Ban of Conditioning

GreyB wrote:

Perhaps it's time to restrict individual cards to max 4 each in a library/crypt.

Look, just no. 4CL is a fundamentally awful idea, because it empowers stealth-bleed (which has a plethora of alternatives), while hurting dozens of other strategies because they don't have alternatives, have been designed without alternatives, and have been intended to work without alternatives.

Bloodline disciplines with restricted card sets were designed knowing that their actions, modifiers, reactions etc. can be stacked up in decks. Anarch three-ways were designed knowing the same. The Red Question, clearly designed to make Anarchs much more playable, was designed knowing that you could toss a load into a deck to kick start the deck if you wanted. Camarilla vote decks get 4 extra copies of Parity Shift in a deck for pool destruction, and non-Camarilla vote decks don't get to compensate for that by playing more copies of Kine Resources Contested. Dominate based decks have the option of Deflection, Redirection, and Murmur, while Auspex decks can only play Telepathic Misdirection.

It has been a terrible idea every time it's been suggested since 1994, and will continue to be so.

GreyB wrote:

Stuff that breaks with a card limit like Orun/Aye and suchlike just need to be designed away in new sets.

Since the game has been getting roughly 20-25 library cards a year, it would take an inordinate amount of time to fix all the problems that are introduced. Of course, since stealth-bleed dominating the game is the result that's happened in more or less any group that's played 4CL - except where they then exert social pressure on people to not play strong decks! - it's likely the game wouldn't last long enough to fix the swathes of problems introduced.

It really is a terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible idea.

ICL wrote:

...Aire of Elation...

I you sure that it's in the same basket, as conditioning?
I was usually evaluating a toreador restriction as a fine one - limited weenie potential, stealth and block denial.

ICL wrote:

...retiring enough cards to remake the environment, an environment with less bloat ability, with less intercept ...

Generally a good idea, but I'm struggling in finding ways to do it practically - banning many cards at ones makes too much "hatred".

By the way, story of bans in MTG modern - format, which is actually pretty close to VtES in structure and cardpool.

magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/arcana/brief-history-modern-banned-list-2015-02-03

Notice the different reasoning of bans.

Continuing of MTG story:

at 9-th of january 3 cards was banned from standard:
magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/news/january-9-2017-banned-and-restricted-announcement-2017-01-09

In MTG standard there are, I think, like ~100 playable cards (most cards in MTG are totally useless for constracted), so it's really removal of a significant part of available pool.

Interesting part in he announcement is the "opening" of the new window for a bannings - from 4 times per year to 8(!) times.

Dominate is so good because at basic dom, you can bolt on 3 bleeds and bounce. At DOM you get bleeds for 3-4, bounce without tapping and pool/influence.

Conditioning is not the problem, it can be reduced/bounced/archoned. Even govern isn't the problem, as it can be blocked. Having all three though...that's pretty amazing.

I would eye deflection first as you don't tap for it and it isn't age based, which is a strong element to dominate, as shown in govern and redirection. However banning deflection would kill one of my favorite combos (rats warning/deflection) which makes me sad, but I could live with it.