Vampire: Elder Kindred Network Newsletter June 2022

elotar wrote:

cordovader wrote:

Can you define your subjective vision of “problematic”?

It's not obvious, that master card which gives 3 pool with benefits is too good?

cordovader wrote:

I could also say that new crypts are “problematic” for the game because they give too many votes per point of pool invested and on the top of that a free bounce for barons.

That too may be a problem. At least they are "in the points".

It's fine for MTG to have big possible power disparity between decks because it's two players game which lasts 15 minutes, so not a big deal if one will be steamrolled. But in VtES it's 2 hours for 5 players. If there some serious disbalance, making the game meaningless, than it's 10 hours of lifetime lost.

Your arguments are just ridiculous.

Liquidation itself it's a card that gives a benefit (3 pool) with a negative sideeffect (burn 7 top cards of library and -1 hand size till discard). The fact that it makes a combo it's the synergy with Ashur Tablets, nothing else, but losing 7 cards is not "good".

Second thing, VTES is an asymmetric game, not rock / paper / scissors, so the fact that on a table you have a disparity in power, it's exactly what distinguishes VTES from other games. You need to make alliances, sometimes even prey / pred if there is a threat on the table. The most important thing is to use the table flows to your advantage.

I will give you a practical example: yesterday I played a "league" game of the parisian league, my pred was playing EL, my prey was playing EL. My grandpred (Goratix), got torpored and diablerized Goratrix on his first action (by Unnamed, my grandprey, no votes on the table). So I was in a sandwich between 2 EL, I just backrushed my pred to do some population control (since he had no presure).

In the end I managed to oust my prey, my pred was at 1 pool, Unnamed ousted and Goratrix back in the game.

We play VTES not Pokemon...

I think this debate has completely derailed. Let's wait for next month's newsletter and a few more big tournament reports to see how dominant MMPAs, Legionnaires, Ashur, and/or Liquidation are. The first one so far is the winner of the Belgian National Championship, which featured Ashur Tablets , not as an engine, but as a counter to other tablets. I was around when people were playing Umezawa's Jittes to counter opposing Umezawa's Jittes in Magic and this sort of deck building is a tremendous red flag and a clear sign that something in the meta is very unbalanced.

GiftsUngiven wrote:

I think this debate has completely derailed. Let's wait for next month's newsletter and a few more big tournament reports to see how dominant MMPAs, Legionnaires, Ashur, and/or Liquidation are. The first one so far is the winner of the Belgian National Championship, which featured Ashur Tablets , not as an engine, but as a counter to other tablets. I was around when people were playing Umezawa's Jittes to counter opposing Umezawa's Jittes in Magic and this sort of deck building is a tremendous red flag and a clear sign that something in the meta is very unbalanced.

I don’t think Bram plays them to counter other tablets since in Belgium he’s the only one playing them.

Maybe you can kindly ask him the question but knowing his love for tablets and the fact that he plays them in 90% of his decks I don’t think that’s the reason but mainly a playstyle / deckbuilding choice.

You cannot counter Ashur Tablets by playing them, as they are not unique. And if you play that many, that you can get a set before others can, you do not play them as a counter but rely on them as a part of your deck.

Just wanted to add this w/o taking sides in this discussion.

thelonius wrote:

In some environment there are players whose deckbuilding choice are very poor and, sadly, they deserve to be steamrolled because they don't want to play vtes, they want to play what vtes is in their mind with absurd combos that never work.

In MTG it's like 1/3 of all players, in VtES even more, because at least here we not only got dorks with strange combos but also people from the RPG croud who want their deck to be somehow connected with the lore. And it's much more healthier environment for the game than just competitive crowd, which dominate most of the discussions.

So it's bad, that they are steamroled as we are losing most valuable playerbase, but also it provide unfair advantage to their prey/predator, so it's also a problem for a competitive crowd.

cordovader wrote:

I don’t think Bram plays them to counter other tablets since in Belgium he’s the only one playing them.

Maybe you can kindly ask him the question but knowing his love for tablets and the fact that he plays them in 90% of his decks I don’t think that’s the reason but mainly a playstyle / deckbuilding choice.

Obviously if it's Bram they are there as a main part of his deck, as I think he publicly stated that he will put ashurs into any deck he plays until they will be banned.