Combat as a strategy

Main essence of VtES is not a fantasy about vampires, it's a prey-predator relationships. Combat breaks it as you at some moment have to go after your predator or even cross table.

There are countless other problem with combat as it's now, but this one is what really destroys the game.

Modedit\\
Split from the Nosferatu thread.

Lech wrote:

What is exactly bad with combat ? Isn't it too little used anyway compared to how many combat cards are in the game and as important it is in the lore ? I hope no combat cards players will get punished even more in coming days.

The core issue is that combat is not a win condition^tm. Combat cards aren't aimed at getting a VP, the way for example bleed cards and vote cards are. People have been sleeping on the fact that combat decks wincons are pretty horrible for really long time, apparently because "that's how things have always been." So in order for a combat deck to actually do well, it has to insert another strategy into the deck, while struggling with card slots as combat decks need quite a few.

New Black Chantry publications have definitely been steps in the right direction (card like righteous aura is perfect). But so far these have been clan-specific (righteous aura, achilles heel, blessings of the Loa) and thus have not helped combat decks as a whole.

Creating new COMBAT cards to make a clan better is not a good idea atm. Great example: Samedi. They are pretty good at combat right now, but because combat is not a win condition^tm they still suck as a clan.

ps. Enkidu just won EC 2019.

pps. EDIT: Or did you mean that people are against playing combat or that it is not fun so it is 'bad'?

The idea was that combat is not a win condition is a feature, not a bug which should be solved. And actually, as by now the combat strategy is quite viable, the game suffers.

elotar wrote:

The idea was that combat is not a win condition is a feature, not a bug which should be solved. And actually, as by now the combat strategy is quite viable, the game suffers.

Looks like you pretty much summarized what Bloodartist stated above. Except for 'the game suffers'. Could you elaborate on that?

He already did. People are not supposed to violate predator prey dynamic as a natural part of play and combat has to.

This is not my idea but paraphrasing his.

So, lets ban Deflections, get rid of all the non prey-predator political actions too?

That about it?