Rules Team Rulings - 22-APR-2013

Lilith's Blessing banned! Awesome

As people have noted, the real problem is the Villein + LB combo, which is just Too Damn Good(tm). While I still hate Villein, at least seeing that combo go away from tournament games is a good thing in my book.

Even on its own, LB is too good. It's usable in any deck, it's not unique, it gives tons of free blood, and it allows you to fetch a discipline card. It wallpapers many previous cards, in one neat package.

Ideally, of course, the card could be reworded to make it permissible again (i.e. nerfed).

@Kevin: Villein is problem because lilith's blessing and giant's blood. Giant's Blood made villein autoinclude, not the other way around.

@Jeff:Check how many deck sport Villein with either GB or LB.

@All: It's blood creation that move from vampires into pool a problem, not just moving blood from vampires into pool.
NC Qualifier
Budapest, Hungary
Rack, LB, GB, 5xV + Gora special

El Barón se va a vender sus pieles
Palma de Mallorca, Spain
3xLB, GB, 8xV, 2xGolconda, 12xAshur's T

Crusade: Krakow
Krakow, Poland
GB, 2xLB, 5xV (3xHeidelberg - MRapes)

Justicar Retribution XIII: Prince of the Rodeo
Helsinki, Finland
LB, 4xV, Blood Turnip

There are more decks that share the pattern. There are also decks with token amount of villeins which opted to not use GB and LB.

In top 20 decks with more than 3 villeins, no one opt to not use Lilith's Blessing, Giant's Blood or Voter Cap. Would they still use such amount of villeins without those cards ?

AaronC wrote:

Banning LB is fairly easy to justify because it is a storyline promo card that was not (supposedly) playtested.

Aaron, that is incorrect. For some reason there is this persistent rumor / belief / urban legend that Lilith's Blessing was never playtested. I've mentioned it before, and I'll mention it again (to correct misinformation):

1. Lilith's Blessing was before my time as Storyline Coordinator (so I had nothing to do with it).

2. Lilith's Blessing was playtested in all of the playtest rounds for Heirs to the Blood.

You are free to argue that the playtesting process was flawed, or the playtesters didn't do a good job, or LSJ dropped the ball. I take no position on the matter, but you have the right to your own opinion.

But Lilith's Blessing *was* playtested (or available to playtest) for three rounds.

villein is a much much more unbalanced card than lilith's blessing ever was imo (but villein allows for high-caps to be played so i'm ok with it). having to retrieve a master discipline card or making it unique (less fun) seem like simple solutions to dealing with the card. giant's blood is also crazier than lilith's (i even accepted GB; it's just one of the -admittedly more unbalanced- parameters of the vtes-environment).
combination with multiple master phase actions also seem like the way bigger problem (anson, girls -cybele-nana-aksinya). huitzilopochtli's special (pay 1:blood: might hold the key to that problem...)
personally, i would have guessed it would have been ashur that got the ban as it's just terribly designed (it ridicules or recursion which it shouldn't imo as so many cards are specifically dedicated to that mechanic/lore)...

voter cap (modifier) in priciple should never gain more blood than a fifth tradition (actual action requiring prince/justicar and other vampire).

_sidenote, shouldn't it be 'It' instead of 'If' in the Impulse-section?

ReverendRevolver wrote:

My question is, why no Ashur errata? I assumed the word "minion" would be added between 13 and "cards", or it would be banned.

The decision was taken not to errata any card until cards with updated cardtext are available.