Honest Idea for fixing overly strong master cards!

With an unfocused deck you have no sure-fire tactic option. You cannot say to yourself "ok, I'm gonna oust this player/stay alive until time/utterly destroy this players minions". You can opt to do a number of these half-way, but that is subject to your card drawing. You simply leave yourself in the hands of luck. If everyone does this you will hover around a 20% win chance in any given game (25% in on a 4-player table).

Additionally when all players are playing toothless decks there is no point in deals and table interaction because every deck has close to 50% chance of winning the duel against every other deck.

There'd also be no point in doing a educated guess and choosing a deck that is appropriate to the given tournament's expected meta game, a skill that is heavily undervalued.

We'd all be engaged in an extremely complex 5-sided dice.

While parts of this oversimplified, this extreme serves as an illustration of where the game is gravitating towards. If all of us made decks without an overarching game-long strategy we'd be moving towards a game where skill and table talk matters less.

Xaddam wrote:

With an unfocused deck you have no sure-fire tactic option. You cannot say to yourself "ok, I'm gonna oust this player/stay alive until time/utterly destroy this players minions". You can opt to do a number of these half-way, but that is subject to your card drawing. You simply leave yourself in the hands of luck. If everyone does this you will hover around a 20% win chance in any given game (25% in on a 4-player table).

That is what I consider to be a badly built toolbox. It doesn't have to be that way.

While parts of this oversimplified, this extreme serves as an illustration of where the game is gravitating towards. If all of us made decks without an overarching game-long strategy we'd be moving towards a game where skill and table talk matters less.

Now you're talking about a definition of 'versatile' that I don't recognize as my own. The deck you're describing sounds like a deck that has no win condition and no options whereas the deck I've been talking about has more than one win condition and several options.

Suoli wrote:

It takes skill to build a versatile deck without compromising consistency but with current recursion options (not just Ashurs), hand management tech, permanents and efficient reactions it can most definitely be done.

Versatile decks != bad decks. They are just harder to build correctly. This leads to lots of badly made toolboxes but that doesn't mean that toolboxes are inherently bad.

Can you give specific examples of the kind of decks you're talking about? I know what Xaddam is referring to w/r/t super-focused decks, but while you seem to have a very clear idea of what you mean, I can't think of any examples of the kinds of decks you're referring to. (FWIW, I don't have a horse in this race since I agree with different aspects of what both of you are saying, but I'm curious as to what deck(s) you're thinking of.)

Xaddam wrote:

With an unfocused deck you have no sure-fire tactic option.

You won't have one anyway, all decks can face a total 0% win scenario. VTES is a game of luck where seating determines everything, the game that follows alters the preordained result only by odd card draws and mistakes if the players make them. The player who sits in the right position wins, and no matter how much skill everybody has they can't change their seat, and no matter what anyone says everybody knows how the game works and won't be conned into doing silly things. (Hm, clarification : a winner of a game where a table-alliance destroyed something is still the one who sat in the right place, able to reap the rewards of the target's misfortune) With a well-built toolbox deck you should have good chances against almost everything, but with the late changes to the game that is no longer the case as your chances of ousting bloat decks are very slim.

Xaddam wrote:

You cannot say to yourself "ok, I'm gonna oust this player/stay alive until time/utterly destroy this players minions". You can opt to do a number of these half-way, but that is subject to your card drawing. You simply leave yourself in the hands of luck. If everyone does this you will hover around a 20% win chance in any given game (25% in on a 4-player table).

If everybody does this then the game becomes much more interesting and more about playing the game than winning with lol luck. But anyway a toolbox deck is usually built in such a way that it survives, at least that's what I think.
So you survive, wait for opportunities and constantly think about your options as the game progresses. If you die fast you can't wait for those opportunities. Think about a !Ventrue grinder deck, that's a pretty good toolbox, what with all that survivability and also hefty ousting power.

Perhaps you're thinking about some crap decks I don't recognize, I'm mostly a Tzimisce player and those decks aren't unfocused all-over-the place rubbish, just don't have dominate so wtf stop bloating 20+ pool every master phase turn scoop fuck this game

Xaddam wrote:

Additionally when all players are playing toothless decks there is no point in deals and table interaction because every deck has close to 50% chance of winning the duel against every other deck.

That's an entirely made-up probability because the decks aren't equal and even a few cards might make one deck completely dominate another. While it's true that playing toothless decks usually means timeouts with 0,5 vp's for everyone, nobody's suggesting to make that kind of decks. What would they have anyway, 90 random cards from fortitude and animalism? This is not a game with a whole bunch of noobs, everybody's a veteran at least here and suggesting stupid things isn't table-talk but game-related comedy.

Xaddam wrote:

There'd also be no point in doing a educated guess and choosing a deck that is appropriate to the given tournament's expected meta game, a skill that is heavily undervalued.

How so undervalued? Of course it's important now. Hey how about building a solid deck you think has a stable performance and taking that and then playing the game...

Anti-things decks such as 14 entrancement decks and coinflip strategies such as stealth bleeds that are either 0% or 100% don't make for good gameplay, just a waste of time of for whom lady fortuna whores.

Xaddam wrote:

We'd all be engaged in an extremely complex 5-sided dice.

Well we are now.

Xaddam wrote:

While parts of this oversimplified, this extreme serves as an illustration of where the game is gravitating towards. If all of us made decks without an overarching game-long strategy we'd be moving towards a game where skill and table talk matters less.

Okay, just what sort of decks are you talking about that don't have a strategy, and how is the game gravitating towards that?

Demnogonis wrote:

VTES is a game of luck where seating determines everything, the game that follows alters the preordained result only by odd card draws and mistakes if the players make them. The player who sits in the right position wins, and no matter how much skill everybody has they can't change their seat, and no matter what anyone says everybody knows how the game works and won't be conned into doing silly things.

No offense, but are you being serious here? I can't tell, because I can't imagine wanting to play the game if that's really how you think it plays, but at the same time the rest of your post seems to support the idea that you really mean this.

Kushiel wrote:

Suoli wrote:

It takes skill to build a versatile deck without compromising consistency but with current recursion options (not just Ashurs), hand management tech, permanents and efficient reactions it can most definitely be done.

Versatile decks != bad decks. They are just harder to build correctly. This leads to lots of badly made toolboxes but that doesn't mean that toolboxes are inherently bad.

Can you give specific examples of the kind of decks you're talking about? I know what Xaddam is referring to w/r/t super-focused decks, but while you seem to have a very clear idea of what you mean, I can't think of any examples of the kinds of decks you're referring to. (FWIW, I don't have a horse in this race since I agree with different aspects of what both of you are saying, but I'm curious as to what deck(s) you're thinking of.)

I'm wary of giving examples as it usually sidetracks into long arguments about some irrelevant details at the cost of discussing the issues that were meant to be highlighted. That said, the new Tremere royalty might be a good example. They have access to some of the most efficient cards in the game and between Alastor, offensive votes, Dominate, Second Trad and so on can choose from several lines of attack without fully committing to any of them.