What is missing from VtES?

Ashur wrote:

Ke. wrote:

No, it's one thing to oust players quickly and a completely different thing to deny them a chance to even act. Preventing a player from taking or blocking a single action only does their prey good, it completely unbalances the table and typically means your grand prey will win.

A combat deck that destroys it's preys minions without a viable ousting strategy is counter productive — the quicker players learn this, the better.

I totally agree. Not understanding this is just strange.

Everyone understands it. I wholeheartedly agree with what Ke said as well... We all do, suggesting people do not understand it is quite condescending.

Ashur wrote:

NO NO NO! This game should NOT be about burning minions!

This game should also not be about a mexican standoff for ± an hour each game. The VP for burning minions was just an example on how VP's can be awarded for other things than ousting.

The main proposition (before it got cluttered with the usual anti-combat propaganda we all heard over and over again) was to change VP mechanics to promote speed and instigate (inter)action. The VP for burning minions was just an example (one that would also make combat strategies more viable removing the situation that the game is going nowhere as is currently usually the case).

If we change the VP system, designers gain a tool to regulate game lengths more easily, design new objectives based on storylines and basically enrich victory conditions. All that, without a legacy of cards being an eyesore. Some current wallpaper cards could actually be revived as well if it aids certain VP award objectives, the legacy of cards suddenly becomes a treasure trove for creative ideas. Imo. the game would get more fun depth as well.

Now untangle your panties, stop spewing the usual combat angst garbage and give this idea some more thought. Reminder: ITS ABOUT A VP SYSTEM CHANGE...

GreyB wrote:

jamesatzephyr wrote:

I'm not at all sure why a combat deck should be able to win the game on turn 3 or 4, by eating more or less everyone's first and second vampire. Pick a solid multi-rush deck and boom.

I'm also unsure why a terrible player doing something stupid like putting out a bunch of terrible weenie minions should make the game just end after twenty minutes.

A deck that can pull off 10 rushes and 10 guaranteed burned vamps in 3-4 turns would surely currently dominate the TWD archive. So I respectfully call bullshit on that If anything; if a player can get VP's for burning minions, it WILL become harder to burn minions as people will adapt their decks to that.

I disrespectfully would point out that "being able" to do something is not the same as something being guaranteed.

I disrespectfully would point out that demolishing an argument that wasn't being made is a sign that you aren't willing to engage with criticism of your obviously completely perfect proposal. Constructing strawmen is just bullshit. Happy smiley face!

I disrespectfully would point out that there's a reason people don't build successful decks that do that at the moment - because it doesn't get them VPs. Changing the game changes their incentives. I disrespectfully point out that if changing the VP structure to change player's behaviour is what you're trying to do, pointing out that their behaviour is different now is just bullshit. Happy smiley face!

Let's try breaking this down.

At the moment, cross-table rushing your grand-predator on turn 2 or turn 3 gets you very little. There's no reason to do it. So no-one really plans to do it. Sure, you might find yourself on a table with Turbo-Arika, but no-one is sitting down thinking "Hey, I can win by rushing cross-table upstream!" Now, they can.

Next, the rush deck currently is exceedingly slow to oust, in the case where it demolishes its prey by being full of rushes and able to crush its prey ruthlessly. Weenie Immortal Grapple tech was incredibly good at tearing down decks back in 1995 - but it was poor at getting ousts, because weenies with obf/pot (popular back in the day) and cel/pot weren't good at bleeding. But putting bleeding tech in the deck changed its timbre a lot, because instead of rushing all the time, you suddenly found yourself with Computer Hacking and a laptop in hand, causing issues. Generally, decks evolved away from doing this because, broadly, hyper-efficient mono-combat that can tear down tables but can't oust is bad. With that change, not so much.

Next, consider that currently you might get a good player as your prey. Or you might get a bad player as your prey. Or an average player as your prey. Luck of the draw, to a great extent, because of random seating outside of the final. So you might have a player as your prey who is good at defending against your rushes. But if cross-table rushing can get you VP, it simply doesn't matter who your actual prey is. Pick the worst players on the table, pile in, and potentially get several VPs. So one or two players suddenly get a double-predator, out of nowhere - and it's the bad players. (Even Kindred Spirits back-ousting is somewhat subject to randomness on this point!)

Next, consider that Immortal Grapple is really good. Against a deck exploiting it ruthlessly, it is very hard to defend against. There are defences, no doubt, but some of them are quite specialist or require a reasonable amount of investment. If hyper-efficient Immortal Grapple can include quite a bit of trump-combat tech, without the need to worry about little things like bleeding, those avenues become potentially narrower still. States of the game pushing people into playing specific tech or specific anti-tech has been one of the hallmarks of seriously bad situations for the game.

Wait for EC statistics. There was crap load of combat. I don't think anybody needs more.

jamesatzephyr wrote:

GreyB wrote:

jamesatzephyr wrote:

I'm not at all sure why a combat deck should be able to win the game on turn 3 or 4, by eating more or less everyone's first and second vampire. Pick a solid multi-rush deck and boom.

I'm also unsure why a terrible player doing something stupid like putting out a bunch of terrible weenie minions should make the game just end after twenty minutes.

A deck that can pull off 10 rushes and 10 guaranteed burned vamps in 3-4 turns would surely currently dominate the TWD archive. So I respectfully call bullshit on that If anything; if a player can get VP's for burning minions, it WILL become harder to burn minions as people will adapt their decks to that.

I disrespectfully would point out that "being able" to do something is not the same as something being guaranteed.

I disrespectfully would point out that demolishing an argument that wasn't being made is a sign that you aren't willing to engage with criticism of your obviously completely perfect proposal. Constructing strawmen is just bullshit. Happy smiley face!

I disrespectfully would point out that there's a reason people don't build successful decks that do that at the moment - because it doesn't get them VPs. Changing the game changes their incentives. I disrespectfully point out that if changing the VP structure to change player's behaviour is what you're trying to do, pointing out that their behaviour is different now is just bullshit. Happy smiley face!

Well... no need to be disrespectfull.

First of, pulling of 10 rushes (possible) and burning 10 minions (exceptionally hard) in 3-4 turns (wowsers) is near impossible, feel free to prove me wrong and I would congratulate you on that.

You (and others) keep rehashing what we all agree on, "combat as a strategy currently sucks". What annoys the crap out of me (and many others) is that it's used as an argument against any attempt to fix it. The attempt gets beaten to death with a broken record.

Beating down any attempt to make combat as a strategy viable won't make the problem go away. People will keep playing shitty combat decks because it's challenging, intensly interactive and fun. That fact alone merits the subject requiring serious attention from a designers perspective whether you like combat decks or not. There are only 2 solutions possible, ban tons and tons of combat cards or make combat viable as a strategy. You simply cannot expect players to not try and love playing combat decks. I for one like to tackle this problem instead of just complaining about it.

Also I really regret writing down the "VP for minion burn" example making me receive this shitstorm. The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of gaining VP's for objectives rather than just ousting. Would've been fun to at least have theorycrafted on it before it got discarded.

jamesatzephyr wrote:

At the moment, cross-table rushing your grand-predator on turn 2 or turn 3 gets you very little. There's no reason to do it. So no-one really plans to do it. Sure, you might find yourself on a table with Turbo-Arika, but no-one is sitting down thinking "Hey, I can win by rushing cross-table upstream!" Now, they can.

Yeah, I saw one that as well, obviously no VP's for crosstable rushing... I said that a few posts back. Perhaps no VP's for burning minions at all, perhaps a Trophy that grants a VP, or an expensive contract. The main idea was alternative ways of earning VP's and game ends when X VPs have been reached.