ReVamping VTES?

LivesByProxy wrote:

So I had an idea that I'd like to get some feedback on.

Hand jam can be a problem for even the best built decks, ...

My proposal is to introduce a new basic action alongside bleed and hunt: the 'plot' action. A vampire can 'plot' at +1 stealth, which results in them tapping in order to put a card on them face-down. That card can later be played from that vampire, following all its normal timing rules and costs. Of course, because the card is no longer in your hand, you draw to replace it.

Hm, there already is a good number of cards that can help your deck in avoiding hand jamming. And as already written above it is part of the game to build decks which don't jam easy.
Otoh your idea is worth to think about. Still I also see the danger of exploitation of this rule by weenie decks.
To weaken the power of this action you could make it an action without stealth or one for vampires with a generation above a certain number i.e. 6+ or s.th.

LivesByProxy wrote:

So I had an idea that I'd like to get some feedback on.

Hand jam can be a problem for even the best built decks, and because the turn structure only has one phase (the end phase) which allows a player to discard a card (1 card) in order to draw a new one. This results in players experiencing hand jam to try to create situations where they can play cards sub-optimally in order to get them out of hand and cycle into something better.

My proposal is to introduce a new basic action alongside bleed and hunt: the 'plot' action. A vampire can 'plot' at +1 stealth, which results in them tapping in order to put a card on them face-down. That card can later be played from that vampire, following all its normal timing rules and costs. Of course, because the card is no longer in your hand, you draw to replace it.

I'm curious to know what you guys and gals think of such a rule.

If you feel 'hand jams' don't have enough solutions, create a card that solves it and post it on the forum. There's a template on how to post card ideas on the forum. New cards are THE means to extend the rule book and sometimes overrule the rulebook.

That said, there already are a lot of vampires and cards that adress the handjam problem, part of the game is finding a right balance of cards that allow you to play the game as uninterrupted as possible, if a deck suffers handjams a lot, it needs more cards that adress that problem, tweakage is in order.

LivesByProxy wrote:

@GreyB: I read your replies on the "What is VTES missing?" post, and I agree with you that a change to the VP system could speed up games and facilitate interesting gameplay. My suggestion, for the record, was: "The Edge grants 1 pool and 1 VP if you have it during your untap phase." This would encourage players to actually bleed one another, and give combat decks the boost they need without necessarily giving them more bleed power (since they could bleed for 1 and then try to hold onto the Edge) and make things interesting for intercept / wall decks. Anyways, I hope to hear your thoughts on the topic.

There's no community willingness to adapt (towards extremes that is), so those kind of post have zero chance of getting a community driven design going, even if just for entertainment value, there will always be many outstanding community members raining on your parade. Any proposed change of the status quo will anger the conservatists.

Also keep in mind there are members of this community that put in a lot of work into fixing this game, through either theorycrafting on the forum or actual handsdown rewording of card texts. After such an investment, any proposal that seriously alters this game will emotionally be in bad taste.

Thank you all for the responses.

Hand jam occurs in 2 flavors in vtes:

The most common is having the wrong cards for your current situation, and often means you play a deck that is a toolboxy one or a wall.

The other is having too much of something compared to other somethings, most often happens in combos (no means for soul gem but lots of ways to burn combo vamp) or, most common of all, playing stealth bleed and choking on stealth because your prey knows he can bloat and jam your hand.

Cards to fix these in order I've listed roughly are:
Heart of cheating, magic of the Smith, dreams of the Sphinx, the art of memory, forschrit library, the summoning, and for stealth bleed, specialization and there are plenty more that exist and aren't used as often.

You just have to play and build and get better at it, it's like in MTG learning how to correctly include proper number if lands, new ppl suck at it and think 30 is right, anybody who knows thier shit will go no higher than 24, typically using between 17 and 21 most often.

Unlike mtg, we don't hand jam as often.

Lönkka wrote:

TwoRazorReign wrote:

I am now the second person in this thread to tell you that, yes, you are one of the people whose posts are in poor taste. Yaddayaddayadda...

Hey! An actual funny post! Nice work!

GreyB wrote:

There's no community willingness to adapt (towards extremes that is), so those kind of post have zero chance of getting a community driven design going, even if just for entertainment value, there will always be many outstanding community members raining on your parade.

As there should be. The ideas given by the original poster are clearly at odds with how most of the other posters here think about the game. The constant raining on the parade makes total sense.

Any proposed change of the status quo will anger the conservatists.

Really? Anger? It's a card game.

Also keep in mind there are members of this community that put in a lot of work into fixing this game, through either theorycrafting on the forum or actual handsdown rewording of card texts. After such an investment, any proposal that seriously alters this game will emotionally be in bad taste.

And to those people, I would say that these ideas are coming from an anonymous poster on an internet forum and have very little chance of gaining traction with whoever controls the game. Emotion should not enter into any of the discussions happening here.

Anyway, back to the topic of hand jam in VTES: This game has a card called Heart of Nizchetus. Any discussion of hand jam being a problem in this game ends right there, at least for me.