Una Freak Drive

Juggernaut1981 wrote:

Most people label those games as not fun.

Most people label vtes as not fun. They understand nothing.

One table doesnt matter, ccg real game is played between "games", when you create decks and develop stratagies. And existence of turbo tech enrich this game greatly.

Also I don't understand timing problem. Una deck have like 50 one card/freak drive actions, if there is no blocks on the table it's conservatively 5sec for an action - less than 5 minutes for a whole turn. One dumb political action discussion can take longer.

I mostly agree with Sergio.I think his points are very clear. Saying that weenie dementation can be dealt with by the first prey is of course wrong. But that's a different matter I think.

To deliver my personal vision of a game, as long as players play to win, I have no problems.
All the games I can remember as boring/bad/upsetting come either from:
- players not wanting to play the game to win
- players playing decks unable to win, just rotting one player/everyone's game or not doing anything at all.

Juggernaut1981 wrote:

I tend to think that the fault lies primarily in Una's Text. I don't think there are many ways to make the Una Deck less of a "one person plays their library in a Minion Phase" without addressing Una.

True, but when you adress Una, then be prepared to adress the next Turbo, then the next weenie reversal, then... there will always be a Non-fun deck around. It's part of the game.

Ke. wrote:

I would ask that any player planning on playing such a deck ensure they're familiar with it before playing it with other players (easy to do by yourself!) and learn to play the setup turn as quickly as possible. You're going to attract table hate, but slightly less if you're efficient. It's in your interest anyway, don't want the table to timeout just as you've setup for the win (or loose).

True, also a right question might be: do you want to bring such decks out of tournaments?
if no, would you consider bringing it to small tournaments?
I know I just brought Una to ECQ or better tournaments, but that's just me.

Ashur wrote:

[The Una-deck just "Anyone got a Pentex/DI? No? Then watch me play for 20 minutes!" That is boring/annoying.

It's certainly not totally untrue, while not complete... but... really?? You can't afford to wait 20 minutes? I mean come on, a game lasts 2 hours, a tournament 8 hours, you can also do many things during those 20 minutes, like thinking how the game will go on, offer deal to the Una player, wait for the rush, wait for the 0 stealth action.
While not pleasant, I don't think it should be annoying at all.

blackday wrote:

@kushiel: mine uses around 30 to 33 freak drives in a 90 card deck. Even with the use of 10 to 12 freak drives in one turn i have only used at most 10mins in one turn

Sorry mate, but you are out of the subject, I should have told you. We are speaking about Una freak show here, which is an archetype that is designed to play the entire deck in one turn.
I think the original poster might have started with a decklist, here is the one I currently have in the French Bibliodeque (for the rush version, which I totally believe is the best, but that's personal of course)

www.veknfrance.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=17978

www.secretlibrary.info/index.php?deck=view&id=18553

Deck Name: Bibliodèque [22] Una circus (!Gangrel superstar)
Author: Orian TTC Gissler
Description:
The Bibliodèque is a French project made of 99 decklists (and designed to welcome more in the future hopefully) based on Tournament winning Decklists or Archetypes, to help people building decks for their casual play or tournaments, and ultimately print those decks in proxy to have a library of decks available for their playgroup.

Lead designer TTC_master
Much thanks for the French people helping in various ways: Ezra, Tim, Cordovader, Darkal, Stone and so on... and to the players which decks have served as basis for the decks presented (or were shamelessly copied directly)

You may find the complete historic of the project at
www.veknfrance.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=49

and the google drive to the final Bibliodèque will be the following
drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B32R3iejqMPTaXNDd2d1b01lR1k&usp=sharing

Crypt (12 cards; Capacity min=1 max=9 avg=5)
============================================
1x Anarch Convert 1 Caitiff:ANY
1x Angela Decker 1 pre Pander:2
1x Antoinette DuChamp 1 cel pre Caitiff:2
1x Franciscus 1 aus Caitiff:2
1x March Halcyon 1 for Pander:2
1x Sandra White 1 Caitiff:3
6x Una 9 dem ANI FOR PRE PRO !Gangrel:3

Library (90 cards)
==================
Action (30)
1x Abbot
1x Ambush
1x Big Game
1x Blessing of Chaos
1x Bloodlust
1x Bum's Rush
1x Charge of the Buffalo
1x Covenant of Blood
1x Creation Rites
1x Deep Song
1x Dual Form
1x Embrace, The
1x Enrage
1x Eternal Vigilance
1x Games of Instinct
1x Harass
1x Heart of the City
1x Loki's Gift
1x Mantle of the Bestial Majesty
1x Marked Territory
1x Repair the Undead Flesh
1x Resilient Mind
1x Rumble
1x Scrounging
1x Sense Death
1x Shadow of the Beast
1x Taunt the Caged Beast
1x Tier of Souls
1x War Party
1x Zillah's Tears

Political Action (2)
1x Scourge
1x Templar

Equipment (6)
1x Aaron's Feeding Razor
1x Blood Tears of Kephran
1x IR Goggles
1x Ivory Bow
1x Kevlar Vest
1x Leather Jacket

Ally (1)
1x Mylan Horseed (Goblin)

Action Modifier (48)
46x Freak Drive
2x Perfect Paragon

Combat (2)
2x Form of Mist

Combo (1)
1x Touch of Clarity


Of course, it can be tweaked even in that version, people depending on their playstyle will be more or less bleed permanents for example, and different combat packages
(prevent I have seen for example)
But as you can see most important things: it has more freak drive than actions (about 10 more when leaving the actions that untap directly), the reason is that you cannot afford to be jammed by 7 action cards in your hand.

Juggernaut1981 wrote:

This is why people don't like playing against the Una Deck and others similar, because you might as well roll a d10 to see if you can stop the Una Deck setting itself up.

That's totally caricatural. I could pull out my tournament stats with Una but I can tell you there are many other difficulties, and it's not a problem of original DI/Pentex which the deck if well built has solutions against.
On another note, we don't speak about power, but Una remains at most a tier 2 simply based on the tournament results: consider the popularity of the archetype and the number of tournament wins, you will see that it's not that good.

To develop because afterwards you reduce the things to do to canine horde and pentex:
there are (at least I don't see it) no cards that absolutely kill Una directly. But from the top of my minds here are tons of stuff that will make you hard times:
pentex
DI/DI2
life boon because people tend to sacrifice themselves when you have GW incoming
intercept (especially permanent intercept - having neighbor john or ahrimane with a good player close to you is almost a lost game)
combat (even full set up, some decks can still take you on)
obedience, banishment, mind numb, sensory, secure haven
tye cooper + unmasking
and many many many other small stuff
all put together in a 5- players game... pretty difficult and far from being an automatic showdown if you want my opinion
oh and of course cross-table ousting and break deals

juggernaut1981 wrote:

If you are relying on a 'silver bullet' to beat a deck, then you are relying on card draw chances and deckbuilding choices. Both of these are not in-game decisions, they are not placing the player in a position of making meaningful choices and dis-empower the player.

Why should deckbuilding not be an integral, key aspect of a CCG?… And what you speak of already happens: most decks have some way to bounce bleeds, because bleed decks are so common. The same with combat and politics (at least I don't leave the house without 2-4 delaying tactics, even in a wall). Teching for Una is no different, I feel.
Not to mention that if you want decisions in-game you want the most variety possible of decks – imagine if all decks were the same. What in-game decisions are here, that can't be predicted (to a point) by algorithms?

TapeTaChatte wrote:

True, also a right question might be: do you want to bring such decks out of tournaments?
if no, would you consider bringing it to small tournaments?
I know I just brought Una to ECQ or better tournaments, but that's just me.

I'd risk saying that you need to bring them out of tournaments, if you want to play them properly at tournaments. But this is, in essence, a personal question leaning heavily on preference, which can't really be discussed here. I know I would.

Ashur wrote:

So it boils down to the classic pair of questions in this classic discussion: Is the "solitaire style"-decks fun? (I think not) Are they good? (Most people seem to think not) So, they can be said to be neither fun or good - so why allow them to exist? If the only argument is "For diversity", I´m sad.

While not being super fun and not super good, they are not really unfun and not really bad, they are in the middle-class on both sides, depending on deck choices.

Happily, we do not sum up the games to only good and fun decks, and it's not the diversity question, it's the freedom question: freedom for any player to plays as he wants/likes/feels and achieves toward the deck whatever goal he wants

Juggernaut1981 wrote:

Sérgio wrote:

This is why people don't like playing against the Una Deck and others similar, because you might as well roll a d10 to see if you can stop the Una Deck setting itself up.

So people don't like to play against Una decks because they only have a random chance of preventing its long setup? I hear a lot about how everything in this game is so random and annoying. It's a card game people. You build a deck, shuffle that deck, and randomly draw cards from that deck. You have a random chance of drawing certain cards, which in turn randomly determine what you can do in the game. This is no different than any other card game. If randomness annoys you, don't play card games. Card games, by definition, involve a fair amount of randomness.

As for Una decks, are they really the scourge people are making them out to be? So you have to wait a while for the deck to set up. If that's a problem, try mentioning to the player how much fun you are not having watching them. Or don't play with them. If it's encountered in a tournement, be happy it's a deck that will more likely than not lose.

As for the question about making hunting an NRA...do we really want to change a fundamental part of the game because of one deck type that can take a long time to set up? Seems a little drastic. I think the best "fix" is simply calling the Una player a dick for taking so long.