New set in 2012

Izaak wrote:

Also, this has nothing *whatsoever* do with CCP/WW and copyrights and all that legality shizzles. CCP *cannot ever* sue me for making something that looks like their stuff FOR MY PERSONAL USE. Yes, they can (if they bother) sue me when I start selling it on e-bay. Which I will not.

The VEKN cannot rule ebay, it can only rule tournaments. Although technically the VEKN or the individual authors/artists would also have a copyright on the cards, I don't think any of them is willing to go into the hassle of enforcing it.

Apparently everyone else is fine with a game that has shitty standards, is insanely easy to cheat in and has more counterintuitive rulings than any game ever made.

As you said, it is not worse than what we have had for 16 years since the Jyhad/Vampire backs. Why get pissed off now?

it can only rule tournaments

Precisely. Therefore it makes ZERO sense to enforce a rule at a tournament that has ZERO effect on e-bay.

As you said, it is not worse than what we have had for 16 years since the Jyhad/Vampire backs. Why get pissed off now?

It pissed me off forever, but there was no reasoning with LSJ once he had his mind set on something. I had the vain hope a new rulemonger would mean a fresh wind of change, but it seems we just got a French incarnation of Scott.

Izaak wrote:

I can with minimal effort create copies of VTES cards that are impossible to distinguish from actual cards. Especially when sleeved. Therefore this would actually be legal in the sense that you have no way to check.

I understand your pov. Still it would be great not to make Pascal or VEKN responsible of the fact they can only allow paper-prints. It is them who get fined if some legal issues arise, not us.

I want to confirm what Izaak said about cards with a piece of paper put in the same sleeve being distinguishable. Indeed we tried, in the previous period when VtES was hard (or nearly impossible over here) to obtain, to use paper copies, exactly the way you want us to with the new set, to be able to test decent decks.

Please, go and try - build a deck, put all your cards in sleeves, then add a paper card in some sleeves, together with the original (five or something). Then shuffle and stack the deck. You'll be able to tell which cards have an extra piece of paper in front of them. Ofcourse you will have to look close, and some of you will say that during heated tournament play, no-one will really bother, but that doesn't change the fact that you still can distinguish the cards.

This, ofcourse, can also be because of the quality (thickness, sturdiness, flexibility) of the used sleeves, I know that. But will that mean there will be a ruling for those too?

I see some good points in arguments from both 'sides', but this whole situation obviously has lots of flaws, not making the game more fun to play.

To me, it even looks like this new set will split the community, since I saw more than one person state they would allow 'fancy-printed new set cards' on their tournaments anyway - will they all be excluded from the VEKN? All because a future company might pick up the game again and find out some of us have printed a fan-based set on card-stock (and if indeed they take some weird kind of offense on that...)?

Ouch... then maybe I am not in favor of a new set at all anymore.

You make it sound like it is easier to cheat with proxies. I don't think it is the case: it is already trivial to cheat with sleeved decks. Just pick 2 different brands of black sleeves or mix old and new sleeves of the same brand.

Ofcourse you will have to look close

It is enough to make it much better than the Jyhad/Vampire backs that catch the eye without having to pay any special attention.

That being said, I am still not convinced that people selling high quality print on ebay are a threat either. Since those cards will have no rarity, one cannot sell at more than paper price, even on ebay where people buy overpriced crap all the time. If you want to make money printing cards, don't print the pdf that everyone has access to, print Enkil Cog! It might be enough to release the pdf for non-commercial use only and wait to see if the sale of cards becomes a problem. The pdf sets should also have their own logo so they can easily be banned from tournaments (and hopefully replaced by official prints) if the game gets back in production.