem of long to execute cards altogether.

Sure, but don't expect to see Waters of Duat banned.

elotar wrote:

Kudos 4 u, but I was talking about this forum discussions, where we can see such gems as "I don't see Ashurs taking that long in most cases". Holy crap, we got players who are stopping to think after each draw of replasement card, choosing of 13 cards will comatose them for a 5-10 minutes!

Since you have a problem like that in Moscow, and we in Helsinki (for example don't), the cards need to be banned.

Obviously schooling the local players to just play their Ashur choosings quicker ain't an option...