Case Study: The Design Success of Nights of Reckoning.

I played the Imbued deck described below a couple of weeks ago (making a couple of very minor tweaks.)  It took its table pretty handily.  I never really felt like I wasn't in control of my destiny - despite apparently having "TABLE THREAT" tattoed across my forehead from the moment of my first discard.

Ironically, it wasn't the conceptual twist of manipulating convictions that made the deck strong.  In the end, it was simply intercept, Champion and aggravated damage.
But, this exercise still had merit.    When you look at it from a game design standpoint, Nights of Reckoning was a 60 card expansion that immediately created tournament-viable decks.   No other expansion can claim that success.  Yet Nights is the game's most-reviled expansion.  Hmmmmmmm.

I started to think about this in context of V:EKN's discussion about what might be interesting in a new set.  A few themes leapt to mind that I just wanted to jot down.

DECEPTIVE DEPTH

In the cases of (original) Anarchs, Bloodlines and Ebony Kingdom, the new themes lacked enough substance to build competitive decks.  Even after addition of a second set supporting each, the comparitively shallow card pool continues to relegate these many of these decks to gimmick status.

The fundamental difficulty in providing immediate impact with new sets was inherently tied to the game's trait-based model.  Disciplines, clans and/or traits like "Black Hand" and "Seraph" drove access to functionality.  Introducing more than one new trait in a set meant that it was difficult to properly support all of those traits in one expansion of fixed (small) size. 

To this day, disciplines existed in 1994's Jyhad base set have significantly more available cards than other disciplines.  Even the least dense original discipline, Protean, has twice as many card options as any discipline introduced after 1996. 

Depth of options for any given trait generally improves playability.  Even if simply because more cards printed statistically dictates a greater number of playable cards.  If you buy into that idea, it is easy to see why new concepts trailed in the power curve.  They just didn't have the depth to be versatile, or to have a significant number of playable cards.

The Imbued received immediate depth in a different way, tied to only one new trait introduced in that set - "Imbued."  The key cards (Convictions, Church of Vindicated Faith, Angel of Berlin) were broadly useable across the entire pool of available minions, instead of being tied to a more restrictive trait like a clan or discipline. 

Upside.....easy access to powerful options available within a compact card base.  Downside.....every Imbued deck starts to look very similar.  Even when I tried to twist the design around some, it ended up being just another wallish Imbued deck with a +1 bleed options.

MECHANICS THAT BREAK THE GAME.

Bear with me a moment, this gets a little lengthy and introduces a rant that I'll probably expand on more fully at a later date.

V:tES is a card game.  It is supposed to use 3 basic resources for play.  Pool as the global resource, minions to act in one's playspace and library cards to manipulate minions or their abilities..  

Innately tied to that model is a common thread among card games - the random nature of drawing from a face-down deck. 

Recursion from the Ash Heap introduces a 4th resource, one with low development overhead.  Accessing that resource also eliminates the random factors, which are supposed to be closely woven into the fabric of the game. 

In short, significant access to the Ash Heap, where information is complete and random distribution is no longer a factor, breaks the fundamental underpinnings of design for any card game.  From Ashur's Tablets to Sudario Refraction to Sargon Fragment, recursion destroys the reliance on one's library as one of the three primary resources and transfers the focus to "working the Ash Heap."

As an analogy, imagine playing poker and being able to draw cards from the muck (discards of players who folded in that hand).   Immediately, you change the probability of "hitting your raw" into a simple question of having whatever triggers your ability to get the card you want.  The game loses a lot of its appeal and complexity - becoming less random and more an exercise in selecting cards to meet situational need. 

As the ease of use for recursion increases, the mechanic becomes increasingly broken.  Nothing is easier than recursion of Conviction - just stick it on the minion during your untap.  Done, and you get what you need for the upcoming turn.  Pretty broken.

Personally, I find it interesting that a large part of what made Nights tournament-worthy was weaving a broken concept into the design. 

SYNERGY WITH THE EXISTING CARD BASE

There are really two parts to this.  First is that several existing cards greatly improved the playability of ally-based decks.  In particular, the Unmasking leaps to mind.

Being unaffected by a number of cards further broadens the card base available to the minions from this small set.  From shrugging off the effect of almost every Event card to accessing Tension in the Ranks without risk from going to torpor, the Imbued were immediately able to access a wide base of existing deck tech with comparitely low risk. 

While some of the other small sets had syngery with existing sets (after all, the minions shared core disciplines with other vampires), very few of those cards had such a global effects. In my mind, having cards that read "all your minions with [aus] get +1 intercept forever" is the only close parallel to the power the Imbued recieved, just by being allies instead of vampires.

In hindsight, "Imbued" should have implied "mortal minion" but not "ally" and their life counters should have been called something else.

THE HARD COUNTER.

I'll use a World of Warcraft analogy here.  In Player-Versus-Player (PvP) combat models with 2 players per side, the type of characters on each side of the fight can matter more than anything other factor in the fight.  Players commonly call this situation "a hard counter."

The Imbued are, by and large, a hard counter to a lot of deck designs. 

Combat is often viewed as the best way to deal with the Imbued.  But of the 87 cards that say "enter combat," 63 of them also say "vampire" instead of "minion."   That hamstrings a lot of combat deck designs - including the flavor of the month Deep Song rush decks. 

Even after combat is initiated, there are a lot of combat cards that are unplayable against the Immune - most prominantly all Frenzy cards and Taste of Vitae.  More innate benefit simply from Imbued being "allies" - which never really should have happened.

The Imbued's tendency to develop a lot of standing intercept is also a hard counter against any late-developing deck that can't generate consistent stealth.  Having a backup Champion in play makes lunging at them harder too - so another subset of deck designs is greatly hampered by what seems to be general commonality in their deck designs.

FREE MULTIACTION

The Imbued permit a disportionately high level of multiaction by rule, without any other prerequisite or resource cost.  Experience has shown that freedom to act repetitively is very powerful - how many people try to play [for] minions just to get at Freak Drive or use Majesty as much for untap as for S:CE?

Perhaps untapping after gaining a Power should have cost the Imbued one of their most precious resources - a Conviction.  Seems roughly analogous to the typical 1 blood cost associated with a vampire using an untap effect.

STILL A MYSTERY

The new mechanics created an innate complexity at a lot of people just don't care to understand.

This is almost as telling as anything else.  A large fraction of the player population still doesn't understand how to beat them - and might not even understand the cards they play.  Even against seasoned tournament players, I often have to explain what the cards I'm playing do. 

I've even gone so far as to put a die in front of each minion, showing their on-the-table intercept, just so I don't have to keep telling people, sometimes more than once per turn.

SUMMARY

All this adds up to one thing......Nights of Reckoning will always be the most-successful, least-loved expansion ever to hit the presses.

The Imbued Principle

I need a new Imbued deck since my last decent one took a tournament at the NAC (so I'm retiring it).  And the guys in L.A. hate the Imbued so much that I almost feel obliged to keep throwing Hunter decks at them. 

What you folks get from all this is a first-hand insight into how I approach deck building in general, with a specific twist on what makes Imbued work.

In looking for a new angle to play, I want to leverage a long-standing maxim about the Imbued. 

The Imbued really aren't about having Powers based on their Virtues. 

Their real functionality is derived from the Convictions they have accumulated.

Since I want to re-test the validity of this maxim, I need to find ways to accumulate convictions at an unusually rapid pace.  I think the best way to do that is accessing them from ash heap during my untap phase.  If I use minions that can further leverage cards from the ash heap, I get even more mileage from the mechanism.

Step 1.  Select the lead imbued.  There are 3 imbued that get extra convictions from the ash heap. 

1. Erick "Shophet125" Franco - a rushing minion
2. Xian "DziDzat155" Quan - a blocking minion
3. Leaf "Potter116" Pankowski - a passive minion

All 3 of these minions share the Innocence virtue, through they share no other virtues. 

Perhaps the most pivotal hunter for long-term staying power, Jennie "Cassie247" Orne, also has INN.  Since 2 of the lead minions have combat-driven specials, having Jennie's special card text seems like a no brainer.

Innocence is looking key here.  Inez "Nurse216" Villagrande's special text allows her to getting an Inspire (INN) from the library when she enters play.  I'll plan on Inspire being a key part of the deck's bloat engine. 

In addition to that function of the deck, there is a little used clause that allows transfer of convictions with Inspire - it's a nice extra utility for a deck that loads convictions or might require a lot of movement from the incapitated region.

Step 2. Plan for conviction. It looks like there will be 5 Hunters in play at peak performance, which means that I'll want 3-5 convictions per minion, or 15-25 convictions total.   If I try to construct this deck at 60 cards, I would be running 35-45 non-conviction cards.  

Because the deck will be churning to find conviction, I can actually plan more for optimal conviction placement.  This is in direct contrast with normal Imbued decks that just want to acculumate ANY conviction in the first 5-7 turns.

For the first cut, I will paradoxically plan to run fewer convictions than normal, but end up with more relevent placements. 

Here is another foible of the deck - I'm building it to this point without specifically knowing what it will do besides gain conviction.  The minions' card text suggests that permanent-based combat will be involved.

Step 3.  Get convictions in the ash heap.  Seems like there are 2 straightforward ways to achieve this objective: Liquidation and Scrounging.  Both have issues for this particular deck design.

I won't have a deep enough library, nor enough Master Phase Actions (MPA) to build a full Liquidation/Ashurs recursion design.  I'll have to be careful about how I plan for losing non-conviction cards.  Jenny being a Visionary allows me to play Unity to layer some permanent recursion into the library design, but it will only drive Imbued-related recursion. 

At the same time, I won't have board access to Viligence for untap/block so the opportunity cost of Scrounging is high and the failure risk (blocking) is also higher than that of Liquidation. 

Since I'll be tossing cards into the ash heap, Gramle seems like a great way to get the backup copy before it gets Liquidated too.  It has a hidden advantage of flushing one more conviction from my hand after the search function, just like Scrounging would - but it's more targeted.

Step 4.  Build basic Library-based function.  Inspire was a clear choice, as was Unity.   Church of Vindicated Faith goes in every Imbued deck.  So does Ivory Bow, Crusader's Sword, the Unmasking and a few Angels of Berlin.  This is looking very heavy on Master cards so the Parthenon may be in order.  

A few of these cards (Unmasking, Unity) will have to show up in multiples so that I don't lose deck function by Liquidating important cards.


Step 5.  Develop offense.  Normally, I'm looking to do this MUCH earlier than step 5, but this deck's design plan has been different and I'm clearing planning on midgame swarm-bleed as a primary offense strategy. 

 From here, I think the following is the deck's supplemental plan.

1. Agg damage and some prevention on Erick to clear the way for bleeding offense.  How those rushes occur remains uncertain, but I would sure like them to either be permanent or to recur through Unity.  I'm done Chainsaw rush with Imbued so that is not an option.
2. Get a defensive weapon (Sniper Rifle) on the Xian and find something for him to do with all that conviction he may accumulate by blocking 1-3 times per turn.

Step 6.  Add situtational cards.  Hmmmm.....already getting to 60 cards, but there are a few more things to add.  The most promising is Determine, often not included because of the Conviction cost.  But we should be absolutely loaded with available Conviction, so the potential for repetitive bounce or action cancellation seems too good to ignore. 

Every minion who has Judgment gets access to Viligence and Discern.  Every Imbued with Defense gets access to Champion.  Maybe I can add 1 Project for block denial, if I have a bleeding minion with Martyrdom.  

At this point, I can construct the rough draft of the deck to see how well the ratios work for cardflow.

Deck Name : The Imbued Principle
Author : Darby Keeney
Description :

Crypt [12 vampires] Capacity min: 3 max: 5 average: 4
------------------------------------------------------------
2x Jennie "Cassie247"     5  inn jud vis  Imbued:4
2x Erick "Shophet125"     4  inn jud      Imbued:4
2x Leaf "Potter116" P     4  inn red vis  Imbued:4
2x Maman Boumba           4  inn mar      Imbued:4
2x Xian "DziDzat155"      4  def inn      Imbued:4
2x Inez "Nurse216" Vi     3  inn          Imbued:4

Library [63 cards]
------------------------------------------------------------
Action [4]
  1x Augur
  3x Gramle

Ally [1]
  1x Moise Kasavubu  *// might be replaced by Carlton Van Wyk
  1x Vagabond Mystic

Conviction [20]
  6x React with Conviction
  7x Second Sight
  7x Strike with Conviction

Equipment [7]
  1x Crusader Sword, The
  2x Eye of Hazimel
  1x Ivory Bow
  1x Sengir Dagger
  2x Sniper Rifle

Event [2]
  2x Unmasking, The

Master [13]
  3x Angel of Berlin
  2x Church of Vindicated Faith, The
  4x Liquidation
  2x Unity
  2x Wider View

Power [13]
  2x Discern
  3x Hide
  5x Inspire
  1x Rejuvenate
  2x Vigilance

Reaction [2]
  2x Determine

Crafted with : Anarch Revolt Deck Builder. [Tue Aug 30 11:14:39 2011]

V:tES Pool and Poker's Independant Chip Model

V:tES and tournament poker share a number of traits beyond the obvious card game comparison.   The one that I want to describe in this entry is the impact of declining resources during the course of a game.

First, we have to establish a common footing between the two games.  Here it is:

Tournament poker chips and V:tES pool counters are simply tokens intended to represent and limit resources inside the game. 

Everyone gets the same number of tokens to start, each player invests or risks those resources as they choose and their resource pool increases or decreases as a result.  Simple enough on the surface.

From that common basis, we can begin to share some theory between the games.  Tournament poker players developed a tool to calculate an expected monetary return from their chip stack in their resource-limited setting.  It's called the Independant Chip Model (ICM).  We're not playing V:tES for money, but victory points could be simply considered another type of currency.  So it's worth looking at the ICM with an eye toward learning something about V:tES.

The tournament Independent Chip Model (ICM) suggests that any individual chip (token) in a large stack is worth relately less than an identical chip (token) in a smaller pool of resources. 

It seems counterintuitive that a $100 chip from a big stack is worth less than a $100 chip from a small stack, but this entirely due to the limited-resource system.

This is a huge part of why late-game, low-pool decisions are so critical. 

• Drop to zero tokens and stop playing altogether.
• Hold one priceless token and keep playing.  Almost all your decisions are automatically made for you.  You push all-in for poker, lunge or wall in V:tES.  Most people tend to wall more than lunge until the last possible moment.  
• A few more tokens makes decisions much harder, but at least you can make a few choices. 
• A heaping pile of tokens makes you cavalier about decisions until you screw up and lose enough resources to create harder decisions. 

Sound familiar and more intuitive now? All the ICM does really does is to put a numeric value to this feeling for poker.

So if you believe the story so far, how can we leverage any insight from the ICM in V:tES?  Our situation is a bit different from tournament poker.  We actually gain and lose tokens from environment, instead of transferring them to someone else. 

But smaller numbers of tokens in front of a player creates the same increasing value of each token and the same increasing importance of each decision -that is the heart of the ICM.

Looking back to this question of pool value and decision-making, the first question I ask is "Would I prefer to see most people being active and making their own decisions?  Or do I want to depress a larger number of players' pool, limiting their decision-making in a more survival-oriented subset of actions?" 

The more effectively you can directly attack your prey's pool, the more tokens you can tolerate (or want to have) on the table as a whole. 

• If I play a high-yield stealth-bleed deck, I prefer to see my prey's pool diminishing but everyone else comfortable.  I'll pound on my prey's pool and allow other people to play their games too.  Large redirected bleeds have less severe consequences in this model.  I also have enough offensive potential to easily work through any moderate to high pool total possessed by subsequent prey.
• If I am building an offensive vote deck, I might want to see pool levels globally depressed a bit, which might simply happen as a function of the pool-damage cards I play.  This creates a setting where other players' decisions have more consequence per action.  They are more likely to be conservative as a result, allowing me greater flexibility and leverage in passing votes.  This helps to offset the lower per-action potential and the greater mechanical complexity associated with a vote-based deck. 
• If I am building a vote deck with the ability to give other players pool (Con Boon or Parity Shift) but less concentrated offense, I want to press everyone's pool down even further, playing cards like Anarch Revolt, Domain Challenge and Anarchist Uprising.  This tends to make people desparate for help, which my deck can provide in a give-and-take fashion.  If my late-game play is deft enough, I can generate a large pool advantage while keeping other players alive through my actions.
• If I am building a combat deck, I definately want all resources low everywhere.  The faster the table collapses to 3 players, the better for my ability to influence a favorable outcome through combat.  I also don't expect to dramatically influence my prey's pool totals with any single action, so I need both my prey (and maybe future prey) to be vulnerable to small shifts in pool.
• If I am building an intercept deck, I also want resources low, which my deck design should facilitate.  There isn't much immediate offense on demand from these decks, so a key performance driver is to limit available pool everywhere on the table.

Of course these are only generalizations intended to get you thinking about how the ICM can apply to V:tES.  There can be a lot of variability in these broad deck categories.  It is easy to see how the output of weenie vote can differs from Inner Circle vote; a Bruise-n-Bleed deck might play more like stealth-bleed than pure combat, or that intercept decks with [DOM] or [PRE] might generate more transient offense than their [ANI] counterparts.

But the general trend remains true.  The more a deck can dependably strip chunks of its prey's pool in a single turn, the more comfortable it should feel with larger numbers of tokens available across the whole table. The less immediate offense a deck creates, the more it must rely on cards like Smiling Jack and Dragonbound to grind away pool over time, even from crosstable players. 

While there is no immediate deck design that leaps to mind based on this wall of text you've just read, hopefully it gives some of you a little food for thought or gives you a jumping off place for your own independent observations.

Comparing Sect Isolation in Voting.

Despite the issues listed in the previous blog, I really like to play political decks.  I think they're fun because they create interaction with the whole table.  I want to oust with them, despite their innate inefficiency compared to simpler bleeding mechanisms. 

So I often ask myself things like "Beyond the typical [PRE] based vote-push mechanisms, what easily-accessible options exist to create more robust ousting via vote?"

Closed Session and Private Audience leap to mind. 

These votes simply remove "X votes", Barons and Magaji from the voting equation.  Done.  The sect that opposes your is finished too.  The only people you have to either convince (or shout down) are your same sect-cronies.  Considering this, both of these cards are amazingly good and underutilized in the current political environment 

Here's the rub, and think about this before you read ahead.  Which of those two cards is innately better?

On the surface, it's instinctual to say that Closed Session is inherently better.  It costs no blood and can be played by more vampires.  I think a little differently though.  You might see that is something of a theme in these blogs.

Let's start by counting the largest contributors to a referenda.

• The 53 Princes grossly outnumber 33 Archbishops.
• The 20 Prisci are intended to offset that difference. Unfortunately, they can't because multiple Prisci still only control 3 votes as a block.
• The 19 Justicars balance the 18 Cardinals.
• There are 13 Inner Circle members, compared to only a single Regent.

So, there are 85 Camarilla vampires who possess 2 or more votes, but only 52 Sabbat vampires that independantly control 2 or more votes.    There really is more opportunity to have Camarilla titles in play, even attached to a non-voting deck. 

Just as impactful as the gross count of titles vampires is that the difference between the sects are all Inner Circle members with 4 attached votes.  Wow.

The ways numbers of Princes scale in parallel, the Prisci don't scale and the ICs dramatically outnumber the Regents simply indicates that you're likely to see much more voting power present on the Camarilla side.

If you've heard of contrararian investing,  you'll see where I'm going now.  The idea is to do what other people aren't doing, creating value for yourself.   Buy when most people are divesting, sell when they are buying. 

In this case, the voters seem to sit in the Camarilla.  So we might want to play the contrarian here and vote from the Sabbat side with Private Audience.  If we exclude everyone else, we should be able to pass our referendum with less vote push, because there are fewer titles to fight against.

The result should be Sabbat voting powerhouses without requiring Presence.  Include the availability of Orlando Oriundus and Bruce de Guy and you have some interesting options.  All because of Private Audience. 

Go forth and build your decks.

Political Darwinism.

Let's start at the beginning with a statement that will already be inflamatory.

The game has changed. 

Passing a vote in today's environment can be both harder and easier than ever before. 

Huh?  Both?  Yeah.  It has to do with decentralization of voting power. Let's look at the table when you actually reach a referendum and being to pool. 

We're seeing an uptick in vampire capacity on tables because they really are innately more playable now than they were in the past. 

• Their discipline-point ratios are higher and their card-text specials are often quite powerful.  This makes them more attractive to a wider group players.
• Villein's "trifleness" removes the Master Phase Action (MPA) overhead associated with recurring pool from those large vampires.  So now we have greater return on investment in play AND easier refund of the investment
• Combining Villein with Giant's Blood and Lilith's Blessing, complete recursion of the pool cost associated with these large minions can be robust and reproducable. 
• There are some powerful sect-based mechanics that leverage newer titles (Revolutionary Council and No Secrets from the Magaji, in particular.)  This provides more incentive to design decks around minions with attached votes.
• With more available sect-based titles and a larger pool of vampires overall, contesting titles is generally less frequent than in the past, so the titles on the table remain accessible.

Those larger vampires tend to come with more titles than the smaller vampires they replaced did. 

And they are sitting in front of player who may not playing political decks.

If you're willing to accept this logic and agree that the number of votes on the average table has increased, we can discuss how that makes voting both harder and easier than in the past.

It used to be that when 2 title-heavy voting decks sat on the table, they would either cooperate to carve up the table or butt heads until one was completely dominant.  In-turn vote push might swing the pendulum for a few actions, but that seemed to be how things worked. 

Now, we see more dispersed, decentralized titles, the swing votes often come from vampires not attached to the heavy vote-powered decks.  It stands to reason that:

• It is now harder to consistently ram your votes through from the "dominant" position, because just in-play titles seldom create true vote lock.  This is especially true in the early and middle game, when 5 players are present.
• It becomines easier to pass votes from the lesser of the vote decks, as the 3rd-party votes might be accessible to the right terms.  This effect usually diminishes as the table shrinks and the unattached votes are ousted.
• If there are 2 heavily titled decks present, the lesser of the voters should be expected to go from a weak voter to establishing complete dominance if the current dominant voter is ousted. 

As a result, I believe there is now more art in setting terms of referenda.

Influencing the swing voters is important even from a typical dominant position.  

In a future blog, I will discuss a political deck which reached the finals of two different tournaments without having a single title attached to it's vampires.  It simply used people's innate greed to defeat its prey.

I would love to say that decentralized political power is good for the game as a whole, because it emphasizes the original intent of political game mechanic.  Unfortunately, the real result wides the efficiency gap between bleed-based decks and vote-based decks.

Political actions never had the same output as bleed actions, despite having a more torturous path to follow.  KRC's 3 damage per action is the benchmark impact vote.  Bleed decks typically generate twice that per action.  It is true that KRC damage can't be redirected.  It is therefore "sticker" and safer.  But is it much more difficult to make maken happen. 

Simply getting to a place where you can pass votes at all can be tremendously difficult, then you have to actually oust your prey with your votes.  You'll never see an ousting bleed voted down across the table by your "allies", but it happens all the time with votes.  The less dominant decks are correct in keeping extra votes on the table to help control the dominant political force, so voting down an oust is often the tactically correct play.  It just adds an additional level of overhead to a political deck....how do I get that last vote through?

As we discuss political decks in later blogs, it will always be with the following realization.

A political deck should be able to circumvent other players' reactions and voting abilities for brief windows.
 It should also include an alternate method to create pool loss. 
Otherwise, it is likely to fail to achieve it's primary objective: to oust its prey.

Sigh.....limited by design

I've been playing around with Blogspot's posting system and I'm finding it a bit limiting.  I might be able to work around the limitations, but I don't really want to deviate from the way Blogspot is intended to work.  So please be patient as I reinvent parts of the site.

2011 NAC blogs will still be posted as planned.  They will appear on the Home blog tab.  It's likely all the random thoughts and theories will also be appearing on that window, since that is the way the interface is designed.

The End of the Beginning

I think I'm finally ready to kick start this blog, just in time for the 2011 Week of Nightmares.  I'll be heading to Columbus on Saturday and will try to provide updates as the week unfolds.

Over the following weeks, I'll dump information in the "V:tES Theories" and "Decks & Testing" sections.  I've got several posts outlined already. 

When I get right down to it, that exercise is more for me than for anyone reading it. I find that the writing process helps focus my thinking in ways nothing else can.  So even if no one reads even a single word I've written, it's still really good for me. 

I know some of the concepts I post will fail.  Miserably fail.  Some won't but need to be tweaked.  A few will simply work.  Any way it happens, the process of thinking about things in new ways is what keeps me playing.  Even after 15 years with this amazing and frustrating game, I still find plenty of things to learn - often about myself more than V:tES. 

With that preamble out of the way, I guess I better start writing something useful instead of this pointless introduction.