Which Master do you most hate to see played in a tournament?

Ashur wrote:

Yeah. That´s why a competent, impartial, unpretentious design team, more playtesters/playtesting and a totally transparent design process are a good ideas.

Don't be an ass to people, either currently in the design team or formerly in the design team directly or indirectly.

There are reasons why the design process is not an open completely-publicly-scrutinised process. The first that pops into mind is basically "Trial by Media" design or "Populist Design". That will not do great things for the game. If you think you would make a long-term valuable contribution to the design team, then start knocking on Ben Peal's inbox... maybe he wants to add more people now (maybe again he doesn't).
**END MINI-RANT**

The Girls' XYZ Decks (which aren't a problem in Australia, since they really aren't played and personally I haven't seen any on JOL so consequently it seems like they are a Euro-trend) seem like they are the convergeance of unforseen design problems. Something akin to people not realising that suspension bridges can have resonant frequencies similar to the frequency of air currents ( click here ).

Effect 1: MMPAs
This is exactly the effect that made the Triple A decks nearly impossible to oust and scarily hard to beat-off the blood. Once Anson hit the table, it was easy for a player to strip them of blood via Minion Tap, Golconda that minion and have 8 pool back on them in a single turn (Zillah's + 4 transfers) and have had a net pool gain equal to (Minion Cap - 1) and realistically delayed themself by 1 action from ousting their prey. It also allowed for the "lunge vote" where 3 TGBs are dropped in a turn and then, for example, 3 KRCs are called before Alexandra untaps one of them which bleeds for the remaining 1 pool...
These were deadly decks and could usually create quite large buffers of pool through a steady combination of Minion Tap, TGB, Voter Cap and the odd Golconda. They became more durable with the printing of Anthelios since you could effectively convert a dud-master into a useful one (swap that Minion Tap for a Golconda you're going to use on the empty minion).

Effect 2: Ashur Tablets and Ashheap Recursion
Ashur Tablets further enhance the effectiveness of 'burning' cards into your ashheap. There are comparatively few effects that will trash cards from your ashheap; ergo it is a safe place to 'dump' copies of a card IF you can get them back. Cards such as Liquidation and Specialization help with this phenomena, especially since your deck may have combat defence cards and finds itself in a combat-light environment or etc, etc, etc.

This is also the reasons why I hate Heart of Cheating... For 1 pool it gives you library-cycling without 'losing' resources. It's not much better than Ashur Tablets for its effect on the game. However, it does have a little more weakness because of its equipment nature (but not by much). I think the best of these 'library-cycling' effects is still Rachel Brandywine, because it does allow some limited end-game engineering of your deck but only 1 card at a time and from your hand and not effectively off the top of the library (you are still a victim of imperfect knowledge of future events in your library).

Effect 3: Multi-player Solitaire
There seems to be a trend of more decks becoming effectively 'multi-player solitaire' decks in the multiplayer environment. They interact minimally with anything but their prey's pool and seem to just be an elaborate proof of "I can build a highly narrow, highly efficient card sequence that cannot be intervened". I understand the desire to basically ensure that your deck is difficult or even impossible to interfere with, but it makes for a boring game when the point is interaction/interferance.

For my own mind, they are boring as bat-crap. The Girl's XYZ Decks seem to be of this category; along with The Una Deck and [Somebody]-a-tron decks. I see there being more place to the Turbo Baron deck (in its older -weenie recur Baron from the Ashheap and Soul Gem format) in VTES.


The Girls' XYZ decks seem to be the convergeance of these three trends. A deck that has high-efficiency non-intervened strategy, strong Ashheap recursion and pool bloat from using cards already-drawn again and catalysing both of these effects with the ability to play 3 non-Trifle MPAs in a single turn.

To my mind, the key targets should be:

1) Creating cards that interfere with others ashheaps efficiently for either defence or ousting capability. This will encourage people to purposefully attack the Girls' ashheap (and limit the value of Ashur tablets) and cripple their recursive ability. "When [Salvager] successfully bleeds your prey, you may burn X random cards from their ashheap to increase the pool burned by your prey by 1"

2) Creating cards that can effectively cancel a vampire's card text or even somehow allow for the limiting of MMPAs. e.g. "When you control [nasty mo-fo] using effects on a vampire that are not stealth, intercept or strength cost that minion 1 blood.", "While [Jim Bob the Destroyer] is ready, your prey must burn 1 pool to use MPAs.", "While [Steve-Dave] is ready each non-trifle MPA beyond the first costs every Methuselah 1 additional pool".

<lost of rant>

You are entirely missing the point that the Girls will Find... deck's engine runs entirely based off of the special of one vampire.

Without Aksinya, the deck is trash.

the card that cancels vampires specials already exists. It's Seeds of Corruption. The problem is that card can be played only on your prey

Juggernaut1981 wrote:

1) Creating cards that interfere with others ashheaps efficiently for either defence or ousting capability. This will encourage people to purposefully attack the Girls' ashheap (and limit the value of Ashur tablets) and cripple their recursive ability. "When [Salvager] successfully bleeds your prey, you may burn X random cards from their ashheap to increase the pool burned by your prey by 1"

I don't know why you would consider such s silver bullet solution.

If Ashur Tablets are a prime contributor to a serious, widespread problem, ban them.

It works, is globally applied (all decks), is simple, is elegant.

It prevents carrying another crap hoser like the Uncoiling. And has little potential for unforeseen new problems. Harbingers Millstone wasn't exactly owning the tournament scene.

If library recursion isn't the problem, isolate the real issues (honestly, I think you did - it's a confluence, to which I would add power levels for pool recursion trifles).

Regards,
- D

nc-italy wrote:

KevinM wrote:

I didn't put Ashur on the list because I personally hate to see every other Master card on that list worse than seeing Ashur. Vote for The Parthenon if you hate MPA decks so much.

Sadly, imho it's ashur tablet that pose currently the most of problem
(all-time consuming card: retrieving 13 cards and choosing one to put in hand, shuffle et all just makes too easy stalling for time) definitively it should be on the hate list. For sure AT it's the card i personally hate most atm

Respectfully, I must point out that you are wrong.

If someone is stalling, they are breaking the rules and are able to have appropriate penalties applied to them.

If someone if playing the card and taking the physical steps at an appropriate pace, they are not stalling.

If the players at the table cannot figure out which it is, they should call a judge.