Card idea: Trust no One

Kraus wrote:

Izaak wrote:

I dunno... I'm up for more ways to deal with ally decks that don't involve "play presence or combat".

I'm not sure if a political action is the way to go, it being so tied up to presence and everything, but something that would be good against Nephandus or Ghouls would be nice.

What's wrong with combat exactly?

Tournament decks are anti combat at best as it is. A wee bit more red cards in there wouldn't hurt, I think. Just add a gun or two and that'll take care of Neppers and Ghoulies in the long run - and that ain't even an investment in combat department.

Allies are a good and cool way to battle the bleeders, voters and whatnot, and hardly over powered. There are plenty of ways to deal with them. Start with blocking the recruitment actions, for example.

And against Nephandi we already have that one vote, which burns all allies unless their costs are repaid. That ought to be enough.

There are also Permanent Vacation and Secret Must be Kept, so there is already 3 votes that specifically wreck allies, and anarchist uprising and ancilla empowerment hurt ally swarms just fine too.

I fear more anti ally tech will make ally decks weaker because I think ally decks are in good balance now. Usually it is ally combat which is biggest threat. I don't find ally combat defence so much different than other combat defence. At least you have some options for allies, not so much against weenie POT. But that is true there really isn't universal answer against allies, I don't think Permanent Vacation or Kindred Segregation are playable.

I put 1-2 Secret Must be Kept in all laibon vote decks I make, there is usually always a target for it.

Pendargon wrote:

If imbued, Khazar or shambler player lose from a dominant position, i call that good! B)

I believe you may have misunderstood me. Those decks are not in a dominant position in the tournament scene. I meant that, in a game, after an hour of careful play, if you're lucky and skillful you may with one of those decks get into a strong position (as you can with any other good deck). There should not be a card which says that you lose because you are winning.

As was pointed out, cards like Domain Challenge and Ancilla Empowerment are also a bane to swarm decks, but are balanced by the fact that hurting the whole table is often not something you want to do, or not something the table will let you do.

Izaak wrote:

I'm not saying allies are too strong or anything. I just think they're obnoxious to deal with from a deck design point of view. More effective ways to deal with allies that don´t involve throwing Carrion Crows or playing Entrancement is good in my book.

If you have a problem with ally decks, either play enough combat to be able to kill them (and they are a lot easier to kill than vampires), play enough stealth to reliably be able to perform actions at 2 stealth, or play enough intercept to be able to block a 1 stealth (recruit) action. This is not advice that is unique to playing against ally decks.

The fact that playing an ally deck is a viable option when designing a deck is good, because the more viable options there are the better it is for the game. Sure it means you have another thing to consider when designing a deck. But as they can't bounce, can't vote, and fight worse than most combat decks, I find they're one of the decks that concern me least in deck design.

If you have a problem with ally decks, either play enough combat to be able to kill them (and they are a lot easier to kill than vampires), play enough stealth to reliably be able to perform actions at 2 stealth, or play enough intercept to be able to block a 1 stealth (recruit) action. This is not advice that is unique to playing against ally decks.

Maybe you should try to read better.

I'm not saying that I have issues dealing with allies in general. Neither do I think they are too strong or anything. Actually, the most annoying ally decks (ie, the fighty ones) do the same thing combat decks do: make someone at the table unable to play V:TES and then proceed to get ousted.

The thing is, there are only two efficient ways to deal with allies. One is Entrancement, the other is beating them up. Yes I realize there are more "steal ally" cards but they are generally less useful than Entrancement because they do just that - steal allies and thus are usually not worth including. So in the deck building phase you either decide you want to play Crows or Presence, or you don't. If you choose to do so, allies are trivial to deal with. If you don't, you're going to get your game randomly destroyed every few games.

This is not neccesarily bad or anything, but I think it's pretty silly there are so few playable (playable meaning it's actually usable when there are no allies) cards that mess up allies. I'm thinking of stuff like:

Action, 1 blood
obf: Bleed at +1 bleed
OBF: +1 stealth action. Tap an ally and put this card on him or her. That ally does not untap as normal during its untap phase. The ally may burn 1 life to burn this card during its controllers master phase.

Reaction
ser: only usable when your predator is bleeding you. Reduce this bleed by 1.
SER: only usable when an ally is bleeding you. Reduce the bleed to 0 and put a corruption counter on that ally. <insert standard corruption text>

Action modifier, 1 blood
chi: +1 stealth
CHI: only usable when an ally attempts to block. The block fails. Take control of that ally until the end of your minion phase.

You get the idea. At least give decks the option to deal with allies. As is, you're pretty much forced to ignore allies because there's just no viable options (ya know, outside of Entrancement and fighty stuff).

or play enough intercept to be able to block a 1 stealth (recruit) action. This is not advice that is unique to playing against ally decks.

FYI, you cannot block Piper. You cannot block Antonio's special. Good luck blocking a turn 2 Garou between Form of Mist and Earth Control and good luck blocking a summoned Remnant with Tangle and some random stealth card. You're just not going to block someone playing a dedicated ally deck. And if you do, you're probably playing the type of wall deck that will cause the two people next to you to be playing for 0,5 VP from the start.