Limit master cards?

the issue with girls is that meta-gaming against it would constitute drastic measures (building a deck around santaleous, using trochmancy, using seeds of corruption, emptying and torping 2-5 high cap vamps) and if the deck is not your actual predator or prey, it raises many questions about playing to win. current imbued can be hurt and halted with a few cross-table actions at it and the players on either side not being idiots about the fact that they have an imbued predator/prey.

current girls decks can be halted if you do everything in your power to get rid of their vampires(or at least the vampires's special text), burn cards from their ash heap(trochomancy if prey, victim of habit, very few others), make them lose pool or unable to gain pool, or can readily cancel 1-2 masters a turn (meaning you need santaleous or bleeding the vine, and to draw an SR or wash every other turn or so.

imbued can be beated by alot less strenuous means. anyone who doesn't think the girls decks are hard to cripple may have just not seen them played in their most optimal way. they are resilient above all else, and its hard to take their resources from them, they do put pressure forward, eventually, and they can block, DT, and bounce while picking what they want for a hand, bloating, and picking up optimal pieces of defence.

if ashurs couldn't pick up masters, they would be weaker, but still strong. if ashurs could only pop once per game per methuselah, they'd be strong but not broken.
without ashurs, you take away some bloat from a deck that wants mountains of pool, and you take away their efficient recursion that lets them use liquidation to begin with, limiting them to just using anthelios (and often recuring and still using a hand picked master card a turn...).

recursion and minimizing the actual chance factors of the game, and gaining alot of pool is how the deck gains absolute strategic advantage.

the entire table both having a way to hurt it and taking time away from winning if crosstable is the only way to absolutely crush it.

its strong, its stupid good, and the problem cards could be changed and it would still be good, but not as nigh-unbeatable as it currently is.

Probalbly the simplest "solution" is banning Anson, Huitzilopochtli, Cybele, Nana and Isanwayen. Although, not a very creative solution.

TryDeflectingThisGrapple wrote:

All in all, the easiest solution seems clear - especially given that we've seen such a similar problem before. I hate banning.....but "least of evils" keeps ringing in my mind.

-D

I wouldn't like this solution for 2 main reason even if this would make some game play sense.

1. Ashurs made suddenly many combat decks viable and that is good thing.
2. Some could have spent close to 100$ to get 9x Ashurs so banning it will make many many players angry. No other bans this far has been so major (well maybe someone with many PTO).

I would just errata Ashurs. One errata to think about is to make Ashurs retrieve only minion cards.

EDIT Also I don't think the solution for master decks is "play something else and try to change the meta". I think main reason why there are not even more Ashurs is because they are so hard to get. Would be better if everybody had Ashurs so this potential problem (not sure if Ashurs/masters are even a problem yet) would be easier to realize.

I saw this kind of conversation few times when it goes about:

pentex, anthelios, lilith's blessing, tupdogs...even direct int...

Personally I think that there is no need to ban or change some master cards or change master phase. Everything is in every player hands, so "good" players can handle with ashur/liq/villein combo (whatever), "bad" players will always complain (I don't want to offend anybody, but I see that we like to talk about cards, not about some ways of play or some solutions...)

Theese kind of deck has so many weakness - look at twda, if the ashurs combo (whatever) was the main problem, there would be so many wins...one main problem is that the combo does real mess with game time. But that's ok because it's one of the elements of playing - stealing the time.

Best regards
Szewski

Szewski wrote:

But that's ok because it's one of the elements of playing - stealing the time.

I think this is first time I read somebody saying that stealing time should be part of Vtes and one element of strategy. But yes I understand Ashurs being good in that. Ashurs is a perfect card if one part of play strategy is stealing time from other players.

Surreal wrote:

I would just errata Ashurs. One errata to think about is to make Ashurs retrieve only minion cards.

As far as minimal erratas go, the simplest would be "only one Ashur tablet can be played per turn". This way, MPA would not help in the ashur competition. And with Anthelios, Dreams, and sometime Infernal Pursuit, dedicated deck should still have a bit of an edge.