Champions of Cagn Unbound!

AaronC wrote:

jamesatzephyr wrote:

AaronC wrote:

jozxyqk wrote:

I build some sort of vote deck, with no Laibon in the crypt except Meno Ngari.
Meno comes out and calls KRC, playing Akunanse Kholo, and putting 3 pool damage on my predator. I continue to beat on my predator with votes.
Later, Meno calls the seat-switcher to switch places with my predator. Voila, sniped VP!

Actually, how is this VP sniping? As described, you did all or most of the work to reduce that player's pool. Now you are reaping the reward of your own effort, not that of another player.

Nothing in Josh's play description (which mirrors things that often happened under Dramatic Upheaval) suggests that the real predator is doing little or nothing.

If you want to predicate a defence of a seat-switcher based on one player on the table having been replaced with a sack of potatoes with the words "I pass" stapled to it, your argument may be regarded by others as somewhat flimsy.

I was referring to your specific example in which "[you] continue to beat on [your] predator with votes."

That's not my specific example.

Nor is there anything in that that suggests that the real predator did nothing, which you predicated your later arguments on.

AaronC wrote:

What I am saying is that there is quite a bit of moral outrage (with healthy doses of sanctimonious condescension, see "motivational" poster above) over seat switching.

No. This is pretty much nothing to do with moral outrage.

No player on the table should expect to have two predators. (Outside of obviously fabricated circumstances like the Nergal storyline.) When a player is being beaten on by two players (their real predator, and the person who is hoping to pass a seat-switcher ASAP), the game breaks down. Each player is expected to put pressure on their prey and defend from pressure from their predator. In a five player table, you now have a Methuselah who probably isn't getting much pressure, and another player who is getting two players piling into them. And there's very often nothing they can do about it.

How does this compare to a player generating table hate? A player who does things that annoy the rest of the table (say, playing an Anarch Revolt deck, pre-errata, or stacking massively annoying Gehenna events) will often attract some extra attention - say, a prey trying to back-oust them, or another player trying to vote their Revolts off the table, or someone else punching the Ventrue who was going to play Elder Kindred Network on the burn vote, or whatever. These things are in the grasp of the player generating the table hate. They can, in general, decide just how much they want to annoy everyone else on the table, and plan their deck and play accordingly. Some players are very good at managing table hate and will be able to negotiate alliances. (Indeed, you sometimes see decks that upset the table including tools to be able to mollify a potential ally, such as giving them pool with a Parity Shift or calling a Consanguineous Boon on their clan, or whatever.) But in this case, if you get more than one player beating on you, it's not for something you've done.

In the seat-switching example, no.

Garfield deliberately designed the game so that no two players on the table had - mechanically - incentives that actively coincided. The predator-prey structure was deliberately chosen and the choice of how VP and pool were awarded was put in this fashion, so that Adam, Brenda, Colin, Danni, and Evelyn have five different sets of priorities. Unlike free-for-all structures (something you sometimes see in, say, multiplayer variants of Magic), there is no incentive to dogpile. Indeed, while you may want a given player off the table for whatever reason (which all basically boil down to "their deck is disrupting my deck excessively", be it from contesting, or significant aggro, or whatever else), this is tempered by the fact that you've just helped someone else get a VP that you can no longer get.

It turned out - from several years of active, competitive play - that the seat-switchers caused all of this to fly out the window. As did Succubus Club, because of the ability for two trusting players to effectively pool their resources into one big uber-Methuselah. They had significant detrimental effects on the game. One player gets jumped on because - due to entirely random chance - they happen to be in a 'good' position for it. This is unfun. Having two predators because you generated excessive table hate may also be unfun, but that's something you do to yourself. Having two predators because of entirely random chance is totally not fun at all.


So this has nothing to do with moral outrage. What it has to do with is the fact that we have years of competitive play where this was possible, all of which show that the potential for utterly unfun outcomes was high. So they were banned.

AaronC wrote:

Calm discussion would be better.

From someone making snide remarks about condescension, this is laughable. If you want calm discussion, how about being less of an ass about it?

AaronC wrote:

You may have valid reasons to not like it, but "PCK are jerks and everything they do is by definition horrible" is not a good reason.

Which is why people have provided repeated concerns, none of which are "the PCK are jerks and everything they create is, by definition, worse than the plague".

AaronC wrote:

I say keep an open mind about the concept.

This would be valid if it were an entirely new concept. (Like, say, the Imbued when first introduced.) It isn't. We've seen the effects seat-switchers have on the game. Willfully shutting our eyes to the problems they caused and having to have the same problems all over again is a terrible idea.

jamesatzephyr wrote:

No player on the table should expect to have two predators.

Guess we need to prohibit cross table rushes. Actually, combat decks in general should be banned because they beat up on their predator so much. *NO* player deserves to have two players beating up on them. Blocking is ok, but only if you play strike: combat ends.

My point is that your statement perhaps *should* be true, but isn't. Votes hit multiple people, bleeds can be bounced. Every action has the potential to "give one player two predators." I don't know if that makes a seat switcher ok (I started playing after they were banned so I have no experience with them).

Also, (to change the subject briefly) I'm surprised about some of the card complaints. Cards like Raiment of Ishtar and Pledge Sword are clearly top-down designs that have taken WoD lore and tried to faithfully turn them into cards. The Pledge Sword can only be used once per minion because once they've sworn an oath of loyalty to you, they can't do so again. Given how many WoD fans have an... interest in the lore that boarders on obsession (from the perspective of somebody with only a casual interest in WoD), I would think that such attempts would be welcomed.

Really, I wonder what the community would say if somebody other than PCK had submitted these cards. I'd guess that the comments would be a kinder, although given the bitter attitudes of many here toward change, perhaps only slightly.

AaronC wrote:

You may have valid reasons to not like it, but "PCK are jerks and everything they do is by definition horrible" is not a good reason.

I don't think that has been said in this thread. But sending a cease and desist letter certainly falls in the 'horrible' category. I have yet to see an action from PCK that would make me trust them ever again. And it is going to take more than some old, some new, some borrowed and some blue cards.

brettscho wrote:

Really, I wonder what the community would say if somebody other than PCK had submitted these cards. I'd guess that the comments would be a kinder, although given the bitter attitudes of many here toward change, perhaps only slightly.

I think it's probably because everyone feels that there is some kind of "side" to choose or something. The Community were polarized because some things happen in the past and now it's very hard to forget and be "neutral" cause if I for example will say that "some of this cards are bad or should be develop much longer" some will say "yeeaah, he's from Vekn so he doesn't like the PCK" and opposite, if I'll say something like "some of theese cards are good" some will say "What is he talking about, he's from Vekn, he forgot about the past? He is doing something against the Vekn" etc etc etc

I see that the mayor problem for now is that we cant discuss without choosing any sides. But there is no "side". There is only a GAME we LOVE.

Regards
SZewski

brettscho wrote:

Really, I wonder what the community would say if somebody other than PCK had submitted these cards.

That a card was created that's better than the entire Una deck.

The few cards that are playable -- and there *are* a few that are quite decent -- don't begin to make up for the dozens that are mediocre, derivative, copies of Camera Phone, and the ones that are just plain untested.

There's a card which is possibly the worst card ever made in any fan expansion. The setup for this card defines the player as creating a deck which is gunning for 0.5vp, and the card even has a fail clause!

It's like this person has never played VTES in real life.

Can you be more specific? Which card in this set is better than the Una deck and why? Which card is the worst vtes card ever and why?