Emerald Legionnaire — First Black Chantry Nerf?

Mewcat wrote:

@skimflux

I would argue that vtes is neither competitive or balanced. The majority of people that go to a vtes event are not trying to break the game but rather to have dome fun with friends and you can see it in their deck choices. If we were trying to win above all other considerations it would just be dominate obfuscate stealth bleed forever.

Try it! Be that guy, see how many VPs it'll get for you, playing brick-cube decks all the time! The game has its own property to "balanca out" these things. Of course, on paper, having drawn 2 condi 2 govern 3 stealth in your starting hand indicates a higher possiblility of getting a VP, then 2 carrion 2 aid 1 terror f 2 deep song... or is it?

Let me recite an example. In my early days of VtES (when i was inexperienced, didnt know all the cards by heart, didnt know most archetypes and their mechanics, etc...) we had a guy playing big cap lasombra all the time. He won most of our matches, because of powerful bleed and stealth cards. Back then, I'd agree with you totally. But after a while we realized stuff, get hold of cards (like archon, bounce cards, intercept cards, potent combat cards, etc...) and his rule was ended. I agree that DOM-OBF seems strong, and it IS strong, but lowering this game to a level where one concept absolutely beats the other without any fun factor, is ill-advised in my opinion.

Thus arrving to the topic theme, nerfing EL-too stroink. I've seen more gangrel/!ganrel twd-s than ELs this year... This nerfing urge eludes me still.

TwoRazorReign wrote:

If it's not competitive, then why would people play a supposedly not fun archetype where 1 action puts 12 minions in play? The reason why this archetype is so prevalent is because it's both fun and competitive.

I'm going to back up mewcat here from a competitive perspective. If we look at 2 player games like netrunner or magic, you have some definitive data to point at. In a highly competitive field, you have 2 decks that will be played by about 50% of the field with some variations. There is another 15ish% that play counter-meta decks with the hope that they can win the matchups with the high winrate decks, and then you have about 35% of people who are looking to combo out or are playing what they enjoy.

In VTES, the decks mentioned aren't prevalent from a competitive in a sense that we have similar deck distributions. At the tournament I was at most recently, of 20 people 0 people played emerald legionnaires. There were two people playing a variation of stealth bleed, but nothing as abusive weenie '94 dom-obf. Nobody played a turbo deck, a nephandus deck. In fact, I probably played the most abusive deck (MMPA) and ended up winning (take that with a grain of salt really).

If 10 of those 20 people showed up with MMPA, EL, good/focused stealth bleed, a turbo deck, nephandus, the whole tournament would have been different. Instead, the vast majority of people played the decks that interested them. Most people don't come to a run-of-the-mill tournament to play "boring" decks, thought that would be the mainstay of a 2-player CCG player's game.

The lack of balance is apparent there as well. These people playing less-than-optimized decks should still be able to be around the 20% win rate. The reality is that these overtuned cards out perform most other cards in a higher than marginal rate. It makes sense to me that playing the best bleed discipline and the best stealth discipline would probably lead to the best stealth bleed deck. Playing anything else seems silly but people do it all the freaking time.

My biggest gripe are the non-interactive cards and those are what I call abusive. Nephandus, EL, Ashur/MMPA all just do their thing and have little counterplay.

Mewcat wrote:

win rates are ok but this shit isn't a job. Rock/paper/scissors may be perfectly balanced by win rates but the FUN RATE is lacking.

I was not trying to say that vtes is too random but rather that paper/rock/scissors is perfectly balanced from win rates but is a stupid game. Looking at just win rate can not give us a full picture.

LivesByProxy wrote:

Having a goal, encountering resistance, and overcoming that resistance, in my opinion, is the recipe for fun. If a game is too hard (too much resistance) or too easy (too little resistance) then the game becomes frustrating or boring, respectively. I think it is too easy in VTES to adopt a strategy that leads to too little resistance (stealth-bleed / power-bleed for offense, 9+ bounces for defense). Playing less optimal strategies would be voluntarily increasing the difficulty of the game.

That is a more developed version of my position. Does obfuscate dominate stealth bleed guarantee game wins? No, but everything else is voluntarily making it harder. Sure you can directly counter my strategy (and need to unless you want to be ousted in 15 minutes) but a lot of other strategies counter themselves.

There many decks far more powerful than Malk94. It is generally perceived as a huge threat and has weak bargaining ability. If your goal is to get 1VP (which is not what you should aim for, barring exceptionally unfavorable circumstances), it's a good deck. But that's all.

Also, your tongue > cards. There are very few situations that do not offer any opportunity for trying to talk yourself out of difficulties. Many players don't talk, so they deny themselves a lot of fun and a very powerful weapon. I think a good way to learn more about table talk and table dynamics is to be that guy playing combat on a table of stealth-bleeders, or the one playing Ventrue law-firm with only 4 Majesty as combat defense in a table of intercept-fighters, etc... You will probably not win that many games, but you will build very useful experience. It will be helpful when you play on less extremely polarized tables.

And maybe, it will also help you understand that almost no cards deserve ban or errata in the tournament-legal card pool.

jonathan wrote:

Also, your tongue > cards. There are very few situations that do not offer any opportunity for trying to talk yourself out of difficulties. Many players don't talk, so they deny themselves a lot of fun and a very powerful weapon. I think a good way to learn more about table talk and table dynamics is to be that guy playing combat on a table of stealth-bleeders,

Combat guy - Don't bleed me or I will rush you
Stealth bleed predator - How am I supposed to oust you then?
Combat guy - uhm?

Mileage will vary.

Back to topic.

@skimflux

I looked through a couple years before they banned kindred restructure and you see about 10 instances of the cards each year, contrasted with 11 EL instances in 6 months. Clearly a card need not be an outlier to be banned.