The 'Metaban' Project - A rolling ban project for VTES Tournaments

What is it?
The goal of the Metaban Project is to create an optional more shifting metagame whilst no new cards are being printed by VTES. It aims to achieve this through a bi-annual rolling list of 20 elected banned Library cards chosen by the VEKN community, which Tournament Organisers may subscribe to or reject for a given tourament, whilst still allowing these tournaments to be sanctioned by VEKN and entered into the TWDA.

Rules
Rules of electing cards for the Metaban Project, and how it would be maintained:
1. The Metaban Project will hold voting one month prior to the start of each bi-annual or annual (TBC by Inner Circle, National Coordinators and VEKN community) 'Season' on the VEKN website.
2. No card may be elected more than one season in a row. The purpose of the Metaban Project is to push further creativity, not to homogenise the game.
3. An 'Exempt' list of 'core' cards chosen by VEKN will be maintained that cannot be elected. This is to minimise 'accidental breakage' of deck archetypes through ill-advised bans.
4. Any Tournament wishing to utilise the Metaban Project must clearly identify itself as such in advance, and to VEKN when providing tournament results.
5. There is by intent no mandatory requirement for TO's to adopt the system - Each region may choose to use it or not on a tournament by tournament baais. However, these tournaments would be VEKN sanctioned, and would be entered into the TWDA.

What next?
Well first, what do you think? Would this be a good thing for the game? Would it 'tide you over' until we can truly expect to see new cards? Is there any abuses or errors you'd like to see corrected but would otherwise support it?

The idea was to keep it quite lightweight and ensure it had no impact on the game once 'in play', so I've intentionally rejected previous suggestions that had any rules impact on the game once it's been started; This purely affects deck construction with a target of pushing people into trying or building new things.

Feedback, comments, thoughts welcomed.

It's worth noting that readers on Sorcerynet #vtes (You all really should join it!) have pointed out there's a lot of similarities and precedents in the Storyline Tournament system, and may be better suited to having a 'separate' TWDA.

I'm personally not convinced, because it sidelines it immediately, and as long as the TWDA indicates these tournaments somehow, I think we'd derive more benefit as a community having them in the same place, but that's just my view. Storylines are generally more restrictive, but I can understand the perspective.

Oh yes, I crave taking idea for Yu_gi-oh! TCG.

Ohlmann wrote:

Oh yes, I crave taking idea for Yu_gi-oh! TCG.

It was more stolen from AGoT and online DOTA/MMO games who have proven that 'stirring the pot' can have beneficial effects, but the (assumed) sarcasm is appreciated.

Shockwave wrote:

Well first, what do you think? Would this be a good thing for the game? Would it 'tide you over' until we can truly expect to see new cards? Is there any abuses or errors you'd like to see corrected but would otherwise support it?

Polling is too uncoordinated to push any game wide conceptual changes. It's most likely that some individual decks would play substitutions, others would become effectively banned but the meta wouldn't be shaken enough to warrant completely different deck archetypes. There's just too much redundancy in the deck pool. For example, banning DEM-bleed would have no implications for a deck builder besides "don't build DEM-bleed". A dozen functionally similar archetypes would remain so you would still play the same general answers.

In the interest of planned, effective and synergistic bannings I suggest that the ban list should be composed by the design team. A popular vote produces an average quality decision at best. Factor in the complete lack of organization and a poll becomes statistically worse than picking a decision maker at random.

One could also impose more constraints on the ban pool to make sure it affects the whole metagame, such as no more than 1 card of any discipline/clan. I am not convinced of the interest of voting either.