Proxies and the VEKN

Pullen wrote:

If you think that allowing proxies will allow people to use better cards, and their for be more competitive, your wrong.

I seriously can not comprehend how you can categorically state that better cards don't increase the chances of winning. A bad player vs. a good player has a better chance of winning with better cards than not. A good player vs. a good player has a better chance of winning with better cards than not. A player with a deck of 90 Ascendances and 12 Democrituses is more likely to lose than a player with a proper deck, no matter who he is and who his opponents are.

More importantly though, having Villeins etc. allows players to move from Malk S&B to more interesting decks.

Suoli wrote:

It's a pretty big subset, more specifically 30% of last year's TWD's.

That's fake math, unless you've actually gone through all those decks to see how many of them are duplicates of each other and thereby not actually different decks. I bring this up not to be argumentative, but because I'm guessing that the recent and massive success of "Girls..." skews that number a non-trivial amount.

Suoli wrote:

I wouldn't compare that to the subset of Nephandus-decks.

Sure. I was exaggerating to make a point. CVS is needed for even fewer decks than decks that require Nephandus. But the principle remains the same - unless you spend a ton of money, you're not going to be able to build every deck. That's the nature of the game, and always has been. The game hasn't needed proxies in the past, and continues to not need them.

Suoli wrote:

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

I've yet to see a game in which someone was prevented from playing due to lacking any given card. I've seen plenty of instances of someone not being able to build a given deck due to lacking cards, at which point they either gave up on building the deck or acquired the cards. No need for proxies.

Suoli wrote:

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.

I was thinking of the poor folks who spent big bucks on Villeins before they got reprinted, actually.

But you seem to want things both ways here. If Villeins were so easy to get, why do they need to be proxied now? If there are people who have enough Villeins for more than one deck, why aren't they trading them away, thereby eliminating the need for proxies? Why are new players spending so much on cards that they don't really need?

Suoli wrote:

More importantly though, having Villeins etc. allows players to move from Malk S&B to more interesting decks.

There's nothing more inherently interesting about large-cap decks than mid- or small-cap decks. If someone is using lack of Villeins as an excuse to make boring decks, they're full of shit.

Juggernaut1981 wrote:

Bullcrap.
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.

Yea, they are just not winning

Kushiel wrote:

Suoli wrote:

It's a pretty big subset, more specifically 30% of last year's TWD's.

That's fake math, unless you've actually gone through all those decks to see how many of them are duplicates of each other and thereby not actually different decks. I bring this up not to be argumentative, but because I'm guessing that the recent and massive success of "Girls..." skews that number a non-trivial amount.

I'm going on Gargoylee's word. He did say that he only counted once, though.

Sure. I was exaggerating to make a point. CVS is needed for even fewer decks than decks that require Nephandus. But the principle remains the same - unless you spend a ton of money, you're not going to be able to build every deck. That's the nature of the game, and always has been.

My point was that size matters and that your principle does not scale linearly. To put it simply, it doesn't remain the same when moving from Nephandi to Villein. At some point the number of decks that require a specific card becomes too big for that card's availability.

The game hasn't needed proxies in the past, and continues to not need them.

At some point in the past the game didn't need a ban list or errata. Things change.

I've yet to see a game in which someone was prevented from playing due to lacking any given card. I've seen plenty of instances of someone not being able to build a given deck due to lacking cards, at which point they either gave up on building the deck or acquired the cards. No need for proxies.

You obviously wouldn't see the deck in a game if it was too bad to be played.

But you seem to want things both ways here. If Villeins were so easy to get, why do they need to be proxied now? If there are people who have enough Villeins for more than one deck, why aren't they trading them away, thereby eliminating the need for proxies? Why are new players spending so much on cards that they don't really need?

Villeins were easy to get for a while but they are not easy to get now.

Suoli wrote:

Villeins were easy to get for a while but they are not easy to get now.

Suoli,
for example you can go to local store and purchase HttB starters for 10 euros for which you get 2 Villeins.

I'd hardly call that "not so easy" escpecially as the pub where local weekly games is played is upstairs from that store...