The Importance of Votes [Article]

jamesatzephyr wrote:

tksolway wrote:

And of course, if the titles you have are not compatible with Parity shift, you should probably use some other political action instead. I think that is commonly understood by players of the game, and need not be said directly.

If you only have a "few votes in your crypt" (your words), you will not draw them regularly. Even if they are all compatible, you will not draw them regularly. Since you will not draw them regularly, you will frequently find yourself in a position where - even if you have a Parity Shift in hand - you will not have the title available to call it, even though you're using compatible titles. Because you're not a vote deck, your crypt isn't stuffed with Princes, and you're only drawing them sometimes. So it's even more likely to be a wasted card.

Putting a couple of Princes into your crypt and drawing those Princes are two totally different things. If you do not have a Prince in play, you cannot call Parity Shift - even if you have two Princes in your crypt.

Am I missing something here? The author just said "if the titles you have are not compatible with Parity shift, you should probably use some other political action instead." So, in your scenario of not having a crypt where one will reliably draw a prince, the author is saying another card without a prince requirement should be used.

I think the main idea of the blog post is that political actions, especially Parity Shift, are such good cards that splashing them (along with extra titles in your crypt), while difficult, may prove to be worth it, and the author gives some advice how to pull this off. I don't think it was meant as, like, a tier 1 winning strategy, but rather the author's personal experience of having success with this approach (at least that's how I read the blog post, but the author can correct me if I'm wrong).

I am inclined to agree with Jamesatzephyr, in that putting random vote cards into your deck should not be done, unless you really intend to utilize them. The latter requires titles and/or vote push. There are few things more pathetic in VTES than being a vote deck without the ability to pass your political referendums.

I mention this specifically since several of old precon decks have random vote cards in them along with couple random bishops or whatnot (and those votes tend to be utter garbage like finding the path, hand intervention, year of fortune). If we make new starter decks these need to be gotten rid of, in my opinion.

I wouldn't suggest splashing finding the path or hand intervention. They are not worth the slots. If you are in a Meta where every vote that hits the table needs push to happen, then splashing a vote isn't going to work. If you play in a meta like this then I can understand your stance on my article.

However, In my experience locally and playing on Lackey, that is not the case. There are commonly times when you may have the only votes on the table. Or when there are multiple vote decks, allowing you to seek an ally's favour. In these cases drawing into a KRC or a Parity Shift is beneficial. Even if voting is not your deck's focus.

jamesatzephyr wrote:

You are literally telling people to add some of their own votes so that they can pass them.

I am telling people that they could add a couple votes to a deck to take advantage of cases in which they could pass them. In my experience, it is common for these cases to exist in a vampire game, even when your deck is not a focus vote deck. If you are not comfortable building cards into a deck that you aren't sure you can use, that's perfectly fine. I lean in a different direction. I think there is value to having different options available.

I am indeed telling people to "add some of their own votes". However, I am also telling them they may not be able to pass them if they are just splashing votes like I recommend. Thus, the second part of your statement is false. Supporting Quote:

"If you can’t get the action through, it’s likely because there are vote decks on the table. You can discard a vote card from your hand during a political referendum to add one vote. So, if you can’t play your political action, chances are there will be a vote called shortly in which you can discard that card anyway."

jamesatzephyr wrote:

I think it's quite clear that you are literally, in explicit terms, suggesting that people should add their own votes so that they can pass them. This is because you are telling people to add votes that they can call so that they can pass them.

These two sentences are simply re-wordings of the first sentence, and they all have the same false assertion: “so that they can pass them”. Please see the quote above from the article regarding the likely case in which they would not be passed.

jamesatzephyr wrote:

If you're telling people to put political action cards in their deck purely to discard them for 1 vote, there are mountains of better ways of getting vote defence.

I’m not sure where you get the idea that I am suggesting you put votes in your deck for vote defense. I never state that. I do suggest that you can easily cycle votes in your deck by discarding them during a political action. This is related to the use of some political actions as opportunity cards. The ability to discard them during a political action reduces their opportunity cost since in cases where you would not be able to use your own political action cards, you will likely see other players calling their own votes.

jamesatzephyr wrote:

If you're telling people to put political action cards in their deck for no reason at all, that's dumb.

You’re right, that would be dumb. However, I don’t remember saying that anyone should put Political Actions in their deck “for no reason at all”. If you don’t agree with my reasons, that’s fine. However, that doesn’t mean there is no reason.

jamesatzephyr wrote:

So you're telling people to put political action cards in their deck to try to pass the vote. Which is a waste of resources.

This statement is ambiguous, because it is included in your paragraph about discarding political actions you may be referring to discarding votes in support of a vote, but that’s not supported by the rules. So obviously I’m not suggesting it. Or perhaps you are making a general statement about how you believe my suggestions are tantamount to a “waste of resources”. In one case, there is no basis in the rules, so no point discussing it. In the other, you are welcome to your opinion but the point of the paragraph was to suggest that the opportunity provided by using a couple cards slots outweighs the cost.

jamesatzephyr wrote:

But these are bad opportunity cards.

Now we have something to actually discuss.

jamesatzephyr wrote:

1) You need to pull them. (This is of course true for all opportunity cards.)

You’ve refuted this point yourself. If this is true for all opportunity cards, it is not a valid reason to claim these are bad opportunity cards.

jamesatzephyr wrote:

2) You need to be able to be in a position to call them, where you're explicitly suggesting that people should put in cards that require a Prince when they're not regularly pulling Princes.

So lets try and break this down. Did I call out Parity Shift by name, yes. Am I suggesting this is the only political action that should be splashed, no. Supporting Quote:

“Now, since you’ve got a few votes in your crypt, why not play two or three political actions in your library?”

While I use Parity Shift as the example in the next sentence. My statement suggests that you “play two or three political actions [of your choice].” The “of your choice” is implied. My apologies if this wasn’t clear enough for you.

Obviously, if you don’t have princes or justicars in your deck, don’t play parity shift. I believe the average reader is intelligent enough to make this conclusion without me explicitly laying it out for them.

That being said, it is perfectly reasonable for people that take my advice to alter decks to add princes, as there are quite a few seven cap princes out there. If the deck has three princes in a 12 vampire crypt. I think there are enough princes there to justify splashing a couple parity shifts. If your ideal crypt have some bishops/primogen, or a priscus. Then play KRC. If you end up with some independent votes, play a couple reckless agitation.
As long as you splash the right political actions, then calling them should not be an issue.

jamesatzephyr wrote:

3) You need to be in a position to pass them, which requires either a very low number of votes on the table, or a co-operative player on the table. It's entirely possible that another voter on the table is your predator or prey who has no reason whatsoever to cooperate with you.

It is also entirely possible that another voter on the table will be your grand-predator, and would welcome some pressure on his predator. Or perhaps that cross table ally would be willing to trade support for your vote if you help him pass his.

Obviously this is the core uncertainty here. And this is definitely influenced by the metagame. If you play in a metagame where vote decks are very common, then this likely won’t work for you. However, in my experience, locally and on lackey, this is not the case.

However, the fact that you may not always be in a position to use the card to full effect does not mean it is a “bad” opportunity card. If the card could be reliably used every game for effect, then it is not an opportunity card.

jamesatzephyr wrote:

This isn't like, say, throwing a few Target Vitals into a non-combat deck for the opportunity to screw people up when you're in combat. You can end up in combat from being rushed, from being blocked, from blocking - so it turns up all the time.

You’re right, but Target Vitals is not an opportunity card. It is always useful. As you say, you always have a chance to use it for effect. That means you are not paying an
opportunity cost to include it in your deck. You can be sure when you play Target Vitals in your deck that it will be useful during the game.

jamesatzephyr wrote:

Thing is, if people follow your advice, you will see lots more tables where a few vampires are flipped out with incidental titles. If people follow your advice, your advice means that you will rarely be at a table with few votes in play. And if you're only flipping out one copy of Cailean or whoever, you really need there to be very few votes in play. But you're telling people to generate environments where that is much less likely to occur.

First off, you are assuming that all votes on the table are automatically against whatever vote you call. Remember, whomever you target has at least one other rival, either predator or prey, that has a vested interest in what you are doing. And don’t assume that cross table players are simply going to vote against you either.

Meanwhile, you’re actual argument is essentially: If the meta changes, then your advice will no longer be valid. I can’t disagree with that. No one can. But if the meta changes because of my advice, and then that advice become obsolete, I think that is a problem I wouldn’t mind having .

jamesatzephyr wrote:

If you only have a "few votes in your crypt" (your words), you will not draw them regularly. Even if they are all compatible, you will not draw them regularly. Since you will not draw them regularly, you will frequently find yourself in a position where - even if you have a Parity Shift in hand - you will not have the title available to call it, even though you're using compatible titles. Because you're not a vote deck, your crypt isn't stuffed with Princes, and you're only drawing them sometimes. So it's even more likely to be a wasted card.
Putting a couple of Princes into your crypt and drawing those Princes are two totally different things. If you do not have a Prince in play, you cannot call Parity Shift - even if you have two Princes in your crypt.

I suggest in my article that you should replace three vampires in your crypt. This is assuming that virtually every crypt in existence is twelve vampires. Supporting Quote:

“Changing out three vampires in your crypt like this might raise your crypt average by 0.5, while giving you a lot of options”

With 25% of your crypt having a title, odds are you will have one in your opening draw. One is enough to play the game, as you say, you won’t be competing directly with a single vote deck for votes. But that’s not the point. The article is about using a couple votes effectively in common situations.

Based upon your point #3, it seems that you believe an opportunity card should always be useful. This is false, if a card is always useful, it is not an opportunity card. If you choose to build your decks without any opportunity cards, that's fine. But that doesn't mean it can't be a useful and fruitful strategy to pursue.

An anecdote:

If you play multi-act, you can splash a vote card in for giggles. I had this super fun anarch multi-equip Samedi deck last year I tuned and tuned, and found that a single Conservative Agitation was absolutely useful. I had actions to spare, and four times out of five found some random votes to splash 3 damage to my prey once a game. Someone with votes on the table was almost always willing to give that if I decided to do 2 where they wanted.

And yes, sometimes it was me if the vote lock was on my predator. In those cases I essentially pay 2 pool to deal 3 damage. It was fun.

Oh, and those tables that had no titles? Cycle the card with necromancy shenanigans and pass the vote again!

Of course it wasn't a top tier deck, but that's probably what passed the votes for me: the deck didn't seem that strong, so I got surprise pool damage done. Would do it again.

Of course if you don't multi-act, it doesn't work half as well. I almost always find better use for my few actions if I don't plan on having them spare.

I'm not saying it's A tier strategy, but it for sure got me an oust or two. And it's fun as hell. It's sometimes a merit in itself.