Timeouting as increasing trend

TryDeflectingThisGrapple wrote:

KevinM wrote:

If players and decks are better, and players have a better knowledge and awareness of the game, they should be PLAYING BETTER and not letting games time out.

As for players playing better or building better decks, bleed offense hasn't scaled up. Ever. There are more options, but the the gold standard for scale is still 1994's Govern+Conditioning. Pool recursion has improved since 1994. Simple mathematics suggest a net longer time-to-oust.

Of course, this isn't meant to suggest everyone should just play Malk '94 or Vignes Tap-n-Bleed.

Derail! Shouldn't everyone play Vignes or Malk '94? If not, what should they play?

TryDeflectingThisGrapple wrote:

KevinM wrote:

If players and decks are better, and players have a better knowledge and awareness of the game, they should be PLAYING BETTER and not letting games time out.

As for players playing better or building better decks, bleed offense hasn't scaled up. Ever. There are more options, but the the gold standard for scale is still 1994's Govern+Conditioning. Pool recursion has improved since 1994. Simple mathematics suggest a net longer time-to-oust.

Since the days of Malk94 we have added Revolutionary Council and Reckless Agitation as well as Palla Grande, Week of Nightmares and and Club Illusion to just name a few. There's no problem with offense.

There are two reasons games time out. One is that you get the wrong combination of decks. !Ventrue stickmen can do just fine until you put them next to two other wall decks. Now is there any way that game won't time out?

The other is players not thinking about how to end the table. Ancient Influence? Oh boy 5 pool. Somebody getting ousted? Must stop that! Now if I lunge I might get my prey, but I might not and if I fail I'm ousted for sure so it's best to just sit here and get my .5.

So vote down the table bloat vote, let the dead weight die and always go for the VP.

Last year's NAC final took under an hour.

TryDeflectingThisGrapple wrote:

KevinM wrote:

If players and decks are better, and players have a better knowledge and awareness of the game, they should be PLAYING BETTER and not letting games time out.

As for players playing better or building better decks, bleed offense hasn't scaled up. Ever. There are more options, but the the gold standard for scale is still 1994's Govern+Conditioning. Pool recursion has improved since 1994. Simple mathematics suggest a net longer time-to-oust.

No, but they could freaking play Sudden Reversal.

Seriously, someone should start a new thread about how Villein is more powerful than it should be due to it being a "must play" master card, thereby taking space away from Sudden Reversal, the card that could stop it.

I think that the dearth of Sudden Reversal, more than any other factor, has allowed decks that rely on Villein to become very powerful.

But what can be done? Not playing Villein in favor of Sudden Reversal, in order to stop others' Villein'ing means that you yourself don't get the power of Villein. Oh, what a devil's choice!

KevinM wrote:

TryDeflectingThisGrapple wrote:

But what can be done? Not playing Villein in favor of Sudden Reversal, in order to stop others' Villein'ing means that you yourself don't get the power of Villein. Oh, what a devil's choice!

Yeah, but I'd fancy playing other masters myself as well. Like, a path for my Ravnos from time to time, or a Pentex, or bloat a wee bit myself if there's a stealth+bleed behind me. And I can assure you those guys do play Suddens...

If the best strategy against Villein is to play cards only to cancel it (and other masters, granted), I'd say it shuts down a lot variety from the game.

Villein's strong as hell. You can't really argue that. Of course there are ways to deal with it, but there's a way to deal with anything in this game. The question is if it's really in the spirit of the rest of the game or not, and does it add to or substract from the verstaility and interactivity of the game.

I'll be leaning towards multiple Suddens myself (or washs), but I'm not really sure if that's what I'd like to see happening in the game.

When people find themselves pushed towards bounce or bloat -- or god forbid, both -- eventually that arms race will have a final result. Perhaps it's time to democratize bounce and other aggression redirecting reactions (like a switch up "Major Boon" that works partially on vote damage), instead of encouraging either bounce graft or shoring up.

More reactions that judo deflect aggression, please!

(That isn't to say there's several cards, namely masters, that seem to be encouraging this trend...)

Well, I for one would like to have not redirection democratized, but something as useful as redirection for (more or less) every clan. I don't know, being unbleedable for a turn with conditions disallowing doing it every turn, or any other more balanced way to deal with predator without hurting him nor using too much action.