TWDA: What it is and is not useful for

wastaz wrote:

One thing I find is that it's really hard to rank how "good" a deck is in this game.

It's not hard, but impossible. People flock to the TWDA because they can have a metrics that seem somewhat right. But a deck quality is not something that can be quantified.

Exactly like beauty : you can see someone is ugly or pretty, but you cannot give an unique, rationnal, and widely accepted beauty note to every men and women. Yet Miss universe exist. The same thing happen with VtES deck : you can't rate them in a absolute way, but TWDA statistics are still used.

You can say that Tzimisce, for example, have or does not have synergy between crypt card, but you can say objectively that Tzimisce is alway a good or bad clan. As in "in a definite and unchangeable way".

Izaak wrote:

Depending on what you classify as specifics, you can, actually.

I meant specific specifics. Some things are impossible to determine from only the TWDA. The next sentence was three examples of things can't say with just the TWDA.

Xaddam wrote:

Card quality, which decks are regularly performing bad or mediocre or a deck's interaction with what it faced (meta game) comes to mind right now.

Izaak wrote:

Because, on average, all the "things that happen" during a tournament such as bad seating, free gamewins because people play bad or tables ganging up on you is all equally likely to happen to each and every deck. There isn't a mystical force sitting over our tournaments that jinxes all !Nos decks.

Indeed, the clan thing is something which you can claim with the TWDA as supporting evidence. But a deck winning cannot simply be explained with "the deck is good". Sometimes really weird stuff happens which makes a bad deck win and this "really weird stuff" is not covered by the TWDA.

Xaddam wrote:

I was actually just thinking about this the other day. I've started building decks which rely heavily on Recruitment (which I think is a legitimately strong card, i.e. I plan to play tournaments with it) which will open up some exciting new decks. But I won't be attributed a 'clan win' with a deck like that, even if it brings up its main clan 95% of the time. The Stranger Among Us is already a strong card which makes the scarce clans' crypts a bit lop-sided as well.

Yeah, there are some library cards whose use are not covered by the TWDA clan requirements rules.

Some cards let you fetch crypt cards from your crypt:

Recruitment
Stranger Among Us
Coroner's Contact
Soul Scan
Summon the Serpent

Other cards may let you draw more crypt cards or cycle through your crypt better:

Wider View
Mesu Bedshet
Clotho's Gift [outferior]
Kindred Intelligence
Effective Management

Others let you change your clan:

Clan Impersonation
Feral Spirit
Unacceptable Appearance


But none of these are unfortunately considered.

In the case of some of the "search your crypt" cases, you do have to genuinely question whether some of those decks are all-star decks or clan decks. Turbo Baron, relies on just one Samedi who it will always get out. It's definitely a "Baron" deck (even though it has only a single copy) and definitely a "Soul Gem deck,", but it's harder to call it a "Samedi" deck (if it has to be classified under a clan, it's probably closer to a "Giovanni" deck).

On the topic of the TWDA archive. It's data. Some things you can say with that data, other things you can't say. You can say which deck, card or crypt regularly wins (the tournaments who qualify for TWDA entries and are interested in reporting to it), but you can't say which deck, card or crypt posts good results. As long as we all agree on how this data is gathered, the resource can't be bad. It can be misused, but we regularly call each others on that when discussing, anyway.

A lot of things happen during a tournament which all amount to a given player winning, things that the TWDA can't reasonably include, so we will never be able to say some specific things from TWDA analysis. Card quality, which decks are regularly performing bad or mediocre or a deck's interaction with what it faced (meta game) comes to mind right now.

Excellent points. I concur.

Izaak wrote:

Because, on average, all the "things that happen" during a tournament such as bad seating, free gamewins because people play bad or tables ganging up on you is all equally likely to happen to each and every deck. There isn't a mystical force sitting over our tournaments that jinxes all !Nos decks.

Untrue. Some decks are more likely to be viewed as table threats and be ganged up against. Some decks are more likely to result in bad play (complicated decks where the player of the deck has little margin of error, or decks that use complicated or rarely seen cards that involve interaction and have a higher chance of causing other players to make mistakes or play badly). In the old days, "bad seating" also didn't apply because back then you had the seat switchers. Even now, decks that can go backwards or crosstable (as opposed to a deck that is pure forward momentum) has a better chance of dealing with bad seating.

Yes, that will be me. You think Lambach is awesome? I think he's alright. Give the guy PRE instead of DOM, get rid of the pointless special (aggrevated hand damage is not a good special when you have vic, and +1 strength and aggrevated damage don't synergize well enough) and give him someone useful instead (say, +1 bleed) and he's a good crypt card. Tell me, what can he do that a cheaper Tzim cannot?

Uh, aggravated hand damage is fine when you have because it saves you card slots. Last I recall, people like Janey Pickman and people intentionally play Basilia precisely because of their agg hands (despite already having ).

+1 strength doesn't synergize with agg hands? Uh, that extra strength helps you cardlessly burn other vampires. And in fact, in the case of Lambach, being able to turn on/off the agg hands (with the blood burning requirement) is often a strength since it lets him better able to manipulate the blood on the opposing vampire so you *can* burn him. (Vampires like Basilia who always have agg hands have a harder time burning vampires by doing enough agg damage when the vampire is low enough on blood).

Lambach can cardlessly burn vampires in combat which is something that cheaper Tzimisce *cannot* do. Plus he can play Cardinal cards!

I think there is nothing Tzims can do that can't be done better and more efficient with a different clan. But none of this really matters for the discussion at hand.

War Ghoul?
Horrid Form combat? (Ravnos Trapparition and Setite Typhonic Beast don't come even close).
Best access to agg damage outside of the Baali (between Breath of the Dragon + Chiroptean Marauder)? Wasn't an Assamite player just recently complaining that the Assamites aren't nearly as good as the Tzimisce?
They have a really good selection of titles (much better than most other Sabbat clans)

Xaddam wrote:

Izaak wrote:

Because, on average, all the "things that happen" during a tournament such as bad seating, free gamewins because people play bad or tables ganging up on you is all equally likely to happen to each and every deck. There isn't a mystical force sitting over our tournaments that jinxes all !Nos decks.

Indeed, the clan thing is something which you can claim with the TWDA as supporting evidence. But a deck winning cannot simply be explained with "the deck is good". Sometimes really weird stuff happens which makes a bad deck win and this "really weird stuff" is not covered by the TWDA.

That is assuming that the "clan" criteria is actually accurate, and unfortunately the TWDA uses a very flawed system for that (which you already see a lot of the time when people say "well you can't really count all those !Gangrel decks because they were Girls decks focusing on Aksinya or Enkidu all-star decks and not *real* !Gangrel decks!")

If another 1000 Abomination decks get played, they'll win more, be in more finals, and win more tournaments, but that doesn't mean Abominations will be good.

And because they are bad, there will not be another 1000 Abomination decks being played. You're inverting the logic here.

Some decks are more likely to be viewed as table threats and be ganged up against.

Oh god... really? Guess what: It's the *good* decks that get conspired against because here it comes *they are actually good*. And despite all that they STILL get a lot of tournament wins, because ya know, they're good decks.

Oh and I guess there's the occasional Imbued or Una player that gets voted off because they make the game unfun.

In the old days, "bad seating" also didn't apply because back then you had the seat switchers. Even now, decks that can go backwards or crosstable (as opposed to a deck that is pure forward momentum) has a better chance of dealing with bad seating.

Keep hanging on to your straw men. What kind of stupid argument is this? "Hey look guys I can just play this DU with my Lawfirm to get away from this intercept wall!" Uhuh.

As much as you don't want to believe it, the TWDA gives us a very solid base ground to determine which decktypes (and by extension clans and cards) are good choices to play if you want to win. It certainly isn't perfect because of the many variables that are not being tracked, but it's a hundred times better than you make it out to be.

I suggest you just hit the negative on my karma counter another time, move away from this thread and go design a new storyline.