Balancing Ashur Tablets

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.

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.