On Villein. 1. "problematic card"

Hi guys,

I've been a lurker for awhile so this is officially my first post on this forum.

How about this very simple fix?

Villein
Master
Master: trifle.
Put this card on a vampire you control and move 2 blood from that vampire to your pool. Minion Tap cards cost an additional pool. Villein costs an additional pool to play on this vampire.

Notice the lack of "or more".

This change would accomplish:
* Reduce the bloat.
* Balance the card without changing the card text too much.
* Make Minion Tap viable again.
* Heavily reduce the effect without making it too bad. 2 pool for a trifle is still playable in many decks.

chaitan wrote:

Notice the lack of "or more".

This change would accomplish:
1) Reduce the bloat.
2) Balance the card without changing the card text too much.
3) Make Minion Tap viable again.
4) Heavily reduce the effect without making it too bad. 2 pool for a trifle is still playable in many decks.

In my opinion:
1) yes.
2) as Adam wrote on "Giant's Blood": "balanced" is not a narrow focus ...
3) yes. (Still I do not understand, why it should be important, that Minion Tap is playable again. There are a lot of cards which have never been playable ... ^^)
4) yes, it would not be "too bad" and still be "playable", but it would become rather uninteresting.

3) yes. (Still I do not understand, why it should be important, that Minion Tap is playable again. There are a lot of cards which have never been playable ... ^^)

I have to admit I'm not with you on this one.

Sure there are plenty of cards never played, but there are few cards made redundant by other, simply more powerful cards. The problem with Villein is its very low accessibility, and I definitely see the newsomers in my Domain struggle with that. Minion Taps are plenty to find around, as still available starters pack them. That is not the case with Villein.

I for one would love to see Minion Tap made playable again. This is already discussed elsewhere, however, and I can remember the points in opposition: there're really no real newcomers around (which, I have to argue, is false ), others can just borrow villeins for tournaments, there's a counter to villein (which is not even scratching the availability problem), and so on...

The history, standing, effect and availability of Minion Tap makes Villein hosing it a problem, especially for beginners. And I beg your pardon, those are to be found around.

Kraus wrote:

Sure there are plenty of cards never played, but there are few cards made redundant by other, simply more powerful cards. The problem with Villein is its very low accessibility, and I definitely see the newsomers in my Domain struggle with that. Minion Taps are plenty to find around, as still available starters pack them. That is not the case with Villein.

I for one would love to see Minion Tap made playable again. This is already discussed elsewhere, however, and I can remember the points in opposition: there're really no real newcomers around (which, I have to argue, is false ), others can just borrow villeins for tournaments, there's a counter to villein (which is not even scratching the availability problem), and so on...

The history, standing, effect and availability of Minion Tap makes Villein hosing it a problem, especially for beginners. And I beg your pardon, those are to be found around.

I have been curious about if somebody would touch the point of "accessibility". In my opinion, this is the "real problem": It is not the card itself, it is that it is not as common as Minion Tap.
But, would everybody be happy again with Villein if it were to get "for free"? Or were there still problems to be solved then?

(And, yes, it should always be the goal to attract new players!)

I have been curious about if somebody would touch the point of "accessibility". In my opinion, this is the "real problem": It is not the card itself, it is that it is not as common as Minion Tap.
But, would everybody be happy again with Villein if it were to get "for free"? Or were there still problems to be solved then?

(And, yes, it should always be the goal to attract new players!)

As a relatively new player with a lot of new player friends I'd like to add my 2 cents here.

Yes, getting villeins is hard. I've managed to scrounge together 10 of them by scooping them up on ebay for ridiculous prices. But most of my playgroup don't really want to do that. There's been talk about doing proxying just because of this card. In the meantime, we all have plenty of minion taps - which don't get played because people more or less assume that I will be using my villeins (which I of course do because the card is just too good not to).

I think that a large part of balancing villein should be to stop the hosing of minion tap. If new players are going to start playing this game and enjoy it minion tap is needed. Because villein just isn't that available, whereas there are enough minion taps around to wallpaper my office with them.

Minion tap must become a worthwhile card to put in your deck again. The relation between villein and minion tap should be similiar to vessel/blood doll (both which are seeing plenty of play around here).

I am very positive to the suggestions to only let villein take 5 blood or something similiar, they're absolutely a step in the right direction. But unless an easy way to get villeins (for new players) shows up we must also un-hose minion tap. Villein has become a staple card which is just too hard to reliably find without spending way too much money. Just check out ebay, currently all the "buy it now" hits I get for villein costs $10 a piece or more. That's not ok for a card that is present in pretty much all decks nowadays.

Well, thank you guys for your comments and the polite and calmed way you worded them.

Now let's finish this point with a poll (of course you can go on posting on this subject as long as you like. I'd like to come to a conclusion, I hope you too). If I see it correct the options for the poll should be:

a) Let the card alone. No change.
b) Change trifleness.
c) Change the amount you can pull off a vampire to X=<5 or to leave min. 2 blood on the vampire.
d) Change the part that hoses Minon Tap.
e) Change trifleness AND the part that hoses Minion Tap.
f) Change the amount you can pull off a vampire AND the part that hoses Minion Tap.

IIRC nobody likes it to be banned. Correct me if I'm wrong. Did I miss something?