[Fairyworld] Examining combat cards and strategies and how they should work

Ankha wrote:

Then again, any deck that doesn't focus on combat won't be playing an offensive combat module.

I don't think that's true - many decks feature aggressive combat cards as a splash/back-up/secondary tactic, specially since the appearance of Target Vitals and WWS.
However, given huge variety of combat cards and strategies, I can't think of any easy and clear stats we can obtain to prove or disprove this idea.

So the stats are just saying "there are more deck that don't focus on combat than deck that focus on combat", not that Majesty is broken/unbalanced/whatever.

Again, I don't think you can conclude that - Majesty appears more often than other combat-avoidance cards, including non-Discipline cards that have greater availability.

Ankha wrote:

Conclusions based on the TWD are likely to be false. First of all, it doesn't contain all the deck of a tournament. For instance, a combat deck could be missing because it was ousted in the final by a stealth bleed deck playing no Majesty at all, and the Majesty deck somehow wins. It doesn't mean that the Majesty deck is better than the combat deck, even though it ranks better than the combat deck.

If there were only* decks with Majesty in the TWD, then I would probably worry about it. But it's far from being the case.

(* That's pretty much the only case you can deduce something: if a card is utterly missing, or utterly present)

I think the point of looking at twd is to perform a random slice of reasonable decks. It may not be the 'best' deck in a tournament. It may even be the 'worst' deck but multiplayer mechanics and poor play elevated it.

The utterly present or utterly absent idea is something to work with. Can we conclude anything if (nearly) every deck runs the same card?

Ankha wrote:

Mewcat wrote:

Construct the beginning of what would be a convincing argument to you, please. We cant have a meaningful discussion without some agreed upon logical structure. Each person having their own facts or calling 'fake news' is amusing but little else.

Conclusions based on the TWD are likely to be false. First of all, it doesn't contain all the deck of a tournament. For instance, a combat deck could be missing because it was ousted in the final by a stealth bleed deck playing no Majesty at all, and the Majesty deck somehow wins. It doesn't mean that the Majesty deck is better than the combat deck, even though it ranks better than the combat deck.

While the TWDA is an imperfect source of data, it is quite appropriate to determine 'good' decks - after all, the purpose of a 'good' deck (in a tournament context) is to win, a deck appearing in the TWDA more often will have won more, hence it is a 'better' deck. The sheer number of decks featured in the TWDA ensure that any flukes have a minimal effect.

If there were only* decks with Majesty in the TWD, then I would probably worry about it. But it's far from being the case.

(* That's pretty much the only case you can deduce something: if a card is utterly missing, or utterly present)

You can deduce something well before that - a large deviation from the average has meaning.
For example: in the TWDA about 20% of library cards account for 88% of all played copies. Such a skewed distribution is a result of imperfect balancing of cards, as we are all well aware of - nobody believes that Twisting the Knife is just as good as Govern The Unaligned...
Now figuring out what/how /if it can/should be balanced, that's the tricky part!

I'm not sure you're understanding exactly what the unwritten rule is. It's not that no one should ever make bad plays, it's that one should not ruin the "fun" for the opposing players. While lots of times bad plays results in ruining the fun for others, the spirit of the unwritten rules in VTES really only concerns the latter.

I didn't know there was a definition for Unwritten Rule. To me what you're describing reads "have fun and let people have fun", but VtES has always had a violent history. Or having played in Finland, the "Promised Land of Potence" has altered my perception. Who knows. I grew in an environment where everyone's vampire was fair game, and having your field leveled was just extra time for pints.

If one's goal is to intentionally make people mad with irresponsible play, is that still the correct answer?

There is no correct answers when playing with people, I suppose. If someone glaringly plays in conflict with 'play to win' in a tournament, you can always ask the judge what they think about the plays and situation. I have no idea what they'd say, but I'm not a judge.

When people just do whack weird shit that conflict with their seemingly best line of play? Flipping yourself rarely works, that's what I found. What would you suggest? Is this a problem? I don't know what else to say. //shrug

Star Trek put it well; really applies to VtES: "It is possible to make no mistakes and still lose. That's not a weakness, that's [VtES]." -Jean-Luc Picard

...well, the line says "life" instead of VtES, but what the heck.

Yet? The card has been around for 3 years. I think you have major rose-colored glasses when it comes to the VEKN-produced material. My sense is these cards range from wholly inconsequential to neat cards that could potentially be swapped in and out of an established strategy.

Okay, yeah, I was kind of thinking that if Nosferatu finally got a decent ousting mechanism for themselves or whatever it could see some play. The design is cute after all, and TRIES to address the combat=//=delivery problem. With the current card pool it's not fantastic (even though I've seen some funny Lucian the Perfect combat decks use it).

@TWDA discussion: It would be beneficial if tournament organizers started reporting at least deck archetypes of each final, if they can't get a hold of decks lists from the finalists.