Balancing Ashur Tablets

Pascal wrote:

For instance, suppose Dreams of the Sphinx read "During your discard phase, discard down at random." I'm quite sure this would definitely save some time. It would also kill some players ("OOps, there goes my Deflection"), so it's probably not the thing to do, but it's something I keep (amongst many other) in mind.

That is an awesome template for a card.

Ankha wrote:

All master cards fit your description (unable to be stopped, no interacting with my game). As for wasting time, one have to choose 13 cards. It usually longer than choosing one card, but not 13 times that longer. Anayway, the players are more to blame than the card.

Remove the card you remove the problem of players not making quick decisions. Yes, a lot of masters are that way, BUT most of them are fast to resolve and don't cause long delays in the Master Phase. That is kind of the point people have been making about MMPA decks for a while... they play the Master Phase and basically nothing else, making them uninteractive and boring (See ICL's Blog Post)

Ankha wrote:

Side-boarding means you bring cards that weren't present in the deck in the first place, with has nothing to do with recursion (the card must be in the deck, and it must have been already played). Plus you just can't add Ashur to a deck without any careful deckbuilding beforehand.

Others are suggesting that almost any deck can include 3x Ashur Tablets. On that basis, I doubt there is as much care. Also you are sideboarding in the sense that you are modifying the deck while it is in play. Recurring cards has the same effect as additional copies of the cards. There is no difference between putting an extra 13 cards which are already included in the deck in a pile before the game, and Ashur Tablets with the small exception that if they are one-copy-cards you might not have seen them yet.

Juggernaut1981 wrote:

3) Ashur Tablets mitigate the costs of other cards (Liquidation and Anthelios being obvious examples) because cards you discard are brought back at a greater rate than lost.

I can't see the link with Anthelios. As for Liquidation, yes it couterbalance the cards removed. Is it an unbalanced combo? Maybe. But it needs more ground before being judged "unbalanced".

Juggernaut1981 wrote:

4) Ashur Tablets individual effects may not be off the top of the power curve for sensible VTES design, but in combination they are.

Apart from Liquidation+AT which is a pool-gaining combo (just like Villein + Giant's Blood), I can't see another plain combo. Anyway, is there anything wrong with combos in VTES?

Ankha wrote:

Any master aggravates MMPA-related problems.

And? Is that an agreement, a complaint or something else?

Ankha wrote:

Less accepted by some people, apparently. Others either don't care or accept it. It can't be a criteria.

Of course it can. And of course it is. You have to decrease your personal resources to gain resources of vampires and spend your entire time making sure your resources don't run out before your prey's resources. That is management of declining resources.

Ankha wrote:

Everyone is subjective, it's not a problem. "Partial" is what you probably meant.
Do you provide any proof that "Ashur Tablets is just getting [...] less accepted due to familiarity." ?

No, what I mean is... cordovera provides anecdotes about himself and complains about others doing the same. He can't hold up his own anecdotes as factual universal evidence and shoot down others for doing similar. My comment about the familiarity of VC, Minion Tap and so is just that... a comment or conjecture. I am saying that because VC, Giants Blood and Pentex have been around for a long time, people are more familiar and because of that they are less likely to get the kind of scrutiny that Ashur Tablets has... despite how much they may be highly similar in their effect on over-all game resources.

As an exercise in creating a comparison...
If we attempted to swap the pool and card effects of Ashur Tablets, would people see that as still a fair card? And by swap I mean allow them to effectively increase the resources by a percentage not a hard number swap. 3x Ashur Tablets = +10% of starting pool and at worst a +14% increase in library. So, lets swap them... +10% of maximum library size and +14% of starting pool.

Would people be fine if Ashur Tablets instead did:
Tablets of Ashur
Master
Put this card in play. If you have three copies in play, remove all copies in play (even controlled by other Methuselahs) from the game to gain 4 pool and choose up to nine cards from your ash heap. Move one of those cards to your hand and shuffle the others into your library.

For the sake om simplicity, would the followig be a viable solution?

Liquidation:
Only usable once per methuselah

Ashur tablets:
becomes a master-out-of turn

It deals with pool spamming with liquidation and makes
the ashur race fair between MMPA and non-MMPA decks.

Juggernaut1981 wrote:

Ankha wrote:

Everyone is subjective, it's not a problem. "Partial" is what you probably meant.
Do you provide any proof that "Ashur Tablets is just getting [...] less accepted due to familiarity." ?

No, what I mean is... cordovera provides anecdotes about himself and complains about others doing the same. He can't hold up his own anecdotes as factual universal evidence and shoot down others for doing similar. My comment about the familiarity of VC, Minion Tap and so is just that... a comment or conjecture. I am saying that because VC, Giants Blood and Pentex have been around for a long time, people are more familiar and because of that they are less likely to get the kind of scrutiny that Ashur Tablets has... despite how much they may be highly similar in their effect on over-all game resources.

Lol, I'm not Miguel Cordovera, the Tremere !

Anyway, I provide anecdotes of myself, since some of the people that are against ATs have done the same, to put facts in perspective.

What I want to say is that we're not having an objective discussion here. Whether to know if the archetype is as unbalanced as you claim, we should do the following excercise, in my opinion:

-Choose one Ashur Tablets archetype that has won more than 1 tournament (for example Girls will find AIDS)
-Choose 4 different powerful deck archetypes, ideally trying to balance the types of decks: Lasombra nocturn S&B + Ventrue 4-5 Lawfirm + Ahrimane block/fight + Warghoulator
-Pick 4 players with similar skill
-Do all the possible seating combinations (I think there are 120)
-Repeat with other deck archetypes containing Ashur Tablets


Apparently there are 2 main POSSIBLE problems that have to be handled with Ashur Tablets, arriving at this point of the discussion, are:

-Power: are they really overpowered?
-Time: are they more a time loss factor than other cards?
(I'll drop the "fun" factor because it's too subjective. I have a lot of fun with Ashur Tablets, for example.)


The power has to be tested, because tournament representativity is not, in my opinion, a factor to determine the power of a deck/card. Now, if ATs decks were winning most of big tournaments, that could be a more accurate indicator, but I guess it's not the case.

TWDs depend extremely on local metagame, local taste for archetypes and several other factors (like the type of archetypes attending to a precise tournament). You cannot confirm that Ashur Tablets are broken (or even the Ashur Tablets and Liquidation combo) till you do a serious test.


Talking about time loss, well in that case you would have to take a look at all cards that allow tutoring:
-Alastor
-MotS
-Mistress Fanchon
...

M.Schumacher wrote:

Ashur tablets:
becomes a master-out-of turn

Aieeee. Play it during someone else's turn, then fret about what cards you want to get back, to wind down the clock to deny a player a lunge VP in the last minute or two of a game. That's going to get very controversial, very quickly - and as Pascal points out, decisions regarding Ashur Tablets are often relatively prolonged without actually being time-wasting (in the cheating sense).

jamesatzephyr wrote:

M.Schumacher wrote:

Ashur tablets:
becomes a master-out-of turn

Aieeee. Play it during someone else's turn, then fret about what cards you want to get back, to wind down the clock to deny a player a lunge VP in the last minute or two of a game. That's going to get very controversial, very quickly - and as Pascal points out, decisions regarding Ashur Tablets are often relatively prolonged without actually being time-wasting (in the cheating sense).

I knew someone would bring up this point.
Yes, if u can ashur during someone elses turn u can interrupt an action,
but the overall incidence of triggering ashurs per game will significantly reduced, since u will need at least 9 turns to ashur 3 times, while right now
u can ashur every turn or at least every other turn in an mmpa deck.
So while the moment of game delay is moved, the overall time for ashur procedures will decrease.
Might as well make it "Only one Ashur tablet may be played per turn" but
thats a longer addition to the text.