Samurai Squad

I’ve played an unusual amount of Heroes of Rokugan recently, two mods in the last week.  I commented recently to people I play with online that, while it’s obvious that the more you play the more you get into the campaign, I didn’t realize how pronounced the effect was.  I’m constantly in touch with the campaign due to weekly local play, where I either GM or superfluously hang out while another GMs an adventure I’ve already played.  But, I haven’t been as jazzed about my (main) character in ages.

Then, I had a few other observations from the unusually prolific recent play.  There are my usual views on party composition – unlike home play where a GM can adjust challenges, the living campaign challenges are largely out of a GM’s hands, so metagaming party composition is important.  Combat tactics was something I spent a good amount of time thinking about.  Sure, it may be ironic that someone who favors combat as an activity so much less than others thinks more about it, but it is an outlet for analytical thinking.

I guess I’ll start with some comments on recent mods.  I will do a new set of rankings on subjective desirability and attempted objective quality for what I have played to this point.  But, first, I enjoyed both recent mods I played – Cold Hands, Stone Heart (SoB15) & Tear Away the Darkness (SoB22).  I especially enjoyed the former.

One of my complaints about HoR3 – yes, I have a variety, no, I’m not trying to grief staff by regularly pointing them out – is that too many mods are underdeveloped.  The underdeveloped ones tend to just be short at least one scene or major challenge.  Some play okay but seem to hint at far more than what you end up doing.  I got really tired of investigative mods from HoR2 because they felt like they dragged, but it wasn’t due to having too much to do, simply that what you did had too much sameness to it.

SoB15 was not one of the underdeveloped mods.  It gave me plenty of opportunities to do the things I enjoy … going to try to avoid being spoilery.  The rolls in the game made my character useful mechanically.  It had one or more themes that speak to me.

Meanwhile, SoB22′s enjoyable experience had a lot to do with relief.  I keep telling folks that I really want to read the mod to see whether it’s as harsh as it seems and how it scales for different groups.  I’m a big fan of smiting evil in L5R – as the first Shadowlands mod for the campaign, there was evil to be smited.  I didn’t have as much of a thematic experience, but I got to use my analytical mind …

Latest thoughts on HoR3 mods:

Scenario	Stars	Rank – Quality	Fun	Rank – Fun
SOB07	3.5	1	4	2
SOB00	3.5	2	3.5	4
SOB18	3	3	3.5	6
SOB15	3	4	4	1
SOB06	3	5	3.5	5
SOB09	3	6	3.5	7
SOB13	3	7	3	10
SOB12	2.5	8	3.5	8
SOB20	2.5	9	3	11
SOB11	2.5	10	3.5	3
SOB19	2.5	11	3	13
SOB01	2.5	12	2.5	16
SOB14	2.5	13	2.5	14
SOB08	2.5	14	2.5	15
SOB21	2.5	15	2	17
SOB04	2.5	16	3	9
SOB16	2.5	17	2	18
SOB10	2	18	1	21
SOB03	2	19	1.5	19
SOB02	2	20	1.5	20
SOB05	1	21	0.5	22
SOB17	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
SOB22	pending	pending	3	12

Moving on, party composition.  Fairly sure I mentioned some elements to an effective party in another post.  Some additional comments and some reminders.

First, the more shugenja, the better.  Shugenja are just superior to other schools for the usual reason that magic is almost always better than the lack of it.  Supernatural stuff dies to Jade Strike like it totally doesn’t to a lot of other things.  Tempest of Air, though I believe GMs are too generous with how many enemy targets and how few friendlies get hit by it, wins fights, including fights that wouldn’t otherwise be winnable.  Fires of Purity is broken.  Path to Inner Peace is essential.  Commune is broken.

After that, we get into specific roles.

Always want a talker – Awareness at least 3, preferably higher, at least 3 ranks in Courtier and Sincerity with Etiquette being important if less so.  Why Sincerity?  A lot of adventures come down to convincing someone to shake off possession or the like.

Hunter – I used to call this the Perceiver but most folks realize the importance in Investigation where too many people don’t value Hunting highly enough.  Picking up trails is essential in a number of mods, more so in HoR3 than HoR2.  The Hunter will have Perception at least 3, preferably higher, at least 2 ranks in Hunting, preferably at least 3, at least 2 ranks in Investigation, preferably 3, should have Battle too since Battle is the only other Perception skill.

Brain – Intelligence 3+, Sage, Commerce, Medicine.  Engineering makes sense but isn’t rolled that often.  Yes, a number of party brains get by without Sage, but Sage is so stupidly good that it really should be part of any character who plans an INT of 4+ and gets the party by while the character works up from INT 3 to INT 4.

“Ranger” – a new category for me, someone who can control range, more specifically, prevent a target from getting out of range of the party when in pursuit and who can affect enemies at range when melee isn’t effective.  This isn’t as essential as the others, and shugenja typically fill this role by accident what with Tempest of Air or Water spells increasing actions/movement or Earth’s Stagnation/Grasp of Earth.  Fire has a harder time with this as Fires from Within is actually not that effective damagewise.

Grappler – grapple is broken, sometimes it’s the only way to deal with problematic enemies.

Murderer – massive damage is the party’s friend, good to target with buffs from shugenja.

Taking my characters’ roles as examples, we can see a bit why I’m so reluctant to play my alt (nevermind not wanting an XP suck for my main).  Typical online party for me is:  Utaku A’Nen, Kitsuki Ketsumei, Ide Xiao Xi, Kitsu Kagami, and Moshi Shigeo (moi).

Ketsumei is the talker.  Xiao Xi and, now that Ketsumei has Hunting, Ketsumei are the hunters.  Xiao Xi and Kagami are shugenja.  I have become a much more useful brain now that I’m INT 4, though I lack Sage.  I don’t think Kagami has Sage, which means no Sage in party.  I think Kagami can ranger, though my recollection is that we don’t ranger well.  A’Nen is a mild grappler (less mild outside of combat).  Xiao Xi can probably grapple well.  Xiao Xi murders well; I’m okay at slaughtering.

Now, my alt, Hoshi Takumi, is best at talker but inferior to Ketsumei.  Two talkers is okay but not thrilling, depending upon what is given up.  For instance, two Air shugenja talkers would be fine because they have shugenja brokenness.  Takumi recently went to INT 3 and is a Sage!  But, he’s been pretty much behind Shigeo at all times as a brain.  Takumi is only a demibrain and will likely never rise to quality braindom.  Takumi also offers nothing else in these categories, though he is a moneypockets, which is a category that’s occasionally useful.

Bottom line, a solid talker and demibrain isn’t as useful to my typical group as a demibrain (Shigeo lacks Sage!), front line fighter, and demimurderer.  Take Ketsumei, though, out of the party and Takumi’s value rises astronomically due to not having niche overlap.

Combat tactics.  I’m not going to go into a lot of depth on combat tactics in this post.  More, there are some bad tactics that amaze me.

Frequent bad tactic – attacking someone who has already gone in the round when there are enemies who have yet to go.  Another, though this is more of a 4e phenomenon due to the awful inversion of the wound chart from 3e – not murdering the wounded, aka spreading damage rather than concentrated fire.

Spellcasting – yes, any spellcasting tends to be highly productive, but not splitting Jade Strike, splitting is far more damage output than calling raises for damage, wasting spell slots on easily winnable battles, and not healing the damage sponges, er, bushi are the main criticisms I have.

Initiative and stance manipulation should be much more common; I’m particularly guilty of forgetting that Center Stance exists, though I rarely see it being a good idea for my character.  Typically, initiative is going to be manipulated by Void Point expenditures, well, speaking of spending Void, people seem to overlove spending VPs for damage soak when ATN boosts are likely to be better defensive return on investment.

Everything is situational.  Most fights aren’t deadly enough for a total party kill, but that’s what gets people dead.  Fight a tough fight and all of those bad habits actually matter.

And, those are my primary HoR thoughts today.

Random Walk Down Wall Street Night

I fully expect to ramble.  Disclaimer out of the way, here’s what I’m not going to talk about:  decks and cards.  I may have had lots of ideas early in January for decks and not so much in the way of ideas in late January, but I always think the value in talking about V:TES is in talking about play rather than decks.  Even other CCGs, where deck composition means so much more, metagaming is likely more constructive than how to build particular decks.

Playing the game has, of course, a variety of features.  I could try to organize this post better by doing something like “here’s how to lose” or “the five things that matter … your deck being fifth” or whatever, but I’m inclined to be more free form.

The Player’s Guide does well to speak of stances to take vis-a-vis one’s opponents.  There are a few I find rather common and rather surprising.

It is turn two, you’ve brought out Dom-dude, DEM-damsel, or PRE-provocateur on turn one, prey has no minions.  Bleed for 5.  Now, many will question this play.  Many will claim that the play depends upon cards in hand – after all, if nothing but bleed boost, why bother discarding it?  Deck archetype certainly has something to do with my reaction.  If you brought out any of these minions on turn one, reasonable chance of a weenie bleed deck.  Let’s pretend it isn’t.

I tend to get offended by this play.  What is the natural reaction of someone who loses 5 pool out of the gate?  Try to have 15+ pool at all times, which means bringing out fewer minions, staying untapped to block/react, rush backwards, whine incessantly to everyone about the table threat.

I’m not sure what everyone else thinks the point of the lunge is, but to me, it’s conservation of resources.  Hmmm … wrong thing to mention first.  Lunging should be mentioned after …

“The most efficient way to do pool damage to your prey is to have your prey transfer out more vampires.”

You have very possibly managed to cause your prey to spend 5 less pool on bringing out vampires, thus doing no net pool damage at all and allowing your grandprey to play with no predator.  That might not be all bad.  I tend to think in terms of five-player tables, where it’s typically counterproductive to have a strong grandprey, but a four-player table might see some benefit to it, though there’s a lot about four-player strategy I need to learn.

Now, I’ve considered an advanced strategy, based on how I see a decent number of games go, around pounding one’s prey as hard as possible, losing steam (probably in truth, but a little faking doesn’t hurt) to pass the “table threat” moniker on to someone else, then magically finding bleed cards (this is easier with bleed decks than vote decks) when people stop caring as much about you to explode with rage.  This would work better for me if I had decks full of bleed cards, but that’s fairly rare, so not one I can test very well.

Moving on.  There are some common traits to bad players.  One of them is playing within their own little worlds.  People who probably shouldn’t play the game include those who don’t pay any attention to anything anyone else is doing and just do their own thing.  That’s kind of extreme but happens.  More likely, moving along the spectrum, you get those who think they are playing some two-player game and battle all game with either predator or prey.  How often do you see someone destroy a predator and hand the game to grandpredator or destroy a prey and hand the game to the predator?

These aren’t terribly exciting scenarios to talk about.  What’s more interesting to me is the person who pays attention to predator and prey and none to the true enemy – those crazy people crosstable who are always trying to screw up your game.

The predator/prey dynamic is a robust one for multiplayer play.  It’s also a predictable one.  Sure, whether your predator is weenie rush, bleed for 5, Parity Shift, Ahrimanes wall, or whatever has an impact on strategy and tactics, but the goal is generally the same.  Not cripple you, though this seems to be a goal of bad rush/Temptation/whatever players.  Reduce your pool.  The more enlightened predator will hope you reduce your prey’s pool significantly while your pool bleeds out.  Meanwhile, the prey wants to have pool and be able to reduce your grandprey’s pool to oblivion.

But, what are your axe doing?  Again, 4-player vs. 5-player is relevant, but in both cases, what they are trying to achieve is harder to fathom and, yet, has a huge, potentially large, impact on your game.  Your beloved crosstablemate may want you beaten down, being all in favor of your predator maiming you.  Your beloved crosstablemate may think you aren’t doing your job as predator and think your predator could do a better job.  I’ve even been in weird situations where my prey threatened my predator with rushes because I kept bouncing my predator’s bleeds.  People crosstable are insane.

On the other hand.  Back in the day, the card pool and the playerbase were both much better suited for aggressive ousting strategies.  It was within that environment that I began looking around and seeing that I had to be deathly afraid of the psychos over yonder.  In recent years and by recent years I mean at least five, I wouldn’t say the same thing.  There are plenty with bad threat assessment skills, but sometimes, it really isn’t worth sweating over every little turn of a card.  Losing sight of the goal gets more tiresome than letting somebody build an unstoppable war machine because you can’t be bothered to form “table threat killing team”.

Winning the game can be simple, complicated, somewhere in between, and even random.

I don’t know that any particular style of play, from my overly passive one to the howitzers, makes for a better or worse game or achieves at a different rate.  I’d say tactics has something to do with it.

Speaking of tactics, I have a relatively new aphorism that I enjoy.

“Play the situation, not your deck.”

I get so tired of the answer to “Why did you do that?” being “It’s what my deck does.”  Are there decks with limited flexibility?  Can my Choir deck suddenly decide to wall up?  Yeah, I guess people build such narrow decks, and I understand that the player’s hands are tied.

Yet, it’s incredibly rare that your choices don’t matter.  Maybe the Choir deck can’t wall up, but it can stop going forward.  Or, it can bleed forward into bounce that goes crosstable.  And, that’s an extreme.  Many decks are far more flexible.

I noticed that at some point when I play that what my deck is designed to do ceases to be relevant.  The situation dictates my stances, how I try to use my cards, how I shape my board.  The tools might differ, and I rather hate the hammer that is rush because it makes decisions so much more difficult, but the game evolves and the player must adjust constantly.

Once upon a time, while the cards existed (Direct Intervention, Eagle Sight, Life Boon, Parity Shift, …), I didn’t expect it to be so hard to oust players.  Maybe it was an offensive philosophy.  Maybe it was fewer ways to get intercept or fewer rush decks.  Maybe it was less random crap and a lot more Govern + Conditioning/Bonding.  I might have some reputation for being a hassle to oust, but I find that everyone is more of a challenge to oust, which means that there’s a lot more tactical play required to manage a game to a productive outcome.

Darn, wasted this title on a post that wasn’t about Wall Street Night.  Oh well, not a lot I’d ever want to say about it besides that I’m not sure if it’s one of the best intercept locations or not.

If Only All Problems Were So Trivial

Four day weekend.  And, I have little idea of what my primary gaming thoughts are.

In the world of RPing, while I played Friday night for the first time in a while, my mind is much more in the realm of GMing.  In particular, I keep thinking of how to do a superhero campaign.

Problems with … supers

One can agonize as much as they want over what system to use for a supers game.  I’m sure I’d just stop and use Champions since I’m more familiar with it and it’s long history suggests that it actually works.  Though, I have thought about how I’m not really so familiar with any particular system to be entirely comfortable for a game with so much variety of abilities as a supers game.

No, my greatest concern is suspension of disbelief.  I just have such a hard time believing in the plausibility of a world with supers.  It’s not the “Why doesn’t a more powerful team deal with this problem?” sort of issues so much as it’s things like how ordinary people would react to supers.  For the most part, mundanes in comics act like having godlike beings around is no big deal.  Deciding just how the law views supers, by itself, is painful to think through.  The point of supers isn’t to be caught up in minutiae.  It’s to do cool stuff with obscene power as part of a soap opera.

So, while Merge World might have been my previous idea, my latest idea is actually reasonably clever.  I’m sure it’s been done before.  The idea is that supers don’t exist in the present, then time travel solves that problem.  Still going to gloss over the historical impact that supers should have.  Time travel and what ifs are such a pain because you have to put so much work into explaining what happens as a result of the change in history, even if the results look much like the present.  I just don’t have the will to build out elaborate histories.  It’s amazing those that do.

Problems with … role-playing

RPing is so often not what one would think it should be.  In that, a lot of the time, people just sit around while others are doing stuff.  One of the big advantages that combat focused games and the tactical wargame style of play that D&D is designed as is that the participation level is so much greater.  No waiting for one player to have a long conversation with a NPC.  Or, whatever.

I don’t believe everyone has to be involved all of the time.  I know I can enjoy the time that others spend doing things when it’s interesting what they are doing.  However, when it isn’t interesting or when there’s too much down time, I feel that there’s something wrong.  So, I’m of the mind to try to figure out ideas for how to increase engagement level.  At times, having someone play a NPC can work.  More combat can work, assuming the party hasn’t split up or simultaneous combats can be run.

I could go into other problems I find, but it ends up being more of the same sort of “Are people’s expectations the same?” issues, which I’m not in the mood to get into in detail.

Problems with … decks

Dominate is oppressive.

Gear switching – activated.

I said that the last time we played.  I had to clarify that I didn’t mean it was oppressive to play against, which is just an ordinary experience, but oppressive from a deckbuilding standpoint.  It’s just so much easier to put Dominate into a deck than do other things.  I often go out of my way to avoid it, such as with my con-dom decks that use a clan with Dominate as a clan discipline but play no cards requiring Dominate.  From a game management standpoint, this has been the greatest flaw in the game since, well, actually, to be fair, Sabbat.  Hardly fair to Dark Sovereigns and Ancient Hearts that they should fix the dominance of Dominate.  Sabbat actually tried.  In theory, if you only played Sabbat, you wouldn’t have to deal with Govern, Conditioning, or Deflection.  On the other hand, you wouldn’t have Telepathic Misdirection, either, nor did the game come up with a lot of “this is as good as Scouting Mission, Threats, and Redirection” stuff for other disciplines and strategies to use, so the game was still afflicted.

Anyway, the game is what it is.  There will always be stronger and weaker.  Animalism is also oppressive in the modern game.  There are even some similarities for why.  Deep Song has flexibility like Govern.  Efficient combat offense/defense for one compared to efficient bleed offense/defense for the other.

Putting aside that it’s too easy to fall into playing Dominate and frequently a pain in eschewing it, there are two other aspects of the game I’ve been finding difficulties with.

Blood denial has been a fourth strategy to bleed/vote/combat.  While I can think of good blood denial cards, well, at least one off the top of my head in Free States Rant, it’s the relative merits of blood denial vs. combat that has me questioning what sort of strategy I’d be sufficiently interested in.  It doesn’t help that I’m really tired of voting, as voting opens up a lot of possibilities, good or bad.

One deck I built recently uses Baleful Doll.  I’ve used it in the past and come to the conclusion that it’s as bad as it seems.  I wanted to give it another shot, more so as a distraction play than a serious attempt to gain an advantage from playing it.  So far, the deck has major problems actually doing anything, which it wouldn’t have if I replaced the Baleful Dolls with Governs.

Meanwhile, combat isn’t really that hard.  I suppose that blood denial is more interesting against Animalism than combat since it’s not that easy to trump Animalism combat.  On the other hand, blood denial is pathetic against Imbued, something I do have to take into consideration.

Speaking of Imbued, my other difficulty of recentness is mixing Imbued with vampires.  While theoretically interesting to consider Imbued builds, in practice, I’d rather games be fun.  So, I’m much more inclined to look into how to meld Imbued with vampires to remove the ickiness of Imbued while still getting some use out of the cards.  I was inspired by the tournament winning deck that ran Maman as the only Imbued.  I could do something like that, but I’m more interested in trying to run a couple of Imbued to make their presence more consistent.  My recent attempt was awful.  I kind of figured that, especially when I changed the crypt to focus on only two vampires to go with the Imbued.  Goldfishing the deck only displayed that I had no real way to get the two vampires out.  Pool gain, pool gain, pool gain.  Have to come up with it.

Of course, with my disinterest in voting, the paths to pool gain are much more limited (outside of the good old Blood Doll/Villein/et al plays).  In general, when I go to build more decks, I keep feeling constrained by the need to do worthwhile things to compensate for the goofy things I want to do.

Which brings up a topic better left for another time.  Probably because limitations breed creativity, limited collections make deckbuilding more interesting.

Cacophony

How does one prove deck quality in V:TES?

By winning?  But, say you play six tournaments and win once.  Is the deck that plays one tournament and wins better?

The problem is solved in CCGs where vast quantities of tournaments are played to where you (generally) overcome small sample size problems.  Not many CCGs have the volume.

Maybe in a six-month span, V:TES generates enough events that at least a few things can be determined.  Imbued were obviously broken – take a look at results here from March 2007 through the end of the year.  As a percentage of wins and in terms of quality of wins (based on tournament size), Imbued dominated.

Or, did they?  If I were to pinpoint the most overlooked factor in determining what is good and what isn’t in V:TES, it would be looking at what lost.  Unfortunately, we really have no idea what loses.  Where Magic can support a system where every matchup in a tournament is recorded, we don’t have a list of all of the table results for every tournament or, pretty much, even a single tournament in most cases.

Personal results should be meaningless.  Nevermind that those who play in 30, 40, 50, 75, 100 player tournaments have experiences I’ve had less than a handful of times.  My entire tournament career is a small sample size with huge biases in player skill and player interests.  Though, I will point out, as an arguing point, that I’ve lost every tournament I’ve ever played where I was running weenie Dominate to go with all of the “I’ve won every tournament I’ve ever played playing …[junk]…” statements.

Revisiting the issue of whether it’s possible to determine or credit deck quality in this game comes, unsurprisingly, right after we had a tournament.  It’s quite amusing.  We’ve had what I consider the most successful tournament season in the region ever in the past month or so.  Sure, storyline seasons saw more total participants, but from a competitive standpoint, we’ve had better than a qualifier weekend’s worth of events spread out to a degree that shows some stability.

Anyway, here is a deck I did not play:

Russian ECQ
Moscow, Russia
September 3, 2011
12 players
3R + F

Konstantin Prischepa’s Tournament Winning Deck

Crypt (12 cards; Capacity min=3 max=6 avg=4.5)
==============================================
2x Angela Preston            5 for PRE MEL     Daughter of Cacophony:2
2x Céleste, The Voice of a Secret 3 pre mel         Daughter of Cacophony:2
2x Delilah Monroe            4 for pre MEL     Daughter of Cacophony:2
2x Gaël Pilet                6 chi pre FOR MEL     Daughter of Cacophony:2
2x Muse                3 ani for mel     Daughter of Cacophony:2
2x Yseult                6 FOR MEL PRE     Daughter of Cacophony:3

Library (78 cards)
==================
Master (10)
1x Command Performance
1x Dreams of the Sphinx
1x Elder Library
1x Fear of Mekhet
4x Hanging Fermata
1x Paris Opera House
1x Protected Resources

Action (33)
18x Choir
4x Concert Tour
6x Enchant Kindred
5x Harmony

Ally (6)
6x Member of the Entourage

Action Modifier (18)
4x Freak Drive
8x Missing Voice, The
2x Phantom Speaker
4x Virtuosa

Combat (11)
4x Majesty
4x Skin of Steel
3x Soak

The relevance of this deck should become clearer by posting the deck I did play.  Ta da:

Deck Name:   110910  Harm-on-ye v2
Created By:  Angela Preston

Crypt: (12 cards, Min: 4, Max: 23, Avg: 3.5)
——————————————–
4  Anarch Convert                     none           1  Caitiff
2  Angela Preston                     for MEL PRE    5  Daughters of Cacophony
1  Celeste                            mel pre        3  Daughters of Cacophony
1  Delilah Monroe                     for MEL pre    4  Daughters of Cacophony
1  Gael Pilet                         chi FOR MEL pre6  Daughters of Cacophony
1  Muse                               ani for mel    3  Daughters of Cacophony
2  Yseult                             FOR MEL PRE    6  Daughters of Cacophony

Library: (80 cards)
——————-
Master (14 cards)
1  Bastille Opera House
1  Command Performance
1  Conductor
1  Coven, The
1  Failsafe
1  Hanging Fermata
3  Life in the City
1  Paris Opera House
4  Wider View

Action (14 cards)
10 Choir
4  Harmony

Action Modifier (32 cards)
4  Bribes
4  Echo of Harmonies
10 Freak Drive
5  Missing Voice, The
4  Siren`s Lure
1  Virtuosa
4  Voter Captivation

Political Action (9 cards)
7  Consanguineous Boon
1  Free States Rant
1  Lily Prelude

Combat (7 cards)
2  Majesty
2  Soak
1  Toreador`s Bane
2  Zip Gun

Combo (4 cards)
4  Madrigal

Is one deck better than the other?  I have no frickin’ clue.  It’s easy to say that one deck won and my deck wasn’t that deck.  In fact, I gained .5 VPs over two rounds.  One could read the tournament report from the Russian event like I did (to the extent that I could have the page translated to English), but I’m still not at all clear how the first deck was so successful beside that it didn’t have either of the stealth bleed decks behind it in the finals.

It could easily be that Konstantin is a better player than I am.  Going off on a tangent, I’ve noticed that I come away from tournaments feeling like I haven’t played much, that I don’t have much to talk about.  I realized that a likely reason for this is that I used to be in finals frequently and there’s no guarantee that I’ll be playing pickup games when the finals of events are occurring these days.

My deck … before I attempt some analysis, I’d note that I took a deck I wrote up almost exactly a year ago – 9/12/10 – and modified it some after goldfishing it once and realizing a lot of vote action modifiers aren’t a good idea when you don’t draw any votes.  Plus, I cut it from 90 to 80.

My deck is not the sort of deck I like to play.  For me, it’s awfully high risk and inflexible.  For a whole lot of other people, this might seem hilarious as it’s way less high risk and way more flexible than most Choir decks.  I could play Konstantin’s deck, but I could never build Konstantin’s deck.

I’ve played maybe four or so different Choir builds.  The general problem of Daughters being unable to defend themselves against pool loss, only made worse when you are forced to fill your deck with awful cards like Choir, is one I’m constantly trying to address.  Based on yesterday’s results, I’m tired of using vote bloat.  People do not respect the fact that you must bloat in decks like this or you will be easily ousted.  It’s also rather boring to Con Boon over and over again.  What was interesting was that I lowballed Choirs so much in my final build that I wasn’t bored with Choir for the first time ever.  I actually hoped to draw Choirs and was entertained when I played them.

Besides dropping the vote angle and likely going with Forestal bounce, I would not run the Anarch Converts as Wider View makes them redundant and Wider View is filtering with pool gain while Convert is filtering with pool loss.  Sure, I dodge Anarch Revolts, but that’s not a major problem these days, and I don’t really have the combat defense to survive anarch removal attempts, anyway.

Removing the vote angle so changes the deck that it’s not that clear how it would look or what sort of vote defense plays I’d consider.  One thing I have to consider is how much evasion to run.  I keep ending up discarding Siren’s Lure and The Missing Voice even though they are tactically crucial.  As I say to people, getting actions through with Daughters is easy, but at what cost of jamming on evasion?  Of course, all problems are solved with Dreams and The Barrens, which may be another reason my game has fallen off, though …

Getting back to the problems of determining deck quality, player skill has a huge impact on results.  Even if you believe deck strength is more important than I do, I believe it’s an easier argument that player skill affects results than deck quality.  Which brings me to my skill.  As I said, I was in finals far more back in the day.  What can that be attributed to?  Smaller events might have something to do with that.  Only need about 2 VPs to get into the finals of a 10-12 player event.  But, recent discussion about how I don’t deal or don’t try to really talk at all to improve my positions in games leads me to believe that my skill has fallen off significantly because I no longer try (to a meaningful degree) to influence games in my favor with politics or table talk.

Sure, the less table politics influence play, the more deck strength will.  My argument on the irrelevancy of deck strength, assuming a minimum threshold of viability, is because any game can be talked to victory, overriding the power of card play.  It’s not because deck strength is meaningless in a vacuum.

Anyway, here’s how my day went:

Round 1:

Rodney (Dementation bleed) -> Ian (Harm-On-Ye) -> Steve (Imbued) -> Brandyn (Aching Beauty)

Steve’s V:TES goal seems to be to destroy vampires and put lots of cards in play.  Rodney was amazingly ineffectual, though his position wasn’t that bad, so at least I didn’t have a lot to worry about from that side.  On the other, though, I didn’t realize until too late that Steve never intended on trying to win and simply wanted to beat up vampires, starting with mine.

I quickly learned that my deck chokes on voting.  Not terribly bad in some respects because stealth bleed behind me can only be survived with my votes, but it meant I got off to a slow start.  Normally, that would be fine and I’d just wait to lunge, but Steve wanted my guys dead even when all I was doing was gaining pool and was perfectly willing to let Brandyn do whatever he wanted, so I was in the mindframe to play for 1 VP anyway.  By the way, 16 player tournament meant all four-player tables and a decent chance of needing a GW to make the finals.

I ended up with four vampires in torpor, but I didn’t feel like I was going to get ousted before time was called, leaving Rodney as the only one to fall.  I also thought I had a reasonable chance of ousting my prey if he “tapped out” (he had Vigilances) by taking the leave torpor action with Delilah with three blood, untapping with Command Performance, gaining blood with magic, Freak Driving for Choir and Harmony.  Might have taken two turns as I had two Life in the City in hand and earlier had played The Coven without using it, though it went when Rodney went.

Did the game bother me?  Not really.  A lot of things did make some sense.  Steve beating down my vampires made some sense.  Brandyn never rescuing made sense.  Rodney going forward made sense.  The game was fairly pointless, but I did stuff and had chances.  You can’t legislate against bad play and whose bad play was really at fault?  Could argue that I let things happen by not pointing out that Brandyn was free to do what he wanted until so late that the game was going to time out.

Round 2:

Joel (Clown Car) -> Sean (Lasombra bleed) -> Ian -> Gerentt (Newjah)

I never tried blocking the Lasombra bleeds.  Talley Govern.  Gratiano.  Guess I’ll just keep Con Booning and playing Bribes/Voter Cap.  I did call one for Abominations to make sure I could cycle a Cap.  I choked horribly on my bloat early, even discarding one of the three Con Boons in my opening hand.  That was okay, I ended up calling seven or eight with Echo of Harmonies help.

I thought it was hilarious that both my prey and my predator talked about my being able to just “Choir my prey out”.  One turn, I played a Choir that got blocked – it was the only one in hand – and ended up bleeding for as much damage as I could have done if I had gotten Choirs through.  Another turn, I Choired for a mighty 2 pool damage.  Late in the game I Harmonyed for 3.  I can take solace in the fear I generate when I’m being completely ineffectual.  Gerentt didn’t even bother bringing out a third vampire because I was such a threat.  Joel got Sean just in time to prevent my being ousted on Sean’s turn.  Didn’t really matter.  I misplayed by bringing out an Anarch Convert rather than blowing a Wider View because I forgot all of the Tumnimoses had superior Chimerstry and it was easy to stealth by this “key” blocker.  Eventually, Joel swept.

Pickup:

Rather than go into too much detail, I’ll simply say that Shattering the Gates is pretty easy when no one cares if you get counters.  I fell a Sense the Sin short of ousting my prey which would have meant two VPs and 12 precious pool, and, then, I died never bringing out anyone besides merged Nergal.  Failsafe getting Suddened by my predator may or may not have mattered, but it was funny how important it is to the South Bay group that I not be allowed to play Failsafes.

Good times, but I should probably either get more pickups in or try to get into the finals to have more to talk about after tournaments.

Tournament Triumph

Not for me, of course.  The triumph was that we had more players for a V:EKN sanctioned event than we have ever had.

I’m still trying to get caught up gamingwise with Gen Con follow up, so I made some changes to the deck I was building for Jeff and came up with a couple of deck ideas Friday night, then had to figure out what I was playing in Saturday’s two tournaments Saturday morning.  Unfortunately, I frequently forget the decks I most want to play in tournaments because they are so infrequent and so many ideas have accumulated.

So, I started looking through old ideas.  There are actually quite a few decklists I have for decks I’ve never pulled the cards for.  I should think about notating that in their file names.  Eventually, I found one of the ideas that I had been saving for tournament play that I was sufficiently interested in to put together.

Angel Rush is not a deck, so much as an archetype.  The idea is to minimize card slots for combat by playing Beast, Pariah, and Guardian Angels.  Not that combat necessarily matters, depending upon which version of the archetype we are talking about.  One version is a serious combat deck.  Another, a … disorganized mess.  I only made things worse by inflating the latter from 80 to 90 cards and putting in such cards as No Trace, which proved to be useless.

The other deck I settled on was yet another Laecanus deck.  Not that the deck needed or, even, wanted Laecanus, but he wasn’t useless, in theory.  Superior Celerity, Toreador anarchs with Presence bleed and bounce.  So far, I could have said “Toreador deck” and been about as descriptive.  The deck was supposed to play a ton of Resist Earth’s Grasp for stealth, supplementing with Suppressing Fire, for the kill card – The Portrait.  Of course, there’s no controlling whether The Portrait becomes a bleed card or not, so this wasn’t the most robust of strategies.  Another deck I left at 90 cards, showing just how little I care about competing anymore.

First Tournament

Round 1:  Jeff (Enkidu’s Car Dealership) -> Andy H. (Tryphosa) -> Ian (Flying Portrait) -> Aaron (weenie Cel guns)

Weenie Cel guns?  Ick.  Though, it turned out the ick was mostly for Aaron, who had Enkidu appear quickly and Andy not bring out dudes for a long time, allowing me free rein to do stuff.  I’m not sure Jeff actually went first, which shows how much less I’m into these games.

Ransam appeared.  I got Parmenides for a turn who only bled for 1.  Aaron started rushing right away, which led to Unholy Penance on Parmenides which never got removed.  Because Aaron just kept rushing me, I decided not to play my usual game of passivity and tried to kill him as fast as possible.  Fortunately, for me, he never Psyche!d while I combat endsed fairly often and he only ever got one gun.  I couldn’t muster quite enough bleed to take him out before two of my three vamps got punked.  Andy had to make a decision when I was low on pool and Aaron was at 2 pool with my Famed guy in torpor.  He ate Ransam rather than bleed me out, figuring I’d just bounce some more and that having to do 2 pool damage with one minion was harder than 1 damage and Fame killing Aaron off.

I got Aaron to stay alive and tried to figure out how to rebuild my board.  Jeff was in decent shape.  Andy was still likely to take me out.  Until, Jeff nuked Tryphosa and Lutz.  Even with just Gem left, Andy might have been able to get me.  I rebuilt my position slightly.  I had The Rack on Philippe de Marseilles.  Jeff stole it.  I twice forgot to take it back, bleeding (when I had the Edge) instead.  That might have been game as Jeff took out Andy to put him out of range of one turn of my bleeds and the combats between Enkidu and my Celerity vampires went slightly in Enkidu’s favor.  I did Portrait, only to see Enkidu’s visage … I discarded the other The Portraits.  I decked.  I finally lost a critical combat to Enkidu and, then, lost another fight with my remaining vampire.

A table win would have been interesting.  As terrible an idea trying to throw Well-Aimed Cars is, I actually really like the Enkidu deck, with its strong Black Hand theme and solid crypt for all of the nonsense it tries to do.  So, I was highly amused that Jeff started off so well.

Round 2:  Joel (HoS Shamblers) -> Brandyn (Highlander) -> James (Corrupt Construction) -> Ian

Joel drops KRCG News Radio, making me sad as I have a hard time with permacept.  James keeps burning D’habi Revenants, which tells me what deck he’s playing since I played against it in our qualifier weekend.  Brandyn is very screwed since his numerous discipline deck is so unreliable and he’s surrounded by rushing allies and intercept.  I’m in a strange situation of being largely unable to do things but also being able to handle the ally combat since my deck has tons of maneuvers and combat ends for defense and can shoot the allies (Shamblers, Escaped Mental Patients) dead much of the time.

We settle in.  Eventually, James Fames and Havens one of my guys and I am way too cocky about my ability to defend forever in combat.  I Catatonic Fear, Target: Vitals one Corrupt Construction.  I Zip Gun, kill an Escaped Mental Patient.  I get punked by a second Corrupt Construction, which I totally could have blocked, when it plays Trap and I can’t draw a Resist Earth’s Grasp to press to end.  I let my Famed guy get rescued and get punked again for the kill.  Funny.  Eventually, Joel wins.

I go for food rather than play pickups.  I do end up playing a pickup when I get back, but it’s against local players, which makes it kind of pointless.  Speaking of local players, the first tournament had six from the South Bay group, five from the East Bay, and six from SoCal.  An Imbued deck gets thrashed.  I land with some Blood Sweats.  The Trem deck dies by bleeding with Govern when at 1 pool when his prey has two torped vampires, his only ready vampire Pentexed, and a Major Boon … on his predator.  I eventually win an uneven endgame, including having my dude with Fame (from the beginning of the game), while doing a forced hunt at 0 blood, torp a Guruhi with Taste of Death (reduced by Path), and take no damage.

Second Tournament

Just ridiculous that this was the first time we have ever had 20+ for a V:EKN sanctioned tournament in the area.  We got one more from SoCal, one more from the East Bay, and one more that falls under the South Bay group.

Round 1:  Ian (Angel Rush) -> Robert (Vote w/ Faerie Wards) -> Sean (!Toreador anarch) -> Michael (weenie Hack w/ Obf) -> Eric (War Ghouls)

I bring out Beast, I spend my whole game rushing, mainly Michael’s dudes with Obfuscate since I know how his deck works.  Eric doesn’t, not that he could have survived, but he could have forced a couple more actions on Michael’s part if he knew about the Obfuscate splash.  Eric does bring out a War Ghoul, who gets Pentexed, and Eric is ousted.  I also rush with Pariah when I have masters to feed him.  I almost get to blow Failsafe.  I also almost die before Sean gets Michael.  With Michael gone, I’m in no better shape, worse in a lot of ways against Sean and fall quickly.  With a lot of pool, Sean seems to have a huge edge in the endgame, but Robert bloats enough to weather the storm.

I should have discarded more aggressively, but I didn’t want to show much of my deck.  I doubt it would have mattered much since my built-in rushers with Potence had no way of dealing with disciplineless Dodge or Staredown.

Round 2:  AJ W. (!Malk) -> Joel (EuroBrujah) -> Robert -> Chris (Serpentis FSR) -> Ian

While I did Beast rush Allonzo Montoya and Disarm him, I actually did very little backwards even though Chris Tempationed Beast and put Form of Corruption in play.  I figured any significant backwards action would just give Robert the game.  The irony of my being annoyed by Temptation, Form of Corruption, and Free States Rants being called is that Chris never stole one of my vampires as only Anarch Convert was ever low enough to be taken by Form of Corruption.  I died to being bled at stealth.

Before that happened, Joel hammered AJ when AJ blocked a Parity Shift and threw a Pentex on AJ’s other vamp.  To break Pentex, Chris cut a deal with AJ to bleed me with Kindred Spirits, which is what put me in ousting range.  Chris’s votes should have been nullified by Robert, but a KRC got through because Ventrue Headquarters had been tapped on Robert’s turn to pass something I could have caused to succeed.  I bled much more in this game since I lost any particular interest in trying to survive and AJ was fairly weak.  AJ did get Joel, which took all pressure off of Robert while depriving Chris of an easy three VPs.  Robert won.

Having RPG stuff today, I headed out at midnight rather than play pickup games.  Not great timing having all of this gaming the weekend after Gen Con.  It would have been even more ridiculous if my regular Friday night RPG hadn’t gotten cancelled.

The interesting thing about the tournaments for me was how uninteresting I found the games.  My decks should have been more interesting than they were.  I think they both were too vague in their goofiness, so I ended up with far too many ordinary situations even if I had strange plays available to me.

Speaking of decks, I fell into the same trap of blaming my decks, even if it was intended to be in jest, for performance failures.  The Portrait deck was good enough, maybe the Angel Rush deck, in all of its bloated 90 card glory, didn’t achieve the minimum threshold of viability.  But, it’s just so easy to talk about deck failures when it’s really player failures, even when joking.  People might have taken my comments about my decks not being serious because they were 90 cards … well, seriously.  Really, I didn’t play well, and I’ve stopped trying to use table politics to determine results, which is a form of playing badly.

I could have had more fun – I think I just wasn’t mentally prepared for tournament play this weekend.  But, the far more important thing was the exceptional attendance for events, attendance at a peak without even the draw of it being a qualifier weekend.  Kudos to Brandon for making it happen and nagging people from outside the region.  Big ups to Andy H. for hosting and providing food and drink.  Shame I didn’t get to play any with much of the SoCal crew – never played with Andy F., Dennis, Matt.

Gum

I started writing a couple of posts only to lose momentum with my thoughts.  Rather than hunt around for something else to get inspired by, I’ll try to get through this piece.

There’s card advantage and then there’s card advantage.  When I think of card advantage, I think of drawing more cards than an opponent, using one card to defeat multiple cards of my opponent and so forth.  In a CCG like V:TES, card advantage doesn’t seem to really apply until you get to the point where you run out of cards.

Though, I’ve thought about how permacept, like a Raven Spy, seems to produce card advantage by requiring so many more cards used for stealth than normal.  Card advantage isn’t really the right term.  It’s more like card paralysis or, better, card quiescence.

I was thinking about tempo recently and how often indirect card advantage is gained in Magic by putting an opponent in a position where there isn’t time to play cards in hand.  It’s similar to how card advantage can be gained by making someone’s draws dead by having them have no effect on the game, e.g. creature removal vs. creatureless deck.

In V:TES, handjam is a major concern.  Trying to jam a stealth bleed deck on stealth might be the only way to survive long enough for the game state to change or to draw different cards.  Jamming an intercept combat deck on intercept might make combat survivable.  Too many masters is a common problem.  Rush deck with nothing but red cards is impotent.

So, there’s nothing new about making someone’s hand less productive.  The question is whether other methods than the ones typically considered can do it.

One of the more common situations I encounter of making cards in hand dead draws is when under a tremendous amount of pool pressure.  Don’t need stealth cards when you can’t afford to take actions.  Similarly, having minions nuked makes all actions, action modifiers, reactions, etc. useless to have in hand.  These situations are just variations on themes.  The question becomes how to reliably create scenarios to where someone else is stuck on cards that don’t do anything.

Some like to try to make use of the cards that restrict hand size.  This is typically awful as hand size has very little impact on card play.  V:TES is a game of card chains.  Sometimes, only one card in a chain is necessary, say Night Moves to get a bleed of one through.  Frequently, two card chains of action plus stealth, stealth plus action modifier, wake plus other reaction, etc. are the power plays due to their efficiency and reliability.  Ultimately, as long as you can play cards, you can … em … play cards.  The effects that prevent replacement are far stronger at disrupting play.  As bad as The Meddling of Semsith is at helping its player win, it can certainly cause someone else to lose.

To get off on a tangent, I’m increasingly thinking about card plays that are only intended for the endgame.  I tend toward plays that get you to the endgame, like bounce, but for variety’s sake, trying to engineer a particular endgame state is interesting.  The Meddling of Semsith is another of these plays.

Anyway, back to creating handjams.  The idea of a tempo deck in a game like Magic is that you come out fast enough that speed itself disrupts your opponent and plays that aren’t strictly card advantage but, instead, time advantage ensure your opponent’s defeat.  Besides putting somebody under so much pressure from speed or such obnoxious things as stacks of Anarch Revolts (more relevant to when there was little way to dodge them), other sorts of time-plays may be interesting.

I’ve been trying to build more aggressive decks as it helps to see different facets of games when people actually get ousted.  But, it seems like that it’s difficult, even more so in tournament play where I’m less likely to do something against my own interests, for me to force the action.  Instead, I probably do disrupt people’s games to some extent by how little I do.  Decisions to use resources to disrupt someone not doing anything you really care about are not the easiest decisions to make.  Well, unless all you want to do is have stuff happen, which I can sort of see when you have an environment where people rarely get ousted.

If putting pressure on jams people’s hands as they look for answers or greater threats, doing nothing jams hands on answers.  With too much time on one’s hands, it’s easy to become impatient.

There’s also the question of where in the spectrum of toolboxiness vs. focus decks lie.  A focused deck does its thing.  It can overwhelm a less focused deck, but more relevant to this post, even a partial overwhelm makes for quiescent cards in hand.  Of course, the drawback of such decks, in this regard, is that their hands can be made entirely irrelevant to the situation.  For instance, rush combat vs. single vampire with Secure Haven.

Let’s assume that a deck will have useful cards eventually.  What are the best ways to get to those cards when you suffer from card quiescence?  Dreams of the Sphinx, The Barrens, Fragment of the Book of Nod, et al.  It’s funny how I used to promote the importance of taking up master slots on card cycling, even more so than pool gain, yet have wandered away from ensuring that my decks move cards.  Dreams is the most common and avoids location hate, so really, the only answer is master counters or playing one’s own cyclers.  The latter seems especially productive.  Not that I’ve made a lot of effort to jam people in the past, but I will tend to sit on a Dreams with two counters.

Inserting another thought – gaining pool increases flexibility.  After all, gaining pool is creating time which counteracts plays that steal time away.  A reason to play Blood Dolls, Villeins, etc.?  How profound.  I’m sure the community can’t wait to hear about the usefulness of playing cards such as what has been the most played card in the game.  It is interesting, though, how some will lowball master pool gain.  Just as I’ve gotten away from card cycling plays, I’m increasingly reducing the amount of pool gain masters I play.  … hmmm … can’t possibly be any correlation to winning less often, nope.

I don’t know if I came to any great conclusions about generating card quiescence.  There are a lot of angles to approach from.  I do find it amusing that my train of thought brought me to playing more card cyclers myself as a subtle way to deprive them to others.  Amusing because, as I said, I have drifted away from the idea that The Barrens goes in every deck.  I suppose another conclusion is that focused decks are more likely to produce these advantageous situations, if at the cost of being on the other end.  It bothers me whenever it seems that it’s a better idea to play focused decks, something I’m increasingly concerned with, but that’s a post for another time.

Illusionists

Ravnos.

Today, while a day of Independence, is not a day in which I envision speaking upon some sort of Independence theme but, rather, about Ravnos.

Why Ravnos?

A coalescing of thoughts and comments.  In no particular order, here are some reasons to speak of Ravnos, now:

1.  I haven’t played them much in a long time.
2.  I like Chimerstry a lot.
3.  Animalism – Join it with Ravnos or humiliate it with Ravnos?
4.  Sensory Deprivation isn’t fun, but that’s because it’s evil.
5.  Someone mentioned Nightmare Curse.
6.  There must be other tech in Chimerstry’s wide range of effects.
7.  I miss Gabrin.
8.  Ezmerelda amuses me.
9.  When did Week of Nightmares stop being broken?
10.  If we ever have a tournament that qualifies for the TWDA …

I’ve been claiming that Ravnos Trapparition has been a good metagame choice for quite some time.  Just like winnie Animalism murders winnie Auspex, Trapparition should as well … while murdering winnie Animalism.  Draba is not reliable, but it’s an answer to stealth vote that a lot of decks don’t have.  Week of Nightmares provides the ousting power boost to actually oust folks.

This was before Nana “I’m not a Prince with PRE and Dominate, yet I’m still clearly broken” Buruku manifested.  While the popular crop of Animalism decks may not get trumped in every fight by Crows + Apparition since Aid From Bats can be used to press to end, leading to minor trades in enough cases, Animalism beats and Apparition should make Ravnos a metagame combat trump, with the worst thing I envisioning being Ashur Tablets recycling trumping the Ravnos deck when it runs out of cards, but that’s so corner case a scenario that I’m not going to worry about it.  Alternatively, the Ravnos can dispense with fighting Murder with Murder [of Crows, poetic license, not suggesting the card will be key].  Double Apparition is still immunity, though what leverage it’s providing is questionable.  A Trapparition deck sans Crows with Canine Hordes and Target Vitals to eviscerate all equipment in play is amusing, if card inefficient.  And, of course, there’s the trumpiest (if not perfect) play of Illusions of the Kindred.  As expensive combat defense, it’s kind of paranoid, so there should be some sort of beatings to come out of the illusions.  No, not Horrid Reality, that’s just going to die against decks that don’t fight.

I loathe Sensory Deprivation as the point of CCGs is to play cards, not sit around doing nothing.  On the other hand, I quite like Nightmare Curse.  As the person responsible for two-thirds of the Nightmare Curses in the TWDA with only that well known hater of all things Ravnos David Cherryholmes responsible for the other third, I can claim to be the undisputed expert on all things Nightmare Curse (and how to win tournaments with awful Ravnos decks and …).  Double inferior is why you play the card.  Double inferior is fun because it doesn’t stop people from playing and might do pool damage.  I’m huge, potentially big, on “might do pool damage” plays.  Actually, the Chi version is reasonably useful, the entirety (I think) of its use by DC’s deck, and makes the card not require doing a lot of crypt distortion.

But, anyway, as cute as NC is, Sensory Dep is more brutal since it’s easy to play at superior.  It’s interesting that the card seems somewhat forgotten.  Many claim that they see bigger vampires these days.  Well, the bigger they are, the more they hate lockdown effects.  While I can’t likely bring myself to make SD a focus of a deck, I can bring myself to play 1-3 as a good stuff play.

Army of Apparitions.  I’ve never been that excited since it doesn’t say anything about redirecting a bleed from me to my prey, but I’m sure it was playable.  Now, though, how does it fit the meta?  All sorts are whipping out Marconius Faerie Wards decks, but FW works against bleeds, which is way more than having a minion you control being targeted.  But, let’s see.  Votes to annoy voting decks and a means to stop being rushed by winnies with Animalism.  Just a question of how warped the meta is, I guess.  It’s not like 3 votes may be enough, though one can save up to play two for 6 votes, I suppose.

I’m amazed at how little press Draba gets.  While it may require a bit of setup, permacept and Draba blocks things that only AUS blocks.  It’s such a random hose on crosstable actions where Auspex rarely is.  Sure, I like more defensive Ravnos builds to the once prevalent Clown Car decks, but I can’t be the only one who thinks Ravnos are kind of good at blocking.

Fantasy World only costs 2 blood (assumedly 1 or zero with Path/Gabrin).  But, does it do anything?  It’s another way to tap Aksinya, though it shouldn’t affect the discarding master power if she untaps from Rats’.  It’s interesting to see whether it matters.  I have rarely played it because I think it’s too random whether it does, but maybe, random is okay if it hits often enough for hard enough.

Fata Amria – I do actually know what the card does, I just think too often what that is is nothing.

Ignis Fatuus may not have gotten any press in ages, but it did once seem to get more attention than Draba.  Not sure why, but it’s also a highly interesting effect.  Maybe not that useful if your main concerns are Girls, ANI, DEM, stealth Parity Shift, or whatever, but interesting.

Let’s say you have a lot of Girls and rushy ANI decks to deal with.  They don’t block well.  Yes, I’m sure there are more Raven Spyrrific ANI builds, but let’s assume they don’t block well.  Mirror Image means getting actions through while the superior buys time against ANI.  Sure, MI has always been hot for Chimerstry, but maybe the meta play these days is to load up on them.  Replace Occlusions?  Occlusion doesn’t prevent being murdered by crows.

How good is Gabrin?  Good enough to be one of the five best vampires in the game?  If you look, hard enough, you will find a comment I made to that effect.  Sure, he had the best discipline cost reduction special in the game until Una (arguable) came along.  Sure, he has Dominate, but, then, so do about 436 other vampires.  Sure, The Path of Paradox steals some thunder, though it also synergizes well.  One has to understand the environment pre The Final Nights.  Lots of folks only considered FoS viable.  I added Giovanni to the list.  But, clearly, Ravnos were garbage before TFN.  Chimerstry had cards like Sensory Deprivation and Fata Morgana, but they were insanely expensive compared to what else you could do, and all of the indies had crypt problems.  Chimerstry was atrocious.  Then, The Path and Gabrin got printed.  Suddenly, at one less blood for every card, Chimerstry looked good; add in a few other good cards, like Mirror Image and Draba, and Chimerstry looks awesome.  Oh, and he has Dominate to go with a 6 cap and a 7 cap so that, you know, you have a Ravnos with Dominate deck.

Though, to be fair, Week of Nightmares is responsible for so many Ravnos wins.  Why isn’t WoN broken anymore?  Perhaps because of Scourge of the Enochians, though I hardly see the card played.  Perhaps because people started metaing harder against winnies, with random Anarchist Uprisings in decks.  Or, maybe, it’s still broken.  Midcap Ravnos dodge Scourge and still kind of like the one time Palla Grande.

Ezmerelda has Dominate.  Ezmerelda can play newer Chimerstry cards that only go on younger vampires.  Ezmerelda is a terrible Ravnos.  She’s not a terrible vampire, being a reasonable Ventrue, though the Ventrue don’t need her.  Have we seen little of her due to rarity?  Perhaps.  But, somebody out there must own enough to build decks.  I’m more interested in her after seeing what she can do in my Ur-Shulgi Has No Presence deck.  Living the dream is Villein for 10, Deflection, gain 11 on untap.  Have I mentioned recently that I won a game when my final opponent scooped to my bringing out Ezmerelda … contesting his?

I’ve played a fair number of Ravnos decks, not so much recently, probably because I got tired of newer cards I hadn’t played turning out to be uninteresting and not having a love affair for Mata Hari, though I have more Mata Hari decks to play.  What might be interesting is to try to keep my streak alive of winning every tournament I’ve ever played with a Ravnos deck, though, as with many tournament related aspects of my playing career, that requires that we actually have tournaments.  The thing is is that I really need to get into a crossregional meta where I think Trapparition is a strong metagame choice, something that eludes me as I fail to make the effort to travel.

Meanwhile, for those who fear the Girls, is there anything to be mined from the Ravnos?  They tap minions well.  They can do a ton of pool damage if willing to risk a Clown Car deck.  I think they give more trouble to stealth vote and ANI, which are two of the decks that have better game against Girls, which may only end up helping Girls if we had sophisticated enough metas to where enough decks of one archetype were played to shift entire tournaments.

Ultimately, whatever someone wants to hate on or not, I still see Ravnos being a largely forgotten viable option.

Fly No More

I’m kind of out of touch with V:TES discussion.  It’s hard to embrace the new go to place of vekn.net because the scheme is really hard on the eyes (changing it is more painful) and because I just don’t have the same level of interest.  I did look around lately, so I saw the question about expectations at the NAC, not a lot of posts.  I did try to find some blog about Week of Nightmares but couldn’t find anything.

So, I can still make predictions in the absence of any sort of results.  There’s definitely a sense that Girls variants and Stickmen are overrepresented as winners in the last year or so.  In the past, I might have done the deck by deck analysis to really see what has been winning recently, but in lieu of going to that much effort, I’d note that Giovanni have done well in 2011 in larger tournaments and I feel like Dementation and Imbued decks are threatening.

As to what I’d expect, I wouldn’t expect much in the way of these various archetypes, except maybe Dementation, at the NAC.  While I’m hesitant to say that there is greater diversity of deck archetypes at major US events, I do think that there’s evidence that suggests that frequent winners in Europe will play the same archetypes repeatedly, embracing what is considered the strongest archetypes rather than eschewing them.

What I would expect is Animalism.  If asked maybe a year ago, maybe two or three, what I’d feel was the most troublesome archetype, I would probably have said weenie Animalism.  It was already a go to metagame choice before Deep Song was printed, and Deep Song only made it vastly more efficient.  While hardly perfect and while there are a number of matchups the archetype isn’t fond of, it wrecked enough decks while having a good enough game against enough of the field, that it seemed a prime choice.

I wouldn’t say the same about weenie Animalism today, but I would say Animalism is even stronger.  Why?  Decks like this one:

V:tES ECQ @ GothCon 2011
Gothenburg, Sweden
April 23, 2011
37 players

Erik Torstensson’s Tournament Winning Deck

Deck Name : girls will find aids (68-rörelsen)
Author : Isak Bjärmark Esbjörnsson and Erik Torstensson
Description : Five minutes with Enkidu.

Crypt [12 vampires] Capacity min: 7 max: 11 average: 8.91667
————————————————————
4x Aksinya Daclau     9 ANI FOR PRE PRO cel tha     !Gangrel:4
2x Cybele            10 ANI DAI OBF PRE SER THA     Baali:4
2x Nana Buruku         8 ANI POT PRE             Guruhi:4
1x Enkidu, The Noah    11 ANI CEL OBF POT PRO for     !Gangrel:4
1x Nangila Were     9 ANI POT PRE obf ser         Guruhi:4
1x Gustaphe Brunnelle     8 ANI DOM POT obf         Nosferatu:4 primogen
1x Talbot         7 ANI NEC PRO for         Gangrel:5

Library [68 cards]
——————————
Action [1]
2x Deep Song
1x Entrancement

Combat [20]
9x Aid from Bats
7x Carrion Crows
1x Target Vitals
2x Taste of Vitae
1x Terror Frenzy
1x Canine Horde

Event [2]
1x Anthelios, The Red Star
1x Dragonbound

Master [31]
9x Ashur Tablets
2x Dreams of the Sphinx
1x Fame
1x Giant’s Blood
2x Haven Uncovered
2x Information Highway
5x Liquidation
1x Lilith’s Blessing
7x Villein
5x Zillah’s Valley
1x Pentex Subversion
1x Jake Washington
1x Golconda: Inner Peace

Reactions [4]
1x Guard Dogs
1x Rat’s Warning
2x Lost in Translation

The evolution of Girls decks is interesting.  Compare with this deck:

Swedish National Championship 2010
Örebro, Sweden
September 11, 2010
44 Players
3R + F

Erik Torstensson’s Tournament Winning Deck with 1,5 VPs in the Finals

Deck Name : Girls will find…
Author : Erik Torstensson
Description :

Crypt [12 vampires] Capacity min: 9 max: 11 average: 10
————————————————————
4x Cybele                 10 ANI DAI OBF PRE SER THA          Baali:4
4x Aksinya Daclau         9  ANI FOR PRE PRO cel tha          !Gangrel:4
1x Adana de Sforza        11 CEL OBF POT PRE PRO aus inner circle Brujah:4
1x Lutz von Hohenzollern 11 AUS DEM OBF PRE pot     inner circle Malkavian:4
1x Mistress Fanchon       11 AUS CEL DOM OBF THA VIC inner circle Tremere:4
1x Rafael de Corazon      11 AUS CEL DOM OBF PRE     inner circle Toreador:4

Library [82 cards]
————————————————————
Action [4]
1x Entrancement
2x Intimidation
1x Unleash Hell’s Fury

Action Modifier [16]
2x Aire of Elation
1x Approximation of Loyalty
1x Cloak the Gathering
2x Elder Impersonation
1x Enkil Cog
2x Faceless Night
1x Into Thin Air
2x Lost in Crowds
2x Mirror Walk
2x Perfect Paragon

Combat [4]
4x Majesty

Event [2]
2x Anthelios, The Red Star

Master [48]
9x Ashur Tablets
1x Blind Spot
1x Coven, The
1x Direct Intervention
2x Dreams of the Sphinx
1x Fortschritt Library
1x Giant’s Blood
2x Golconda: Inner Peace
2x Information Highway
2x Jake Washington (Hunter)
8x Liquidation
1x Metro Underground
1x Misdirection
1x Monastery of Shadows
1x Parthenon, The
1x Pentex(TM) Subversion
7x Villein
1x Wash
5x Zillah’s Valley

Political Action [4]
1x Ancient Influence
1x Banishment
1x Political Stranglehold
1x Reins of Power

Reaction [4]
1x Guard Dogs
2x Lost in Translation
1x Rat’s Warning

Same player, same region, same sort of broken core strategy that abuses masters, very different support module.

Nana Buruku should have settled in everyone’s minds (but I’m sure didn’t) that multiple master phase actions is broken.  Here’s a vampire without a number of the benefits that Anson has provided lo these many years who still has shown up in a variety of winning archetypes as the key vampire at the higher levels of play.  Add to Aksinya and Cybele a third ANI vampire, and one sees how easy it is to bolt a combat module on to crazy bloat and recursion.

And, what a combat module it is.  Anything can win.  We see that.  But, would anyone want to run weenie Potence or Celerity guns into Aid From Bats + Carrion Crows?  So, it doesn’t beat combat ends.  It doesn’t need to.  Eventually combat ends runs out (ignoring Henry Taylor or whatever).  The massive power that Majesty has always brought to the table is that whatever the deck was doing that wasn’t getting out of combat was harsh to one’s pool.  Girls decks are kind of decent at pool gain.  Bloat enough to play a game of attrition and 1+2+press+1+2 is enough damage to tear up minions.

I’ve thought about how to counteract Animalism decks and the answers come up wanting far too often.  Sure, against weenie Animalism, stealth vote is nice but how well does it do against “oh, my deck also has Lutz”?  Combat ends has the problem I mentioned of only being good enough if the deck can be ousted fast enough.  Opposing combat can be a big annoyance, especially ranged agg, but then, what does your combat do for you against stealth bleed, stealth vote, etc.?  Can’t really avoid getting into combat when Deep Song is around.

To abuse masters or to try to stop master abuse?  While I might not expect much in the way of Girlie decks at the NAC, I’m sure people will still try to abuse Ashur Tablets, Liquidation, the two together, and whatever else.  Join the club?  Or, try to Monkey Wrench (grossly underplayed card) the club?  I just don’t have any confidence that a deck can run enough Suddens and/or Washes to ensure winning the metagame.  Answers aren’t as good as threats and the threats in a deck with 6+ Ashur Tablets feel pretty much infinite.  Even if the Tablets never go, the amount of effort put into stopping that likely means everything else happens which is not a “win”.

Though, there are deck archetypes that are fearsome enough without having to stop a lot that I can see decks such as Dementation bleed with 4+ Suddens try to be anti-club.  Not really anything new, I was suggesting just such a build back when Gen Con still had major V:TES tournaments and played such in 2001.

V:TES is a multiplayer game.  So, sometimes, it’s a matter of playing something that with a bit of help, the problem decks go away.  There’s this deck http://thelasombra.com/decks/twd.htm#2011iecqbi that doesn’t stop masters (other than with Le Dinh Tho) or much of anything else.  It basically bleeds … a lot, with LDT possibly being an annoyance.  Girls and Stickmen are anywhere from reasonably resilient to big bleed to absurdly happy to see it, and there’s a lack of tech in here to tap Aksinya, nor is there Trochomancy tech, but think about an actual game where this sits as a predator to a Girls deck or a Stickmen deck.  In addition to being relentless in attack, what if this deck’s predator doesn’t want Girls or Men around?  There’s enough bounce to create a two predator situation and that should be enough, everything else being equal.

What I run into when I play in crossregional metagames is a lot more intercept than I’m used to.  Interestingly, Girls, Giovanni, Dementation, and other successful archetypes aren’t terribly blocky.  I’d expect to run into enough intercept, especially weenie Auspex (awful against Animalism but just horrid to deal with) or fat Toreador, at the NAC that I’d need to adjust my thinking away from my normal deckbuilding style, which often fails miserably against significant intercept.

Likely, even if I had gone, I wouldn’t have made much of an effort to metagame my decks.  While I could have looked for tech, like when I ran Mercy for Seth in my Harbingers vote deck years ago or Ambulance and merged Sebastian Goulet last year, I need a certain level of amusement in my decks.  I don’t know what I would have built, since I pretty much ignored the NAC when I realized I wasn’t going, but I think I would have spent less time on trying to kill Parity Shift (my most recent goal) than trying to figure out how to survive winged animals and get through outrageous bloat.

Probably just means some lame Parity Shift deck will win.  … sigh.

Reach … in V:TES

The inspiration for this post comes from this article – http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/mf37

The narrowest concept of reach in Magic is to be able to do the last few points of damage outside of creature combat.  Within Mike’s article, he does talk about reach a bit more broadly than that.

While V:TES has similarities to Magic in terms of putting “actors” into play that deal damage to an opponent, the card pools are quite different and the actors are far more sophisticated in V:TES.  There are some cards that are closer in concept if one were to try to port reach over as closely as possible from the one CCG to another:  Anarch Revolt, Antediluvian Awakening, Dragonbound, (most obviously) Personal Involvement, etc.

While some of those cards are commendable, in particular Antediluvian Awakening is underplayed in speed decks, I’m not all that enthralled by focusing entirely on such a narrow range of cards and such a limited concept.

Rather, I use the philosophy of reach fairly often when determining decklists these days to throw off expectations.  Though, to be fair, the way I use it is as old as people’s decks in 1994 in many ways.  But, let me speak of what I mean.  To me, reach in V:TES is the ability to get an extra few pool of damage out from one’s actions, especially with bleed actions.

Note that it isn’t the same as lunging.  Lunging is about devoting a concentrated effort during a prey’s apparent moment of vulnerability to attempt to put the prey out during the present turn.  Reach makes lunging easier, and the philosophy of doing those few points of extra damage are very much consistent with lunging, but I’m more focused on the details of an individual action.

Hey dude, isn’t Conditioning just a reach card and everyone has been doing this since day one?  The nature of CCGs is that there are expectations.  When you see Dominate, you can calculate fairly easily how many bleed of 5 or 6 will be coming.  The power of CCGs is that there are always unknowns, so it’s not the case that someone will always accurately predict the amount of damage someone will inflict.  What we are looking for with reach in V:TES is increasing that unknown, throwing off the “combat math” so to speak.

More in my mind, for the brokenness that is Dominate, is Command of the Beast.  Sure, if the deck is chock full of them, it tends to be as predictable as the expected Govern/Conditionings.  In truth, Dominate is not really where I’m concerned with the concept as Dominate’s ousting power is so unfair that it hardly matters whether you slip an extra point of damage in from a strategic standpoint (with the fun of Dominate being all about the tactical issues of maximizing damage).

So, what am I talking about when it comes to deckbuilding?  I had lent a Samedi Off Kilter deck for storyline use and a suggestion was taking out the one Computer Hacking and one Leverage, the former to make room for something more important and the latter because it lacked synergy with Off Kilter.  My response was very close if maybe not exactly, “But, that’s how you oust people.”  Or, maybe, it was, “But, how else do you oust people?”

Many of my decks actually have very little ousting power, light years less than the decks that run double digit Governs, et al.  Now, that isn’t just about reach, it’s about conservation of resources, well, and eschewing decks that just blow people off of tables, as that’s dull, especially when I’ve played so many bleed decks in the past.  Early on, after I adopted my more passive play style that relies far too much on lunging, I didn’t really need reach as I could just fire off some Changelings or whatever when someone left an opening; yes, for the day, it was reachy since people weren’t used to lunging.  But, anyway, over time, I see players being more cautious against me, expecting such antics.

The point of the casual (read:  low quantity) bleed pumps is to make the lunges just a bit deeper, to throw off the math a bit further.  Now, I do like tactical Anarch Revolt or whatever for similar reasons, but let’s get back to focusing on Computer Hacking and Leverage.  That these two cards can be played by any minion who can bleed, regardless as to how much bleed the minion has, is of exceeding importance.  In one major tournament, I only ousted one prey because I could Computer Hack with Mylan (aka Crowbait) to set up getting a couple of Conditionings through after expending my prey’s wakes.  That random Carlton, Repo Man, or Jake Washington might be the end of someone who, given another turn, would be able to hold out beyond my decks’ abilities.  Leverage is even more interesting since it starts a bit sneakier and can be followed up with more beats, say, a Monkey Wrench.

Of course, Power of One (Potence) is another way to go if the deck can support it and I contemplate (because I’m just that way) the Power of One into Monkey Wrench off of someone with copious amount of blood to burn.  A very different way to go, and one that has been obvious since its printing, is the reach possibilities with Force of Will.

Note that the concept I’m going for is really much about exceeding expectations.  There’s nothing tricksome about Force of Will when playing a Force of Will deck.  It’s the ones and twos of particular cards to put someone away or, at least, into a deeper hole that may be problematic.  A Force of Will for the kill is not the same as a Force of Will for the “reduce under double digit pool” play.

In one game, against the eventual tournament winner, we were down to the endgame and I had my opponent on the ropes; he survived due to a lot of wakes, some misplay on my part with On the Qui Vive on Carlton, and the fact that I had run out of Leverages in my deck even if Carlton could act on the relevant turns.  What was interesting was that my opponent, a far better player than I, was concerned with the possibility of my drawing Leverage having seen two come out earlier.

One question from this experience was whether the fear factor of reach had any benefits beyond the actual damage output effects.  Probably not, as I typically find that fear makes it harder to oust people not less so.  But, there’s a whole level of gaming where getting people to misplay, no matter the sort of misplay, is of interest.  Actually, I do think I’ve saved a grandprey or two due to representing a much greater threat than in fact was the case, which pales next to how many prey I’ve had wall up for no reason and throw the game to their prey, but whatever.

Cast Off The Yoke

So, the Legendary Vampire tournament and Day 1 of the European Championships were won by the same deck archetype – Girls Who …  Then, another thread on the newsgroup has a metagame answer in a deck with Trochomancy.  I can’t help but think that there’s nothing new about the problem of how to deal with master heavy decks.

Once upon a time, there was, of course, the Anson Anarch Revolt decks that could even go 100% masters.  Change in Anarch Revolt has made that archetype scarce to nonexistent.  Actually, I’m sure that it could still be built, it’s just that preventing or eliminating anarchs to ensure damage is a hassle.

Anthelios made tedious master heavy decks popular.  Really, why is this card legal?  Oh, right, GF that badly designed cards be purged in the name of making for healthier environments.

Anthelios, however, is not the core problem, just a great boon to such decks.  Could argue that anything that generates multiple master phase actions is really the root problem.  A good argument when you consider how popular Anson has been, how Nana made Guruhi go from suck to the in thing, and, of course, Cybele decks.  However, there’s no will to fix that problem, so we have to move on.

We have had Liquidation for a while and it was some good with Shambling Hordes and Giovanni recursion.  Then, Ashur Tablets comes along and recursion is open to every deck.  The synergy between Liquidation and Ashur Tablets just being ridiculous, though the engine screams for multiple master phase actions, which is why we see it so much less in decks that either play fair or would only run The Parthenon (as my FoS deck I played in Vegas this year did).

Interaction is weak.  This is a lesson gleaned from discussing CCGs and playing a variety over quite a few years.  When you interact, things can go wrong.  If you don’t interact, whoever has the mightiest plays in the least amount of time wins.  This lack of interaction is a key feature of the winning deck mentioned above – stealth to oust, master bloat (and bounce) to survive.  It’s also the feature common of turbo decks, Una (for most of the game), AAA, Malk94, First Tradition decks, and numerous others.

So, what metagame strategy does this leave us with?  There’s always playing such decks, oneself.  That’s what happened when Necropotence ruled the Magic scene.  There’s attempting to go off faster either with a (better) combo deck or speed decks. An example here would be a weenie bleed deck.

There’s attempting to force interaction.  Sure, there’s rush, but rush is often a weak strategy to begin with and runs into the problem that these decks often bloat so much that taking out the key minions doesn’t cripple the deck, and there’s always Golconda to ensure that the board is cleared to bring out another copy.  A deck that could rush did win day 2 of the EC – in my mind, just further proof that one’s deck strength doesn’t matter that much.  Then, there are winnie decks.  Winnie Animalism with Deep Song is not so bad as it mixes pool damage with lots of rush ability.

There’s fighting a master war with Suddens or Washes, but threats are better than answers for a reason.  First of all, there’s little chance that one will have enough counterspells to cancel all of the key master plays.  Even if the deck has them, the chances of having a counter in hand at the right time is surprisingly low, as I’ve often found when I attempted this strategy.  Of course, an environment where everyone runs 4+ Suddens/Washes changes the equation to one of absurd politicking to see what gets through and what doesn’t.

Eliminating the parts that improve the engine – Anthelios, The Parthenon – doesn’t hurt, but again, answers that may come up too late.  Though, one would think that location destruction would be quite viable, except when I run it, I never have any targets.  Can also be DIed, overloaded (drop second The Parthenon), or whatever.  In Anthelios’s case, there aren’t that many options for eliminating it, and I’ve found The Uncoiling to be much worse at its job than I thought.  Fourth Cycle requires distorting one’s own deck just to nail a small segment of the metagame.

Then, there’s tech answers.  Trochomancy, as mentioned, is one (against the decks that recurse).  Requires playing a specific discipline that limits deck options immensely, the discipline isn’t even that good, though there are very good decks that use the discipline.  Mix with Shambling Hordes and it’s not that difficult to beat these decks down.

But, what about more general answers?  I’ve considered The Rising, but it has the same problem as Fourth Cycle in terms of distortion and it only works if the prey of the offending deck does its job and doesn’t get ousted.  Still, The Rising has such interesting effects, that I’m curious as to see what it does.

We can’t take cards like The Name Forgotten seriously, so permanent minion elimination seems unlikely.

Playing The Parthenon oneself, of course, is not unreasonable for many decks.  There’s no reason to not put Information Highway into virtually every deck, so there’s always the possibility of contesting that.  Same goes with Dreams of the Sphinx.

Cards that screw big vampires, which actually I see being quite good in general in current metagames, might help.  Fear of Mekhet can hit a lot of commonly seen targets, but it doesn’t touch Cybele or Aksinya.  Kaymakli Nightmares needs to come up early and, even then, doesn’t matter unless you hit the deck hard enough, nevermind that it does nothing useful for most decks.  I so want to hate on large vampires these days, so I should be spending more time looking for plays that will screw them.

What we want are “natural answers” – answers that are not about targeting a specific deck but that arise naturally from doing what you want to do.  Example would be fast decks with Suddens or vampires good for other things that randomly have abilities that are relevant – I had merged Sebastian Goulet in the Vegas Qualifier with an Imbued deck as my predator because DOM/OBF is passable and reducing the cost of my miscellaneous allies was … pretty much never relevant in that event.  Of course, being unable to do anything to the Imbued deck even with Sebastian and Ambulance! just goes to show how answers are not as good as the threats they are meant to answer.

And/or, we want high quality answers – they must not be overly narrow or too weak to matter.  If an answer can perform multiple functions, even if the secondary function is slight, like how Trochomancy is kind of a bleed card, so much the better.  I’ve actually won a tournament with Victim of Habit (in the deck) – I often considered the card underrated; but, my attempts to recapture that magic haven’t gone well, so I’m not that enthralled with it.  Still, it’s a relatively painless option that could be experimented with.  Also, it’s not like the decks we are looking to hit are that redundant, they just seem that way.  We aren’t talking about 20 Ashur Tablets or some such, so not only will one Victim of Habit only likely do 1 pool damage, but it can be worked around to where it probably won’t do any.

Or, just give up on metagaming against such decks and play what you want.  After all, table politics can demise any deck.