Honest Idea for fixing overly strong master cards!

Mephistopheles wrote:

Conclusion: if you favor the play of Sudden Reversal so much that will lead to a rise of weenie or weenie/mid cap aggressive bleed decks with a bunch of Suddens. An archetype that is already strong. This will have a very negative impact on big caps deck making them disappear from tournament play once more.

I second that.

I like to add that nothing at all prevents you from playing Sudden Reversal without the Louche rule. Okay, you use your master phase action and things. But you can counter one crucial master card, which could be enough for the oust. Strong enough for me.

We in fact have already a Loucherule in our playgroup. Everytime a Villein, Liquidation or Ashur Tablet is played everybody at the table sighs "boring". Which it isn't of course. But playing with only the strongest cards is cowardly at best.

Besides: You made up a nice presentation of your idea, congrats.

I think counter cards like Sudden and DI are very important to the game as they make it unpredictable. This is one of the great things in vtes. How often was the suspense at its peak, when you(or somebody else) lunge for the VP/GW and have to worry about is somebody acts against you with one of those cards.

Matt stated in his report that he held on to his DT, to make a strategic move to win the game, not rescuing someone who was sgetting dangerous for his overall situation.

I like it very much to have those cards, as they make some Decks survivable against other deck. For example, Warghoul Decks without DIs will be at loss.

Just my 2 cents.

Erol wrote:

I think counter cards like Sudden and DI are very important to the game as they make it unpredictable.

If your games are predictable without DI and suddens, then you are doing something wrong.

elotar wrote:

Erol wrote:

I think counter cards like Sudden and DI are very important to the game as they make it unpredictable.

If your games are predictable without DI and suddens, then you are doing something wrong.

They already are even with those. Hey which one of the ten different power decks are you playing? Oooh Anson, never seen that guy before. Hey how about some !Toreador deck? Nah, can't parity shift nor have 50 masters in the deck, that won't work...

First of all thanks for all the replies.

I totally shouldn't have added the 4th option to the poll...

So as for the replies:

Ankha wrote:

Juggernaut1981 wrote:

Any card which is an 'automatic inclusion' or a card which must always be considered during deck building (i.e. played by your prey/pred) should be either overpowered or at least close to overpowered.

This would immediately put the following cards into contention:
Carlton Van Wyk
Pentex Subversion
Giants Blood
I don't really see too many other cards turning up so frequently in people's consideration or decklists.

Carlton Van Wyk is dangerous to include if stolen you can't handle it.
Pentex Subversion is great in many decks to handle that star-wallish-tower vampire that will prevent you from doing anything (for me it's an autoinclude sure, but that's my way of playing).
I don't play Giant's Blood in decks that don't care for it.

But don't forget to add to your list: Blood Doll, Vessel, Govern the Unaligned, Delaying Tactics... Everyone seems to be playing them. They should all cost 2 pool more of course.

This is actually the reason why I went only after master cards. Carlton Wyk is really strong, but his action can be blocked, he can be stolen. On the other hand a Piper cannot be blocked (still stolen though).

Also the idea was not to just attack the most played/auto-include, it was meant to help you stop cards that are really strong (Pentex) or cards that benefit a lot from multiple master phase actions (Ashurs).

If you could play as many out-of-turns as MPAs, I wouldn't mind the latter group of cards. (but that would mess with the balancing of Rotschreck etc)

Also what is really annoying is the Anthelios + multiple MPAs, which renders Sudden more or less useless. (except when canceling GB)
With 3 MPAs, a Sudden barely slows you down.

Also for the notion that is just a trend like any other: I beg to differ.
Akynasa or whatever her name is, was in the wrong group to be played with anson and hutzli. But now with Cybele, Akynasa and Nana Buruku all in compatible groups it changed the playablility of Akynasa by a lot. Also ignoring the Girls decks, I think the Anson+Liquidation/Ashurs is also rather over average.

And here again why MASTER CARDS: They can only be canceled on the spot to prevent their effect. Actions can be blocked (except if you have somebody with MEL and 3+ blood etc) and combat can be avoided in many ways. So only events are as hard to stop, but events effect everybody which is itself the balancing of them.

I drew a lot from my experience here (2.5 years of VTES) and I used Ashurs before their rise to fame and abuse. So when I see that my whole deck is turned unplayable by any deck using ashurs and any additional MPAs (which are very popular, check TWD) and now that we don't have any new editions coming out in the near future, this trend will probably be here to stay.

As a last remark, here is my first idea to give decks like my Ashurs deck a chance to actually survive other ones:

What do you think about this one?