Compromise on Villein

Those decks are just another really strong archtype, just like S/B and Lawfirms are. When you design a deck, you have to consider "how do I deal with bleeders" and "how do I deal with voters". I'd add "how do I deal with 3 masterphase bloat monsters?"

Kushiel wrote:

elotar wrote:

(1) Main reason to Villein was an idea to speed the game by penalizing cap&tap in the mid-end game.

Probably not. More likely, Villein was designed as an alternative to Minion Tap in exactly the same way that Vessel was designed as an alternative to Blood Doll, in order to provide players with actual choices during deckbuilding. Unfortunately, Villein failed (mostly) where Vessel succeeded (somewhat).

The question here is "do we need solution for cap&tap?" If we doesn't need it villein can just be errated to "trifle: move 2 blood" or banned with no real hurt 4 the game.

elotar wrote:

The question here is "do we need solution for cap&tap?" If we doesn't need it villein can just be errated to "trifle: move 2 blood" or banned with no real hurt 4 the game.

No, and no.

Your conclusion does not follow from your premise.

Tap&Cap does not need a solution.
Villein was not designed as a solution.

You have not demonstrated any need to change Villein.

Lasombra,

The main question I ask is... What is the purpose of Villein if NOT to hurt the play of Minion Tap? There are a scarce few cards that mention another card specifically (Villein, Vessel spring immediately to mind).

So if Villein is not there to hurt Minion Tap, why does it specifically hurt the play of Minion Tap?

From there I conclude that Villein must have been designed specifically because of issues with Minion Tap. From there I go back to the argument above, that the problem people must have perceived with Minion Tap is things like:

AAA: Tap + Golconda on a big-cap (e.g. Anson, Anneke, Masika, Alexandra)
Cap & Tap: Tap the majority of blood off a minion, refill them with VC and repeat the Tap in the next Master Phase. (gaining an additional 2 pool from the VC).
Refill & Tap: Limited by Clan and/or Bloodline Discpline so unlikely to be a widespread effect that would cause significant numbers of games to time out.
Thaumaturgy & Tap: This is basically a combat or wall-combat deck technique. Historically these have had limited success at regularly winning games but may have contributed to time outs.

Therefore I reach the conclusion that, Villein appears to have been created to specifically counter some effect of Minion Tap and the only plausible target deck-types for that countering are "Cat & Tap" and "AAA". Since there are comparatively few ways to affect "AAA"-type decks other than SR, Wash and The Uncoiling... the easiest target to both AAA and Cap&Tap is the Minion Tap. The result has been to create a card that enhances the AAA deck and restricts Cap&Tap. So, if the card functions as intended... Cap&Tap was the target and if the Cap was changed to limit the blood given (and then limit the blood to be removed by the later Tap) and NOT give pool. It will reduce the pool-bloat of Cap&Tap decks which would meet the objective of stopping games timing out by excessive bloat.

Asking anyone other than L. Scott Johnson what he had in mind when he created Villein is pointless speculation.

In my opinion, Villein was created to enable large vampire decks and to enable greater diversity in master cards. It enables large vampire decks by quickly recapturing invested pool. It provides greater diversity in master card play by being a trifle.

Any other value is superfluous.

Remember, if you want to know why LSJ did something, you can ask him.