file Power creep and/or inflation

02 Oct 2012 14:46 - 02 Oct 2012 14:48 #38237 by ICL

Even arguing that LB is the real problem (it is certainly "a" real problem if not necessarily "the" real problem), Villein + Blood Doll is good and Villein + Life in the City is better.

I would argue that 1 blood on a somewhat big cap seem pretty risky. One of the advantage of Lillith is that yhou can work for a pretty long time with 3 blood.

I would also say that big blood generation is much more of a problem than their transfer. Without Giant Blood and Lillith blessing, an empty vampire would more less stay empty.


I don't think my point is being understood. Villein, no more than Blood Doll or Minion Tap, isn't being used one way. There seems to be some sort of assumption that everyone either Villeins down to zero and used LB or Villeins some fattie down to small amounts of blood.

Villein on a 3-cap with no LB in play down to 1 blood is still a 2 pool trifle. With Blood Dolls or Lifes in the City in one's deck, which don't need to be played the same turn as Villein, that can be 2 blood on a 3-cap (admittedly kind of poor to use Villein to net only 1 pool using Blood Doll rather than LitC - that's what Wider View is for). At nearly any point, Villein is a strong choice, stronger than Blood Doll and Minion Tap, because it's a trifle. It has less control than either, but that rarely matters, and the reason I brought up using it with BD or LitC is to restore the ability to fine tune blood on a vampire. It's not like LitC is so weak that it's only useful in combination with Villein - many of the cards that combo well with Villein are playable on their own. Not recommending people go out and put Sermon of Caine and Gird Minions in decks just to fine tune blood after a Villein.

When I go to build any deck with master pool management, I wonder why I don't just run Villein and Life in the City. That's before worrying about the brokenness of adding LB in. Others may find it silly, but I don't have any problem playing Villein on an Anarch Convert or Tupdog in the absence of LB.

I would argue that Blood Doll and Minion Tap were always overpowered. Evidence of that could be seen in commonality of play. Further evidence for Blood Doll would be that it would have seen just as much play even if it had some of the limitations it didn't have but people thought it had - couldn't use right away, couldn't push, couldn't stack, whatever.

Villein is just better than both.


Ironically, Villein was designed to nerf minion tap, as Vessel was designed to nerf Blood doll. Vessel hit its target, more or less, but Trifle just was way too powerful.

I don't think Blood Doll is that powerful, because it's slow anyhow


I'm well aware that V:TES started down a hoser path to try to hose old cards. A horrible way to manage a game, which is why it's fortunate that Vessel didn't slay Blood Doll, etc.

If the historically most played card in the game isn't overpowered, then what's the argument for any card being overpowered? Put another way, if something else was more helpful to winning, then why wasn't that something else played more often?

I know others don't feel the same, but being a staple card means that the card is better than those cards that aren't staples pretty much by definition.
Last edit: 02 Oct 2012 14:48 by ICL.

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02 Oct 2012 15:43 #38247 by Ohlmann

Villein on a 3-cap with no LB in play down to 1 blood is still a 2 pool trifle.


And, then ? It's supposed to be overpowered ?

You conveniently forgot that a bloodless minion can't act, while a lot of very useful card need blood (govern, conditioning, deflection for example). If you try too much to aggresively get blood with Villein, you will take so much master phase and hunt action that on the long run it won't exactly be that good.

Except if you don't spend that many ressources, because you also create blood on your vampire much more efficiently than everybody else with lillith and Giant Blood (and, as Izaak point out, Vote Captivation ; there is surely some other too convenient blood generator out there).

Villein on something with less than 5 cap is usually a waste of time, because your minion was going to use this blood to do something useful. Yes, it's better than Transcendance, but skipping your master phase is often better than having Transcendance in your deck.

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02 Oct 2012 16:20 - 02 Oct 2012 16:21 #38249 by AaronC


Try doing a Lutz deck without any of thoses card. Good luck in not dying randomly before doing anything worthwile. The ones with multiaction and/or Fortitude may prove a bit more playable, but you will still try to stay away as much as possible from thoses expensives vampires.


Here are recent TWDs since May of this year starring 10- and 11-caps that do not feature Minion Tap or Villein:
www.thelasombra.com/decks/twd.htm#2012swsdc
www.thelasombra.com/decks/twd.htm#2012ecqppfa
www.thelasombra.com/decks/twd.htm#2012lcqco
www.thelasombra.com/decks/twd.htm#jr4sohf
www.thelasombra.com/decks/twd.htm#2012tsno

Admittedly, all of the "Lutz" decks in the TWDA feature Villein, but we're not talking about "Lutz" decks. We're talking about large-cap vampires in general and whether they are playable without Villein/Minion Tap. These links prove that it is possible.

However, I do have an example of a viable Lutz deck that does not use Villein. When I was in Denver for the recent tournaments, there was a gentleman who played a Lutz and friends block and bleed deck. There were no Villeins or Minion Taps in the deck that I saw, and I played against him twice, once in a round and once in the final. He played in the final of this tournament: www.vekn.net/index.php/forum/9-event-reports-and-twd/37755-twd-qforced-awakening-denverq-9-22-2012

He used Lutz's blood to pay for Majesties and Telepathic Misdirections. Sure, if you're playing a stealthy vote/bleed deck, Villein/Minion Tap makes sense, but there ARE other ways to play with large caps.

The only reason this deck won (not to take away from Kelly) is the metagame. No combat, or wall decks. The meta was filled with active decks. The closest deck was Brian's bruise & vote to a combat deck. The deck and Kelly exploited the meta as much as he did. Is that bad? No. This deck fails miserably against rush, wall, even against a grinder? Probably. A very good deck, in an active meta, but that's it. The best thing it can do in a passive or combatish meta is draining its vamps to have a big cushion.
This deck's success not proving anything new, or groundbreaking about villein.

I very much disagree. I also played against this deck during a tournament at the 2011 NAC/Week of Nightmares. He was my predator and I was playing Eurobrujah. It was a 4-player table, and my crosstable ally was playing Jaroslav bleed/vote/combat. The other player was paying Mistress Fanchion. Kelly also won that table, even with the presence of decent combat. Admittedly my crosstable and I didn’t play perfectly, which was absolutely required against that competition, but what happened is that the two fattie stealth bleed and vote decks teamed up against the combat decks. The Kelly Highway is amazingly resilient. Certainly there’s a Spock to its lizard, but that doesn’t seem to prevent it from getting out at least three IC members plus Nana and/or Cybele every single game.
But what do I know? I’m just speaking from real tournament experience.
Last edit: 02 Oct 2012 16:21 by AaronC.

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02 Oct 2012 16:23 #38250 by Soonerborn
OK I give up, what is Transcendence?

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02 Oct 2012 16:56 #38251 by Ohlmann
@Soonerborn : my mistake, it was Ascendance (the master that gain 1 pool when played)

Admittedly, all of the "Lutz" decks in the TWDA feature Villein, but we're not talking about "Lutz" decks. We're talking about large-cap vampires in general and whether they are playable without Villein/Minion Tap. These links prove that it is possible.


Thank for the precise proof of what I explain. Your link are :
* A Shalmath deck (10 cap with built-in multi acting, 2/3 action + potentials block for 10 pool. A bargain
* An Enkidu that play nothing above 3 except Enkidu, multi act with Meld, and play Enkil cog and Sense the savage
* A Ceswayo deck which do work with your thesis (well, it's because he can or at least hope to easily multi block with No Secret from the Magaji
* Another deck with 4 blood doll (well, 1 blood doll and 3 vessel), and with 8 govern and 9 bleed redirection. Oh, and the main vampire untap defensively
* another deck with 4 blood doll/vessels
* Another Shalmath deck

So, you can find about 1 decks that somewhat fit the bill, but still with less than 8 average capacity and with a somewhat heavy emphasis on wall element. But apart from that, it's completely possible to play inner circle without way to recoup their costs.

There is a reason why Lutz does not appear on TWDA without Villein or Minion tap : 11 pool for one action and no real defensive ability is way too expensive by a large margin. Even for a good blocky vampire like Enkidu, it's really expensive - as prove the deck you post that strangely can't hope to put another non-weenie on play and do use everything it can to multi act.

But what do I know? I’m just speaking from real tournament experience.


You could have won 200 TWDA, I would still trust only solid explanation, and not your authority.

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02 Oct 2012 17:07 #38252 by Soonerborn
Ascendance, I should've known what you meant... :blush:

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