The future of V:TES

Squidalot wrote:

i've seen players turn up very casually to events in Sweden, UK and USA who haven't played for multiple years and have just grabbed their favourite deck.

To support this I just heard that in the last weekend's Swedish ECQ at Gothcon there were several attendees that at least the Finns that tend to attend Swedish ECQ hadn't seen previously.

Great thing that might have something to do with the upcoming EC in Sweden later on this year!

I do like the idea of a rotating ban list, and it sounds like it could be fun. But making it the default format just seems like it would be another layer of complexity for new players.

Part of VtES's appeal is that you can use all* your cards, even the Jyhad ones. Why sacrifice that? If there are equivalent cards, you're only making people who have them re-sleeve them, and if there aren't you're potentially breaking decks.

(*ok, almost all)

we're too concerned with bob who already left the game. how about chris, who's still playing, but bored.? pretty soon chris will become bob. showing up occasionally during tournaments with the same old decks.

Is there anything preventing Chris from using his own initiative to try a new deck or playstyle?

I actually think a more interesting direction would be to borrow from the WoW TCG (who originally borrowed this from VtES!) and pursue alternate gameplay "modes" with stuff like dungeon and raid decks, unique PvP battleground games, and the like.

If you're unfamiliar, the PvP battlegrounds work by imposing alternate victory conditions through a separate pile of cards / tokens, which approximate Capture the Flag or territory control. You can play with a standard deck, but if you optimize for the battleground it's going to be a better experience. The dungeons and raids were more co-op, but had a similar idea. The Nergal storyline deck comes to mind - consider if that had been fleshed out and developed further.

Obviously co-op isn't very close to VtES's theme, but storylines and scenarios are the bread and butter of the Vampire RPG. It's frustrating - Storylines were a great idea with a TON of potential, but a different game took that ball and ran with it. So why not reclaim it?

Arbitrary decrees like "No more Majesty!" are a little jarring. It feels artificial when your vampires can't use an ability because we're playing Some Type Deck Format Number. But tweaking victory conditions to where Majesty isn't as tech causes a natural shift away from it, and maybe a different card is substantially better in this Scenario.

Essentially I'm saying we should expand, not contract. So what I think is that we can add Scenarios. Basically Storyline decks, but abbreviated with different win conditions, etc. Maybe the Scenario is about who can burn the most vampires in ten turns. Maybe it's about who can win a final vote on turn 7. VtES pioneered the idea of using our decks differently, so run with it.

jtroyve wrote:

how about chris, who's still playing, but bored.?

WTF?

There are 2136 library cards and 1370 crypt cards for the game.
The options are endless.
Just open the doors of perception and try out stuff you haven't previously -it all doesn't have to be classic tier 1 you know...

Squidalot wrote:

We used to have bans/card limits [6 card?] in the very very first tournament rules (i swear I have a duelist with the recommended tournament rules in but I could be making that up) so I wouldn't say that doing funky things in VTES would be entirely new but still I really couldn't tell you if changing card blocks would help my personal tournament scene/playerbase

You mean this tournament rules from 1995? Check section 3.