On Tupdog 7. "problematic card".

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).

alek wrote:

It's just very bad designed from the very beginning, so banning it would be best option

I strongly disagree :

* first, it's very well designed in the lore perspective : it show how the !tremere are using the gargoyle as cannon fodder, as opposed to the defensive role in the regular tremere, and it caracterize both !tremere and sabbat very well. I believe strongly that one of the important part of VtES is the World of Darkness vibes, so banning flavorful card (and fun to boot) is very counter-productive.

* second, I also disagree that mecanic-wise it's very badly designed. It's very different from regular vampire, but that's not a problem. The two problems it has are :
- first and mainly, and I believe it's the main source of hate against it, it's (almost) alway readily available in exactly the needed amount. Kind of a rush that tutor itself from the library. You waste a lot less by cycling tupdog than library card to boot. That's the aspect that the 15-card crypt limitation is trying to address in my opinion, since you will be able to run out of tupdog more easily.
- the second problem is that tupdog is dirt cheap. 1 pool for an on-demand action is pretty cheap. Look at metro underground or patronage to convince yourself with that.

Both of thoses problems only arise because tupdogs are dirt cheap. A new tupdog with 2 or 3 capacity would be a lot less deadly, because increased cap will both make it a lot less "available on demand", and would ensure that you use it for *important* targets and not use it for a random vampire.

I am not too sure that the 15-card limit would really do the trick, even if it's a lot more elegant than a card errata. A dedicated deck would still have about 6 to 10 tupdogs, meaning it can destroy at least 3 to 5 vampires more or less on demand. It may not be enough to win, but it would still be enough to be frustrating, no ?

echiang wrote:

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?

This conclusion is a function of where I am taking my stats from. If you have a source of statistics that covers every deck played in/out of a tournament whether it won a game or not, I'll be only too happy to look at it.

echiang wrote:

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

I'd say four is a few rather than several, but we can agree that there are some decks that would be effected. Less than would be effected by banning or errataing Tupdog though.

echiang wrote:

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).

This deck I would like to see.

Mael wrote:

echiang wrote:

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?

This conclusion is a function of where I am taking my stats from. If you have a source of statistics that covers every deck played in/out of a tournament whether it won a game or not, I'll be only too happy to look at it.

It's true that our primary source of statistics is from the TWDA, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the TWDA is accurate. In fact, I would imagine that the TWDA is a highly biased (in terms of not representative of all players) source (similarly, top-level players is not very representative of all players).

In the U.S., there's a classic example of sampling bias with the Chicago Tribune's prediction that Thomas Dewey would defeat Harry Truman for the 1948 presidential election, but that was because they were relying on a telephone survey (which was not representative of the general population).

There has already been mention that an online poll on the VEKN website is not likely to be representative of all VTES players. Similarly, I do not think the TWDA is representative of the average player's deck (for better or worse).

echiang wrote:

It's true that our primary source of statistics is from the TWDA, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the TWDA is accurate. In fact, I would imagine that the TWDA is a highly biased (in terms of not representative of all players) source (similarly, top-level players is not very representative of all players).

Actually I'd take it further and say that if you had a deck list for every deck that was at every tournament, it still wouldn't be representative of the decks played in casual play. That doesn't make the TWDA worthless as a tool though, you just have to be aware of it with any conclusions you draw.

Anyway, we're digressing from the point. The important point is don't ban or change Tudog.