Tariq and merging

Personally I think merging is interesting idea, but the merged abilities need to be significant enough to be worth it. A title is not that. If advanced vampire is given a title improvement over the basic one, it shold imo be baseline on the advanced version, with a bit more interesting merged ability.

BenPeal wrote:

elotar wrote:

BenPeal wrote:

You're a weird man, sir.

One deck in 20 years - not a good track record for mechanic.

We've already established that it's not the mechanic that's the problem - it's the Advanced crypt cards.

You can approach it from both angles. At the moment, we have a mechanic that requires a fairly serious amount of investment (5+ crypt cards, 8-10+ library cards, in your suggestion) to use with mostly not much pay-off. And in, say, a fast-paced combat deck which stands a decent chance of emptying its library in some games, 8-10 cards is quite a lot of deck space.

If the mechanic was easier to invoke, merging could be justifiably weaker. For example, if there was a cardless way to merge yourself that was significantly easier than the current one, the benefits being more mediocre would be fine. +1 stealth cardless action costing some blood or a pool to get a cool extra special, or maybe a new discipline, or maybe a new title (i.e. the current sort of merged abilities)? Potentially doable - obviously, you want some effort, but there's potentially a sweet spot that could be hit with the current power level. This sort of thing might also mean that you didn't have to do it based on star vampire decks - it would be possible to just toss in two copies of Ramona into your Gangrel deck (one of each), and if you draw one, you can get the other out reasonably easily. It also gives a little more design freedom - if advanced vampires basically need to be capable of being star vampires, you can't really have a fun 3 cap who becomes a merged 4 cap Primogen, or whatever. That's not to discourage creating good advanced/merged stars, just that it could go wider than them too.

The obvious alternative is to make merged vampires much stronger, so the current effort is worthwhile in more cases. That's also potentially fine, but does have the potential downside that the 'bad' merged vampires are still bad. You get a dozen new shiny advanced vampires to play with who will be worthwhile candidates for merging - but the existing ones are still terrible.

Obviously, you could do a little of both.

jamesatzephyr wrote:

BenPeal wrote:

We've already established that it's not the mechanic that's the problem - it's the Advanced crypt cards.

You can approach it from both angles. At the moment, we have a mechanic that requires a fairly serious amount of investment (5+ crypt cards, 8-10+ library cards, in your suggestion) to use with mostly not much pay-off. And in, say, a fast-paced combat deck which stands a decent chance of emptying its library in some games, 8-10 cards is quite a lot of deck space.

A 5-6 crypt card investment is typical for a star vampire deck, though I agree with your following concern about helping non-star Advanced vamps.

If you're going with my approach (8 Epiphany, 2 Wider View in a 90-card deck), you're still left with 80 cards for your deck, which is a very common amount. Matti Palomäki's deck used 5 Epiphany and 0 Wider View in an 81-card deck. Randal Rundstam's deck used 5 Epiphany and 2 Wider View in a 73-card deck. Neither were combat decks, so perhaps the card investment remains a concern for those or other card-intensive decks.

As for the payoff, I still think that's well within the realm of the base/Advanced crypt cards typically not being good enough in the first place, be they stand-alone or merged.

If the mechanic was easier to invoke, merging could be justifiably weaker. For example, if there was a cardless way to merge yourself that was significantly easier than the current one, the benefits being more mediocre would be fine.

That's a potential option, though my job is to design cards, not change the rules. I'm strongly disinclined to change the rules with the game out of print, as I want existing players (both active and lapsed) to be confident in knowing that the rules remain as they know them. I'm also concerned about adequately disseminating rules changes, though adoption of VEKN expansions by the playerbase appears to be going well.

Also given that my job is to design cards, I'm inclined to design cards in the attempt to address design space gaps. Despite a cardless become-Anarch action, LSJ still felt the need (and rightly so) to design more cards to help your vampires become Anarchs. Merging vampires didn't become viable until Epiphany was printed, and perhaps there are other merging cards that can be designed.

That said, I agree that the existing influence phase mechanic for merging is unsatisfactory, and perhaps it could be sent for review.

Potentially doable - obviously, you want some effort, but there's potentially a sweet spot that could be hit with the current power level. This sort of thing might also mean that you didn't have to do it based on star vampire decks - it would be possible to just toss in two copies of Ramona into your Gangrel deck (one of each), and if you draw one, you can get the other out reasonably easily.

Yeah, I agree that "casual merging" for vamps like Ramona could use some help.

It also gives a little more design freedom - if advanced vampires basically need to be capable of being star vampires, you can't really have a fun 3 cap who becomes a merged 4 cap Primogen, or whatever. That's not to discourage creating good advanced/merged stars, just that it could go wider than them too.

Definitely.

The obvious alternative is to make merged vampires much stronger, so the current effort is worthwhile in more cases. That's also potentially fine, but does have the potential downside that the 'bad' merged vampires are still bad. You get a dozen new shiny advanced vampires to play with who will be worthwhile candidates for merging - but the existing ones are still terrible.

The plan is to design Advanced vamps that can stand alone on their own without merging, and in some/most cases provide a merging option for those who want to do so. For the "bad" vamps...well...they weren't designed properly in the first place. Perhaps there are cards that can be designed to be tailored to them.

There's a difference between bad vampires and wallpaper. Very few vampires are actually wallpaper (or close to wallpaper). Yet, there are many, many bad vampires. People still play bad vampires. I've merged Tusk - I'm not only playing bad vampires, I'm playing a worse deck than if I didn't merge Tusk.

Seem to be contending that advanced vampires are intended to produce superstar decks, but that's clearly not how they were designed. Merged Ramona, as an older option, is clearly not intended to be a deck. My point is that playing both copies of vampires is a disadvantage, not a neutral proposition. Only when you get something mindblowing from merging do you actually net positive. For example, if version A is an archbishop and version B is an archbishop and all you gain from merging is being a cardinal, you are still at a net loss. Of course, there are all sorts of miscellaneous abilities that don't make that math that easy, but the math is largely on the "I'm just better playing one version of this guy rather than both".

As for Goulet, I've played one or two decks in tournament play that could merge him, and I somehow managed not to win those tournaments.

As to what I'd like to see. Rather than create a good version of a bad vampire, which will just mean the bad vampire sees less play, I'd rather see merging the vampire be helpful to winning and/or do highly amusing stuff that doesn't contribute heavily to losing.

When I created a bunch of group 1 advancies, I did tend to make the new versions just flat out better, but that was more due to how much design space there is to do vampire abilities. It's fairly easy to have merged abilities be vastly stronger than individual abilities.

BenPeal wrote:

The plan is to design Advanced vamps that can stand alone on their own without merging, and in some/most cases provide a merging option for those who want to do so. For the "bad" vamps...well...they weren't designed properly in the first place. Perhaps there are cards that can be designed to be tailored to them.

Or we could just errata every last one of them! Rebuild for Group 1!!!

But on a slightly more serious note... regarding the alternative Merge Mechanic then a simple edit would be to adjust the current "Merge" to include a search.

"You may spend 4 TPs and 1 pool to search your uncontrolled and crypt for an advanced or base vampire that has the same name as a vampire in play. Merge those two crypt cards and shuffle your crypt."

Juggernaut1981 wrote:

But on a slightly more serious note... regarding the alternative Merge Mechanic then a simple edit would be to adjust the current "Merge" to include a search.

"You may spend 4 TPs and 1 pool to search your uncontrolled and crypt for an advanced or base vampire that has the same name as a vampire in play. Merge those two crypt cards and shuffle your crypt."

Same name as a vampire you control, unless you want the option to merge other players' vampires. But yeah, that very idea has been proposed before. It's still not super-hot, as you're still waiting a fair amount of time to get the benefit of merging (bring out the crypt card, go a whole round of turns into your next influence phase, then finally merge). That also assumes you're not wanting to bring out other vamps at that point. Still, as a cardless option it might be fine, and Epiphany would still be a faster option that doesn't get in the way of your transfers.

Speaking of Epiphany, perhaps there could be a starting-as-Advanced version. Just noodling around:

Legacy

+2 stealth action. Requires an unmerged advanced vampire.
Untap this acting vampire and search your crypt, uncontrolled region, or ash heap for his or her base version to move to him or her. Shuffle your crypt afterward. If this vampire merges, move the top card from your crypt to your uncontrolled region.

It's not cyclable like Epiphany, so I gave it a crypt draw bonus. Probably not as good as Epiphany.