Please Ban The Unmasking

Is this thread for real or just a joke?

yeah, let's effin' start banning the cards in the order of their power. Sooner or later we won't have anything else to play with than Julius and Up Yours!

Lönkka wrote:

Is this thread for real or just a joke?

yeah, let's effin' start banning the cards in the order of their power. Sooner or later we won't have anything else to play with than Julius and Up Yours!

Banning cards in order of their power is the only way to do it, when necessary. Why ban something that's weaker than the most powerful card?

Sarcasm's fine when backed up with logic.

Lönkka wrote:

Is this thread for real or just a joke?

With most "please ban..." posts, start from the principle that the person is saying "This card/deck-type is really bloody powerful and I can't deal with it." Happens a lot.

There are then a variety of responses, including:

- you're reading the card wrong, it doesn't work like that (so it's a lot less powerful)
- you're missing some really obvious defence
- if you change your strategy a little, you can survive way better (like "Burn the Madness Network whenever it hits the table, don't wait to survive the OOT combat!")
- well, every deck type has some foils, and you're just doing the equivalent of playing zero combat defence and getting creamed by a powerful combat deck
- actually, there are quite a lot of decks that do badly against it, maybe it warrants errata, or a better selection of defensive cards
- oh wow, it's way too bloody powerful, kill it with fire (Return to Innocence)


Events - and particularly powerful Events - are probably part way down that list, for me.

Also, ban is not for the most powerful card only. Some have been banned because they were annoying (Madness of the Bard mainly, and that's basically the reason for the call to ban imbued too).

ANother interesting example are the table swicher. They certainly aren't the most powerful card on themselves, since they don't actually oust anyone, but they improve too much some kind of decks. In addition to be annoying, that is.

Ohlmann wrote:

Also, ban is not for the most powerful card only. Some have been banned because they were annoying (Madness of the Bard mainly, and that's basically the reason for the call to ban imbued too).

ANother interesting example are the table swicher. They certainly aren't the most powerful card on themselves, since they don't actually oust anyone, but they improve too much some kind of decks. In addition to be annoying, that is.

Seat switchers also were taking like 6 years discussion in tournaments before goimg to referendum, i was led to believe thats why the ban. Just like pto would be legal still if not for the IC part of its text.....

Madness of the bard is not a good card for a game where everyone must have a grasp on english, but many players only speqk it, making things painfully unfair to folks who only have the basics, as rules require.

Imbued are a different kind of annoying.

ReverendRevolver wrote:

Seat switchers also were taking like 6 years discussion in tournaments before goimg to referendum, i was led to believe thats why the ban.

They could cause very, very, very long discussions, yes. (I can think of one example that took something 90 minutes.)

But LSJ's publicly stated reasoning for the ban was simpler - it gives a player two predators at the same time, their real predator and the guy who's going to jump right in there. Which is pretty unfair. Richard Garfield's original design was fairly careful to avoid two players having the same incentives (e.g. he expressly didn't include "Whoever ousts the Methuselah gets the VP" and went for the circle of death format), except where the third player is being egregiously horrible to the table so everyone wants rid of him. A key skill in V:TES is being able to do your thing while staying under the radar - or at least being regarded as Just Doing Normal Stuff, rather than ravaging the table with 75 Gehenna Events, 300 Anarch Revolts and a squillion Baltimore Purge.