So we have a core play group at the FLGS and we're lately not having
as much fun playing the game as we did. There's a few things going on.

We have players of wildly varying skill levels. We have some players
that are just awful. We have some that are excellent and routinely win
tables. And we have the ones like me that sort of muddle around in the
middle. The better players play decks that either repeatedly abuse
effective card combos and/or are playing at a much more advanced level
than the others. This leaves the other players frustrated because (a)
they're losing all the time, and to the same deck archetypes, and (b)
they face the same decks over and over again.

Compounding the problem is that most of the players are unwilling or
unable to create new decks. There's a few reasons for this, but it all
boils down to my observation that, for me, creating a VTES deck is
akin to giving birth. And I'm not very good at it. So like myself, the
other players spend hours putting a deck together, put aside two or
three more hours to play a few hands to test it... and get their asses
whooped. Result? They don't have fun.

I personally have resorted to emulating decks from the tournament
archives to save time. This has its own problems. First, a lot of the
decks don't have author comments explaining to the reader how the deck
*works.* (Props to Ben Peal; every deck I've seen him post always has
instructions.) Second, a lot of tournament decks are based around rare
cards (though nothing like a similar archive of M:TG would be) that
the players have trouble getting. Or the deck is so hideously
effective that I shelve the deck for fear of making the problem worse.

For example, this past weekend I recreated two tournament decks - a
Salubri Spirit Marionette/Heidelburg one, and a mass Nocturn one. The
first deck did absolutely nothing both games it played, while the
second captured (I think) 9 VP across three games, and only so few
because the third game people basically stopped what they were doing
to shut it down because they were afraid of it. Same thing happened
with a Lasombra deck a few weeks ago - it did great, but it was a
mindless S&B deck and I just hate playing them, and the table hate for
it was palpable.

So between the wild disparity between some of the players in my group
and the lack of new decks being produced, it's led to a stagnant play
environment where some players never win, some never lose, and all of
them are playing the same damn decks over and over again. It just
seems like we're not having much fun playing, and as the local Prince
I feel it's my job to make sure that they do. Some of the players
thought a card limit would help (this is the reason for my previous
thread), but... I dunno. (We tried a draft format once and it got a
decidedly cool reception, so no luck there.)

Feel like I'm rambling. I get depressed talking about it. I'll shut up
now. Thoughts appreciated.

Christian

On Nov 4, 1:24 pm, Christian wrote:

I would recommend trying some of the variants.
http://www.TheLasombra.com/variants.htm

Also consider the Storylines and sealed leagues.

The Texas playgroups (Austin, Dallas) have had success with each
player getting a new starter and then drafting a limited number of
cards and allowing trades between games.  Do this for one game each
session.  Restart after 6 months or so, or at every set that has new
starters.

Jay Kristoff of Columbus, Ohio had a similar league, documented here:
http://columbusvtes.tripod.com/variants.htm

I would be a fan of using the Sect War rules, to both encourage deck
building skill, and to limited the environment in a way that can be
creative, assuming you can assemble 8 players and half a box of two
different starter sets.
http://www.thelasombra.com/NAC2006/
and
http://www.thelasombra.com/NAC2009/
Extend that experience with a short league, then do it again.
Everyone gets a break from the current decks, get to figure out how to
build better decks, and the FLGS makes some cash.

The important part is enjoyment of the game, so explore the variants
that cater to the local groups interest.

Carpe noctem.

Lasombra

http://www.TheLasombra.com

You could run a couple games with random decks.
Each player brings a deck to the table and than they are distributed
randomly.
After the game have a deck workshop with any who are inclined to take
critics.

Matt

You know, now that you mention it, I do recall one of the local players
  organizing a "fun" tournament a while ago. There were different rules
  for each round... But the finals had the rule that after seating
  (which was random) every player has to hand their decks to their
  predator! :)

You had toolboxes and table control type decks, because everyone brought
  a deck that they thought was not obviously easy to play, but rather
  required practice and knowledge.

--
Regards,

Daneel

On Nov 4, 1:24 pm, Christian <chrisi...@aol.com> wrote:

I'm not sure that there's really a cure for this, aside from getting
new people into your group and thereby having enough people that not
everyone plays with everyone else in every game.

Are the not-as-good players actively trying to improve their game?

John Eno

On Nov 5, 8:07 am, Kushiel <invisibleking...@gmail.com> wrote:

Why should people make new decks....
#1 They have a "fun incentive"
#2 They have a "un-fun disincentive"

I'm considering starting some wacky concept events for our playgroup.
One is tentatively called Fight Club, where minion desctruction counts
towards winning a small pool of cards (everyone chips in a few bucks
which buys boosters and the top placed people get a cut of the
cards).  Or other such ideas...  It's Animalism Week. Or something.

The disincentive is simple: play counter-decks.  If your meta has vote
decks all over, play Ventrue Anti AntiVote (Quentin, Demonstration,
Loyalist, Delaying Tactics, Beureaucratic Overload, Poison Pill,
Irregular Protocol, etc).  If there are S&B Cheese Monsters, play a
reduce wall (Aus Intercept + Keep it Simple & Telepathic Counter/
Misdirection), etc, etc, etc.  This is the "make them play new decks
cause their old decks don't win anymore" kind of tactic.  It can be
hard to do right because people can get really offended.

On Nov 4, 1:28 pm, Juggernaut1981 <brasscompo...@gmail.com> wrote:

To piggy-back on these two posts, players should practice countering
the things they commonly see in their metagame. This involves (not
necessarily in this order)
1) Knowledge of what strategies there are and practice with them
2) Knowledge of how to counter the above strategies
3) The drive to play the game well

On the first subject, there are a variety of resources out there.
Start at http://www.thelasombra.com/strategy.htm   If you don't have
the cards needed to practice every deck type, borrow, buy, or proxy
them(for non-tournament play).

On the second subject, keep reading more strategy, talk to other
players, see what works for you.

Finally, you need to care. I've seen plenty of players, or would-be
players, without the desire to play the game, let alone play it well.
There may be hope for some of these people, I'd take it case-by-case.

My personal approaches to countering certain strategies(some are more
tested/effective than others):

Stealth Bleed- LOTS of bounce(followed by your own bleeds), heavy
intercept, archon investigation, not blocking anything they do(to
choke them on stealth), rush them and burn them.

Voting- Intercept the vote, Delaying Tactics, make their votes fail,
rush them.

If you and your friends have trouble making decks, net-decking is fine
for now. You can eventually change some of the net-decks to be more of
your style, if you want. Having at least a hand full of decks is good,
especially if people are tired of what they normally use.

Hope that helps,

Brandon

On Nov 4, 2:34 pm, wedge <matt...@gmail.com> wrote:

For pick up games for people I use 5 demo decks builds that I got from
the Lasombra deck list guide.  They are simple for each deck does 1
thing, sure they are 1-dimensional ,but it lets them try different
things and different strategies.

Some are easier to pick up then others , like stealth bleed is
simple ,but timing is what you have to learn. Voting is the hardest
for you have to be good in making deals with other people.

James D Burns
Prince of Scranton

On Nov 4, 6:26 pm, brandonsantacruz <brandonsantac...@yahoo.com>
wrote:

Yeah, see, I disagree with both of you. I think you have good
intentions, but maybe I might be more privy to the new shit than you
are. In the parlance of our times.

If the not-so-good players in Christian's playgroup are having a
difficult time with even the basic VTES essentials (which is what he
told me in a private email which I suspect he meant to post here),
changing decks probably isn't the way to go. Making new decks and
metagaming locally aren't going to help you if your fundamental skills
are so much in the basement that you don't really grok the basic
throughlines of how the game works in actual play.

Mind you, I don't have a solution that that particular problem,
either.

John Eno

What is FLGS?

We had issues with this sort of thing for a long time, no one ever had
time for new decks.  We did two things, that fixed it overnight.

1) We played each others decks, no instructions, just took it and
played, it was a lot of fun.

2) We got together and spent a night making decks, no playing, just as
a group making different decks, to get over the "giving birth" feeling
people have.  This activity also involved a lot of trading with people
who never trade, I mean never trade.

Good luck

On Nov 5, 10:13 am, Wilsoros <davewilso...@gmail.com> wrote:

Favorite/Friendly Local Gaming Store.

John Eno

On Nov 4, 10:21 pm, Kushiel <invisibleking...@gmail.com> wrote:

Playing a different deck(one built by another) will improve anyones
game~.
It shifts you into a problem solving (to figure out the deck) rather
than reacting to card play.
Exposure to different deck types (builds) can help to improve you own
deck building.

Toolbox decks are best for teaching new players the game.

Basic VTES essentials that I tell new players.

*know the phases
*know the cards types (which cards to focus on at a giving time)
  - all cards played are resolved immediatly baring interrupts (action
cards being the most common exception)
  -If they are having problems w/ the cards it is best to drill in the
groups.
  -reactions and OotM only playable on anothers turn
  -intercept only when  blocking
  -combat only in combat
  -actions state the action (I have seen people declare a bleed then
later say it was a govern bleed)
  -action mod only during an action
  -stealth only to surpass intercept
*you need pool to win
*you need minions to oust your prey

Matt

If I am missing something please let me know.

On Nov 5, 11:33 am, wedge <matt...@gmail.com> wrote:

How does that help someone play better if they can't grasp the basics
of the game? How is borrowing someone else's deck going to help teach
a player who insists on continuing to spend pool on minions in spite
of not being able to defend themselves against their predator, for
instance?

This I totally agree with.

John Eno

On Nov 5, 10:46 am, Kushiel <invisibleking...@gmail.com> wrote:

I assume that the borrowed decks will have better D#, bloat or
control, allowing players to see other options.
Hopefully giving them an idea of D# required to justify pool
expenditures. The deck of a player that does not understand the basics
will not be as good as one who does. By allowing them to play a
different deck they may grasp the differences.

Matt

Thanks for the feedback guys...

Christian

John,
it helps immensely, because often you play a deck that does more with
less, and you learn that using 6 minions to do a task they suck at
isn't a good idea, it teaches by example.

May I propose something completely different?

I have been playing VTES as follows:
- Put a lot of cards together and divide them into categories (action,
action modifier, combat, equipment, vampires, etc)
- Let everyone start at random with approximately 120 to 180 cards,
while everybody gets the same amounts out of every category
- Everybody plays with a minimum of 62 cards in his library
- When starting, draw a card from your prey's library for ante and one
to put back into the stacks
- When you oust your prey, you will receive his ante and put it at the
bottom of your current library
- After each game 1 vampire form your crypt and 1 vampire from your
side-crypt will be put back into the stacks
- After each game you will receive 3 games from the stacks at random
and 3 new vampires
- At the end of each gaming session, the one with the most victory
points may return one of his "bad" cards to the stacks and draws a new
one from the same category.

This system has made a lot of people happy, since there is a
continuous balance of loosing and gaining both bad and good cards.
You will always have to tweak your deck and once in a while you are
forced to change the core of your theme.

Been playing this for years for MTG and is equally fun for VTES!
Try it some time.

Oiendor

On Nov 5, 2:16 pm, wedge <matt...@gmail.com> wrote:

That's still a question of deckbuilding skill, not playing skill.

Okay, that makes sense.

John Eno

On Nov 4, 10:24 am, Christian <chrisi...@aol.com> wrote:

[snip snip]

i usually find that certain players are more competitive or munchkin
and others are more experimental or character actors. they don't
always blend well. another issue is that good players can often take
pretty much anything and play it well, and other less good players
often lose from accumulated mistakes. unlike MtG or L5R, VTES is
nowhere near as tight when it comes to tight deck construction
affecting success. player skill in VTES has a remarkable swing factor
that often compensates for construction.

soo, enough theoretical babble, i suggest everyone bringing decks and,
once seated, passing their decks to the left. that way better players
will probably show what another not-as-competitive player's deck can
do, or where it can be improved defensively against their own better
deck (who should now be in the hands of another). this should build
more dialogue about what the creative or role-playing players want to
do, but how to make it competitive enough to realize their new
creation.

ideally that sharing of efforts should bring a better sense of
community through communication and shared struggle. it should help
undo some of this "Us vs. Them" attitude creeping in.

besides, this does more than help the less-competitive or munchkin
players. competitive players routinely whipping ass with a familiar
tier 1 deck are also likely becoming bored. and more importantly,
competitive players routinely taking easy victories makes for low
experience gain, which should likely result in rusty skills that could
affect them if they ever enter a larger tournament pool.

On Nov 4, 10:24 am, Christian <chrisi...@aol.com> wrote:

Let's say that instead of a CCG, you all were playing poker.  Would
the problem be the same?  Playing Puerto Rico?

People who play CCGs have very different motivations.  Some like to
compete ... since CCGs are competitive games, this is reasonable ...
and some like to do other things.  I've found with two-player CCGs (or
other competitive games) that it isn't a particularly big deal, you
end up finding your level of play or quitting.  With multiplayer CCGs,
it's easier to hide in a game.  And, with politics, lesser players can
win often enough to disguise vast differences in play ability.

Anyway, at least some of the motivation when playing a competitive
game should be to be competitive.  If that's not a motivation, then I
don't know what you do.  It has been a consistent problem with niche
CCGs in my playing experience that people have different ideas of fun
and that the playerbases are so small that you try hard to get
everyone to play together even though the differences in desires leads
to frustration.

I have empathy for how busy people are.  I don't have empathy for the
idea that someone playing a CCG doesn't have time to build decks.  The
point of CCGs is deckbuilding, otherwise you are essentially playing a
boardgame.  If you can't be bothered to build decks, stop playing
CCGs.

Sure, building V:TES decks is (at least conceptually) more difficult
than building decks for many other CCGs.  When I built Wheel of Time
decks, I only had to think about 10% of my deck and what my opening
hand should be.  But, that's why you go to the effort of learning how
to build them faster.

I've repeatedly suggested to people who don't use a deckbuilder to use
a deckbuilder to build decks.  I would approximate the number of
people who followed that advice as zero.  I've repeatedly suggested to
people who build one deck at a time to build multiple decks in one
sitting as I've found that I have fixed time costs to deckbuilding.
Furthermore, my ideas for decks don't come one at a time - actually, I
get tons of ideas when playing that I stupidly don't write down and
end up forgetting.  I would approximate the number of people who
followed my advice to build multiple decks in one sitting rather than
one deck (or tune one or more decks) as zero.

Seems to me that V:TES deckbuilding is perceived as harder than it
is.  Frequently takes me 15 minutes to write out a new deck in FELDB;
the physical card pull is much longer as I have to go through my
collection, make sure the sleeves are all the same sort, and whatnot.
There's tremendous redundancy of effects in the game - this is a
stealth card, this is an intercept card, etc.  I've frequently relied
on a cookiecutter methodology to deckbuilding where it's just a matter
of slotting cards in and out for various roles.  Probably better than
"cookiecutter" would be "template" - you build an intercept combat
deck you like, in the future you have an outline of how that sort of
deck is built and just change disciplines or clans or whatever.  When
you play the new deck, you may find it to be flawed, but hey, you have
a new deck.  Sure, it helps to have experience to know what works and
what doesn't, but um, that's sort of true of everything.  Build more
decks and deckbuilding becomes easier.

This is a separate issue.  Whether you know how a deck works or not,
at least you have a new deck.  Whether you figure out how it works or
not from playing it, you should form opinions on how you would build a
similar deck or different decks.

I know it can be unrealistic to suggest playing more, but I see it
being a loop.  People who play infrequently aren't motivated to build
new decks frequently which causes them to not be that interested since
deckbuilding is fundamental to playing CCGs which causes them to play
less frequently.  You can also go the other way - the more you build,
the more you want to play, or the more you play, the more you want to
build.

As for not having the cards to build other people's decks, I'm not
sure what the concern is.  There's an essentially an infinite number
of possible decks, build something and change it later if you don't
like how it plays.

I've never been able to accomplish this as people for some reason
aren't open about it, but I think groups would have a lot more fun
when there's an effort made to find out from everybody what it is they
enjoy about a game.

Some groups have used a system where one game is tournament decks and
one game isn't or whatever to satisfy different interests, I've never
seen that work, but maybe it can.

Note that someone's views may change over time as the person comes to
experience more things.

BTW, were these in actual tournaments?  If not, I'd get irritated,
too.  I have no problem with people playing the best decks they have.
I get tired of seeing the same deck played frequently.  But, maybe
that's just me, I'm all about not being bored and predictability bores
the hell out of me.

Groups that aren't building new decks should face the realization that
maybe they should be doing something else.  I had a weekly game that
went on for more than 5 years that converted to boardgaming.  Was I
happy about it?  Not particularly - I consider CCGs vastly superior to
boardgames due to the variety and ability to bring your interests into
the game.  But, I encouraged not trying to occasionally play V:TES
with that group after the conversion because there was so little
deckbuilding going on and the game had ceased playing like a CCG.  I
could build three new decks for a session and then play against the
same decks I've played against for the last three months - that's not
playing a CCG.

Some people decide to pick up a CCG who really shouldn't.  Most folks
playing CCGs, though, like something about the CCG that you couldn't
get from a boardgame with the same theme.  I only wish, frequently, I
could figure out what those things are from players so that gaming was
more fun.  Instead, I find players lose interest without ever
expressing what it is they didn't like about how the group played.

I see your problems being common.  For niche CCGs, it's incredibly
painful as you need critical mass to keep playing something that you
invested in.  Speaking of which, I don't think enough people realize
how much of an investment of time and thought CCGs are.  For
multiplayer CCGs, it's even harder.  We got by with essentially three
WoT players and just rotated in for games; when we lost our fourth B5
player, our B5 group was done.

The importance of new blood cannot be overstated as you will find
players who eventually realize that it isn't their thing.  In one of
his articles, Magic's lead designer answers the question of what he
thinks will kill Magic, his answer being the lack of influx of new
players.

This is my experience also.  Deckbuilders are critical to me.

best -

chris

If deck building is hard for you, or you want some advice, head to
www.vtes.org post some decks, we'll give you feedback, or post a few
cards you like and we'll help you build a deck based on them.