Concerning lilith's blessing, ashur tablets and liquidation

Lilith's Blessing (mainly in conjunction with Villein, as I understand it) and Liquidation+Ashur Tablets. There's currently a lot of discussion about these cards. Whether or not they benefit the game, if they should be changed or not or maybe even banned. In my play group these cards do not constitute the problem others' point out and I'll try my best to illustrate why not.

My play group, while many joke around we only play dominate, it's not true to 100%. The fact of the matter is that we only play 'focused' decks. This term is kind of vague, but think of it as 'non-toolbox'. We play rush decks, block decks and vote decks as well (maybe a bit less than other play groups, but they're not excluded by any stretch of the imagination). We make an effort to remove extraneous cards in all our decks, this brings our games to a very short length. We never exceed 13 rounds and games are regularly 6-8 rounds long. With decks like this as your opponents, any little slip-up and delay to your strategy will get you ousted or make your prey run away from you. A hunt action or one too few stealth cards is the opening your opponents need to take the game win away from you.

As such, Ashur Tablets+Liquidation (or Ashurs alone) won't have time to trigger during our games without multiple MPAs, and if you want to play Lilith's Blessing you need to either remove all your other non-trifle masters or have multiple MPAs. Any divergence from these two laws of deck building and your deck will be too inefficient or slow to function in our meta.

Try it out. Make a 60-card voter and play KRCs with 100% of your actions and see all the 20-master cards decks vanish before their masters start paying off. It might be the final answer to these arguably too strong masters.

I wrote a longish reply, but interent ate it away .

But the gist of it is : I play assamites... should i just crawl in the corner and die? The very idea of regular playgroup like that would make me go play solitaire...

I actually agree with you on Ashur/Liquidation. As Isak put it, it's very competitive, but it's not broken. I also had an interesting chat with Brian Morris about it when we talked about the Legendary Vampire finals.

What basically happened was that a Rock Cat deck created a crater around him and then left the Nana Ashur deck unchecked for turns and turns on end. Meanwhile the guy was Liquidating and Ashuring to his heart's content until his entire library had basically "fuck you" written all over it. Ye sure, if you let me combo 9 Ashurs I'm gonna sit on 15 Aid from Bats. The gist of it is that Ashur/Liquidation based decks have very fragile and inconsistent libraries *until* they have hit 1 or 2 Ashur combo's. The trick is to hurt them before that time.

What I don't agree with is the Lilith's thing. You don't need multiple MPAs to abuse it and neither do you need nothing but trifle masters. You ain't playing a Villein every turn so there is still space for non-trifles. Just slightly less of them. That card is simply broken and if it's not, then Villein is. The latter is something Im unconvinced about. Villein doesn't create any blood/pool counters. It just moves them around.

What surprises me the most though, is that a playgroup that plays like that spawned the abomination that is Girls will find... I mean, that deck isn't exactly known for speed and requires a bunch of turns before it can actually move.

Pendargon wrote:

I wrote a longish reply, but interent ate it away .

But the gist of it is : I play assamites... should i just crawl in the corner and die? The very idea of regular playgroup like that would make me go play solitaire...

Sure, I see your point. Not everyone likes the same thing with this game. I'm simply offering up our play-style as a possible solution if you don't like how these masters work. A possible counter, if you will. In the same way that lots of decks have problems with DEM weenie lots of decks will have problems with Liquidation+Ashur Tablets.

Izaak wrote:

What I don't agree with is the Lilith's thing. You don't need multiple MPAs to abuse it and neither do you need nothing but trifle masters. You ain't playing a Villein every turn so there is still space for non-trifles. Just slightly less of them. That card is simply broken and if it's not, then Villein is. The latter is something Im unconvinced about. Villein doesn't create any blood/pool counters. It just moves them around.

There's another thing which is a problem, but that is hardly because of our play group, but I can still offer it as an argument against Villein+Lilith's: Three blood is not enough for most decks to function. You basically need to have no cards which costs blood or have a huge way to gain blood through-out the game. (Edit: writing this, I realize this might actually be the thing which makes tables time out, villein for a lot and then not have enough blood left to kill your prey)

What surprises me the most though, is that a playgroup that plays like that spawned the abomination that is Girls will find... I mean, that deck isn't exactly known for speed and requires a bunch of turns before it can actually move.

Yeah, we've made it 60 cards without removing any bleed cards since last year.

Izaak wrote:

What I don't agree with is the Lilith's thing. You don't need multiple MPAs to abuse it and neither do you need nothing but trifle masters. You ain't playing a Villein every turn so there is still space for non-trifles. Just slightly less of them. That card is simply broken and if it's not, then Villein is. The latter is something Im unconvinced about. Villein doesn't create any blood/pool counters. It just moves them around.

I think Villein is the problem, not Lilith's Blessing.

Although it doesn't create any blood/pool counters, it is the speed and acceleration that it provides (mainly due to the Trifle) which is the problem.

Villein + Giant's Blood (or Lilith's Blessing
Villein + Golconda

Or just use your normal assortment of Master cards, and Villein is far easier to fit in due to Trifle (as opposed to Minion Tap).



I do think the Minion Tap hosing goes too far (creating equality issues). But the main power balance problems stem from its Trifle nature.

First I can agree that the problem with Villein is ofc "trifle nature"

Second: After the few nights spending with my old polish friends with taking about the new problems with some cards we mostly agree that the one question with lilith blessing is "if this suppose to be unique card"?

Combo Ashur+Liq... don't bother us so much. But villein+lilith blessing...in theese days bloating is not a problem (cause it is a way to do the game somehow) but the "time outs" of much more games than before villein+lilith...

But I am far far away from ban anything...exept the bad players