Another (NEW) suggestion to handle constest

I'm sorry, but I'm not sure I understand you. The main reason why people complain, and I see that as the only valid reason, is that "random factor". Why punish players with 2 pool if it's really random?

May you give me an example like I gave you with Enkidu? Let's say two players play Parliament of Shadows precons:

2 Antón de Concepción
2 Carolina Vález
2 Charles Delmare
2 Lord Leopold Valdemar
2 Luca Italicus
2 Percival

Okay, it's the first round of the tournament, and no one knows what deck everyone else is playing. As usual everyone has kept it secret to maintain the element of surprise.

Let's say that the players on the 3rd and 5th seat at this table (let's call them players C and E, and the others are A, B and D according to turn order) are both playing the Den of Fiends precon.

Crypt:
1 Dr. Morrow, The Skindoctor (5 AUS VIS for)
1 Duality (6 AUS VIS ani)
1 Ilias cel Frumos (3 vis aus)
2 Ludmijla Rakoczy (7 ANI AUS VIS)
1 Yuri Kerezenski (5 ANI aus for vis)
2 Lady Vadislava (9 ANI AUS DOM VIS nec)
2 Rurik Rakoczy (6 ANI VIS aus)
2 America Johnson (4 AUS vis)

Player E's starting 4 uncontrolled vampires are as follows:
Yuri Kerezenski (5 ANI aus for vis)
Ilias cel Frumos (3 vis aus)
Ludmijla Rakoczy (7 ANI AUS VIS)
America Johnson (4 AUS vis)

On player E's first turn, he uses 4 transfers to move blood to Ludmija, because she is the highest cap vampire in his starting 4. He currently plans to influence out Ludmija first, then Yuri. He doesn't know that player C has already placed 3 counters on his own copy of Ludmija.

On the second turn, player C's Ludmija comes out. Player E sees this and at the moment decides he will not contest, and instead redistribute counters to bring out both Yuri and Ilias on his coming turn.

However, on player D's second turn, he reveals that he is playing a weenie dominate deck. He used his previous turn's 4 transfers to put 2 counters each on two 3-caps, and on this turn, he brings out those two 3-caps and another 2-cap.

Player E sees this and can now change his plan. He knows that he should not go ahead with influencing Yuri first since he needs a vampire with superior auspex to be able to defend with superior Eyes of Argus and Telepathic Misdirection. On his second turn, he removes his copy of Ludmija from the game and redistributes the 4 counters to America, uses 3 transfers to bring out Ilias, and leaves 1 counter on Yuri so he can come out on the next turn instead.

The payment of 2 pool is not punishment. It is a COST for a powerful ability. Player E has already seen every other player on the table complete their second turn, and so he can now decide how to redistribute the blood counters from Ludmija in a way that takes advantage of that information. This is incredibly advantageous, and he should not be able to do this for free.

In the same way that players shouldn't be punished for dumb luck, players should also not be powerfully rewarded for dumb luck.

Thanks for this great example!

From my and my playgroup's experience, whenever there was a contest (again, I have to say that contesting extremely rarely happened) at the beginning of a casual game, if we allowed the contest to be avoided, it was always a fixing and patching the game, and it almost never happened that the player no. 2 was fully satisfied, and surely never in benefit.

But your statement is in place, and your example shows it. Yet it seems to me to be a more common case like my "Enkidu example", and that it is more important to correct that part.

However, examples like yours need to be tested in a deliberate environment to see how often a player actually makes a benefit in a situation like this. Playtest point one - checked.

TLDR but obviously only intelligent suggestion about contest rule change would be to also change library cards contest to the same wording for the sake of clarity (and because we don't need to contest Pentex any more).

elotar wrote:

TLDR but obviously only intelligent suggestion about contest rule change would be to also change library cards contest to the same wording for the sake of clarity (and because we don't need to contest Pentex any more).

If you have not read the whole topic, please do not throw in offtopic and incomplete suggestions or suggestions contrary to the existing "unique card" rule. This topic has nothing in common with the current test rule offered by BCP. Please read the whole topic if you want to help in the conversation.

Palamedes wrote:

Please read the whole topic if you want to help in the conversation.

I've read your first post (half of it) and it's clearly obvious that nothing useful can be said about it, so no point in wasting time further. But somebody who still cares about the topic maybe interested in the right way to solve the contest problem in VtES.