Contents and card changes in 25th Anniversary revealed

PetriWessman wrote:

In general, it's a mistake to think the game should (only) cater for some small group of tournament winners. Black Chantry (and playtesters) make changes based on what's good for the overall health of the game, which includes the general game experience, and includes both tournament play and casual play.

This means that cards and decks which promote a bad play experience -- in the form of "often cannot get to play at all", like Una & Pentex -- are problems for the game, and must be dealt with. And it's not all about just tournaments, a *vast* majority of games played are casual games. Where everyone is trying their best to win, of course. In general, one could argue that casual games are perhaps *more* important to the general health of the game, tournaments are a side attraction.

On to the actual changes:

Pentex is now an oust card (like Anarch Troublemaker), and not a one-stop solution to everything or a defense card. It's probably annoying to have to *think* about what to include now, instead of just auto-including 1-2 Pentex, but that's life. I expect to see less Pentex in tournaments (and casual) from now on, but I would be extremely surprised if I didn't see it at all. It's still a great finisher.

As for Parity Shift, everyone knows it was too powerful. Full stop. Now it's a lot more balanced (though still by far the best vote in the game); less powerful in beginning, more powerful in the last 1-on-1 portion. I'd still include lots of it in titled Cam vote decks, nothing much changes there.

And Una? That's not something people focused on tournament wins should care about in the first place; Una Twister decks don't win reliably, what they do reliably do is kill everyone else's game and bypass basic game interaction. Good riddance. Sure, there are other degenerate decks like that out there (which the Ankara change didn't kill), but like BC said in the article, they're keeping an eye on the developing meta. I like the fact that BC avoided touching FD itself, I think that was a good call.

It's not the end of the world, even if one disagrees with the changes, and the actually good players will quickly adapt. The ones who now suddenly can't win without old-style Pentex or Parity Shift, well maybe they weren't actually all that good in the first place. We'll see.

I am globally in line with what you say except on 1 point :

"Black Chantry (and playtesters) make changes based on what [they see as] good for the overall health of the game,"

It is a possibility that BCP AND the playtesters are wrong... But yes, "we'll see"

PetriWessman wrote:

...
It's not the end of the world, even if one disagrees with the changes, and the actually good players will quickly adapt. The ones who now suddenly can't win without old-style Pentex or Parity Shift, well maybe they weren't actually all that good in the first place. We'll see.

I really hope the rule changes will become effective right before the EC. Then we might get the first "big data" about the effect of the changes. B)

All changes long time called for.

Some nitpicks:
Ankara Citadel "not action modifiers" feels kinda unnatural.
Instead of +1 stealth for BM it should be better to make all undirected action default +1 stealth in the rulebook.

PetriWessman wrote:

In general, it's a mistake to think the game should (only) cater for some small group of tournament winners. Black Chantry (and playtesters) make changes based on what's good for the overall health of the game, which includes the general game experience, and includes both tournament play and casual play.

I think the mistake is conflating a tournament-level meta with a casual one, like you are doing. The changes were clearly made in reaction to a tournament level meta, where "deck archetypes that have exploited multi-acting to the point of abuse" are apparently a problem. This has zero relation to a casual meta where players either don't play those decks because of personal preference (in the case of experienced players), or may not know these decks can even exist (in the case of inexperienced players). Pentex or Parity Shift were never a problem in these play environments. By changing card text, you are also affecting those casual environments for better or worse. Please note I definitely understand the changes could be for better in these environments as well, my point is the changes were not really necessary for casual environments.

The problem is that in VTES we don’t have enough data to make statistics relevant, like in other card games.

And the fact that we’re talking about a multiplayer game adds some difficulty, since seating and deck combinations are endless.

So seeing a lot or few decks of a given archetype is not that relevant to judge if they are too or little powerful (unless it’s systematic, which is not the case in VTES). In VTES when you see the same deck entering the finals it’s usually the same player :
- Martin Weinmayer with Stanislava
- Alain Greiner with Nephandi
- etc.

Well, dunno. I see a lot of Pentex and Parity Shifts even in my casual games, and these changes should also reflect there in (what I see as) better games.

But yeah, these changes are not *necessary* in casual, that is true. But removing some "kill all fun" scenarios (like getting star Pentexed as is comes out, or sitting in table with Una or related deck) from casual games also is a win in my book. Worst case, that's someone's first game experience.