Alternative Grouping Rules

So I'm not a fan of the Grouping Rule, as some here may know.

Now, I've heard the reasons for it, and those are fine, but I keep thinking: with the Grouping Rule imposed, Crypt options are limited in such a way that certain deck builds, archetypes, and strategies are completely unavailable (or virtually unavailable).

For example, in the recent Information Highway article talking about the Parliament of Shadows Lasombra Starter:

It has been a very long time since we had the possibility to build this kind of deck! Since G2 in fact. Until now G5 didn’t have enough serious voters. G3 only had a few bishops, an infiltrated Marcus Vitel and an Independent 11-Cap with 2 votes. As for G4, it gave us Prince Giangaleazzo, Archbishops Antón de Concepción and Luca Italicus, and Cardinal Melinda Galbraith, and sure you could try something with them. I did, with Nehemiah, and… Just forget I mentioned it.

The Grouping Rule, with the intention of keeping a player's collection viable, may also further restrict their deck-building options. Imagine a player who has some Jyhad cards (Group 1) quit playing, and only resumed playing during the Keepers of Tradition (Groups 3-4). They have a very limited card-pool, and even more limited Crypt options.

So I want to ask, why aren't their alternative Crypt Grouping Rules? That might shake things up a bit and allow for some new archetypes, strategies, etc. It can also reward players who have large collections, but might not have 5+ copies of a key vampire needed for a particular deck. Examples:

Standard Grouping - Consecutive Pairs:
May use up to two (2) Groups, but they must be consecutive numbers (i.e. Group 1-2 is valid, as is Group 4-5, but Group 3-6 is not.) There is no limit to the number of copies of a vampire in your Crypt.

Extended Grouping - Evens / Odds:
Must use only even or odd Group numbers and must include at least one (1) vampire in your Crypt from each Group (i.e. your options are Groups 1-3-5, or Groups 2-4-6). You can only include up to x4 copies of the same vampire in your Crypt.

Vintage Grouping - All Numbers:
May use any and all Group numbers (i.e. Groups 1 through 6) but can only include x1 copy of a vampire in your Crypt and you must include vampires from all the Groups.

I hope my examples are self-explanatory. Thoughts?

LivesByProxy wrote:

Vintage Grouping - All Numbers:
May use any and all Group numbers (i.e. Groups 1 through 6) but can only include x1 copy of a vampire in your Crypt and you must include vampires from all the Groups.

presence and dominate weenies would have the most bananas field day with this format.

I've said this before on this forum and I'll say it again - as far as balance is concerned, in my opinion, (the original) grouping rule is one of the best things to happen to this game.

I will share my experience, since I was in that position a few years ago. I had stopped seriously collecting cards around the BH era and had only bought a few KMW cards before stopping completely. I had mostly G1-G2 vampires, and not enough G4 cards to make anything G3+ really viable. When I resumed playing regularly in 2014 I found that I could not build any of the decks that everyone else was playing. So, I played the decks I could build - Malk '94, Eurobrujah, Tremere B&B, Tzimisce wall, etc. Because of the grouping rule my decks were still viable, and the cards I was missing to make them optimal were all library cards. I was able to ignore G4+ crypts for a long time. If the grouping rule was not in place none of my crypts would be optimal - I would have had to pursue additional crypt cards from the start.

Removing or significantly changing the Grouping rule would give a bigger advantage to anyone with access to more old cards, it would not benefit new or returning players. Any suboptimal groupings should be balanced out with new cards (available to all players), not by messing with the grouping rule.

@skimflux: I was not suggesting we remove or change the Grouping Rule. I was suggesting there be additional Grouping Rules for the benefit of new and/or returning players. Maybe my suggestions could be tweaked, but the goal was to provide interesting alternative Crypt options, not make existing Crypts suboptimal.

New players would likely have to use Consecutive Pairs, but returning players could opt for Evens / Odds - you could've used your Group 2 and Group 4 vamps together albeit some restriction (like the number of copies of each individual vamp you could include.) Players like myself, who have mostly singles and two-of vampires, could use the All Numbers option. None of these should be strictly better than any other, only different.

@self-biased: Maybe that particular Grouping Rule could be restricted further to include only vampire cards of the same clan. Or any other restriction you would like to see.

Well, you seems to advocate for yourself. I'm OK with that. But I don't see how it improves the game in any way...

If you want to play with houserules (on any subject actually) you can rightly do that if your mates are OK with that...

For example, in Paris, last fall, we did an unsanctioned tournament where there was no grouping rule. It was fun but I don't see how it is necessary to the game to make these games a legit sanctioned tournament...