Attempt to Fix (not ban) Events

Jeff wrote:

Have you ever sat at a table where you played The Uncoiling and it *randomly* burned the wrong event, so your prey (who had the bad event(s) you wanted gone) gladly paid 1 or 2 pool to keep their "screw the entire table" events in play? I have. It happens.

The Uncoiling, Black Hand Ritual, and Not To Be are *bad* anti-event cards. BHR requires an action and NTB needs to be in hand before the event is played. The Uncoiling is closest to being reasonable since it always burns something that is already in play. But it is random and some events are overly powerful.

I'm almost to the point where I could support the "Ban all events" movement, but I'm not quite there yet. I like some of the minor enablers like The Bitter and Sweet Story, NRA PAC, and Urban Jungle, as well as hosers Narrow Minds and Scourge of the Enochians.

But I'm glad you call my solution a silver bullet because that's exactly what it is supposed to be: precisely countering a problem card with itself. In fact, it's better than The Uncoiling because you can 100% anticipate that it will work when the "anti"-event card is in your hand. Maybe countering highly-powered cards with highly-powered and highly-targeted effects is just what the game could use.

So you are in favour of a solution that limits interaction in a game which has, at its core, been about minion interaction and resource attrition?
You are in favour of a non-interaction arms race?
The suggestion you have made is effectively the 'current Pentex Solution'... hold a silver bullet or get screwed. The reduction in opportunity cost only places the risk into deck design, which is basically where the Pentex Arms Race is currently held. This is always the problem of Silver Bullet solutions... you are taking all of your risk with the Silver Bullet before you even sit down.

Jeff wrote:

It's not card design at all. It's a rule change that could provide another non-card, non-ban solution to a pervasive and wide-spread problem. It lowers the opportunity cost because it provides *yet another* solution to the event problem, one that happens to not require developing a new card to implement.

I didn't mention card design, I said DESIGN. The game is more than cards. Your rule promotes another form of non-interaction between minions. That would be a bad design for a game supposed to be focused on Minion Interactions...

Inventive Card Design might come up with something that has general utility (without just being Computer Hack v2 in the same way many of your "Aye/Orun" set was just Camera Phone v2) and an ability to interfere with Events.

Jeff wrote:

I can easily imagine decks playing with both the above-mentioned "good" events and "anti"-events because they don't have to use The Uncoiling as protection against "bad" events. Seems like a good thing to me, one that would encourage deck diversity, not inhibit it.

Your list of 'good events' is arbitrary and seems to have no basis on something than opinion. Please explain why you chose THOSE cards and not others, such as The Unmasking, Breaking the Code, The Rising, Marisa Fletcher and so on.

Banning is a Knee-Jerk reaction, and I'm sure there are a plethora of people who would want to add cards to the "Ban This" list... I myself would start with Imbued because they break the general game structure of depleting resources (their own resources are effectively bottomless and regenerating). But then, as said, banning cards all over the place just means other cards rise to prominence and you keep on banning cards until there are very few left in the game. I am aware I am making something of a slippery slope argument, but it also connected in with ICL's comments regarding relative power fluctuations earlier in this thread.

Juggernaut1981 wrote:

So you are in favour of a solution that limits interaction in a game which has, at its core, been about minion interaction and resource attrition?
You are in favour of a non-interaction arms race?

Apparently you didn't read my post. I am proposing a rules-based solution to the VTES problem that is poor access to event removal, since many of them are over-powered, global events. I think it's a stretch to claim that events encourage minion interaction. What they really do is fundamentally change the rules of the game.

The suggestion you have made is effectively the 'current Pentex Solution'... hold a silver bullet or get screwed. The reduction in opportunity cost only places the risk into deck design, which is basically where the Pentex Arms Race is currently held. This is always the problem of Silver Bullet solutions... you are taking all of your risk with the Silver Bullet before you even sit down.

Actually, my suggestion gives everyone *another* silver bullet for the problem they expect to have, if they want it. Azel's original solution was even more far-reaching. A bit too far in my opinion, but nonetheless a great kernel of an idea.

I didn't mention card design, I said DESIGN. The game is more than cards. Your rule promotes another form of non-interaction between minions. That would be a bad design for a game supposed to be focused on Minion Interactions...

Actually, as you may know, events are put into play outside of normal minion interaction. As such, there should be ways outside of normal minion interaction to counter or burn them. The solutions that exist are too weak for the strength of existing event cards.

Inventive Card Design might come up with something that has general utility (without just being Computer Hack v2 in the same way many of your "Aye/Orun" set was just Camera Phone v2) and an ability to interfere with Events.

And just the way that Camera Phone was Laptop Computer v2, and Scouting Mission was Govern the Unaligned v2. Ere Ibeji was designed quite quite a few synergies in mind, not least of which were African cultural and spiritual references.

Speaking of our PCK Laibon set, thanks for the opportunity to plug it again.

Check out Champions of Cagn here:
pckvtes.wordpress.com/set-pdfs/

Your list of 'good events' is arbitrary and seems to have no basis on something than opinion. Please explain why...

Go read my post again. It is very clearly my opinion. Good vs bad. Some events are over powered, some are useless, some are in between. You know, like all cards?

Banning is a Knee-Jerk reaction...

Um, re-read my post again. In fact, re-read the whole thread again, starting with the title "Attempt to Fix (not ban) Events". My proposal follows of the original post and tries to modify the idea to something I find a bit more targeted.

I think there is merit to the suggestion by others to "ban all events" because it is a clean solution to a large problem. And that suggestion is by no means a knee jerk reaction--we've had events for almost ten years now (May 17, 2004)--despite how much you may want to ascribe that motive or trait to me by implication. Keep trying, I know you will.

Ok, I know
.......

I came up with this, unrelated to the topic idea like 2 years back:





Now, lets add "appolonious may burn any event controlled by another methuselah as a D action. If that action is successful, you gain 4 pool" after the words "advanced, independent"

(I was going to make a new card, but its alot of work to do via cellphone)

Also, Juggernaut, stop letting this happen:

Jeff Kuta wrote
[Quote/]Speaking of our PCK Laibon set, thanks for the opportunity to plug it again.[/quote]

Juggernaut1981 wrote:

Inventive Card Design might come up with something that has general utility [] and an ability to interfere with Events.

There could be cheap minions which could have the ability to sacrifice themselves in order to burn events in play. This burn-ability should not be an action (The Unmasking would create a natural barrier here), but rather "instead of taking an action, burn this <minion> to burn an event in play".
You could use the minion for actions and blocking, and if the need arises burn an event with it.

Since having many minions (>5 in your suggestion) puts a big red cross the player, I'd not count poltical part of PA as a cost. This is how politics should have been played in the first place, from the general look of them. Coercing others to take mutually beneficial PAs. If damaging someone with 5+ minions is not mutually beneficial for the whole table, I do not know what is...

The problem with weenies in most cases is that you die well before you draw your silver bullets. Perhaps errata-ing one of existing cards to have a limited help against weenies might be worthwhile. For example, adding "burn/send to torpor up to two vampires, controlled by your predator with capacity 2 or less". You take a card, which is exclusively used with (and limited to) archetypes most vulnerable to a horde of weenies, and give it a high-opportunity cost high-focus high-effectiveness effect. Or just a make a slightly weaker version of high-cap accelerator to compete for card slots with a similar opportunistic side-effect.