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Is this VtES write up focused on pre-5th edition? I think it’s worth pointing out some of the changes to clans and disciplines in 5th that are important. Off the top of my head, Banu Haquim (previously Assamites) are now a Camarilla clan and have traded Quietus for Blood Sorcery (the new name for Thaumaturgy). The Ministry are now Anarch, not Independent and have traded Serpentis for Protean. Gangrel and Brujah are now Anarch clans as well. There are a large number of other changes coming to Ravnos (no more Chimestry), Lamsombra (now Camarilla, and Obtenebration is now Oblivion) and other clans that haven’t got post-5th cards out yet. Some of the changes are significant for players getting into the game now.
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Sep 17, 2022 02:28
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thefakenews posted:Is this VtES write up focused on pre-5th edition? Yes. Most of my experience is pre-5E. 5E has attempted to pare down some of the disciplines. The Banu Haqim getting Thaum/Blood Sorcery isn't out of left field; the old Assamites had a vizier bloodline that had Obfuscate/Auspex/Thaumaturgy. It's even represented in some of the older cards. I noticed the name changes to some of the clans an added those, but included both names for clarity. The vast majority of cards one might encounter are older ones, so clarifying names is important here. The sect changes are new to me. Anarchs are an older mechanic, but they're now their own sect. It seems like they're trying to make Anarch the new Independent, and have each clan pick a side: Cam, Sabbat, or Anarch. That's probably for the best in terms of streamlining. Given this, I'll probably go back and add some notes about Anarchs as a sect in the previous post.
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Sep 17, 2022 02:39
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Railing Kill posted:The sect changes are new to me. Anarchs are an older mechanic, but they're now their own sect. It seems like they're trying to make Anarch the new Independent, and have each clan pick a side: Cam, Sabbat, or Anarch. That's probably for the best in terms of streamlining. Given this, I'll probably go back and add some notes about Anarchs as a sect in the previous post. The sect changes are a result of changes in the RPG, I understand. It appears Black Chantry’s licence requires them to reflect those changes. New Ravnos and Salubri are coming up soonish (with discipline changes) and may be Independent. Hecata (combining Giovanni and all the other former Necromany clans) will likely be Independent as well.
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Sep 17, 2022 03:10
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This wouldn't be the first time things reflected through the RPG / card game. I heard (possibly apocryphally) around 3rd edition (of the card game) that the latter days 'infection' of Dementation through the Camarilla Malkavians (mostly replacing Dominate) was to make things other than Malk Stealth Bleed viable in the CCG. I don't know what the 5th edition (of the RPG) metaplot says about that, but all the Camarilla Malkavians in group 6-7 have Dominate again, it seems. Now that just reminds me that we were hoping for a more interesting Dr. Douglas Netchurch.
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Sep 17, 2022 11:22
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Magnetic North posted:This wouldn't be the first time things reflected through the RPG / card game. I heard (possibly apocryphally) around 3rd edition (of the card game) that the latter days 'infection' of Dementation through the Camarilla Malkavians (mostly replacing Dominate) was to make things other than Malk Stealth Bleed viable in the CCG. I don't know what the 5th edition (of the RPG) metaplot says about that, but all the Camarilla Malkavians in group 6-7 have Dominate again, it seems. Replacing Dominate with Dementation did help at the time, but the meta and the answers to stealth are so much better and more numerous now that they can get away with realigning with old Malk disciplines coming back. In the tabletop I think one of the Malkavians "solved" the "Great Prank" that afflicted everyone in the clan with Dementation. In the era of Dementation, VTES was kind of cool in how it handled passive storytelling. High-capacity Malkavians who are supposed to be older would tend to have Dominate and either not have Dementation, or be bad at it. One of my favorite cards, who is a major player in a Malk political deck I have, is a good example:  Maris is squarely in the middle of the Dementation era as a group 3 vampire, but she packs Dominate as a reminder of how things used to (or ought to) be. She also has an ability that is so loving good it hurts, but that's neither here nor there. I'm planning on covering group numbers as they pertain to deck construction in the next post, and that is as good a place as any to cover changes over time like this. I had a hard enough time slotting in notes about the Gangrel changing sects and stuff like that without an already bloated post becoming hard to read. Railing Kill fucked around with this message at 12:25 on Sep 17, 2022 |
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Sep 17, 2022 11:44
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Randalor posted:So only tangentially related to card games, but how bad were the old World of Darkness novels? The local charity book fair was on this weekend and they had a bunch of Vampire and Rage novels, including the complete 13 Clan series. The clan series is variable, depending on how you tolerate the style of that particular story, the mediocre writing style and how much you like the setting. I read most of them in the four collected editions with all the books smashed together with the chapters in chronological order and not clan order and that helped slog through the Ravnos and Tremere chapters and toned down some of the other stuff like Tzimisce craziness. The rest are probably at the lower end of tie in fiction writing.
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Sep 17, 2022 11:52
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Zodiac5000 posted:I was part of the Brookings crew, so I'd be at a lot of the SF locals at dragons Den! We played together I bet! Thank you to Sega32x for the L5R write ups, nostalgia is a hell of a drug.
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Sep 17, 2022 13:40
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Magnetic North posted:This wouldn't be the first time things reflected through the RPG / card game. I heard (possibly apocryphally) around 3rd edition (of the card game) that the latter days 'infection' of Dementation through the Camarilla Malkavians (mostly replacing Dominate) was to make things other than Malk Stealth Bleed viable in the CCG. I don't know what the 5th edition (of the RPG) metaplot says about that, but all the Camarilla Malkavians in group 6-7 have Dominate again, it seems. As I understand it 5th edition Malkavians have Dominate again to reflect the changes in the RPG.
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Sep 17, 2022 14:00
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thefakenews posted:As I understand it 5th edition Malkavians have Dominate again to reflect the changes in the RPG. That's correct. VDB shows this in searches for Malkavian crypt cards. Most of the group 6 and 7 cards have Dominate. It's also why a lot of the group 6 and 7 vampires are reworkings of group 1 rockstars, like this guy here: 
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Sep 17, 2022 14:18
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Randalor posted:Doomtown got the LCG treatment a few years back. I tried it and bounced off pretty hard, so I never invested anything into it. Db0, the guy who did like 99% of the work for the OCTGN automations for Android: Netrunner was big into the beta (or alpha) test of that game and got some high level netrunner players including myself and one of the guys who made Slay the Spire (before he did that) involved. Db0 just loved the original and the new LCG implementation to bits. The rest of us had very serious reservations and kept trying to convince the developer and Db0 to change their game mechanics for the better for a while (like for example, implement a loving mulligan rule holy poo poo) until we all gave up on it. Game was a trainwreck, and I regret spending any time on it at all. Railing Kill posted:Dominate: payload and resource management Dominate is payload, resource management, defense and even a bit of combat defense. Which is the biggest design problem with VTES (amongst others). You can just play a deck around only Dominate and be fine. Orange Devil fucked around with this message at 16:08 on Sep 17, 2022 |
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Sep 17, 2022 16:03
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Dominate also has bounce. My Nagaraja deck with Auspex, Necromancy and Dominate was just bouncetown.
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Sep 17, 2022 16:17
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Orange Devil posted:even a bit of combat defense I had a deck with all 10 caps with Superior Dom. Obedience put in some work in that deck.
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Sep 17, 2022 16:20
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For all VTES' faults though (and there are so, so many faults) I do miss it sometimes and wish the VTES: Online (https://deckserver.net/jol/) implementation wasn't quite so rear end and had more people willing to do simultaneous play. But then again the online meta was always ridiculously combat focused so never felt like the real game anyway.
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Sep 17, 2022 16:31
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Magnetic North posted:I had a deck with all 10 caps with Superior Dom. Obedience put in some work in that deck. Having a crypt full of 10 caps these days is a recipe for disaster. The meta now has so many more answers to things that spamming Obedience or Majesty as a sole means to protect your huge minions can't be counted on the same way anymore. It can work, depending on your match-ups, but it isn't safe enough to run that kind of capacity without lower cap minions to bail you out or do some extra work for you. I say that as someone who has several decks build around a specific high-cap vampires (Saulot, for one). You need low or mid-cap help to go with your heavies these days. Orange Devil posted:Dominate is payload, resource management, defense and even a bit of combat defense. Which is the biggest design problem with VTES (amongst others). You can just play a deck around only Dominate and be fine. Dominate has Deflection and that is for sure a staple of any deck running the discipline. But I wouldn't say it's the discipline's forte, which is why I didn't include it in the quick rundown. Payload is way more diverse than stealth-bleeds for 6 these days, so leaning exclusively on Deflection and expecting that to keep you alive might work, but often won't. Defense needs more answers to threats these days.
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Sep 17, 2022 17:05
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Railing Kill posted:Having a crypt full of 10 caps these days is a recipe for disaster. The meta now has so many more answers to things that spamming Obedience or Majesty as a sole means to protect your huge minions can't be counted on the same way anymore. It can work, depending on your match-ups, but it isn't safe enough to run that kind of capacity without lower cap minions to bail you out or do some extra work for you. I say that as someone who has several decks build around a specific high-cap vampires (Saulot, for one). You need low or mid-cap help to go with your heavies these days. It wasn't a recipe for success back in the day either  Running like 5 Info Highways, 6 Zillahs Valleys and 2 DOTS, and of course 4-5 Barrens to get rid of all the extra Masters once I didn't need them. I think this deck was literally 100 cards.
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Sep 17, 2022 17:12
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Railing Kill posted:Dominate has Deflection and that is for sure a staple of any deck running the discipline. But I wouldn't say it's the discipline's forte, which is why I didn't include it in the quick rundown. Payload is way more diverse than stealth-bleeds for 6 these days, so leaning exclusively on Deflection and expecting that to keep you alive might work, but often won't. Defense needs more answers to threats these days. Not according to the decks I saw at the European Championship Finals 2022. Here's decklists: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JdXJahFEifYbyKHh4TGYxq5T_vPJW0wNmhQ8Raeqsek/edit Of the five, 1 is: 6x deflection 2x obedience 2x on the qui vive 1x sense the savage way And another is: 6x on the qui vive 3x redirection 6x deflection 1x delaying tactics The latter being as absolutely bog standard as you can get. The day 1 finals even had a deck as stupid but efficient as this: 10x dreams of the sphinx 3x life in the city 2x the coven 1x anarch troublemaker 1x jake washington 1x misdirection 1x pentex subversion 24x govern the unaligned 8x mirror walk 5x bonding 5x conditioning 4x seduction 2x foreshadowing destruction 1x command the beast 7x deflection 2x on the qui vive 1x delaying tactics You can see it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahXiBjdKkL0 Speaking of which, I'm near certain almost every VTES deck people play would be better if they just cut some cards. 90 card decks are still the standard though 60 is the legal minimum. I've only seen people deck themselves with combat rush decks and even then it is super rare. The average deck should be 75 cards or less imo.
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Sep 17, 2022 17:45
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Railing Kill posted:Dominate has Deflection and that is for sure a staple of any deck running the discipline. But I wouldn't say it's the discipline's forte, which is why I didn't include it in the quick rundown. Payload is way more diverse than stealth-bleeds for 6 these days, so leaning exclusively on Deflection and expecting that to keep you alive might work, but often won't. Defense needs more answers to threats these days. My playgroup was on the verge of banning Deflection. The ability to negate any bleed, regardless of stealth, and send it at your prey? And advanced Dom can do it all day long? Broken.
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Sep 17, 2022 22:48
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Orange Devil posted:Not according to the decks I saw at the European Championship Finals 2022. Egads. Ok, at the risk of sounding like a homer, the European meta has always been more streamlined toward big bleeds. It has been for 20 years. There's unwritten rules over there about interaction that just aren't a thing over here. I'm not saying it's better or worse, but it just is a thing. There is just a different expectation for how you interact (or don't) with opponent's minions. These decklists would get absolutely smashed over here. If you're sitting there with 3 Governs in hand because your deck is running 24 of them or you only have 2 Obediences across your whole deck to get out of combat, you are going to lose every one of your minions, probably before you oust your first prey. It's common for decks in the US meta to run even more copies of Deflection than these, but even then they have more plans for defense and combat than these lists do. I played in at least one tournament a month for fifteen years, a ton of regional qualifiers, and went to nationals twice. One of the decks I qualified for nationals with was Stanislava Dom Gangrel. That deck ran 7 Deflections despite also having Gangrel disciplines to deal with defense and combat. I saw Setite decks that ran 20 Majesties because otherwise they'd get turned into chunky marinara. Those Malk and Setite and Giovanni stealth/bleed decks would win, but their win rate went down steadily over the fifteen years I played avidly because the cards and the meta compensated for them. The European meta has just never been about playing the game the way the cards tried to correct the balance.
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Sep 17, 2022 23:01
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I was reminded that one of the head developers for VTES used to live in town. He even had a couple tournaments at the FLGS I worked at. Big four man things. It was neat to watch.
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Sep 17, 2022 23:56
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The impression I get for VTES is that you play the meta or you end up complete fodder, not even in control of your own cards.
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Sep 18, 2022 00:03
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Loxbourne posted:The impression I get for VTES is that you play the meta or you end up complete fodder, not even in control of your own cards. Wouldn't that be true for any CCG that isn't brand new?
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Sep 18, 2022 01:30
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All this Deflection talk makes me want to type up a description of an old Deflection-resistant deck I made ages ago.
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Sep 18, 2022 12:26
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So you're saying every single European is just playing the game wrong? Interesting.
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Sep 18, 2022 13:35
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Orange Devil posted:So you're saying every single European is just playing the game wrong? Interesting. No, I'm saying they're playing the game in their meta. I even went out of my way to say it wasn't a value judgment. But nice try, tiger.
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Sep 18, 2022 13:42
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Magnetic North posted:All this Deflection talk makes me want to type up a description of an old Deflection-resistant deck I made ages ago. The way to deal with Deflection (and other bounce effects) is to not bleed with Govern + Conditioning every single action like a dope. That just gets you to oust your prey's prey for them. You go in for smaller bleeds (1-3) and challenge them to either use the bounces on less impactful bleeds, or just take them. Decks that rely too much on bounces and not on combat interaction don't have any other choices, so they will eventually run out of bounces or pool as long as you don't power bleed and oust their prey for them.
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Sep 18, 2022 13:47
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Gynovore posted:Wouldn't that be true for any CCG that isn't brand new? It can depend. Not the subject of this thread, but the idea of balance is that there's a number of viable options. In Magic for example, a deck of 60 Islands won't go far, but Legacy isn't "play RUG Delver or just concede". It sounds like the specific meta is even more important in VTES tho, being a multilayer game, with a smaller base, and more local.
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Sep 18, 2022 13:54
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Serperoth posted:It can depend. Not the subject of this thread, but the idea of balance is that there's a number of viable options. In Magic for example, a deck of 60 Islands won't go far, but Legacy isn't "play RUG Delver or just concede". It sounds like the specific meta is even more important in VTES tho, being a multilayer game, with a smaller base, and more local. Yeah, it's interesting to think how a game that is routinely played four player affects meta in general. If you make a deck that just goes for the throat (heh) right away you'd probably get triple-teamed quickly.
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Sep 18, 2022 14:19
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Dawgstar posted:Yeah, it's interesting to think how a game that is routinely played four player affects meta in general. If you make a deck that just goes for the throat (heh) right away you'd probably get triple-teamed quickly. This is what I was going for. VTES's payload and deflection mechanics combine to create a game where a weaker player can be weaponised against your opponents. A newbie isn't just fodder, they're actively a tool for other players. I can see how that would be a massive barrier to entry. When you say "taking out your prey's prey is one of the worst things you can do", is there actually a mechanic that penalises you for that or is it just Nyar Har Har, you are puppets dancing on my strings?
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Sep 18, 2022 20:20
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Loxbourne posted:This is what I was going for. VTES's payload and deflection mechanics combine to create a game where a weaker player can be weaponised against your opponents. A newbie isn't just fodder, they're actively a tool for other players. I can see how that would be a massive barrier to entry. Kind of. You get 6 pool when your prey is ousted, no matter who does it. So ousting your prey's prey for them gets your prey 6 pool and gets you that much further from ousting them. But mostly it is just hugely embarrassing. There are quite a few barriers for entry to new players, and the multiplayer dynamics are definitely one of them. It's one of the game's strengths, but most CCGs have nothing quite like it so it can be tough for new players who don't have a good group to foster new players.
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Sep 18, 2022 20:44
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One of the things about “meta” in VtES is that because it is a multiplayer game, with a lot of social interaction and deal making, and voting is a core mechanic, different play groups develop very different social rules about what is socially encouraged play in a local meta. Including what kind of actions will draw table hate. Where I live has had a reputation for being substantially more aggressive, both in terms of combat and size of bleeds, compared to most of Australia. Part of that is due to a smaller playgroup with a lack of availability of certain cards (e.g Archon Investigation), but also the players just like to play in a super aggressive way. We also have a lot of new players in the current playgroup and many of them just don’t care about responsible bleeding and will increase bleeds after they have been deflected just because they want to get a big bleed regardless of whether it helps. Also, in addition to 6 pool, you also get a victory point when your prey is ousted (regardless of who does it). And you win by having the most VPs at the end of the game. thefakenews fucked around with this message at 00:56 on Sep 19, 2022 |
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Sep 19, 2022 00:03
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I kept a few cards from the early days of TCGs. First pic here is an old InQuest Magazine fake Magic card that I cut out and glued to... something. Magic isn't dead, but it's neat, okay? Then there's Wyvern, which was one of the earliest TCGs. I don't remember how to play, but young me liked seeing the different varieties of dragons. Third is Marvel Overpower, which was very odd. I remember having cards all of the same art but with different numbers, sort of like a poker deck, which is probably the inspiration. The fourth card deserves special mention, because Warhammer Champions (and its cousin Lightseekers) was a game with a very novel mechanic. Most cards rotated 90 degrees every turn, and then triggered depending on what symbol was showing right side up. Some cards got discarded when they got to a blank side, but some completed "quests" and got you unique powers. I believe it was a double-whammy of supply and balance issues that killed it. The Death Star is just the Decipher Star Wars game that's been covered in this thread.  Here's X-Files, which had more stats on the cards than a D&D character sheet. I always did and still groan when I see another creature-basher with power and toughness ala Magic that is focused on combat. Some designers recognized this and tried to break the mold, but that's Too Many Numbers. Eureka is from Doomtown, the OG version. I played the LCG and never knew what was happening, but I liked the poker mechanic a lot. Shame the balance killed it. Cat's Guidance is from Jyhad, i.e. the thread's current V:tES topic. No idea if the card is good, I kept it because it has cats.  First up here, some cute cards from Illuminati: NWO. Drizzt is from Spellfire, which is first game to be released after Magic. It was a running joke among my friend group that it was impossible to figure out how to play. I only bought a starter deck because I saw an ad saying you could trade in a Magic pack for a pack of Spellfire, and having no frame of reference at the time, thought it was an expansion or side game to Magic. Force of Will is from L5R, and I've used it as a proxy for Force of Will in Magic at times. Cerberus is from Netrunner, and has some uncharacteristically Cool Art for a game that usually had some ultra-90s CGI art. 
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Sep 19, 2022 00:38
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Those are rad. I actually played Wyvern a bit when it came out (bought a few starters), it had some interesting elements, but I would have to look it up. I was, I think, 14 or 15 and was playing with my brother who was 10. That said, before I talk about other games I have more L5R to talk about. I'll try and get the next post edited and up tomorrow, if total war Warhammer doesn't distract me again.
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Sep 19, 2022 04:44
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Railing Kill posted:There are quite a few barriers for entry to new players, and the multiplayer dynamics are definitely one of them. It's one of the game's strengths, but most CCGs have nothing quite like it so it can be tough for new players who don't have a good group to foster new players. I feel like this is an easy thing to point to for multiplayer games not doing well in general. It was very easy for me to get my friend group into Duel Masters (still should do a write-up, maybe today actually), because I bought a starter pack, two decks, ready to go, one person at a time. Meanwhile, if I wanted to get a VTES group together, I'd need to make sure my (say) 5 friends are available at the same time, and have a deck for each. It could be mitigated by selling ready-made decks, but in general it doesn't lend itself to "Well, we have some time, and our decks... Wanna play real quick?", and while not a specific barrier to entry, it doesn't have that advantage of the open door being there.
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Sep 19, 2022 08:03
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Serperoth posted:I feel like this is an easy thing to point to for multiplayer games not doing well in general. It was very easy for me to get my friend group into Duel Masters (still should do a write-up, maybe today actually), because I bought a starter pack, two decks, ready to go, one person at a time. Meanwhile, if I wanted to get a VTES group together, I'd need to make sure my (say) 5 friends are available at the same time, and have a deck for each. We have been trying to get the game up and running at a local store since the release of VtES 5E. Getting a full table together at the same time has definitely been the biggest challenge. Since the game is no longer sold as a CCG, and the majority of new product consists of pre-built starter decks, there is definitely an easier entry point than there used to be when I started playing. The new starter decks are all pretty viable for causal play straight out of the box. There were starter decks in the CCG days, but they were uniformly unusable straight out of the box. Edit: in fact, the 5E core product is a box containing 5 starter decks.
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Sep 19, 2022 08:41
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X-Files CCG! I dimly remember that. It kind of popped up locally and then disappeared just as suddenly for no particular reason. If I recall correctly the base game was Guess Who? If you won an "attack", you got to ask a question about the opponent's choice of "X-File", and there was a reference in the rulebook to match which it was?
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Sep 19, 2022 16:44
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Dawgstar posted:Yeah, it's interesting to think how a game that is routinely played four player affects meta in general. If you make a deck that just goes for the throat (heh) right away you'd probably get triple-teamed quickly. Well, not really - you've almost always got a cross-table buddy with the same enemy players in common. It's not like Commander where the whole table can recognize someone as a threat.
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Sep 19, 2022 16:54
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Duel Masters A game so nice it died twice. This was probably the first game I got proper into. Yeah, I had bought a booster pack or two of Magic, and used to have a Yu-Gi-Oh! deck with decisions like "Horn of the Unicorn is so much better than Malevolent Nuzzler, you don't have to pay for it", but with Duel Masters, we proper got into it. I still remember how, even. I visited the local game store (literally 3 doors over from our apartment) with my mother, and with the 15 euro I was allowed to spend, my choice was the Duel Masters starter deck or a Battletech miniatures game booster pack. Only one of those was something that could be played out of the box, so... Duel Masters came out in 2002, developed by Wizards of the Coast alongside Takara-Tomy, initially in Japan, and in 2004 in the US. From the start, it was intended to be similar to Magic, but simpler, and more accessible, so the gameplay overview should be pretty straightforward. That said, I'll primarily talk about the game in its initial form when it comes to the summary. Each player shuffles their deck (minimum 40 cards, in Japan exactly 40 cards), then puts the top 5 cards in front of them, face down. This is the first divergence from Magic, with these cards being your shields, and the game featuring no Life Points. Attacks break a shield (or more sometimes), which goes into your hand, when you have no shields and get hit, you're out. Next, draw five cards, someone goes first (RPS, dice roll, best 2 out of 3 falls wrestling match, whatever), first player skips their draw, and the turn starts. Turn structure is a little bit different than Magic. It goes Untap -> Draw -> Play mana -> Play cards (only two card types initially, spells and creatures) -> Attack -> End turn   A creature, and a spell, respectively. Spells do what they say, creatures have a single power stat in the lower left, creature type is below the name Mana is the second major difference to Magic. There are no lands. Any card can be placed upside down, untapped, in the mana zone (behind your shields), and then tapped for mana as in Magic. Creatures and spells cost their cost in mana, and at least one must be from that civilization (Light, Water, Darkness, Fire, Nature. Light is more yellow than Magic's cream-white, but otherwise it parses to WUBRG), and that's about it. Other than those, the core of the game is mostly straightforward with no big surprises. Creatures have summoning sickness, attacks are made either directly to the opponent or to a tapped creature, and some creatures also have blocker (tap to block an attack, and the creatures fight). Break all five shields, then hit your opponent, you win. The core structure of the rules is simple, so a lot of the depth is due to the board state and the cards themselves, especially as later sets rolled in, but shields and no need for lands were noted improvements over Magic's base at the time. No, a card like Holy Awe wouldn't save you from getting killed forever, but it could turn a big swing into a dud, leaving your opponent vulnerable next turn. Creature abilities themselves started from the standard stuff such as blocker, speed attacker (haste), power attacker (gets +X attack when it attacks), double breaker (breaks two shields), and the first few sets introduced Evolution (put on one of the same race creatures, no summoning sickness), Survivor (Slivers, but for your side only), as well as multicolor cards (they go into the mana zone tapped, need at least one of each to play them) It was notably less "serious fantasy" than Magic, with races (creature types) ranging from your Dragons or Giants, to Liquid People, or Wild Veggies, and for a short while it sold like hotcakes, outselling even Magic. However, that momentum didn't stay, and it released a total of 12 sets (including the Base Set), ending in 2006 with "Thrash of the Hybrid Megacreatures", without much fanfare that I remember. Power creep had started, with Bombazar, Dragon of Destiny being a very notable card (but not the sole reason for it dying), and between the aesthetic and WotC's general prowess at the time, I'm not entirely sure how much it would've lasted anyway. It's still going strong in Japan however, where the game has changed significantly. Compare for example Crystal Lancer, one of the main features of my deck from back in the day, to Dogiragon Nova, Blue Guardian Deity   Crystal Lancer is cool. Comes in, evolves on top of your Aqua Hulcus or something, swings for two shields. Dogiragon Nova, Blue Guardian Deity can replace any of your attacking Light or Fire dragons that costs 5 or more when they attack (like Magic's Ninjutsu), is a blocker, a triple breaker (3 shields when it hits), untaps all your multicolored creatures each turn, and when he comes into play with the first ability he can summon put more stuff from the top of your deck into play. One deck in the current meta is a 5-color control deck, and includes Nicol Bolas in its cards The game has been power crept a lot, and complexity seems to have gone way up, as well as the game (understandably) being much more anime, with crossovers (Including with Magic), extra decks (including one from which you summon stuff randomly), cards with multiple cards on them (a card that takes five cards to assemble into one (costs 999 mana, has 999999 power), cards that link to others and are shared (the wiki says up to TWENTY, but I couldn't find how), and probably all sorts of stuff I'm not even aware of. With what I saw of the wiki (where all of the links and pictures are from) to write this piece, I get the impression that it has a lot of COOL stuff, but it feels lost amid the rest of the COOL stuff. Is a God stronger than a Dispector? Can I play Forbiddens? (yes, the banlist is called Hall of Fame) What's a Draguner? Is Splash Queen Dragon a Dragon? I don't know, and I'm tired just trying to find out. Well ok, I know that last one, Dragon is not a type. Wizards tried to relaunch it under the Kaijudo name in 2012, but it appears to have flopped, and the subreddit for the original Duel Masters seems pretty dead as well, and I don't think it's unique enough to have the fan backing that something like Warlord, VTES, or L5R would have in this day and age. I did pick up the starter pack, the very same one I'd gotten all those years back, a few years ago, for 1 euro, and it will stay in its packaging. You can play it, and Serperoth fucked around with this message at 22:42 on Sep 20, 2022 |
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Sep 20, 2022 21:24
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Duel Masters isn't just still played in Japan, it's one of the big three TCGs over there while Magic sits in the next tier down.
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Sep 20, 2022 21:55
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In really hoping duel masters will make another come back. I've always lived the game and had a good time with both previous iterations. With Magix being such a cash cow and the transformers tcg dying, I doubt it will. Who knows though banzai will soon have 4 tcgs on the market, wotc could totally support 2.
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Sep 20, 2022 22:52
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Show Me Your Deck and Thralls: VTES Deckbuilding (VTES part 4) VTES effortpost one: the basics VTES effortpost two: card roles VTES effortpost three: clans and disciplines Let's look at VTES deckbuilding. To recap, decks need answers to these things: 1) Payload. What you're doing to deal pool damage to your prey. 2) Delivery. How you are ensuring your payload gets through. 3) Combat. Damaging opponents' minions, or at least keeping yours safe. 4) Defense. Blocking opponents' minions and keeping your pool safe. 5) Resource management. Getting new blood to both your minions and your pool.  Crypt This is the separate deck that only contains your vampires. (Side note: I keep using the term "minions" for the acting cards in VTES. That's the game's term, and it encompasses both vampires and allies that vampires can recruit. But 99% of minions are vampires. But I digress...) A crypt must contain at least 12 cards, and you'll start with 4 of them face-down to choose from to start transferring pool to bring into play. You usually want to run 3-4 copies of a vampire in a crypt in order to see it consistently at the start of the game. Some decks run 5 or 6 copies of a vampire that is particularly crucial to a deck's discipline usage. A crypt can contain any number of any vampire.  Library Like MTG, this is the term for your main deck. Before I get into a breakdown of how the library will address payload, delivery, etc., here's a few rules and tendencies for deck composition:  A deck may be between 60 and 90 cards. The optimal number is debatable, but in the meta I played in running any less than 75-80 cards was a recipe for getting decked out before the two hour time limit. Getting decked doesn't kill you like in MTG, but you just have whatever is left in your hand to ride out the rest of the game. It is one of the game's most exhilarating feelings, but not in a good way. It feels thrilling like getting chased by a pack of wolves might be thrilling. Combat-heavy decks tend to be more card-intensive, so they'll tend to be up closer to 90. A deck may have any number of copies of any card. Decks do not have to adhere to MTG's and other CCG's 4 card limitation. That said, rares in VTES tend to be the kind of card that can shape a game but that you don't want to spam. Commons are the sinew of a deck. The magic number for a 90-card deck's most critical card(s) is 12: this is the number that will, statistically, be more likely than other numbers to put a copy of the card in hand at any given time without choking your hand with more copies than you can use. Master cards are a type of card played in a separate phase ahead of the minion phase. They are not played by minions, so you only get one per turn (except where otherwise noted). They are often powerful and some can swing a game if played with the right finesse. They also tend to be anchors for resource management strategies. However, because we can only play one per turn, it doesn't benefit us to have a hand full of them at all times. Ideally, you want 1-2 in hand at any given time, so in a deck of 90 cards, 12-16 are usually in order. Any more than that and we'll have our hand fill up with them. Any less and we may miss utilizing our master phase action on some turns for lack of a card to play.Vampire the Eternal Struggle is an eternal format (obviously).  Joking aside, that means that tournament play can include any card printed in the entire span of the game's lifetime. This worked fine up until Third Edition, when they sought to print newer vampires with different abilities but similar discipline spreads than already printed vampires. This would be a problem since you don't want to give players 4 versions of a 6-cap with all in-clan disciplines at superior. One of those is fine, but a crypt full of them would homoginize every clans' crypts pretty quickly. So they started printing Group Numbers in the bottom left of crypt cards. Up there on Saulot you can see a little 4 above his text box. He's group 4, so he can sit in a crypt containing either 3's and 4's, or 4's and 5's. A crypt can only contain two consecutive group numbers. (Vampires printed prior to this ruling are designated 1s or 2s depending on if they were from the core set or expansions, respectively.)With all of that in mind, let's break down a decklist and see how a deck leans into its disciplines' strengths and compensates for its weaknesses. Here is an Animalism weenie deck I've been using for a while. It's moderately strong (an EDH player might say it is "a seven"  ) but it's great for when I don't want as much of a brain-burner as some VTES games can get, and it's great for letting new players pilot because it runs one discipline and doesn't rely on funky combos or interactions. But it still has to address all of the above challenges with only one discipline. Let's see how it can do that. Crypt This one only cares about the discipline Animalism. Every deck is looking to pay as little as possible in capacity for the disciplines that it requires, so this one is running a bunch of 2's and 3's with basic Animalism, and some 4's and 5's with superior Animalism. Stick stands out as a 3 cap with superior Animalism, and he may be the "best" minion in the crypt, although they are all markedly more expendable than they would be in other decks. This is a weenie deck, and it is looking to land 5-6 minions as opposed to the 2-4 most decks will land. Most decks will spend about 18-22 pool on minions before any resource management engines go off unabated, or before ousting one's prey grants 6 extra pool.  Payload This deck cannot bleed its prey for 6 pool in one action. That's the realm of Dominate and Presence. Instead, it's going to bleed for 2 so many loving times. Volume hitting is how we're going to do a lot of damage to our prey. Tier of Souls will grant a minion with superior Animalism a semi-permanent +1 bleed, and Deep Song lets any of our minions bleed for 2 (or 3 if they're already carrying a Tier of Souls). Even 2 is decent given the sheer number of minions we're intending to field, here. Army of Rats also provides pressure by volume, since once it is in play it just sits there and pings our prey without us taking an action to do so. They can get rid of it, but that taps someone down who could otherwise be blocking one of our many bleeds. Lastly, we have Fame. This is part of a block of "punishment" cards that combat decks will use to deal pool damage by way of combat. This is the only one we're using because some of the other ones are risky for us to run as a weenie deck. We'll throw Fame on one of our prey's minions, knock his rear end out, and our prey will lose 3 pool. Even better, we have enough minions to do the ol' "Fame yo-yo:" knock out the famous vampire, rescue him, and dunk him again. So we have a few ways to do pool damage, but all of it is predicated on capitalizing on our strength in numbers.  Delivery Speaking of which, that volume is most of how we're going to deliver our payload. Our prey only has so many minions, and only so many "wake" effects (to block or react as though untapped). We don't need to kill them all if they simply can't block. Some of our cards can help with troublesome minions who are (wisely) staying untapped to redirect bleeds, or repeatedly blocking. Taunt the Caged Beast and Deep Song can both be used to enter combat with another minion. Sometimes we'll end up in combat by being blocked, but sometimes we'll want to force the issue with a slippery prey. Once in combat...  Combat ...We have our own slippery strategy. The aim here is to protect ourselves by staying at long range, and making every single combat a war of attrition. Aid from Bats both gets us to long range and acts as a (weak) ranged strike, but Carrion Crows can pile on more damage. The bats can also get us into more rounds if things look favorable for us. Terror Frenzy can help us neutralize Celerity combat and other disciplines that can beat our maneuvering, and it can make combat extremely costly for card-intensive combat decks that could otherwise blow us up in combat. Our combat, like our payload, isn't about huge alpha strikes; it's about turning each encounter into a grind that we will win in the short or long term.  Defense Animalism is a toolbox discipline, but if it excels at anything it is defense. Guard Dogs and On the Qui Vive are "wake" effects. Cat's Guidance and Instinctive Reaction can provide intercept. Those alone are not going to stop concerted stealth decks, though. If we have a stealthy predator, we'll look to pile Raven Spies on one minion and designate that one as our blocker. WE can even save ourselves actions to get the ravens with Pack Alpha. This deck cannot deflect bleeds with this discipline, so if it is facing power bleeds with a ton of stealth, it will look to "rush" (enter combat) upstream with Taunt the Caged Beast or Deep Song and beat up its predator's minions enough that they cut that poo poo out.  Resource Management Most of this is coming from our Master card block. This decks runs a lot of Blood Doll and Vessel, some of the standard blood management engines. We're running 1-2 more than most decks would because we're planning on having that many more minions. Beyond that, Powerbase: Montreal, Dreams of the Sphinx will also keep our pool up. Effective Management will save both pool and time when we need to get more vampires out beyond our first four. Gird Minions is good in a pinch to restock our minions from our pool, but we usually want to do the opposite of that with Blood Doll and Vessel. Lastly, Tier of Souls is good for a little bump, stealing 1 blood from our prey's minion (although this deck should always use it at its superior usage to maximize bleed pressure). So that's it for that deck. Hit for 2-3, and do it a million times. Make it too costly to block often, and win the war of attrition in combat. Use your numerical advantage to hold up your predator long enough to oust your prey by volume bleeds. Rinse, repeat. So let's look at one more deck that's a bit more complicated but is more typical in that it runs one clan, and three disciplines instead of one. I have some decks that run four or even five disciplines, but I'll spare you the fevered, Pepe Silvia insanity that it would take to explain my Saulot deck. Instead, let's look at: Uta Kovacs is Standing Outside Your Window With a Boombox  This deck is a "beat and bleed" deck that uses the threat of combat to drive through Dominate power bleeds. Unlike most combat decks, though, this one is going to step right out into the open when it announces actions. It'll play a Scouting Mission to bleed for 2, and cap it off with the (above) Serenading the Kami to juice the acting minion's strength by +1 or +2 for the action. So, our prey has a choice: take the bleed of at least 2 (4 with Threats), block and go into combat with a minion who already has set their strength to 3, or misdirect the bleed. We have an answer to the misdirections too, but more on that later.  Crypt This deck runs the standard Tremere/Tremere Antitribu discipline spread: Auspex (defense), Dominate (payload), and Thaumaturgy (AKA Blood Magic in 5th Edition; a combat/toolbox discipline). It is exclusively Tremere Antitribu and happens to run a ton of minions with the special Black Hand designation. This is a subset of the Sabbat sect that lets the minion (or it's controlling player) play cards that require Black Hand. More on that later too. 5 of the 12 crypt cards are Uta Kovacs, who is not necessary to the deck winning but it far and away the best minion int he deck. She pays 1 less blood for Thaumaturgy cards so she pays nothing for Serenading the Kami, Blood Fury, and Rutor's Hand. Paying nothing for Serenade is a big deal when she also has a built-in "rush" to enter combat with an opposing minion as an action. She can initiate that action, play a serenade for free, and go hog wild. This rush is crucial to picking off problematic minions who are able to misdirect our bleeds. The fact that she doesn't have to play a card to do this means she can wear down minions who aren't able to stand up to her in combat.  Payload The payload of this deck is typical for some Dominate decks. The only major difference is that it is running Scouting Mission instead of Govern the Unaligned, and Threats instead of Conditioning. Govern does the same things as Scouting Mission, just moreso, but I'm not using it here because of its blood cost. Likewise for Conditioning vs Threats. This deck can consume a lot of blood, so I wanted to keep the expenditure under control where I was able. With Scouting Mission + Threats, our vampires with inferior Dominate can bleed for 3, or 4 with superior Dominate. (Note: it is common in most metas to "bleed responsibly," limiting bleeds to 3 on purpose. This isn't a friendly agreement; it is pragmatic. Bigger bleeds getting misdirected have a much greater negative impact, so diffusing your bleeds across more actions is a defense against ubiquitous misdirections like Deflection and Telepathic Misdirection. Also, a Master card called Archon Investigation straight up kills a minion that bleed for more than 3, and power bleeds are easy enough to pull off that a lot of decks run a copy or two of AI to keep the big bleeders honest.) The deck also has some Black Hand tricks like Guarded Rubrics and Census Taker to add to bleeds. We also have a suite of "punishment cards" that hurt players for losing minions in combat: Dragonbound, Tension in the Ranks, and Fame. So between combat and Dominate, it's a full-court press for the deck's payload.  Delivery Being a beat and bleed deck, this deck will aim to make each bleed action a painful choice for its prey: either take a bleed of 3, or potentially lose a minion to torpor. So the threat of combat will do a lot of our delivery, but that doesn't always work. There are combat decks more flexible and capable in combat that could hit this one back harder than we can deal with, so in that case we have to get more surgical. We can occasionally shut off particularly dangerous blockers with Seduction, and we can use Uta's build-in rush to remove dedicated redirectors.  Combat In combat, this deck wants to go into combat on the tails of a Serenading the Kami, stay at close range with the incidental maneuvers, and strike with Blood Fury to deal a ton of unpreventable damage. Biothamaturgic Experiment, IR Goggles, Ruins of Ceoris, and Spirit's Touch all provide maneuvers to keep combat close. But just a Serenade + Blood Fury from Uta Kovacs deals 6 damage that can't be prevented with the game's most common damage prevention discipline (Fortitude). That's a fuckload of damage that, unless dodged, is going to knock out or cripple most minions. Things can get a bit dicey if the opponent is also throwing heavy close range damage, but that's where we can try to be a bit more surgical with help from things like Seduction. Lastly, Telepathic Tracking is a fun counter to strikes to end combat: it resumes a combat that would otherwise end for any reason. If we throw down a Serenading the Kami, we want to make the most of it by pressing into new rounds or resuming combat by Telepathic Tracking.  Defense Auspex provides a lot of options for defense. Mostly we have Telepathic Misdirection to redirect bleeds. We have the means to block stealthy actions too, but we can't benefit from Serenading the Kami during other minions' actions so we don't actually want to block our way into combat as much as we want to be in combat on our own turn. It would be foolish to have Auspex in clan and not be able to use it at least a bit to block things like political actions or low-level stealth actions, but this deck isn't going to bother trying to throw a ton of intercept at a truly concerted stealth deck. It'll bounce those, and rush them with Uta on its own turn.  Resource Management Like a lot of decks, the Master card block does a lot of this work, but we also have Taste of Vitae. Taste is a crucial card in a lot of combat decks, as it lets a minion take all of the blood lost by an opponent at the end of a round of combat. If one of those Serenade + Blood Fury strikes lands, we can tank up Uta or whoever is in combat for that 6 damage. Scouting Mission is also a big deal, since we can use it to get more minions out faster and cheaper, or transfer the free pool off the target and back to our own, effectively gaining 2 pool per action. A lot of the Master cards require a Black Hand minion and have as much to do with card advantage as pool management. Drop Point Network is a powerful way to fetch exactly what we need in a jam, for example. I'll leave it there for now. The next post might be about multiplayer dynamics and table politics.
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Sep 30, 2022 00:17
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