Remove vampire contesting

Ohlmann wrote:

As a side note, vampire contest may not be the worse kind of contest for deck building.

Replacing a vampire by somebody with the same kind of ability, either directly or via some card, is usually easy enough, except maybe for Una, Aksynia, and the malkavien that give intercept. On the other hand, finding a replacement for Talbot, Enkil Cog, or Gem of Etrius is very hard or flat out impossible. Unique equipment that give unique ability are pretty commonplace ; it's even why they are unique on the first place.

So,if people are somehow convinced that vampire contesting hurt metagame, then equipement contesting is arguably the same or worse.

(it does not change my opinion that contesting is useful. But if it is changed, better go all the way)

Unique equipment contesting is easier to solve in that you can often try to intercept the equip action or try to deal with the vampire with the equipment. With vampires the contest cannot be interrupted (well, other than something extremely convoluted) and it is often the result of two or even three turns worth of pool investment so usually higher stakes (though admittedly contesting Soul Gem is usually just as high or even higher stakes).

Lemminkäinen wrote:

From a fluff perspective it of course makes perfect sense, but other than that I can't really see a justification for the mechanic.

Anyone think differently?

LSJ and others proposed a number of variations as discussion topics, which would generally - to my mind - be more involving and allow for strategic choices.

For example, things were suggested such as:

- when yielding a contested vampire[0], its current blood total goes to your pool
- when yielding a contested vampire, its current blood total goes to a card in your uncontrolled region (and/or your pool)
- when a vampire is contested, when you burn a pool to carry on the contest, your copy of the vampire becomes temporarily controlled for the rest of your turn, and goes back into contest land at the end of your turn
- you can reveal a vampire that you would contest if you brought it out, get rid of it, and move the stuff over to another uncontrolled vampire

And so on. They seem to preserve the intention of making vampires somewhat slippery to control, without necessarily killing you because you lose the "contest lottery". Given that most contests happen, in my experience, with the more popular, more optimized vampires, it's not necessarily a bad thing to have a small disincentive to playing Arika or Lutz and playing another vampire instead. Star-vampire-only decks may still be screwed, of course.


[0] I'm saying vampire, but it could apply to Imbued. Generally, people weren't massively in favour of (or massively against) it applying to library cards, because they typically take a very different role in a deck. Additionally, where pool is involved, it's a lot less interesting with a library card. But for some of the suggestions, it might be possible to apply them equally to library cards in a fruitful fashion, if desired.

AaronC wrote:

When a player influences a vampire that is already in play (not meaning his own), the copy that is already in play is "banished" - sent face down to the uncontrolled region with any cards and counters still attached.

That is very interesting. It is more or less equivalent to the other ideas summarized by James but it integrates more naturally with the current system since we already have effects that send vampires back to the uncontrolled region.

Removing the attrition component might be a problem though: what stops players from contesting forever? Maybe the controller of the first vampire should burn a pool when his vampire goes back to the uncontrolled region.

Non-existant user wrote:

Maybe the controller of the first vampire should burn a pool when his vampire goes back to the uncontrolled region.

If I read correctly your suggestion, you have actually an advantage to start a contest since you would be the first one to make the other burn a pool.

Also, the two interlocked players are still at a serious disavantadge. AMong the suggestion, the one about putting the blood on another vampire when yielding to to avoid that, since while it's still pretty costly you still have a vampire out.

(of course, it have the problem that it help a lot more "normal" deck than star deck, because star usually don't have two star in the crypt. But it still can be circumvated with deck construction)

Non-existant user wrote:

AaronC wrote:

When a player influences a vampire that is already in play (not meaning his own), the copy that is already in play is "banished" - sent face down to the uncontrolled region with any cards and counters still attached.

That is very interesting. It is more or less equivalent to the other ideas summarized by James but it integrates more naturally with the current system since we already have effects that send vampires back to the uncontrolled region.

Sort of. The more significant problem here is that if you do decide to 'give up' and not bring that vampire back out, the methods for shifting the pool to another vampire are generally very slow. The reason why transferring back was added to the game was to deal with contestation - by giving players a way out once they saw someone else had brought out Democritus - and the reason why LSJ was openly exploring alternatives was because of the perception that it just wasn't working. (This is in part because it appears current players are more focused on fewer vampires, while Jyhad playtesters may have had more varied crypts - but even allowing for that, getting to 10 pool on Arika and changing your mind when someone else brings her out is just really, really horribly slow.)

Tinkering with the rules on use of transfers is tricky, because no-one really wants to make superior Govern an even more efficient form of bloat. Then you start getting into slightly messy "Well, you can use 1 transfer to pull back from a minion who was contested, but 2..." etc. Which might be worthwhile, but is a little annoying.

Removing the attrition component might be a problem though: what stops players from contesting forever? Maybe the controller of the first vampire should burn a pool when his vampire goes back to the uncontrolled region.

burn a pool, drain off during influence at 1 transfer per blood [period]

My personal choice for a change is this:

When a player influences a vampire that is already in play (not meaning his own), the copy that is already in play is "banished" - sent face down to the uncontrolled region with any cards and counters still attached.

This allows scenarios that are more dynamic (and perhaps fairer) than the current contestation mechanic:

- The player with the first copy of the vampire could retrieve the blood counters from his "contested" vampire using transfers. A player in a weaker position could at least recuperate his investment to try for another vampire.

- The two players could trade control of the vampire in question back and forth. In this case they could at least react with the "contested" vampire until the other player's influence phase. The cost of this "contest" would be different than that of the current rules. The vampire in question would have to constantly be influenced to full capacity, and a game of attrition would ensue. This dynamic would be interesting since it would involve finding ways to remove blood from an opponent's vampire so that it is harder and harder for him to "contest" it by influencing it out fully, or indeed, waiting for the player to remove the blood himself.

if you and someone contest a unique, and one of you attempt to bring a third copy of it into play, this third copy decides the control.

perhaps simply 1 pool and 4 transfers, much like merging. INFLUENCE/CONTROL

the player with 2 cards keeps the contested card, the other player is forced to yield, and the winning player's duplicate copy is burned (or to put it another way, as the third card comes into play, both previously contested cards are both burned)

1 blood may be moved from a contested vampire to your pool, per transfer, instead of the usual 1blood per 2 transfers.

pay the cost of contestation from the vampire, not pool
cost of other uniques would be paid from pool

This perhaps greatly improves contest mechanic


there are many ways to improve contestation, are they all good?

SJ and others proposed a number of variations as discussion topics, which would generally - to my mind - be more involving and allow for strategic choices.

For example, things were suggested such as:

- when yielding a contested vampire[0], its current blood total goes to your pool
- when yielding a contested vampire, its current blood total goes to a card in your uncontrolled region (and/or your pool)
- when a vampire is contested, when you burn a pool to carry on the contest, your copy of the vampire becomes temporarily controlled for the rest of your turn, and goes back into contest land at the end of your turn
- you can reveal a vampire that you would contest if you brought it out, get rid of it, and move the stuff over to another uncontrolled vampire

And so on. They seem to preserve the intention of making vampires somewhat slippery to control, without necessarily killing you because you lose the "contest lottery".