How I would relaunch V:TES (competitiveness + Speed and fluidity)

brettscho wrote:

If out of turn actions must be taken, force them to be used between turns - after the discard phase of one player but before the untap phase of another.

This is foolish — you would introduce a major advantage to the player acting out of turn.

With the current impulse approach the current player at least has the ability to act again and potentially take advantage of the newly tapped minion(s). Also, if the out of turn player passes on an offered impulse then they loose that window. With your suggested approach the out of turn acting player can act without risk or repercussions...

Good point, but if it can't be done simply, the question is should it be done at all? I'd suggest no.

EDIT: A thought - maybe you could limit the out of turn action to being between two specific player's turns. Maybe a Malkavian who says "If XXX is ready and untapped, XXX may take an action after your prey's Discard phase." That would allow you to keep the advantages of acting after your prey, but it would remove the flexibility of defending or attacking. Maybe that would be a decent way to decrease the power of out-of-turn acting? Anyway, just a crazy thought.

Overall great post!


However:

2wayspeaker wrote:

VTES needs more: Searches, Combo cards, Recursion.[/li]

Yes and no. Searches and recursion are a two-edged sword. The reason being that they instantly make any combo or restricted card stronger by allowing you to either search for it in early game, or reuse it. Recently we had a ban (Anthelios) simply because recursion made an already powerful strategy (multiple master phase actions) even stronger. There is a lesson to learn here.

The game absolutely NEEDS searches and recursion, but they need to be handled carefully and not just dispensed in abandon. I'm saying this after observing such cards for 20 years in magic the gathering. Searches and recursion (especially recursion) often end up being format defining.

(Magic the gathering also banned a card-searching card Dig through time not too long ago because it essentially made a powerful combo deck even stronger and helped other decks that were already dominant in metagame)

I think that searches are more okay than recursion. Searches also help those with limited card supply to make working decks. The problem is of course it helps already strong decks in equal measure.

Good ideas but, please, could we retire Carlton and The Unmasking in any future sets?

AaronC wrote:

Good ideas but, please, could we retire Carlton and The Unmasking in any future sets?

And giants blood and Heidelberg please.

On recursion, vtes is long enough already. Timeouts due to repeated Ashurs are a pain in the ass.