Master change suggestions

changing the core rules of the game to nerf one archetype (and lets face it, anson guns running about 20 masters is going to be hurt way more than mmpa decks using running villein into lilliths blessing activation into liquidation into a tablet. they gain too much pool for that to shut them down.)is very drastic.

the mmpa decks are strong because ashurs pick up masters and events that get dumped by liquidating and using aksynia's special (and sometimes just cards that get discarded to cylce during the discard phase so the player can find another tablet). the girls decks do the same thing as some imbued decks where they infinitely get to recur the one copy of DI the deck has by anthelios cycling, and have it within their power to do the same thing with pentex and the like.

recursion is the issue, not the stupid number of mpa's inherently, but what is done with them. if they just played life in the city into ascendance, cybele'd into ascendance, nana'd into ascendance, then parthenoned to a fourth ascendance, we probably wouldn't be having this conversation. but dropping a wider view with the same minions and parthenon and the playing liquidation and 3 tablets gains them 6 pool and recurs all the liquidated cards plus 6 more.
liquidation isn't nearly as good if you can't pick up whatever you just burned.

ashurs are good cards. some people spent alot of money on them(not me, i think i traded for all but 2 of mine, and in fact, i ripped myself off earlier on because new carthage was going for more than tablets when KoT was still available) and that is a good reason to not ban them in their opinions.

i like the idea behind them solely from a standpoint of letting you recur some cards if you play a very fluid deck and find yourself out deck at a 3 player table. the first deck i ever included them in out of decking necessity was gargoyle combat. they didn't break the deck, and really, rock cats and stone dogs cost so much, i barely noticed the bloat as anything other than almost paying for an ally. but they let me fish for grapples and pounces and disarms and tastes and put them back into my deck and put a rush in my hand. i've even toyed with the idea of using them in combo decks to recycle graverobs and that sort of thing. but i've never won a game because i've gotten to resculpt my deck as i go. i only ever run about 5 tablets, because if you're using them just to recur cards and not as a replacement for a good deck, you only need to recycle 13 cards and gain 3 pool once per game.

so, i would just like to see ashur tablets get changed, not banned. if they can only pick up minion cards, they'd be less of an issue. if they could only pick up minion cards AND could only pop once a game per methuselah, perfect, fixed, still work for all the non mmpa decks just fine and nerf mmpa, but still let them be playable to some degree.

suggested this in another thread, but what about changing some masters to make them the opposite of trifles - ie, when you play them, you have to skip your next MPA before you can play another master? This could easily be keyworded.