juggernaut <3s his combat

Juggernaut1981 wrote:

As other people have said...
There are few purposes for entering combat unless you plan to do one of two things -
1) Remove as much blood as possible (to waste their actions, stop flicks, stop other cards)
2) Put a minion in torpor because it doesn't need much blood to majorly interfere with your game (e.g. Lucian, Queen Anne, Leandro)

So we either need to give combat bonuses for doing these two things (probably defences to ensure that they need to be done less often) OR we need to give them incentives to do option 1) but not option 2) (barring certain exceptions).

Removing blood from a vampire WITHOUT sending it to torpor is pretty crucial. It prevents minion taps and villeins as well as reducing the effectiveness of blood dolls and vessel, while keeping table balance (or at least the perception of table balance.)

But there aren't many incentives to do that. There are plenty for dunking them; Fame, Dragonbound, Tensions, Perpetual Care, etc. But they are also not that efficient/effective in the short term.

The only cards I can easily think of that give benefits for removing blood are:
Taste of Vitae and Street Cred. Street Cred would be more useful for decorative purposes. Taste of Vitae is regularly played but isn't any good for defensive purposes unless you can siphon off the blood somehow... like Minion Tap which leaves your guys in a fragile state.

direwolf wrote:

Removing blood from a vampire WITHOUT sending it to torpor is pretty crucial. It prevents minion taps and villeins as well as reducing the effectiveness of blood dolls and vessel, while keeping table balance (or at least the perception of table balance.)

If you put someone to 3-5 blood, you won't have do too much, maybe reducing a villain of some points. And you need a bloody good hand to do 4-7 damage to a vampire usually, especially if your opponent have some basic combat defense (like most deck have basic bleed defense at least).

If you have reducted someone to 0 blood, then it's more or less than having dunked him.

For some strange reason, 9/10 of the time I see shattering crescendo played, it is to put one or two vampire in torpor. Maybe there is a reason, namely that removing blood from vampire is more a fringe benefit, which is bad considering the ungodly amount of card needed to do combat efficiently ?

Honestly, it's because players who think like Izaak, Ankha and Drain seem to want combat to mostly be 'ultra-defensive'. It seems like they would like combat to not be a major component to Tier 1 decks (other than maybe Majesty like crazy every time you get blocked).

Combat is a part of the game. It has always been part of the game. It's a tragedy that it is still not a major component of anything but a limited number of trick decks (such as XYZ Eats the World decks). This is an area of the game that need improvement. It's a shame that First Strike isn't the "first strike" but instead the 3rd Strike. It's not a major part of the game (only a few cards have it) but its fairly useless anyway, you often get better mileage out of additional strikes.

Ankha wrote:

I never said that.

It is a summary of what your position seems to be based on your posts. It is the impression I get from reading your posts.

Combat is a means, not an end.

This is where our opinions are very different. I don't think combat should just be a means. Stealth is a means to make your actions successful. Intercept is a means to stop others actions. Bleeding is an end. Voting is an end. I don't see why combat should relegated only to a means and not to an end.

Why is it a "tragedy"? Why would it be better the other way?
I think that if combat was preponderent, V:TES would look like UFS . There would be no room for vote, bleed stealth or other strategies.

Why would there be nothing but combat? Plenty of cards already ensure that a combat won't occur. And already Combat Defence is far stronger than Combat Offence (S:CE. and already nerf most offensive combat).

I prefer to adjust myself to the game and build deck that wins, rather than daydreaming about combat and try to adjust the game to my desires.

Is there no room for changing the game? You want the status quo to remain? There should be no new paths to win VPs? Combat should not play an affirmative role in that? I think VTES has the capacity to change, and keep changing and combat should have a role in that considering it is one of the three major interactions possible between vampires.