ReVamping VTES?

Regarding the handsjams, there is already a master card that works a bit like Livesbyproxy would want to: Storage Annex.

ReverendRevolver mentioned quiet a few cards but some other are Infernal Pursuit (play a couple in combat and you should have a totally new hand), Distraction, Barrens.

And basically anything that increases your handsize.
Guillaume Giovanni is a favorite of mine. I think I've had hand sizes of 14 or more with him. Which actually is a bit too much as it slows your game down and makes you miss what the others play...

Hey, I'm back by unpopular demand, because similar to how the community refuses to let VTES die, I refuse to let this thread die.

REVAMPING VTES (WITHOUT DUMBING IT DOWN), PART 3

So in Part 1 I spoke about how I think the card types could be reduced and condensed, since many are similar in function, if different in the details. In Part 2 I talked about some rules minutiae that I think can be removed or tweaked without harming the game.

WEIRD DESIGNS
In this part, I'll be talking about some designs and mechanics that I find odd. For me, these are cards or elements of the game where there is a flavor disconnect - a separation between what the card appears to be about, or what I think it should do given its art and name and related context, and what the card actually does.

HUNT & HUNTING GROUNDS
I find it strange that there are these cards, the Hunting Grounds which are unique locations, and yet these cards have nothing to do with the gameplay mechanic of Hunting. It would make much more sense, IMO, if they gave vampires an additional blood when a Hunt was successful, or some other cool effect. The entire design of the Hunting Grounds feels like a missed opportunity, and the Hunt mechanic is largely underused.

DOMINATE
Could not be more appropriately named. Dominate is the best bleed discipline in the game, but oddly enough, also happens to have some of the best cards AGAINST bleed - Deflection, Redirection, and Murmur of the False Will. I think this was, in part, due to Richard Garfield thinking it would be good to make one discipline really, really good? (He did the same thing with Blue in Alpha MTG. They got all the best cards for some reason...) And the later designers wanted to cement this fact, which I find strange indeed. You may notice that Garfield was no longer designing MTG cards after the first couple of sets, only occasionally joining in years later as a generalist guest designer (like he did with the set 'Ravnica' in ~2004.) The overall design of Magic has veered away from his initial designs, but it looks like VTES has remained true to him.

NERFS & CARD ERRATA
Once upon a time, there was a card named Army of Rats. This card was very neat and offered Animalism a win condition that wasn't based on combat cards like Aid From Bats or Carrion Crows, nor direct bleed bonuses like Deep Song or Computer Hacking. Army of Rats was subsequently nerfed by WotC, and reprinted to be strictly worse. I don't understand why. Was it over-powered? When this game supports plenty of (what you could call) degenerate strategies like Weenie Computer Hacking or Malk' 94 Bleed that can end the game just as quickly, how could it be considered over-powered? Why were cards like Fame and Fifth Tradition: Hospitality hit with the nerf hammer while cards like Govern The Unaligned (arguably the best Bleed card in the game since it can double as a crypt accelerator) and Voter Captivation (refill your big-caps AND bloat at the same time) are left untouched? It just seems like schizophrenic design.

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What do you have to say about all of this? I look forward to your responses. Join me next time when I talk about why I think Grouping is counter-productive *gasp!*

@ Hunting Ground design: The design actually makes a lot of sense. With favorable terrain the vampires do not have to go through the trouble of taking an action to hunt - they can feed easily and continue with other, more pressing actions. I do agree with hunt actions being underused, even though we do have some special hunt actions. I'm still sad that Loki's Gift does not steal blood as a hunt, but just burns one from a specific vampire; it could be used for cool combo effects to make a Sabbat or Anarch, Protean based steal-blood archetype if it did. We do have special hunt actions, but arguably the design space could be further investigated.

@ Dominate: Not sure what to say here. Garfield's best dominate cards are still the best dominate cards. Govern, Deflection and Obedience were all printed in Jyhad, weren't they? They're all the powerhouses of dominate, and none better have been printed. So I'm not sure if your argument really holds true here.

@ Army of Rats: The difference is that big effects for big cap vampires have been adjusted (Hospitality), while Army of Rats could be abused by weenies. Weenie ANI is super strong even in today's meta. There's really no reason to look back at their balance revisions. Tournament winning deck archives serves as proof for this.

If you do require a more thorough reasoning, I can't tell you why Army of Rats was errated per se, but I'll have you know that through Antediluvian Awakening and Anarch Revolt weenie ANI has plenty of table damage even without spammable rats. At least this is the situation today.

Weenie Comp Hack and Malk '94 are not degenerate strategies. They are abusive and strong, but ultimately very fragile and win tables less often than they take a first random VP. If players are not prepared to deal with S&B, they are not prepared for the game. There're plenty of ways to deal with S&B, and it is a strategy this game needs. It speeds up games. It's all good.

Voter Cap is fine. It enables PRE voters, and makes them strong. Once again, if players are not prepared with vote defense and deliberately give free, filling vote caps, you're playing it wrong. It's an interactive card. It's fine.

I'm not really sure what you would suggest with these cards. The game is filled with powerful, big effects, and they are roughly as competitive as more grindy strategies. Balancing is a complex effort. VTES has had excellent history with bans and erratas, and doesn't have a restricted list even after all these years. The only other major game I know that still doesn't do cycling for balance is Yu-Gi-Oh. They can still use the cards from alpha or whatever in competitive play. They are however restricted by a vast and complex restricted list, as far as I know.

Discussion on a game on a purely theoretical perspective should never touch singular cards. Theory never gives enough leeway to judge cards as played and their relative power. Cards designed for big caps should enable big effects for said big caps. Cards designed for weenie strategies should have their power level adjusted accordingly. Picking singular examples from a card pool of thousands of cards, with all their interactions, is not productive at all I think.

I was not clear with my overarching point perhaps. Some very odd designs choices were made with VTES. These are just the ones that I find particularly strange. To elaborate:

@Hunting Grounds: I agree that the design space around the Hunt action could be further explored, and that having the flavor of hunting grounds and how they operate as they do can be justified by your explaination... but I still think it is a missed opportunity.

@Dominate: My point here was that the best Bleed discipline is also the best discipline against Bleed defense, which I find strange. They did somewhat correct this with cards like Telepathic Misdirection for Auspex but it is a weird design choice IMO.

@Army of Rats: My point here was that Army of Rats, Fame, and 5th Tradition: Hospitality (among others I'm sure) were all deemed too strong or abusive for one reason or another, and hence saw serious errata, but that other really, really strong cards (like Govern, Deflection, Heart of Nietzsche, etc.) are deemed perfectly fine? That's odd. Also, the majority of the responses I've gotten that defend some aspect of VTES have made the claim that 'You would adapt to the table situation' implying that if a player was spamming Army of Rats, all the players would turn on him (adapting to the table situation, as it were.) That this was for some reason not the response at the time, and now, is also strange.

This wasn't about specific cards, it was more or less about some specific designs, which all of my posts have been about really. The design to have 7+ card types, to use symbols for the types instead of words, to have 20+ clans and bloodlines, rules minutiae that exist even though the number of cards that interact with those rules is only slightly greater than 0, disciplines that aren't disciplines, the expansion symbol being larger than the clan symbol or disciplines, the flavor of some of the cards, some disciplines being tremendously powerful while others are lackluster, the inclusion of ultra-specific combat cards meant to counter other specific combat cards, the timing of the combat windows, grouping, is ALL very strange.

I'm not a designer, but like everyone else I've got my own aesthetic tastes and preferences, and as much as VTES appeals to me, I don't find it elegant. It's design reminds me less of a beautiful Toreador and more of a WarGhoul.

Thank you for the response though.

LivesByProxy wrote:

HUNT & HUNTING GROUNDS
I find it strange that there are these cards, the Hunting Grounds which are unique locations, and yet these cards have nothing to do with the gameplay mechanic of Hunting. It would make much more sense, IMO, if they gave vampires an additional blood when a Hunt was successful, or some other cool effect. The entire design of the Hunting Grounds feels like a missed opportunity, and the Hunt mechanic is largely underused.

There's already plenty of other cards that give >1 blood for the default hunt action (Aaron's Feeding Razor, Hungry Coyote, Harvest Rites, Hospital Food, Festival dello Estinto, Abactor, etc.). Changing hunting grounds to do this would be redundant. Also, those listed cards get played less than hunting grounds, because it is a weaker effect. You'd essentially be unintentionally nerfing hunting grounds. Master cards need to have a very useful effect, or they will be seldom played.

DOMINATE
Could not be more appropriately named. Dominate is the best bleed discipline in the game, but oddly enough, also happens to have some of the best cards AGAINST bleed - Deflection, Redirection, and Murmur of the False Will. I think this was, in part, due to Richard Garfield thinking it would be good to make one discipline really, really good? (He did the same thing with Blue in Alpha MTG. They got all the best cards for some reason...) And the later designers wanted to cement this fact, which I find strange indeed. You may notice that Garfield was no longer designing MTG cards after the first couple of sets, only occasionally joining in years later as a generalist guest designer (like he did with the set 'Ravnica' in ~2004.) The overall design of Magic has veered away from his initial designs, but it looks like VTES has remained true to him.

I'm going to pick on your writing here. You say that dominate is the best discipline in the game, but then don't give any ideas on how to fix this issue. You instead try to get in the mind of the original designer. I'm not sure what your point is about dominate. I think your point is that other games have evolved away from a single aspect of a game being super powerful, and VTES should do the same. The prevailing thought is that sticking to the original design with dominate being so powerful helps the game more than it hurts it. Anybody can buy a box of Jyhad and play at a high level because of dominate. Also, people who bought a box of Jyhad in 1995 can still play the game today at a high level because of dominate. For a game with a relatively small player base, this is a strength, not a weakness.

NERFS & CARD ERRATA
Once upon a time, there was a card named Army of Rats. This card was very neat and offered Animalism a win condition that wasn't based on combat cards like Aid From Bats or Carrion Crows, nor direct bleed bonuses like Deep Song or Computer Hacking. Army of Rats was subsequently nerfed by WotC, and reprinted to be strictly worse. I don't understand why. Was it over-powered? When this game supports plenty of (what you could call) degenerate strategies like Weenie Computer Hacking or Malk' 94 Bleed that can end the game just as quickly, how could it be considered over-powered? Why were cards like Fame and Fifth Tradition: Hospitality hit with the nerf hammer while cards like Govern The Unaligned (arguably the best Bleed card in the game since it can double as a crypt accelerator) and Voter Captivation (refill your big-caps AND bloat at the same time) are left untouched? It just seems like schizophrenic design.

Army of Rats changed because it was determined very long ago that the original intended design was for Army of Rats to burn 1 pool per turn, no matter how many Army of Rats are in play. The original card text was the issue because it did not clearly explain the intended effect. This is the same story for Fame; the updated text follows more closely to the original intended design.

TwoRazorReign wrote:

Changing hunting grounds to do this would be redundant. Also, those listed cards get played less than hunting grounds, because it is a weaker effect. You'd essentially be unintentionally nerfing hunting grounds.

My point was that this was what Hunting Grounds should've been doing all along, and that they could also afford to grant some other cool effect. If not even more blood due to clan bonus (i.e. "this vampire gets 1 additional blood from a successful Hunt, and another additional 1 blood if they are Gangrel"), then some other effect like "Untap and gain +1 stealth even if it is not yet needed" or "+1 bleed" or "+1 hand size until end of turn." It seems like there is a lot of design space beyond "get 1 bonus blood" that all the Hunting Grounds currently follow and all those cards you listed basically follow.

You say that dominate is the best discipline in the game, but then don't give any ideas on how to fix this issue.

Why would I offer more ideas on how to fix Dominate when 99% of the ideas I've put forth have been shot-down as being unnecessary.

I'm not sure what your point is about dominate. I think your point is that other games have evolved away from a single aspect of a game being super powerful, and VTES should do the same. The prevailing thought is that sticking to the original design with dominate being so powerful helps the game more than it hurts it.

My point was that making the best discipline for Bleeding in the game simultaneously the best defense AGAINST Bleed is a very strange design decision. It would be on par with making Potence the best combat damage discipline and then giving it all of, or most, or the best Strike: Combat Ends cards. It's weird. It would be like making the Zerg from StarCraft not only the cheapest units that could rush-swarm your opponent, but also giving them the best area-denial units. Or if you prefer, it would be like giving the color Green in MTG the best mana ramp spells AND land destruction. Do I need to go on? It's so bizarre. Dominate being the best Bleed discipline is cool, and players need Bleed bonuses since Bleeding is the primary form of ousting. Bounces are also cool, but for Dominate to get BOTH is beyond my comprehension. It would be like if Blue magic got the best card draw, counter-spells, mana ramp, removal, and direct damage..... OH WAIT, Blue did have all of those things in early MTG, which is why it was the best color of Magic.

Anybody can buy a box of Jyhad and play at a high level because of dominate. Also, people who bought a box of Jyhad in 1995 can still play the game today at a high level because of dominate. For a game with a relatively small player base, this is a strength, not a weakness.

And that's fine, I think it is a great thing that a box of Jyhad boosters costs 100$ and not the $200K that a booster box of MTG Alpha costs. I think making the cards accessible and not over-powered or broken is key to having a long running healthy card-game. I don't think Dominate is broken or over-powered, I just think it having the best defense and offense regarding Bleeding is overkill, and that the game would benefit if Bleed was more common in other disciplines and Dominate was the 'tap down' or 'control their minions' discipline.

Army of Rats changed because it was determined very long ago that the original intended design was for Army of Rats to burn 1 pool per turn, no matter how many Army of Rats are in play. The original card text was the issue because it did not clearly explain the intended effect. This is the same story for Fame; the updated text follows more closely to the original intended design.

Fair enough. Still, it is a shame that such a cool card is basically written not to be a win condition.