New VTES tournament rules
Ok, the 2008 tournament rules for VTES just came out, and contained some (welcome) surprises. The changes contained two significant items:
The cards Edge Explosion, Memories of Mortality and Protect Thine Own are now banned in tournament play.
The way finals results are tallied has changed, now the top scorer of the final round (only) is the winner, all other finalists share second place. In addition, prize splitting is forbidden.
Now, this has already spawned a lot of talk both on the newsgroup and on a local mailing list. The overall reception has been very positive, with of course some dissent here and there.
So, what does this mean, and why was this done? Here are my views, in a nutshell.
First off, the banned cards.
Edge Explosion - I think the rules team correctly identified this as the problem card, causing the problems with overpowered Imbued decks. It let them largely ignore Conviction costs, and also let you largely ignore Virtues, letting you build optimal cryps mostly based on special abilities. Without this, Imbued decks will actually have to pay attention to Conviction as a resource, and also make a lot more (hard) choices in crypt construction. This is good. This would have been a hard card to errata without rewriting it completely, so I think a ban is justified.
Memories of Mortality - this has always been a stupidly powerful card, but with the Imbued it became a problem card. Total shutdown for combat decks, and near-impossible to get rid of (especially since most Imbued decks used Anthelios to cycle it back). I would have personally preferred an errata to this card, making it a lot less powerful, since this ban also hit some otherwise ok ally decks hard… but I’m ok with a ban, too. This card is too strong, whichever way you look at it.
Protect Thine Own - well, what can I say, except “goddamit, finally!”. This card has been a problem since forever, the effect is simply too strong, no easy way to rewrite it to reasonable levels without totally changing it. Ban is fine.
So, in effect: the Imbued get a (deserved) nerf, while still being totally playable and competitive. IMHO, of course, some people disagree on this. Also, an old problem card has finally been buried for good.
Then, for the tournament finals rules: the reason here is that lately, tournament finals have tended to be… well, not that fun. Too much careful table talk and wrangling, and weird deals made just so someone could become 3rd instead of 2nd. This change will hopefully force people to play to win in the finals, disregarding everything else. What will probably happen is lots of careful table talk and wrangling, but the moment anyone gets a VP everyone else goes all-out. We’ll see.
All in all, I’m very happy, these changes should result in better games all around. An overpowered deck type has been toned down a bit, and players in finals have been given new priorities.
My “hate list” is growing short, here, it now only contains Anthelios and Direct Intervention.
On a VTES-related note, Monger is still down, but Jussi Hattara’s excellent Secret Library provides a good replacement. I haven’t played around much with it yet, but what I’ve seen looks very cool and well-designed.
Tue, 04 Dec 2007 13:44 Posted in Games
Tags imdued, monger, secret library, tournament rules, vekn, vtes
