Proxies and the VEKN

Bullcrap.
Villein is not necessary. There are not that many Villeins being played around the Sydney group...

To be brutally honest, NO one card is necessary, just between 60-90 library cards and 12+ crypt cards. This is VTES, not MtG. Yes almost every last TWDA Deck has a Carlton Van Wyck, an Ivory Bow, Pentex Subversion and Dreams of the Sphinx... But there are entire decktypes that don't require any of those cards and they compete just fine.

fojtik wrote:

I thing that Villein is necessary to play the game. Withought Villein you can play swarm decks only. Withouth Villein you have big disadvantage with trying play big capacity deck. There is no alernative for Villein in big capacity deck.

No. Lacking Villein prevents you from playing a certain subset of large-capacity vampire decks, in the same way that lacking Nephandus prevents you from playing a certain subset of ally decks and lacking Camarilla Vitae Slave prevents you from playing a certain subset of turbo decks. Lacking all three still doesn't prevent you from playing the game.

One thing that I find interesting is that nobody seems to be worried about the potential for proxy use to alienate older players who've expended real-world resources on getting these cards. It's always been the case that people who spent more money on the game could play a wider variety of decks than those who didn't. I do agree that this was an unfortunate sales model, but that horse has been out of the barn for fifteen years now, and it's never prevented new players from beginning to play in that period, precisely because those Mr. Suitcase decks aren't necessarily any better than five-and-dime decks.

Put another way: If a new player who can't get (and by "can't get" I mean "isn't willing to spend the money to buy or the effort to trade for") enough Villeins to make a particular deck and feels like that means he can't play competitively at all, well, my bet would be that such player wouldn't have lasted long anyway. There are loads of decks that a beginning player can't reasonably hope to make, and if the lack of one card is such a sticking point that he'll quit over it, he probably wasn't going to have stuck out the long period of getting his head crushed in competitive play.

Kushiel wrote:

fojtik wrote:

I thing that Villein is necessary to play the game. Withought Villein you can play swarm decks only. Withouth Villein you have big disadvantage with trying play big capacity deck. There is no alernative for Villein in big capacity deck.

No. Lacking Villein prevents you from playing a certain subset of large-capacity vampire decks, in the same way that lacking Nephandus prevents you from playing a certain subset of ally decks and lacking Camarilla Vitae Slave prevents you from playing a certain subset of turbo decks.

It's a pretty big subset, more specifically 30% of last year's TWD's. I wouldn't compare that to the subset of Nephandus-decks.

Lacking all three still doesn't prevent you from playing the game.

Lacking Villeins does prevent you from playing an unreasonably large group of decks.

One thing that I find interesting is that nobody seems to be worried about the potential for proxy use to alienate older players who've expended real-world resources on getting these cards. It's always been the case that people who spent more money on the game could play a wider variety of decks than those who didn't. I do agree that this was an unfortunate sales model, but that horse has been out of the barn for fifteen years now, and it's never prevented new players from beginning to play in that period, precisely because those Mr. Suitcase decks aren't necessarily any better than five-and-dime decks.

This is one of the reasons I'm against allowing every card to be proxied. But with Villein? The only real-world resources I spent on my 16 Villeins was the price of a starter box. I'm not going to be alienated if the price of Villeins on ebay drops to a level that reflects what I actually spent on them.

Suoli wrote:

Lacking Villeins does prevent you from playing an unreasonably large group of decks.

Suoli would you pay 0 pool to gain 5 pool?
How about 1 pool to gain 5 pool?
How about 2 pool to gain 5 pool?
How about 3 pool to gain 5 pool?
I'm going to assume that you wouldn't spend 4 pool to gain 5, yes?

If you are using 4, 5, 6, and 7 Master cards as trifles, how many additional Master cards do you play? A very very quick look at the TWDA for 2010 seems to indicate that a majority of decks don't take full advantage of the fact that Villeins is a Trifle. A couple sure did though, but it doesn't appear to be the majority though.

Is Minion Tap really so inferior? Of course as the theoretical player base increases and the shortage of Villeins increases the better Minion Tap becomes from a potential pool spent to pool gain ratio.

Gargoylee wrote:

Is Minion Tap really so inferior?

This has been thoroughly discussed on the newsgroup. I'm not going to start that discussion again here but yes, Minion Tap is that inferior.

Their shouldn't be proxies in any way shape or form in competitive play.

If you think that allowing proxies will allow people to use better cards, and their for be more competitive, your wrong. A bad player will lose with a good deck to a good player with a bad deck a large majority of the time.

This isn't MtG were we all sit and play Solitaire tell the first person to get his combo off wins, you have to talk with others, you have to wheel and deal, you have to lie your ass off and put on a good show so others screw up. That's how people win with this game, that or they play Malk S&B (can build a good one with all commons and a few uncommon's) and fall asleep at the final table and still win (seen it happen a few years back).