As Ohlann already stated such cards already exists. Additionally there is no reason now to help combat decks any more. While it was needed some time ago, now, combat is in best shape ever. Two last EC was won by combat decks, in EC Warsaw final, 3 out of 5 decks were combat ones.

I don't get it. What kind of problems it would fix?

By combat deck you mean animalism combat with 3 cards : deep song ( amazing card, ANI did not need that one) carrion crows and aid from bats, which are existing for 15 years? Come on, we all have tried to win with dragonbound, tension, codex and all these crapy cards when playing !gangrel deck. We did not win a tournament except with enkidu or una.

a part of players argue that, with a pdf format, you will introduce many copies of the cards, and if just one is over designed, we will see plenty of that. If this card is unique or usable 1 each game, it solves the problem.

aria wrote:


By over designed you probably mean over powered, right?
Let's assume that in such a small set the cards get thoroughly playtested, and nothing will be overpowered.

If a unique card is overpowered, it still is overpowered and would need to be addressed, so your proposal is kind of beside the point.

aria wrote:


combat deck != !gangrel. They have theirs own set of problem, not having any bleed modifier to oust faster being one of them.

It is still highly recommanded to have some legal manipulation / govern / changeling / living manse / other secondary ousting deck. Is that a bad thing ? Hard to tell, but putting overpowered version of dragonbound will surely not help pure combat deck, just make overpowered the one who already played bleed card.

The problem with dragonbound or Edenic is *not* that they are not powerful enough. It is that putting all your prey's vampire in torpor is both overkill and too difficult to be done reliably.

Also, animalism combat is not really a combat system. It's a cheap way to punish thoses who are unprepared to combat ; it fall apart as soon as you push a little with either real combat focus or S:CE. It's efficient, it's adapted to metagame, but it's not really all of combat.

This is pretty accurate.

As an aside, Edenic only requires your prey not to have any *untapped* minions. They can be ready just fine. The only real problem with combat is that the people playing it think that empying your preys ready region should make you win.

By combat deck I mean a deck which main game plan is controling a game through combat (either blocking or rushing). This contains animalism combat, as well as other combat decks. Coming back to my examples from previous ECs, in Paris it was ABO ANI combat (without aid from bats), I don't remeber other finalists. In Warsaw it was CEL guns, POT ANI (no aid from bats) and Rock Cats, with POT ANI winning the finals.

What does this has to do with .pdf format? Would it be any different if it will be printed? Should that mean that every card should be unique/ once per game just in case it's too good? Should we ban/ make unique/ once per game) all good cards and play only with tortured confesions and than ban tortured confesion because it will became too good?

@alek
Man, you are so condescendant, you might be a good player but it does not allow you to be an ass on a forum.

I have no problems with pdf format. If the cards are good to play and the game is a little changed for more fun, it is ok for me.
But when you have no more notions like rarityin a CCG, you may have for a moment the internet effect : everyone can play tupdog and indeed, there are many tupdogs decks on internet.
Finally, cards like PTO, or edge explosion have been banned because they were too strong, so, yes, good cards can be banned. It is just a matter of fun.

I have a different analysis on presence or many allies/combat decks in tournaments. People don't play combat defense anymore, and play villein. So the solution is to take blood away before villein and/or send the vampire empty to torpor. When players will re-introduce the number of majesty they used to play ( in law firm ventrue, sethite decks etc), I think we will see disappear all of this animalism and allies.

The fact that animalism combat is used mean that everybody have understood that fewer anti combat are played. That's exactly why people use Carrion + aid from bat, it's very efficient against people who defend with only blood on their vampire.

Sorry for that, it's not intended (maybe partially to strenghten the message). Additionally, English is not my mother language, so it's hard to me to control in writings emotional package that's included in some wordings.

I feel that controlling the power of cards via rarity is the worst thing to do. It creates situations when only people with enough money can play competetively and all tournament worthy cards are very expensive. It's such a case in Mtg, where rares are just better than other cards.
One of the big advantages of vtes is that you can build very good decks with reasonable amounts of money and we should trying to stick to this.

chaitan wrote:

Yes, and that also applies to Group 3 Ventrue (who have Obfuscate) and Group 3 Toreador (who have Fortitude), which Izaak has already admitted to.

If you want a more traditional deck focusing on clan disciplines you're better off with Group 2 Tzimisce (or Group 1 Ventrue or Toreador). If you want to try something different, or experiment with out-of-clans, you have other Groupings (4 for Tzimisce, 3 for Ventrue/Toreador).


As Ohlmann pointed out, you shouldn't really compare Group 2/3 to 4/5, since Group 5 has barely started, and you can actually combine Group 3/4 if you want. The better comparison is Group 2 vs Group 4.

In any case, with Group 4, you end up with 5 vampires (excluding Dr. Morrow).

Group 2 actually has 7 (excluding Piotr and Elizabeth from Group 3).

Though it might also be accurate to note how many vampires there are of capacity 7 or less.

Group 4 has 5 vampires out of 8
Group 2 has 7 vampires out of 9

Or looking at it another way, Group 4 has 3 vampires who *don't* meet that criteria, while Group 2 has 2 vampires who *don't* meet that criteria. Meaning the difference between Group 2 and Group 4 is just a single such vampire. (Obviously there are different ways to view and interpret that data, which I was just trying to illustrate, but here is one possible way that could downplay the differences).


Yeah, Group 4 has some really good specials. Some people will want to play with those, other people will want to play with more disciplines. I think it's great that players get a choice.


I agree. If you want a traditional Tzimisce deck focusing on the clan disciplines, play Group 2. If you want to try off-clan disciplines, Group 4 offers lots of exciting options. The point is Group 4 isn't completely useless. It has some strengths (out-of-clan disciplines, some great specials) and it has some weaknesses (less of a focus on clan disciplines). That's not a "complete waste" as some might suggest, it's just something different.

Heck, if everyone else in your playgroup prefers Group 2 Tzimisce, you could also choose Group 4 simply to avoid contestation issues.