The Importance of Votes [Article]

tksolway wrote:

I don't disagree with your points. There are many different forms of vote push. However, in my experience Vote decks do not play with enough push to push every vote they call. Would you disagree?

I wouldn't. Every Bewitching Oration you slot isn't a Parity Shift or a Forgotten Labyrinth to actually do stuff.

I would disagree with the notion that Wrong and Crosswise wasn't a good card. If you Stealth and Bleed with Korah, Kite and Quentin King III, it kills votes. That is a kind of a crypt that is a text book example of what the OP article is about.

Nice article btw.

tksolway wrote:

I don't disagree with your points. There are many different forms of vote push. However, in my experience Vote decks do not play with enough push to push every vote they call. Would you disagree?

The point is that by amassing standing votes, they typically don't need to vote push every vote they call. Arika + Queen Anne + poitical action card is 7 votes, so you probably don't need to push everything - and since they can probably multi-act, you can probably fairly regularly get the edge if you need it to burn for another vote. Add Mind Rape to taste (steal a titled vampire, swing some contentious votes). Legacy of Pander decks flip out loads of Panders to get a bunch of votes, and then may well trade up some of those to Archbishops by passing Crusades - it's relatively easy to get 8-10 standing votes with that sort of construction. (Not all LoP decks take the Crusade option, but it's a decent one.)

It's somewhat like asking whether a gun deck plays a maneuver on every combat. It often won't need to, because it has the permanent maneuver, so it probably doesn't pack all that many dedicated maneuvers for that purpose. Some, but not many - a bit like a solid political deck having some transient vote push, but not loads. Why clog your hand with too many Flashes when you can get to long range and torporise someone on the first round anyway? Someone wanting to do long range shenanigans without putting in the same level of permanence as the gun deck will probably need more maneuvers.

A deck that happens to flip out a copy of Cailean but really, really wants to pass this Banishment will fairly often not be able to rely on the few votes (3, possibly 4) it has to pass the vote.

I'm not sure what point you are trying to make. My article is not about passing your own political actions with only a couple votes on the table, yet you keep refuting that fact as if it was asserted.

The article is about the value of having votes on the table, and therefore in your deck, without the intention of calling anything but the most opportunistic vote yourself.

I agree it is possible for vote decks to generate dozens of votes in a political action. That fact doesn't detract from the usefulness of having votes on the table yourself, because they won't be generating dozens for every vote they call.

As you said above, and as I pointed out in the article, most vote decks target 6-7 votes with the possibility of more in the late game. Is this more than two, sure. But if each of the other four players have two, suddenly votes are very interesting, and there are opportunities for you to benefit from votes you don't even play, as long as you have votes to bargain with.

Finally, the number of votes that a vote deck can generate is irrelevant to the core argument of the article. The article points out that being the swing votes is one of the most powerful positions you can be in in a vampire game. This assumes there are two vote decks of roughly equal power on the table, not a stretch of reality I think. Being the man in the middle that can push a vote either way gives you praxis over the table.

All of these possible situations lead to the inescapable conclusion that one should play titled vampires where possible, even they don't intend to play political actions. Or more succinctly "The Importance of Votes".

tksolway wrote:

I'm not sure what point you are trying to make. My article is not about passing your own political actions with only a couple votes on the table, yet you keep refuting that fact as if it was asserted.

That's because it was asserted:

If you're not including those political actions so that you can pass them, then why include them at all? It's especially hard to pass them when you can't call them in the first place because, as with Parity Shift, they require a specific title, and you don't reliably include that title in your crypt, so many games you can't even call it, let alone pass it, no matter what your cross-table ally might think.

You omitted a very important part of that paragraph. Here it is in its entirety:

Now, since you’ve got a few votes in your crypt, why not play two or three political actions in your library? A Parity Shift is still a parity shift regardless of how many votes it passes by, and maybe you and your cross table ally can trade support for that action? The great thing about vote cards in your deck, is that they generally don’t clog your hand. 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.

You'll notice that I specifically suggest that it is likely you won't be able to pass these votes through if there are other votes on the table. I suggest you play two to three political actions as opportunity cards, and follow up with the fact they are relatively easy to cycle when they can't be used.

I think it's quite clear that the article is not about passing your own votes. Adding a paragraph to discuss the opportunity cost for a couple political actions doesn't suddenly make it so.

So if the reason behind your whole argument about the number of votes that can be generated is to refute the addition of two to three political actions as opportunity cards. Sure, I agree that it is possible to come up against that, I believe it is also equally possible to be at a table with little to no votes in play. That's why I wouldn't dedicate ten card slots to parity shift, but only two. The possibility you suggest, is also directly referenced in the part of the paragraph you omitted in your quote, so I think it's hard to suggest I didn't think about that possibility.

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.

tksolway wrote:

I think it's quite clear that the article is not about passing your own votes.

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

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

tksolway wrote:

So if the reason behind your whole argument about the number of votes that can be generated is to refute the addition of two to three political actions as opportunity cards.

But these are bad opportunity cards.

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


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. Playing Parity Shift for value when you aren't reliably playing Princes and need the table to support you is massively harder.

tksolway wrote:

Sure, I agree that it is possible to come up against that, I believe it is also equally possible to be at a table with little to no votes in play. That's why I wouldn't dedicate ten card slots to parity shift, but only two.

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.

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.