Submission - Pentex Intrusion (Villein-hoser master)

Suggestion :

Giant's blood
Event (Inconnu), Transient
Forfeit your next master phase. burn this card and choose a ready vampire : this vampire gains enough blood from the blood bank to reach full capacity.

Ankha wrote:

Give me an example of a vampire that wouldn't be played if Villein was banned.

My guess would be Rafael de Corazon. He's not good enough for a star 11-cap, and is playable because he really cost more along the line of 3-5 pool.

Ankha wrote:

Furthermore, the pool gain from Voter Captivation during a game is far lower than the pool gain provided by Villeins.

The 2 pools from Voter captivation is indeed not the problem. The 8 other pool gained with a subsequent villein / Minion tap may be.

But then again, I do believe it's inaccurate to say that blood creation is the main problem that lead to people having 3+ 10cap or 11 cap on table. It's a combination of three things :
* pool cycling with Villein and Minion tap
* blood creation, via Lillith, Giant Blood, and Voter cap, that give additional inventive to the whole pool cycling
* Zillah Valley and Information Highway that authorize to use this pool to put other 11 cap in play in due time

Blood creation is not the main problem because a Zillah Valley and a Villein to 2 will still net you an Inner Circle for about 5 pool (maybe less). It just make thing worse.

I don't think it's that much true. Could you give any example?
Personally, I play decks with 10/11 cap star vampire with no Villein with them that win tournaments or make the finals.
Give me an example of a vampire that wouldn't be played if Villein was banned.

Surely crypts would evolve and less efficient vampires or those that enable cornercase master-requiring strategies would disappear, but nothing would be unplayable.

So I can't give an example because what would happen is that people would just flock back to Minion Tap, with the consequence that master variety goes down the drain again. Just as in the old day.

The last 3 years I've played more different masters than I ever did in the 15 years before that, simply because I can create my poolbuffer with trifle masters instead of being forced to use half of my MPA's on Minion Taps. The issue we are facing is that in a lot of circumstances the bonus master phase is used to simply undo the effects of the Villein instead of playing a different, exciting master.

The reality is, if you play anything bigger than, say, 6 caps, you NEED some way to get the pool back off of your vampires because otherwise you are just going to get ousted by dementation or Vignes. It's simply not optional and will never be as long as 2-caps can bleed for 5.

This can be done (and was done for years) by using Minion Tap, with extremely limited master selection as a result, leading to fairly boring deckbuilding in the green card section. Then Villein came along and dozens of master cards that were always nice and useful suddenly got a slot because people had master phases to spare! Rejoice!

Then some dumbfuck decided to make Lilith's Blessing tournament legal with the stupid state of VTES we have now as a result. Giant's Blood has always been a stupid card, but it was reasonable in the time where master slots were important for decks with fatties. Now it's just a lottery who gets to play with 10 extra pool. It's retarded, cannot be meta'd against and is *entirely* luck based. Once per game makes it even MORE retarded, not more balanced.

I wholehearteldly agree with the fact that anything over cap 6 need seem blood recoup, because a 11-cap action will not on the long run be worth 2 or 3 small cap action.

Izaak wrote:

Then some dumbfuck decided to make Lilith's Blessing tournament legal with the stupid state of VTES we have now as a result. Giant's Blood has always been a stupid card, but it was reasonable in the time where master slots were important for decks with fatties. Now it's just a lottery who gets to play with 10 extra pool. It's retarded, cannot be meta'd against and is *entirely* luck based. Once per game makes it even MORE retarded, not more balanced.

I believe you put too much emphasis on Lillith Blessing and Giant Blood. I have seen girls deck work pretty well without Lillith neither Giant Blood.

Villein is significantly more the problem than what you believe, because using villein + Zillah Valley to churn out multiple inner circle (or other big cap, of course) need a lot less MPA, so it can be faster and more consistent. It also make MPA-giving vampire that much less important to do that.

The conundrum is, making a card that prevent people from using Villein to put 30+ or 40+ worth of transfer on the table, while not affecting people that just want to put, say, a Priscus and Armin on the table, or do a Fakir wall deck, or other thing like that.

Which of course, lead to the fact that the difference between the "good" villein user and the "bad" villein abuser is not all that clear.

I'm still inclined to say that Lilith's Blessing is a viable card for general play, just as soon as it is made Unique.