Theorycrafting: What would be the effects of banning Govern

So, after our weekly games in Stockholm we go drink beers and theorycraft.

This weeks topic was, What would be the effect to the game if Govern the Unaligned was banned? There would still be Scouting mission to replace it, but ousting power of dominate decks would be lessened, also early game would be hampered with slower influencing of minions and increased investments in minions, deflection would still be there but less since bleeds are less powerful.

Read more on the discussion here:
stockholmjyhad.blogspot.se/2012/05/pub-talks.html

And I'm interested in what the community would think the effects would be.

I don't think it would make a huge difference. Sure, ousting would be a bit slower, but Dominate (SM+Cond.) would still have the Edge over Dementation (KS+EoC). And if your keen on bleeding you still change some of the Governs to Slaughtering the Herd instead of Scouting Mission (losing some flexibilty in the process).

Crypt acceleration would be a bit slowed down, but only by a small bit. And in terms of bloating, it does only make a marginal difference. Scouting Mission let's you keep a blood (which might be preferable in the mid-/end-game), and more often than not you can only transfer back one blood anyhow.

Banning Deflection would be an entirely different matter, since the replacement cards don't let you stay untapped and is restricted to superior DOM and/or has some restriction (only against younger vampires).

Dominate would lack the +2bleed action for 1 blood, which presence has a plethora of. While presence lacks a conditioning that isn't clan based it would be more in line with presence bleed decks as they look now, they bleed for 5 which feels alot less than 6 for some reason.

Also adding an extra actiontype to bleed harder with would clog some of the streamlining of current builds. While small changes can feel inconsequential I'm considering building a dominate bleed deck without Govern just to get a feel for it.

How would lack of Govern effect the Stickmen archetype? govern down and bringing up a 7-cap (Blackhorse Tanner) as a second vampire might not be an option anymore because of the lack of transfers.

I rank Govern the best card of the game. It works as amazing bleed card, "building up" card, crypt influence speeding card and even as a bloat card. Banning it would make dominate quite much weaker. It would be replaced by Scouting Mission but Enchant Kindred is played actually surprising rarely in many copies. I agree with extrala that Deflection is a different story. I rate that card the best defense card in the game and it goes also to my top 5 best cards.

Myrdin wrote:

How would lack of Govern effect the Stickmen archetype? govern down and bringing up a 7-cap (Blackhorse Tanner) as a second vampire might not be an option anymore because of the lack of transfers.

That only happens if you start with 0 blood on Blackhorse Tanner at the start of your turn. If you know you play only Scouting Mission, you will use an extra transfer (if you have it) to put it on Blackhorse in the round before.

So again, yes there are situations where crypt acc. is slowed downed, but I doubt this will significantly hamper decks like stickmen.

TWDA Entries since April 1, 2010 (after HttB):

TOTAL: 473
Deflection: 172
Conditioning: 128
Govern the Unaligned: 125
Deflection & Conditioning: 114
Deflection & Govern the Unaligned: 111
Conditioning & Govern the Unaligned: 103
Murmur of the False Will: 24
Redirection: 21
Scouting Mission: 19
Threats: 13
Mind Rape: 12
Slaughtering the Herd: 7

This is consistent with my other data mining based on post-KoT TWDs. Govern the Unaligned is a great card, but removing it from the game would not have a huge impact. People play with Dominate for bounce first and foremost. The huge dropoff in number of TWDs with Deflection & something else demonstrates this very clearly.