TWDA: What it is and is not useful for

Jeff wrote:

The TWDA is the They are under-represented precisely *BECAUSE THEY ARE BAD CLANS*.

echiang wrote:

That could be a factor, yes. I at least admit that.

But there are additional factors which you seem to ignore or refuse to recognize.

No, I do recognize them. But the weight that I place on the various factors is pretty close to diametrically opposed to yours.

No they don't. We need context in order to properly interpret those numbers.

I agree that this would be *better* but we just don't have that information. Imperfect information doesn't mean that it's not worth making an educated guess and trying to identify issues with game balance then addressing them.

Is all else really the same? I don't think it is.

Opportunity to make choices about what to play is the same. I do admit that I play Assamites disproportionately when I go to tournaments. This weekend, I played Thucimia in the "fun" tournament and tried to be "Johnny" with a friend's Baali Barrenness deck in the Qualifier. [Thucimia got Archon'd in both games, and I missed the finals on a coin flip. The top-seeded Baali suffered from my overconfidence to discard Maleficia early coupled with *two* Sudden Reversals--one cross table--of the first ones I tried to play. Plus I was the only player without Dominate and became the bleed sink. But I digress...]

(Maybe that's why we're at a stalemate. We're relying on different fundamental assumptions?).

Yes, I think this really is the underlying situation. And therefore, it's not surprising our assessment of the situation and reasons for decks rising to the top diverges even further.

Yes, the TWDA is one of the only tools we currently have. But I think it's better to admit that it is significantly flawed and possibly look for better tools, rather than to simply assume that the TWDA must be correct (because it's all we have!).

That's where we disagree. Due to its imperfections, the TWDA is *not* providing as much proof as you seem to think it is.

But it's also providing *MORE* than you seem to think!

Wait a minute....someone is claiming that Tzim's aren't competitive?

0_o

I guess you've never heard of a little man named Lambach?

I'm not a big fan of the new Tzimisce vampires as the older ones are more solid and can run toe to toe with votes against dedicate voting decks.

Izaak wrote:

Well, ya know, you can think whatever you want. The reality of it all is that on average, clans with good cards, crypts and synergy will be played more, win more and thus be in more finals and thus win more tournaments.

This is more wishful thinking and / or blind faith than fact, for a lot of reason.

* decks are not strong in absolute, but relative to others decks. The famous animalism combat is a very good example : it only work when others decks let it, since it have to spent 2 or 3 card before strikes determination *and* does not have any response to S:CE.

* people don't know the exact value of a deck, but their reputation. You can have "powerful" deck that never get played because nobody heard of them, or are really underrated, or simply are hard to play and perform very badly when badly played.

You may try with all your might to say that players are rationnal and make motivated decision based on an inaccessible truth. But it's false, people play deck they find fun, can be extremely conservative, and simply aren't omniscient.

echiang wrote:

3. Flawed "Clan" criteria

It is my personal opinion that the clan criteria under the TWDA is flawed. According to the website:

"If a deck has 5 or 6 vampires of one clan, and no other clan has more members in the crypt of that deck, it will be listed under that clan."

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.

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.

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

Sure, we all talk about TWD, but I dont think that even the most avid TWD-defender would say that it is the whole truth.

Imagine for instance if I made a deck using the Abominations (yea, they suck, on that I totally agree with you) which is a -major- hard counter to all stealth+bleed decks, but gets totally hosed by animalism combat. In the current meta I'd never get a win with it, but in a meta where stealth-bleed was the main event and ani-combat wasn't used much it would probably work pretty good.

Would this deck be _good_? I don't know.

When I play, my current meta is weird. It has a -huge- amount of combat and intercept (almost to the point where I'm considering if packing 25 majesty in a deck wouldn't be a quite good idea). I've tried playing a lot of decks from the TWDA, but generally it seems that since the meta in the tournament scene is not -that- combat heavy the decks I find in the TWDA generally has way too little combat defense and gets totally hosed by the constant rushes for 5 agg damage by Hektor.

Does this mean that the TWD are bad? No, of course not, it would be silly to say such a thing. But I have a hard time getting a win with a lot of them since I seem to get constantly blocked (even with a lot of stealth) or rushed and end up in torpor with no way out. People here at the forum talk about how combat decks just make your prey lose and then not win themselves. That's probably true, but in a warped meta where almost everyone goes combat-intercept the only thing that is sure is that the person not bringing enough combat defense will lose and the last one standing after the dust breaks will probably win.

So how do you rank how strong a deck is when it's all very meta-dependent?
I'm not sure.
But for a start, I'd say that you have to record the meta as well. Adding the second place, or the entire finals table, would be a good indication on how the meta looks. But it's a lot of work. But it would give context to the TWD and why it won.

Also, this is just a personal opinion, but my main request aside from a more meta-indicating TWDA would be that for a deck to be entered into the archive it should also have a short comment about how it is meant to be played. Some decks have this, but other decks are just a list of cards with no indication about what the thought is on how it should fit together. Maybe it's obvious for the older players, but as a new player just a short "The idea is to rush your prey with deep song and then carrion crow/bats them into torpor and then bleed them to death with deep song instead" gives a quick context and insight in the deckbuilders mind.

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.

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

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.

It's fairly easy to extract from the TWDA that, for example, Lawfirms are really good and consistent decks regardless of metagame and that the best way to win with Assamites is bleed/vote.

Wait a minute....someone is claiming that Tzim's aren't competitive?

0_o

I guess you've never heard of a little man named Lambach?

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?

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.