Dominate Redux

jamesatzephyr wrote:

I'd be against meddling with card text if the meddling is for no reason other than consistency with the WoD canon.

For example, Pulling Strings is in something like 4 entries in the TWDA. It is not an overpowered card, generally speaking. Much of the time, a player will go for something like Delaying Tactics instead (or Vox Domini, sometimes).

This is more of a thought experiment rather than what I really want to happen. I just made some reasonable proposals and wanted some feedback.

Well sure. Pulling Strings is a pretty weak card. It *might* be semi-useful with the change I suggested.

jamesatzephyr wrote:

The changes to Seduction (in particular) and the Sleeping Mind also make certain forms of wall deck a fair bit better. More or less any star vampire wall deck using a big vampire (e.g. Anneke, Eternal Vigilance) is made better, whereas say a mixed grindy wall is still hampered. I'm not sure that that's a sensible evolution of the game.

Good observations. I think that all large capacity decks are helped by such a change, but wall oriented ones receive the lion's share of the benefit. Players might start using larger vampires because they cannot be Seduced as easily as before. Mainly though, Dominate becomes weaker and that's not such a bad thing.

jamesatzephyr wrote:

In general, I would rather push the game slightly towards greater and more diverse forms of aggression in order to do things like reduce time-outs and make it harder for a Methuselah with 1VP in a tournament final to play for a time-out.

Enablers are key.

Far Mastery could be changed to only work on non-animal retainers controlled by vampires without Dominate.

AaronC wrote:

I guess your idea would be to replace Deflection and Redirection by combining them into Translocation.

Thesaurus.com only does so much.

AaronC wrote:

In the RPG, you ordinarily had to get close enough to someone to look them in the eyes unless you possess an advanced Dominate power only accessible to those of the 7th Generation or lower.

Interesting.

If Dominate bounce was more attuned to generation differences in vampires, the game would be dramatically different, and in a good way IMO.

Others have long ago suggested a base V:TES rule like "If a vampire successfully bleeds for more pool than his or her capacity, ignore the excess." Doesn't need to be tied to any specific card. It hampers weenie bleed but leaves mid- and large-cap bleed intact.

A card like this might be nice:

Elder Privilege
Action Modifier
1 blood
Only usable during a bleed action. You cannot play another action modifier to increase this bleed amount.
+1 bleed if the Methuselah you are bleeding controls a younger vampire.

Jeff wrote:

Far Mastery could be changed to only work on non-animal retainers controlled by vampires without Dominate.

You know, having dominate doesn't mean your retainer cannot be brainwashed. It just ean you can take them back, but it have no reason to be automatic

Jeff wrote:

jamesatzephyr wrote:

The changes to Seduction (in particular) and the Sleeping Mind also make certain forms of wall deck a fair bit better. More or less any star vampire wall deck using a big vampire (e.g. Anneke, Eternal Vigilance) is made better, whereas say a mixed grindy wall is still hampered. I'm not sure that that's a sensible evolution of the game.

Good observations. I think that all large capacity decks are helped by such a change, but wall oriented ones receive the lion's share of the benefit. Players might start using larger vampires because they cannot be Seduced as easily as before. Mainly though, Dominate becomes weaker and that's not such a bad thing.

The large capacity decks are 'helped' in as much as they don't suffer the problems inflicted on other decks. Typically, Arika playing Seduction will get away with it. (One game in 20, she'll face a Laibon with a fake 37 capacity.)

Empowering decks by screwing others may leave the playing field equitable, but it's not the 'fun' way to do it. I'd rather the 4 and 5 cap deck full of dom/DOM vampires was still motoring along, but that the currently-a-bit-rubbish large cap deck was given a leg up to that standard. Psychologically, telling players that (essentially) they'll have their fingers slapped for playing tier 1 decks isn't great. From a player perspective, making the large cap deck viable via some positive method doesn't feel like the Dominate machine deck is being punished - it feels like other crappy strategies are being empowered. The end result is a (hopefully!) similarly diverse group of viable decks, without having had to piss Dominate players off.

But the biggest problem is that basically two cards (Redirection and Deflection) basically trump all other pool-defence-reactions. The only other ones that compare are either cornercase or fairly limited in scope. Auspex flick/reduce is strong, but Auspex flick is expensive (blood + tap) and people generally deem reduce to be inferior (because it doesn't increase pressure on the prey but only neutralises resources of the predator).

And there are only three cards... one of them requires you to control ONLY Laibons.

Non-Dominate-or-Auspex Bleed Defences

Keep it Simple
Really quite good in a static-intercept deck to neuter an Obfuscate-based block fails. They need to get it up to a moderate stealth amount often before playing the Block Fails, then you drop a Keep it Simple and the action (and all of its modifiers) are basically wasted.

Lost in Translation
2 blood, only on younger, only once per action... Could this card basically entrench the power of Deflection more??? If it cost 2 blood and a tap, but not require younger vampires, then awesomesauce. If it cost 1 blood and no tap and a younger vampire, then awesomesauce.

Terra Incognita
Honestly, if it reduced by 2 and gave the other ability, I'd have it in all of my Laibon decks, including those with Auspex. It's a not-too-bad card, but a reduce by 2 would have made it great.

Taking these two together:

Juggernaut1981 wrote:

But the biggest problem is that basically two cards (Redirection and Deflection) basically trump all other pool-defence-reactions.

Jeff wrote:

If Dominate bounce was more attuned to generation differences in vampires, the game would be dramatically different, and in a good way IMO.

Being pedantic, I'd say that Murmur of the False Will is actually doing okay - it's turning up pretty consistently in moderate quantities in a range of TWDA entries. It addresses one of the few flaws bounce has - which is what you do with it when it's useless, such as when you're down to 2 players or when a mono-political deck is your predator. That might be a good avenue to explore when creating other bleed defence. So, say:
But, leaving that aside.

So let us assume that We (tm) decide to nerf Deflection in particular. We need to be careful that we don't cause more anguish to the decks that are currently struggling to be viable by strapping on Dominate for a few Deflections. Will the mono-Dominate deck still be more viable?

For example, some decks strap on Dominate by adding in a couple of weenies to the mix - so they hope to bring out one or two big vampires, but one or two weenies with Dominate too. (I've certainly seen this done with Star Vampire + weenie fans, for example.) If those weenies cannot reasonably play any bleed bounce, that deck is potentially hit hard. Will the 'proper' Dominate deck be hit as hard? I'd say not, because it still has decent bloat, it still has decent bleed, and it can bounce some bleeds.

We need to be careful that 'hurting' Dominate doesn't, in fact, cause people to chase its power down rabbit holes that lead to them ditching their kinda-kooky-loads-of-fun deck that has Dominate grafted on. Bleed bounce will still be valuable to decks that can play it, even if it's somewhat inconsistent.