Imbuided - Dead or Alive?

IMO, silver bullets / hosers / hard counters wouldn't be so bad if VTES didn't have 20+ clans and / or had developed the Camarilla / Sabbat / Anarchs (no Imbued please! ) equally from the start. VTES also gets away with it better than other CGs because most VTES cards have two options thanks to the Inferior / Superior discipline format. Other CGs with silver bullets / hosers are devoted to an entire card. But, IMO, silver bullets / hosers / hard counters are generally indicative of poor design or creator oversight ("this card was more powerful than we thought") which is poor design by another name.

LivesByProxy wrote:

IMO, silver bullets / hosers / hard counters wouldn't be so bad if VTES didn't have 20+ clans and / or had developed the Camarilla / Sabbat / Anarchs (no Imbued please! )

I hate vegetables because of climate change.

GreyB wrote:

I hate vegetables because of climate change.

This is meant to be some kind of mockery, but I don't get it. My dislike of the Imbued is purely personal opinion, I've said as much. But it's inarguable that the value of silver bullets / hosers / hard counters decreases dramatically as the odds that you'll ever see their intended targets decreases. In other words, the more clans that are added, the lower the odds you'll see a specific clan at a table, the less valuable any silver bullet / hoser becomes.

Notably, Amaranth only reveals one card that directly hoses the Imbued - Break The Code. Of course, if the game only had 4 playable factions (Vampires, Mages, Werewolves, Imbued), then such a card would probably see much more play. As it stands, I can't imagine anyone adding Break The Code to their deck. :/

The clan hosers used to work quite well in '95.
Also some of them were more effective than others.

Malkavian dementia is still good. Then again malks are one of the best clans and it has combo support in Derange...

No one uses Brujah hosers because they are not a prelavent clan. Also easier to deal with your main game plan as well.

True silver bullets include Scourge of Enochians, Uncoiling, Fear of Mekhet and that location that taps tupdo-- minions as they enter play, to name some. I mean out of those that see any play these days.

Lönkka wrote:

The clan hosers used to work quite well in '95.
Also some of them were more effective than others.

And as I like to point out: Magic the gathering has moved away from hoser-cards over the years. (I don't agree with this writer btw) The opinions on whether its for better or worse is debatable. But I NEVER want the ONLY counter strategy to be a hoser card. That is simply poor design. Deck strategies need have play against each other without a handful of one-of hosers. Hoser cards should also never be so strong that "I play this against this particular deck and I automatically win." Then the game becomes a coin-toss of whether you draw that card or not. Who would want that?

What I am saying is: We shouldn't be thinking that "As long as a hoser card exists against this archetype, everything is fine and balanced".

LivesByProxy wrote:

Notably, Amaranth only reveals one card that directly hoses the Imbued - Break The Code. Of course, if the game only had 4 playable factions (Vampires, Mages, Werewolves, Imbued), then such a card would probably see much more play. As it stands, I can't imagine anyone adding Break The Code to their deck. :/

Likely the best hoser against Imbued is Fourth cycle , which I got to windmill slam against a crosstable Imbued that was messing with everybodys game in last weekends tournament (hopefully we see a TWD report soon). It burned 3-4 gehennas and a bunch of convictions.

Imbued tend to rely heavily on gehenna cards because imbued dodge pretty much all negative aspects of these cards that mess up everyone elses game. It would be tempting to say it was fun, but I'd rather not have played against Imbued OR gehennas OR included fourth cycle in my deck. Admittedly Imbued wouldn't be as annoying if they didn't play Gehennas. Maybe Gehennas are the problem.. Such loathsome cards.

ps. Break the code is a blank that you include in a deck if you want to play other gehennas that require gehennas to already be in play.