Una Freak Drive

So, here's a thing that's been flitting round my head for ages now. I'll split it up a bit.

1) Do you think that the Una Freak Drive deck is a problem for the game? Not necessarily in terms of raw power, but also in terms of how much time one player can spend on their turn, and whether this has an impact on how much fun other players might have. (You are quite welcome to say "No"!)

If yes, carry on to...:

Most other fixes I've seen suggested for it involve errata-ing a bunch of the untap cards (especially Freak Drive), or limiting the number of untaps, or something involving quite a bit of faff.

Instead, what about limiting hunting (from any source) to once per vampire per turn, like bleeding or political actions?

2a) Would that fix the problem adequately?

2b) Would that cause any unnecessary or significant collateral damage? Do you or a friend have a deck that's not monopolizing a table that would be torpedoed by such a change?




(Footnote: turbo decks can be similarly annoying and this wouldn't do anything about them. But nor would tweaking Freak Drive or other untap mechanisms.)

I tend to think that the fault lies primarily in Una's Text. I don't think there are many ways to make the Una Deck less of a "one person plays their library in a Minion Phase" without addressing Una.


Messing with Hunting also messes with things like Hesha Ruhadze and Sargon Decks, which aren't overpowered.

Adding NRA to cardless hunts would mess up some Rabbat decks, probably, and they don't need to be nerfed.

No.

I actually find the fiddling around with Imbued stuff and the like to be a more tedious amount of time spent. Should not take much time to hunt. Journal of Hrorsh decks are also much more fiddly as you are manipulating more counters with each iteration.

What about making Freak Drive cost non-reductable(is that an english word?) It would also destroy some ankara-related decks but that's fine.

I don't think it's a problem (neither is Mimir or similar turbo decks). If predator and prey declare no blocks early on and just let the player do their thing, the turn can be over fairly quickly. Obviously there's always the option of "wait, that action I will block" — but normally it's fairly clear if the turbo deck has free reign or not early in the turn.

And once the initial turn is over, the rest of their turns are normally fairly quick — especially if they've decked.

I would ask that any player planning on playing such a deck ensure they're familiar with it before playing it with other players (easy to do by yourself!) and learn to play the setup turn as quickly as possible. You're going to attract table hate, but slightly less if you're efficient. It's in your interest anyway, don't want the table to timeout just as you've setup for the win (or loose).

Such decks are normally fairly susceptible to cross table ousting, cancelled freak drives, pentexes and card flow issues which means they're a fairly high risk strategy. But they still have a place in the game.