Osebo NO!

If I could, I'd rather help someone be better at building decks than be better at building a specific deck. That may not be of interest and you really just care about the specific deck.

This is very much of interest to me, but any time I've been told this before, I've ended up with some guy telling me I have to build a thousand stealth and bleed decks before I can try anything fun. (hyperbole, but you get my meaning).

I LIKE unusual things, I like dementation decks, I like turbo decks, I like things that play well without having to spend turn after turn going "bleed for 2.. +2 stealth, bleed for 2.. +2 stealth, bleed for 2.. +2 stealth" ad nauseum.

if this means I end up with some shitty decks, that's fine, but I'm going to keep doing it until I find what works.

Chaitan wrote:

Unfortunately I can't back up my counter claim with real math but I'm sure your claim is extremely exaggerated.

If there are any math guru's out there, I'd love to see a solution to this problem.

I can't speak to genius, but Ira Fay has a decent tool for card drawing simulations.

www.irafay.com/cards.php

See also:
www.thelasombra.com/utilities.htm

Chaitan wrote:

Hmm, I got a sudden inspiration of xkcd.com/386/ and started calculating Hypergeometric Distribution and other probability methods but after a few hours I gave up.

With 3 vampires in 4 each, you have a bit more than 58% of chances to get the 3 in the starting crypt. If you had a bad draw with only 2 different vampires, then you have 50% of chances that the fifth vampire is the missing one.

tarantulus wrote:

I LIKE unusual things, I like dementation decks, I like turbo decks, I like things that play well without having to spend turn after turn going "bleed for 2.. +2 stealth, bleed for 2.. +2 stealth, bleed for 2.. +2 stealth" ad nauseum.

if this means I end up with some shitty decks, that's fine, but I'm going to keep doing it until I find what works.

Ahh, you like to explore... just like me. I feel you. But the key to exploration is to still bring some threshold of viability to the table, otherwise you're wasting your time and everyone else's time (been there, done that, felt like a heel). Masochism isn't a commonly shared trait, so it's better to make our experiments meet a baseline strength.

Now, for me, it made sense when I asked myself what are the clear goals of VTES, now compare what are the clear (thematic, card specific, module) goals of my experiment. I can easily isolate the former: oust your preys for VP and profit, ftw! The latter I isolate as tight a block of experimentation I can, which would be the heart of why I'm playing. Then I look at the heart and ask where is it weak in: a) accomplishing my clear VTES goals, a.k.a. offense, and b) thwarting my predator's clear VTES goals, a.k.a. defense.

My experiment would obviously swing to one or the other. Thus the other remaining aspect needs more traditional support. And for that you use a more tried and true tight module to then complement.

From here you test vigorously through solo play ("goldfishing") to check crypt/deck flow. And then you test it against live opponents. From there you learn the strengths and weaknesses of your experiment. It'll give you data on whether an alternate tried and true complement -- or even new support to your experiment's goal -- would make your idea better.

Basically, long story short, you gotta be familiar with what the cards can do; small experiments build up to big experiments. Part of that is using a bit of the already beaten path, and then adding just enough of your own thing to be off of it. That'll give you confidence about how your experiment cards work in practice so you can then beat your own path to victory in the future.

tarantulus wrote:

If I could, I'd rather help someone be better at building decks than be better at building a specific deck. That may not be of interest and you really just care about the specific deck.

This is very much of interest to me, but any time I've been told this before, I've ended up with some guy telling me I have to build a thousand stealth and bleed decks before I can try anything fun. (hyperbole, but you get my meaning).

I LIKE unusual things, I like dementation decks, I like turbo decks, I like things that play well without having to spend turn after turn going "bleed for 2.. +2 stealth, bleed for 2.. +2 stealth, bleed for 2.. +2 stealth" ad nauseum.

if this means I end up with some shitty decks, that's fine, but I'm going to keep doing it until I find what works.

I do advise people to play stock decks until they understand them. Well, in theory, can understand decks by observing others play them, but that tends to be much less reliable. An often comment from people who play Imbued is that they aren't as unassailable as they seem and one will understand that from the other side.

Of course, to get off on a tangent, it comes from whether there's a real desire to improve or not. I got into a long conversation over lunch yesterday with someone about improving one's success at V:TES, with the thrust of my view being that people speak of wanting to be better (which we will say equates to being more successful, here) but don't do the things that will improve their games meaningfully.

Anyway, this all should really become its own topic, rather than further threadjacking your Osebo deck thread. I don't have a quick list handy for tips on better deckbuilding, but I could try to think about such.

To somewhat relate to this specific deck, the concept of intercept combat is fine - it's a far more robust archetype than rush combat. The crypt doesn't bother me. Many of the card choices don't bother me. But, I would take to heart the questions in the sticky post, as mentioned. I would also ask the question going in for any deck, "Does this deck appear to do what I want it to do?" One must always keep in mind that there are other players trying to do things that you may not want them to do, like try to oust you or try to stop you from ousting or, if playing a combo deck, disrupting the combo. The follow up holistic question would be something like, "If my opponents play any of common strategies M, N, or O, what is likely to happen?"

Just to be inconsistent, here is one tip: think about how to build the deck as a 60 card deck. Regardless as to how big it ends up being at the end, by trying to conform to a smaller deck size, you focus on what you need to accomplish your goals. Once you covered your goal(s), you can add more cards to shore up a weakness, build on a strength, run good stuff cards, run metagame cards, or run fun or goofy cards.

With this deck, the need (as I understand it) is intercept, wakes, and smash face. I see the second not being served well enough, but that's just my judgment. That doesn't mean 20 intercept cards, 30 combat cards, and 15 wakes. That could be some permacept with 10 or so transient intercept (that includes bleed bounce), permabeatings with 15 or so transient beatings, and maybe eight wakes to start out with. Let's say that's a core of 43 card slots used. Twelvish masters and five "I need some way to oust people" cards takes to 60. Then, what does the deck look like? Sad, pathetic? Well, have 0-30 more slots in a normal environment to change that; in your environment, more, though why this deck archetype is advantaged by being fat is unclear.

By the way, the problem with making judgments about the quality of decks is that V:TES games are not short, relatively few get played, very few tend to get played with specific decks (varying considerably by player, many of my decks only ever get played once and hardly any more than thrice, but that seems unusual). Results, therefore, suffer immensely by sample size issues. Then, play skill varies to where it's difficult to distinguish the deck's contribution from the player's contribution. Then, you have metagame considerations that bias results. Etc. You may find that a particular build that someone else thinks is awful works great. I find that builds of my own decks that I think are awful can be successful in any given game. I could point to my most recent tournament winning deck as a deck build that offends me for what it omits.