Attempt to Fix (not ban) Events

I see the logic ICL has, since NOBODY has a "we all get +1 intercept" card with no built in burn mechanism. That parts important.

Week of nightmarez makes yoir deck fom swarm of meh or group of ok dudes into the table threat, but you also have a finite amount of turnz before your game emplodes.
Revel gives gangrel more punch(still not great, poor gangrel...) but is burnable

Freaking New Carthage is the closest to unmasking, and i think its roughly 12x scarier. It gives votes, bleed, and lessenz ventrue votes. Is kinda stupid.

But, changing it or banning it (the unmasking, that is) doesnt seem proper. Maybe non-imbued should get the perk? Theme is, vamps arent as good at hiding from things wanting to see them, and imbued can see em fine, its just a queztion of ability to do anything about it. Imbued can find thier own damn intercept. If we ban unamsking, im in favor of events to grant werewolvez and zombies/wraiths/mummies(gehenna event called the great maelstorm?) Intercept.
But unmasking is cleaner.

And other events arent as cool.

I think we are getting lost in theoretical example-counter examples, "if this was played you could do that; but if that was played I could respond with this instead!" It reads like Yu-Gi-OH! fiction, and I'll just call it the Yu-Gi-OH! defense from here on out as it skips design discussion for getting lost in the weeds.

There are plenty of examples of events having hugely disruptive permanent swing effects. If one was corrected, another would be pointed out. However the point is not about micro-adjusting those effects. In fact the genesis for events as a card type, gehenna events, has their very raison d'être in "hugely disruptive permanent swing effects."

The issue is we have a card type that was designed with the above purpose in mind. And while their power ranges from wallpaper to questionably disruptive/broken, we are losing sight of the entertainment level. That's due to the lack of interactive responses to this card type. For a game of small effects, a whole card type dedicated to big swing effects makes a messy ripple but does not seem to add much beyond that.

That is what I want to address. I feel that contesting a space is a better design solution. By having more players vying for that space helps mitigate it. And wherever enough people vie a space, it lowers opportunity cost to make counters an easier sell.

So, how would I raise the interest in contesting that space, so as to bring down the price of including counters? Well, I could fashion another event focused set like Gehenna -- and great gnashing of VtES players' molars are heard around the world. It would involve card design needing a fine-toothed comb to bring out something viable and not over the power curve. Or I could abort it as an abomination, ban the entire card type and move on. Or I could leave things as they are, which still leaves the event card design space as a big booby trapped field for any future design team.

Or I could kill two birds with one stone by letting events explode events. It serves several functions: no new card creation needed, raises each event's value to counter status, invites contesting of event space, and lowers average in-play time of events in general. And all while still being an uncommon 1-in-80+ card deck counter bullet. Clean, discreet, and reopened design space (discard phase cards). Of the above ideas it's the one that currently intrigues me the most.

Azel wrote:

I think we are getting lost in theoretical example-counter examples...

...That's due to the lack of interactive responses to this card type. For a game of small effects, a whole card type dedicated to big swing effects makes a messy ripple but does not seem to add much beyond that.

...Or I could kill two birds with one stone by letting events explode events.

I think your original idea has merit: A rule based way to get rid of dramatically game-changing events could be very good for VtES.

However, I think it's overly expansive. Paradoxically, it also encourages Methuselahs to play with *other* events to counteract the really bad (Gehenna) events. I'm not sure whether this is a positive consequence of the proposal.

I would be in favor of a more focused rule change. For the most part, decks with events choose them for their specific purpose. There are only a few deck archetypes, like Imbued, which spam events to disrupt the entire game. Those are less problematic in my opinion because of their relative scarcity.

So, a proposed change to your proposal:

Once each discard phase, a Methuselah may use a discard phase action to discard an event from his or her hand to burn an event card of the same name which is in play.


This means if you expect that The Unmasking is going to really wreck your casual stealth game, you can put a copy of it into your deck to burn one that makes it into play. If MMPA decks really crimp your style, use Anthelios to remove recursion tech option from them. If events are generally a problem in your metagame, then The Uncoiling is still your best bet. This narrow focus allows players to make strategic decisions about what they may see in a game, while keeping the opportunity cost relatively high so entire archetypes aren't wiped out with one broad stroke.

Jeff wrote:

Azel wrote:

I think we are getting lost in theoretical example-counter examples...

...That's due to the lack of interactive responses to this card type. For a game of small effects, a whole card type dedicated to big swing effects makes a messy ripple but does not seem to add much beyond that.

...Or I could kill two birds with one stone by letting events explode events.

I think your original idea has merit: A rule based way to get rid of dramatically game-changing events could be very good for VtES.

However, I think it's overly expansive. Paradoxically, it also encourages Methuselahs to play with *other* events to counteract the really bad (Gehenna) events. I'm not sure whether this is a positive consequence of the proposal.

I would be in favor of a more focused rule change. For the most part, decks with events choose them for their specific purpose. There are only a few deck archetypes, like Imbued, which spam events to disrupt the entire game. Those are less problematic in my opinion because of their relative scarcity.

So, a proposed change to your proposal:

Once each discard phase, a Methuselah may use a discard phase action to discard an event from his or her hand to burn an event card of the same name which is in play.


This means if you expect that The Unmasking is going to really wreck your casual stealth game, you can put a copy of it into your deck to burn one that makes it into play. If MMPA decks really crimp your style, use Anthelios to remove recursion tech option from them. If events are generally a problem in your metagame, then The Uncoiling is still your best bet. This narrow focus allows players to make strategic decisions about what they may see in a game, while keeping the opportunity cost relatively high so entire archetypes aren't wiped out with one broad stroke.

Good for stopping abuse and also a spite play, which is solid in vtes

I dont feel we need "vessel events" (vessel event, type event inconnu, requires another event in play, when vessel event enters play, you may burn a gehenna event in play. Titled independent vampires get +1 stealth on nonbleed D actions directed at non-Laibn vampires and players who control any camarilla or sabbat vampires)

But, our problem:

Limiting the foudation of the game, interaction, by creating OVER-RELIANCE on cards that arent interactive.

Unmasking, no interaction to play, keep there, but its purpose is to make allies block, which is interacting. So its not optimal or terrible.

Mmpa issues are he biggest offender with the problem, and i still feel only one additional mpa should be obtainable from a non trifle source.

Trifle once a turn, then mpa, and mpa from a vamp, parthenn, or vote in play. Thats it. So, trifles arent too hurt, vamps with extra mpa arent, but they arent as abusable as before. Also, anthelios removing cards from the game would be possible.

Jeff wrote:

Once each discard phase, a Methuselah may use a discard phase action to discard an event from his or her hand to burn an event card of the same name which is in play.

OK, so you propose a RTR with a rule change which nobody will use 99% of the case ?

Let's be honest : if I am afraid of Unmasking hitting the table, I will still pack Uncoiling because there will ALLWAYS be a case when I will have 3 vampires in torpor and a dragonbound in play, or a MMPA deck sitting next to me with an Anthelios in play or really any type of situation where a disruptive event will wreck my game.

And come on, I thought the process was to lower the opportunity cost of counter to event, not the exact opposit...

Jeff wrote:

Once each discard phase, a Methuselah may use a discard phase action to discard an event from his or her hand to burn an event card of the same name which is in play.

Isn't this just a 'silver bullet' to solve a problem, when we already effectively have a Silver Bullet for Events (as people have mentioned before... The Uncoiling.)

This is terrible design philosophy.

This is, to a certain extent, the same 'arms race' philosophy that says that every deck should have Pentex Subversion purely because someone ELSE might play Pentex Subversion on you. It's just not sensible. If we want a diversity of deck style and types that can win tournaments, then we need to encourage a diversity of cards to be used. It will probably mean that the Design Team will have to heavily favour minion interactivity over the various cards that have contributed to "The Master Phase Game" that people seem to be objecting to in the MMPA decks*.


*MMPA decks are clearly an attempt to solve the problem of other people having 'better answers' for my minion interactions. Either they block better, stealth better or sent my minions to torpor... The end result in the same: deck designers have aimed for a more 'solitaire playstyle' because it provides consistency against the variability of minion interactions and other people's deck choices. MMPA (and Una decks) answer the variability between seating placement and pred/prey deck choices by attempting to render them irrelevant to the deck design of the MMPA deck. It drives down the variability of its performance by removing minion interactions where possible and thereby eliminating both the play decisions, deck building decisions and table-state of all other decks.