On Tupdog 7. "problematic card".

Limiting Crypts to, say, 15 is actually a really good idea.

PRO

I personally dislike Tupdog, but I don't think it's ruining the game. It's an annoying deck, but it's not imbalanced. The only problem I have with it is that it's so hard to defend against. The tupdog decks first prey and predator can't win the game, no matter how well or bad the tupdog player plays. It's a high risk deck, it should not have perfect answers to everything. Its' first prey and predator should always have a chance to win without having a "counter-deck" (25 fortitude prevent, for instance). With the addition of As The Crow Gran Madre is not a defense. With the addition of Brick by Brick Sniper Rifles or maneuvers is not a defense. Tupdog is fine. Brick by brick is really, really not warranted. It almost had perfect combat before. With this card, it almost can't be defended against in combat.

A change which limits crypt size to 15 does seem like a workable change, but a bit drastic. I don't think the deck is competitive. It's been in day2's by multiple players of the EC the past three years and hasn't showed up in the finals once (cats and dogs != tupdogs). As soon as everyone realize it's a bad deck, the deck archetype will stop showing up.

Making changes to disallow bad decks which ruins others' games might be tempting but it's a slippery slope.

Tupdog annoys the crap out of me, but it's by no means a "broken" card. it is stupid, I dare say - retarded, but not broken. as it was pointed out in this topic, winning a tournament with a tupdog deck is quite uncommon, since a) you get a lot of table hate constantly and b) people will gang up on you whenever they can. I don't like tupdogs, I don't play them (unless I want to cycle crypt by other means than Wider View / Anarch Convert or I'm working on a !tre + gargoyle deck), I absolutely don't enjoy playing against them, they're simply annoying, although not unbeatable.

The problem I see with tupdogs, contrary to other "problematic cards" is that it begins to "shine" in the hands of a bad player. You know, that dude who just sits there, completely obliterates your game and gives a GW to your prey in the process. This card is like giving a stick of dynamite to a monkey - you know the trouble is coming and you know it's probably not going to be fun either

Tupdog's mechanic is just too simple for what he does, especially with the HttB cards (set range, untap, rush again...seriously?), there's no drawback to it other than being a slave, which is not as bad as it seems. first - tupdogs will play secure haven (so the !tre is secure, while your vamp is not). second - they do lack intercept, yes, but keep in mind that combat decks usually don't stealth either (with some exceptions of course, but generally - let's face it - they don't). So the argument for stopping them is kinda moot, chump blockers are usually a no-go, I've found out that they have issues with allies and lots of weenies though. In 90% of the cases I stopped tupdogs thanks to table talk and help from other players, not on my own - stuff like someone rescuing your vampire is gold in this situation. Also, consider how players treat tupdog decks - if they see it and gang up, you have a chance. If they see it and do nothing, the game is already lost, yes it's that simple.

TL,DR version - it's not about the card itself, it's about the level of unbalance it can bring to the table, based on the personal experience of the player playing this deck. there's a crapload of things in this game that do the same trick, tupdogs just brought it to the whole new level of simplicity.

oh and btw, limiting crypt to 15 cards - sounds good to me.

Mael wrote:

I would also point out that the majority (if not all) of the arguments against this card are actually against the Tupdog Deck. If you want to hamstring that deck without effecting anything else than the simplest way is to introduce a card limit to a players crypt. I don't think any other modern deck would be effected by a rule saying your crypt could contain only 12 - 15 cards.

That is a bad idea, because it ends up impacting a lot of decks and cards besides just Tupdog:

- Soul Gem decks (however much you hate them). Baron decks with every critter with often use larger than normal crypts. Turbo-Arika or Turbo-Aurora decks traditionally have used them as well.

- Soul Scan decks can easily afford to use larger than normal crypts. Possibly also decks with Recruitment. Wider View has also made far larger decks more viable.

- An excessively bloaty Samedi deck with Coroner's Contact and/or Little Mountain Cemetery might choose to use a larger than normal crypt. Same with Blood Brothers using Unwholesome Bond and Hive Mind for bloat. Maybe some Honor the Elder decks too.

- Malgorzata and Paul Cordwood decks are fueled by their crypt. Decks centered around any of them could easily include larger than normal crypt sizes.

- Sabbat Inquisitor + Possession decks aren't very good, but they also may use larger than normal crypts.

- Betrayer decks were already partly hosed with the Grouping rule, but you'd be hosing them even more with a crypt limit.


So using such a blunt instrument (as limiting crypt size) to target Tupdog ends up having large ramifications for a bunch of other cards.

echiang wrote:

That is a bad idea, because it ends up impacting a lot of decks and cards besides just Tupdog:

- Soul Gem decks (however much you hate them). Baron decks with every critter with often use larger than normal crypts. Turbo-Arika or Turbo-Aurora decks traditionally have used them as well.

TWDA shows that the majority of Soul Gem decks have 12-13 card crypts. Two decks there have 18 copies of a single vampire.

echiang wrote:

- Soul Scan decks can easily afford to use larger than normal crypts. Possibly also decks with Recruitment. Wider View has also made far larger decks more viable.

All TWDA decks featuring Soul Scan have 12 vampires. Only three such decks though, so not a very large sample size.

echiang wrote:

- An excessively bloaty Samedi deck with Coroner's Contact and/or Little Mountain Cemetery might choose to use a larger than normal crypt. Same with Blood Brothers using Unwholesome Bond and Hive Mind for bloat. Maybe some Honor the Elder decks too.

Again TWDA shows these decks mostly as 12 - 13 cards. The exceptions being two Honor the Elders decks, one having 15 cards, the other 20.

echiang wrote:

- Malgorzata and Paul Cordwood decks are fueled by their crypt. Decks centered around any of them could easily include larger than normal crypt sizes.

One such deck in TWDA had 19 cards, all others had 12 - 13.

echiang wrote:

- Sabbat Inquisitor + Possession decks aren't very good, but they also may use larger than normal crypts.

Again it's a small sample size, but of four TWDA decks using possession, all use 12 card crypts. I'm not sure why Sabbat Inquisitor decks should use larger than normal crypt sizes.

echiang wrote:

- Betrayer decks were already partly hosed with the Grouping rule, but you'd be hosing them even more with a crypt limit.

These were the decks I was thinking of when I included the word 'modern' in my earlier statement. They've already been completely hosed by the grouping rule.

I'm not claiming that the TWDA is a perfect tool for gauging what decks are played in other areas, but it's the only alternative to anecdotal evidence. Anecdotal evidence tells me that Tupdog is the only deck I've ever seen with more than 15 cards in the crypt. And I've both played with and against various of the archtypes you list above.

To be clear, I don't think limiting the crypt is required, as I don't think the deck is broken enough to need any change to fix it. But if a change is to be made, I think limiting the max crypt size is better than banning or changing the card.

I agree that the TWDA is a limited tool.

But your evidence seems to be indicating that players should be limited to decks that have already won tournaments. So because there is no TWDA deck containing 50 crypt cards, I shouldn't be allowed to try something like that in the first place?

If you have a crypt of only a single vampire, you might as well go with 100 rather than just 18.

The very fact that there are several TWDA decks with crypts greater than 15, proves that there are decks that would be affected.

Plus, technically under the TWDA rule:

"If a deck has 5 or 6 vampires of one clan, and no other clan has more members in the crypt of that deck, it will be listed under that clan."

So you can theoretically build a single deck with 5 vampires of every clan. And if you win, it counts as a win for *every* clan. Right now, that would be 40 clans (if you include Caitiff and Imbued), so you'd need a crypt of 200 cards! But that's only possible without a crypt limitation! (This is me being facetious BTW).