Open letter to Black Chantry Productions

Khormag wrote:

I can see that you are reading a bit too much between the lines. I literally say in the text, that the best decks are always part of the meta. Also looking at TWDA results and saying there is no meta shifts is not totally valid.

I don't know about other areas, as I mainly play in Finland, besides the yearly ECs. From what I've seen, there is definitely a meta game that shifts occasionally in VTES. Lets look at the situation where the game was in my area during years 2017-2018. Meta here was dominated by ally decks, and the whole thing culminated in the release of Emerald Legionnaires. Obviously the deck was dominating the meta during that time, but this is totally normal, as new things enter the game, they are usually more heavily represented than they are going to be when the meta adjusts, but you have to realize that Allies were dominating the meta even before that, in the form of Nephandus decks. This lead to a situation where decks started to prepare to face allies, and started to play more ways of dealing with them. Like playing a lot of Entrancements or other effects that steal or negate allies. During this period, a huge influx of of Animalism decks emerged into the tournament scene, mainly lead by the decks build around Nana Buruku, with heavy Anarch modules. This lead to a meta shifting towards combat decks, which lead into Animalism kind of dropping out of the meta, because it doesn't really handle other combat decks that well. Also decks like Unnamed and different variations of Girls archetype started to become more prominent part of the meta, because of cards like Unleash Hell's Fury being very effective in defending against combat and the MMPA Strategy being extremely resilient.

However, there was always decks that could win, and won tournaments, that were not considered part of the "meta" or didn't really follow the general direction of other decks. And what comes to the star vampire decks, I think they will always be heavily represented, as from what I see and hear, they are kind of an "fan favourite" type of decks.

On the game being an Rock Paper Scissors game, that is something I agree on, and something I even said on the text. Although maybe a bit confusingly, I just said that the game doesn't feel too Rock Paper Scissors, but I didn't mean that the game isn't just that. It's just not as set in stone as in some other games, where the competitive options are way more limited. Having played a lot of games competitively, there are games like "Warmachines and Hordes" and "Guildball" that I quit because they were too much of Rock Paper Scissors, which made the games very heavy and straining to play in tournaments. Obviously those games are not card games at all, but it doesn't make it less true, that the games felt super boring and repetitive, because you could only play "the Rock, the Paper or the Scissors". Something that is not as apparent in V:TES.

Saying that contest rules don't affect competitive choices is both true and not true. It is true that it doesn't affect the power level of decks at all. What it does affect, is the choice that you are making when deciding what to play in a tournament. Which indirectly affects the meta game, and the "power level" of some decks. I honestly think that Unnamed based bleed decks are probably the best, or one of the best decks in the game at the moment. But you won't see half of the tournament scene playing those decks, because of the current contest rules. Which is a good thing for the game.

I understand the problems with new player experience, and problems with limited collections. I have been there myself, and I play in area where there is many new players. The situation is not easy one to solve, but it will get better, once there is more products to choose from, and it is totally OK to play with some house rules that make it easier for new players to learn the game. Although I do agree on that the contesting of crypt cards might need some tuning, as I said in the text. But as I said, I don't think that this is the right time for it yet.

I agree but this rotation of the meta happened because of paper, rock , scissors design and it will happen regardless of contest rule

BTW i also played BG nad agree 100 % For W&H the problem for me is amount of knowledge you have to have to play efficiently.

Its true that the rotation is mainly caused by the rock, paper, scissors design, and changing contest rules won't change that, but what it will change is the meta, as you will be less punished from playing the actual best deck. Which might lead into a situation where the rotation becomes stale, and the diversity of current meta game suffers, becoming very focused on certain decks. Which is what I've been saying the whole time.

Contest rules also prevents a deck from becoming too big part of the meta to a degree, as you always have to consider it as an risk, when going to a tournament. Without it, we might see similar problems arise, than what has happened in other games before. Like in MTG or W&H, where there has been times when one deck or army list was 70-80% of the meta. Even if the meta is focused on similar style of decks, the current rules make it so that there are options to build the certain deck archetype, and you just don't see the exact copy of the best "stealth bleed" all the time. Obviously this can be seen as negative too, as it does limit some decisions more than others as it is not always smart to play your favourite vampires, but it also gives more options and decisions,as you are not only limited to the "best" option.

Obviously the proposed rules change still punishes you for contesting. So it is possible that the impact to the meta game will not be as huge as I fear it might be. But this is why we need to properly test the rule. And which is why I wrote this post in the first place!

Khormag wrote:

Obviously the proposed rules change still punishes you for contesting. So it is possible that the impact to the meta game will not be as huge as I fear it might be. But this is why we need to properly test the rule. And which is why I wrote this post in the first place!

Ke. wrote:

So far when testing the net effect of the rule change has been positive. In one game it meant that two players had a game even though their star was contested. In another a support vamp was contested with no negative impact to the game.

The pool damage per turn combined with vampires that can act also speeds up the game. This along with allowing all 5 players to play is just better overall.

I hope that eventually this becomes the standard rule.

You can see from Ke.'s report that the contestation had no effect. Literally both players played undisturbed (I read the report on Facebook). They played like they had an infernal vampire, and they compensated the pool loss unhindered with hunting grounds or similar. This is an extremely big change that will have a big impact on the game, so the fear is justified.

Yes, to be able to draw any sort of conclusion I believe you would have to use the rule for quite many big tournaments to be able to draw any conclusion on the effect.