Imbuided - Dead or Alive?

Ankha wrote:

LivesByProxy and Bloodartist got what I meant.

A brute search of "a vampire" returns 607 occurrences in library cards, and "a minion" returns 185 occurrences. VTES is a game of vampires, and cards are mostly designed so. By having a crypt composed of allies only, an Imbued deck substracts itself to those cards, that is a great part of the game (thus the recurring feeling of not playing to the same game)

Considering that:
1/ detrimental cards are played by other players
2/ beneficial cards are played by yourself

Then
1/ The Imbued deck avoids a lot of detrimental cards played by other players.
2/ The Imbued deck doesn't have access to all the beneficial cards, but can use only those that are Imbued-compatible (no Blood Doll, but Liquidation for instance).

The advantages outshine the disadvantages.

Typical allies decks are not the same since they rely on vampires to bring out allies. Imbued decks don't have to.

I'm also not convinced by the support you give for your argument that the "advantages outshine the disadvantages." Kine Resources Contested is one of those "detrimental cards played by other players." It gets played way more often then about 90% of the cards that say "a vampire" (thus not affecting imbued). Imbued have little going for them to do anything about this card and the ensuing referendum. This is a major disadvantage and pretty much makes up for Taste of Vitae (another commonly played card) not being able to be used on Imbued.

Bloodartist wrote:

In order to have allies, you're supposed to have a vampire that recruits them. Interacting with said recruiter makes all the difference for ally decks. This is not the case with Imbued.

Now, this touches on where I can start to understand the argument that Imbued are bad design: they are crypt cards but also considered allies. It's odd that Imbued are considered a term that was introduced in NoR (Imbued) and also an old term that works differently mechanically (Ally). It's even more odd when juxtaposed against the new term that was introduced in NoR to refer to any non-mortal/non-animal (Monster). Was having the Imbued be both "Imbued" and "Ally" a good idea when NoR was clearly introducing new terms to circumvent problems with existing terms? I don't know, but it does seem to introduce a lot of confusion. That said, even if this was a design mistep, I'm still not convinced that the symptoms of Imbued also being considered allies are a problem. Imbued have weaknesses because of this.

Ankha wrote:

If you're the predator, you'll have to go through 2+ intercept each time (Unmasking + Second Sight), if you're lucky enough not to have the vote action cancelled by Determine.

And Determine takes away an extremely useful, but very limited and slow-to-replenish resource. Not much different than Power of All or Rewind Time or any other effect that cancels a card.

For The Unmasking, that means you didn't pack a Gehenna hoser, like Fourth Cycle or The Uncoiling. That's just an event arms race like any other arms race in the game. The game has plenty such races. Why is calling this one out important? How many will the Imbued deck pack? How fast will the deck get to one? Is there a window when it is not available? It's not like they start the game with an event in play.

The Imbued's other intercept is via Second Sight. If you make continued pressure every turn then, they have to burn it every turn. That means the Imbued is not playing his game (ie, going forward). It's a slow to replenish resource, easily defeated by Change of Target, Crypts' Sons, Majesty, Tangle Atropos' Hand, superior combat, etc.

If your vote deck failed to have a plan to encounter a wall built with some permanent and some transient stealth, then you didn't plan to succeed. Vote decks need real stealth or "European" stealth in most metagames to succeed. Even then you can't expect all of your actions to be successful.

Why is this such a sore point? How is this "wall" really any different than !Ventrue, Tremere, or !Tremere deck types? A Bowl of Convergeance with a tons of wakes is likely more threatening than the Imbued variant.

Why you are suddenly discussing how to deal with imbued? Yea, they can be dealt with, it's even not wery hard - they are totally not tier 1 and in some mutchups can die horribly.

Problem lies in completely other dimension.

elotar wrote:

Why you are suddenly discussing how to deal with imbued? Yea, they can be dealt with, it's even not wery hard - they are totally not tier 1 and in some mutchups can die horribly.

Problem lies in completely other dimension.

Then why are people bringing it up? I'm only responding.

It seems pretty clear that most folks conflate how to play against Imbued with the design of them.

kschaefer wrote:

It seems pretty clear that most folks conflate how to play against Imbued with the design of them.

How to play against them is somehow connected with their design problems. Average vampir on the table got 1 strength and 1 bleed, most his abilities comes from hand of the player, so his opponent has to evaluate possibilities, analize their table position and mange risks accordingly.

Imbueds got most of their abilities on the table. All surprises there is Determine and Angel of Berlin. So you have to "solve a puzzle" with only real challenge here is to physically differentiate half a dozen identical cards (with different abilities) on each of identical dudes (with also completely different abilities) across the table. That sometimes this "puzzle" will be unsolvable for your deck because of imbued immunities is just an icing on the cake.

All this is manageable, just not fun, especially for those, who like VtES at the first place.

Making addition to the game, which makes it less fun, is a bad design.