Playtest Application

1) Please list your first and last name, e-mail address, and
city/country where you play. If you regularly play online using
JOL or another system, you may list that in addition to your
physical city.

Simon Cross (Prince of Cape Town)
hodgestar -at- gmail -dot- com
Cape Town, South Africa

I would like to put in a joint application on behalf of six of the
local players to form a far flung play testing group in Cape Town.

I think our local meta-game (which is unusually combat heavy) has a
distinctive view point to offer. A good example is perhaps one of our
recent tournament winning decks
(www.thelasombra.com/decks/twd.htm#2011vsctsa) -- a stealth
Lutz and Alicia stealth vote deck that includes 7 Sleep Unseens, 6
Charismatic Aura, 7 Majesty and 2 Staredowns. It involved from an
earlier version played at SA nationals last year that didn't make the
TWDA because it had Lutz, Alicia and Aristotle consistently burnt in
earlier rounds despite packing a fairly hefty (> 20 card) manouevre
and S:CE defence package.

The six players are me (current prince), Neil (experienced player,
large card collection), Richard (experienced player, huge Laibon fan,
medium-sized card collection), Marc (experienced player, won nationals
this year, medium-sized card collection), Evan (new player, has played
a few tournaments, favours combat) and Anthony (new player, has played
a few tournaments, going through the Malk S&B phase).

2) Do you promise to keep secret all the cards and content of the playtest until at least
12 months after the release of the set?

Yes (and the others have agreed too).

3) How often do you actually play VTES? Describe in a sentence or two (weekly casual game, tournaments, etc.)

I run a tournament roughly ever six weeks and we play socials about
every week or second week in between.

4) Approximately how many hours per week do you spend on VTES-related things? (including deckbuilding, playing, forum posts, organizing events, etc.)

Eight hours plus. Neil and I are the developers of Sutekh (the VtES
card collection manager) which uses up time regularly. I hang out on
the #vtes IRC channel, read the forums, read the news group (yes, I
still read the news group .

5) Pick up to two of the following as your favorite decktypes to build and play (yes, I know it may be hard to pick just two):
Bleed, Vote, Combat, Toolbox, Crazy Combo/Trick, Weenie, Star Minion, Allies/Imbued,
Specific Clan (name the clan), Specific Discipline (name the discipline)

Combat. Malkavian. Preferably both at the same time when I can pull it off.

6) If selected as a playtester, do you promise to play at least 2 games per week (for 1 month) using at least some of the cards from the playtest? These would need to be at least 3 player games.

Yep. The idea would be for our playtesting group to meet to play
together once or twice a week during the playtesting period.

7) Pick any card idea from this forum (that hasn't been picked yet in this thread), include a link to it, and describe why it is or is not balanced. Feel free to compare to existing cards, give examples of a potentially broken combo, etc.

vekn.net/index.php/forum/30-expansion-sets-a-card-ideas/6383-card-idea-weekend-anarch

Weekend Anarch didn't get any discussion on the forum but I think it's
an interesting idea for two reasons.

Anarch Secession and Jack Drake's text are currently the only means of
making titled vampires anarch. Neither are particularly attractive (AS
requires playing lots of copies and is useless later on and Jack
requires influencing out Jack first and having a younger, titled
minions of the right group to bring out second). This card would add a
third option that avoids these problems and enables the construction
of a whole variety of new types of anarch decks.

There is currently no way to become anarch temporarily so that also
opens up a whole new avenue for interesting decks.

Galaric's Legacy is a similar card (trifle for making minions anarch)
but it's not popular because it shares with Anarch Secession and Go
Anarch the issue of requiring a lot of copies that are dead cards late
game. It would be important for Weekend Anarch to avoid this pitfall
-- perhaps it needs additional text similar to Pallid's,
e.g. "Alternatively, when a non-anarch vampire is acting, play this
card to your ash heap as an out-of-turn master to give an anarch you
control +1 intercept".

Some cards that possibly interact interestingly with Weekend Anarch
include Stolen Police Cruiser (possibility to untap and use the SPC
without having to worry about the downside if it's burnt), Lay Low
(possibility to diablerize with minimal risk), The Mole (causing a
bleed by a younger vampire to fail is seems very powerful for a high
cap vampire who is temporarily anarch), Crypt Sons (can equip and
benefit from the 1R damage even while not Anarch) and Anarch Railroad
(many more decks can benefit from the stealth).

My attempt at improved Weekend Anarch card text:

Master. Trifle. Put this card on a ready non-anarch vampire you
control. During a minion phase, this vampire may tap this card and
move a blood to it to become anarch (and independent) until an action
or the minion phase ends. During your untap phase, if Weekend Anarch
has 2 or more counters on it burn it and make this vampire anarch
(and independent). A vampire may only have one Weekend
Anarch. Alternatively, move one blood from the blood bank to a ready
anarch.

Reasons for changes:

* "During a minion phase" -- avoid being temporarily anarch outside
the minion phase (although I sort of liked the possibility of
avoiding paying for Anarch Revolt this way).

* "tap this card" -- weekends only come around so often.

* "2 counters" -- for decks relying on being anarch temporarily
requiring 3 counters makes the card a lot stronger (perhaps too
strong) and for decks wanting to become anarch permanently requiring
3 counters makes the card less attractive (perhaps too
unattractive).

* Add a means to cycle the card as a trifle once it's usefulness for
making minions anarch is gone.

The card still has a lot more text than I'd like though and I haven't
found a good way to fix that yet.

One last worry is that this card supercedes some of the other means
for becoming anarch (Go Anarch, Anarch Sucessionm, Galaric's Legacy)
but they haven't been particular popular anyway.

TWDA stats for popularity of various card-based means of going anarch
(courtesy of Neil):

6 decks have used Go Anarch (none since 2008)
17 decks used Galaric's Legacy
0 using Anarch Secession
17 using Twilight camp
57 using Anarch Convert

Of these 21 decks are using combinations of the techniques, with the
combo of Anarch Convert and Twilight camp being the most popular (13
decks). 5 of the Go Anarch decks pair it with either Galaric's Legacy
or Anarch Convert.

Some of the decks Anarch Convert appears in are probably using it
purely for its crypt cycling ability.

8) What are the top three things that you think could be improved about the game?

Print more expansions (new players' options for buying cards are
becoming rather limited).

Several of the more important rulings need to be part of the official
rulebook. The "During X, do Y" template and combat queuing
interactions are obvious cases.

It would be nice if the Complete Rules Reference gained some sort of
official standing (maybe it could even be included in the rule book).

Get the rankings system up and running again.

Flesh out the research area concept that was introduced in HTTB.

Re-print Ashur Tablets (it appears in a lot of TWDs, new players don't
really have access to it and in play groups like ours the down side is
never a factor because so few people have enough copies to play them).

(That was not three items.

9) What question would you add/change on this application to ensure we get the best playtesters?

I liked the suggestion to take a wallpaper card and unwallpaper it and
the suggestion to include a description of your local meta-game and
tournament experience (perhaps number of TWDA entries is a useful
statistic).

If you're going public, go fully public. After the design team creates some cards, put them on a sticky message and let EVERY playgroup play test them and give feedback here.

There's no real reason to keep any of this private, since you're making it public (some of those) who is on the design team and who is going to be a play tester. It's not like anything (money) is at-risk. and if openness is better, then fully embrace it.

KevinM wrote:

If you're going public, go fully public. After the design team creates some cards, put them on a sticky message and let EVERY playgroup play test them and give feedback here.

There's no real reason to keep any of this private, since you're making it public (some of those) who is on the design team and who is going to be a play tester. It's not like anything (money) is at-risk. and if openness is better, then fully embrace it.

100% support for this. make the cards public, long before they become official and start appearing on the tournament scene. I honestly believe that the power level of some cards which appeared in the last couple of expansions is way too high, so it's better to be safe than sorry.

1) Robert Guerrero Acedo, , Cádiz (Spain). I play around Cádiz normal.


2) Yes, why not? Is a secret.


3) Three to five games for week, and tournaments. (weekly casual game)


4) 30h, sometimes more time if i will play any tournaments, o brainstorm decks.

5) Block Tzimisce (VIC/AUS) and Toolbox Abonwe (ABO/FOR) my favourites.


6) Yes, no problem. I have a flat, many friends players and princes. We can do good partys while playing.


7) vekn.net/index.php/forum/30-expansion-sets-a-card-ideas/10601-card-ideas-new-toys-for-the-bahari

Conversionde hate Bahari. They only make blood win bloodless vampire turning to Bahari, if we mix it with princes as "Anson" double master in turn. Liquidations, guns and Ashur tables have a pool orgy and crypts entire game.


8) Cooperation between clans
Being more selective in sects
Earn other ways

9) How old are you and if you think a Methuselah while playing. What clan and sect?

Thanks. ^^

1) Chris Hammond , melbourne australia

2) Yes

3) weekly

4) 8

5) Pick up to two of the following as your favorite decktypes to build and play (yes, I know it may be hard to pick just two):
Combat, Weenie,

6) Hells yes

7) Villein: Can be used top creat timeout focused decks. Not balanced due to poor focus on ousting/

8) Reprints of all cards for newbies, downloadable pictures fomatted for printing and playing proxie decks allowed in tournies

9) What question would you add/change on this application to ensure we get the best playtesters? All good

1) Please list your first and last name, e-mail address, and city/country where you play. If you regularly play online using JOL or another system, you may list that in addition to your physical city.

Brandon Haas, , San Jose, California.

2) Do you promise to keep secret all the cards and content of the playtest until at least 12 months after the release of the set?

As long as VEKN exists, I'll have and adhere to this obligation, yes.

3) How often do you actually play VTES? Describe in a sentence or two (weekly casual game, tournaments, etc.)

I play 3 games about every 2-3 weeks and tournaments 2+ times/year.

4) Approximately how many hours per week do you spend on VTES-related things? (including deckbuilding, playing, forum posts, organizing events, etc.)

I'm always thinking about it. As far as sitting down and consciously planning, ~5 hours/week. Playing, it averages 2-3 hours a week (based on answer #3 above). On the forum, 5-8 hours a week. Total: 12-16 hours/week.

5) Pick up to two of the following as your favorite decktypes to build and play (yes, I know it may be hard to pick just two):
Bleed, Vote, Combat, Toolbox, Crazy Combo/Trick, Weenie, Star Minion, Allies/Imbued, Specific Clan (name the clan), Specific Discipline (name the discipline)

I like toolbox and star decks.

6) If selected as a playtester, do you promise to play at least 2 games per week (for 1 month) using at least some of the cards from the playtest? These would need to be at least 3 player games.

It would depend on the timing. If it is on a school break (i.e. over the holidays, summer), I could probably do that. Otherwise, no.

7) Pick any card idea from this forum (that hasn't been picked yet in this thread), include a link to it, and describe why it is or is not balanced. Feel free to compare to existing cards, give examples of a potentially broken combo, etc.

Here's one I just made up:

Quinton McDonal Adv
Gangrel
8 capacity
FOR ani cel pot pro
Independent. Anarch. When you gain control of a vampire, that vampire may become anarch.
Merged: +1 stealth +1 bleed

Edited: Baron is cool, but not as cool as +1 stealth with cel/for

8) What are the top three things that you think could be improved about the game?

Weaken S:CE
Make it easier for titled vampires to become anarchs
Make a card that gives anarchs a table action worth taking (i.e. club illusion should have been "any anarch may take a D action to bleed their prey at +1 bleed that costs 1 blood" or something to that effect)

9) What question would you add/change on this application to ensure we get the best playtesters?

I don't know who the "best" playtesers are. I would change this to ask for a specific trait you are looking for in playtesters so that people could give more pertinent advice.