Several of us at the FLGS are discussing a four-card format as we're
finding the decks use the same narrow range of monotonous combos over
and over again. (I'm not making a judgment - I play it and enjoy it
regardless.)

I'm just curious if anyone has tried this format and how it works for
them? Problems? Complications?

Thanks,

Christian

There have been so many discussions about this in the far flung past,
that I can't even begin to bring myself to look them up for you.

Search google groups for Four card Limit, 4CL, etc etc.

It won't make your games better.  It won't make your decks different.
Only *you* the players can make your decks different.  And you can only
do that with no limits.

That said, any VTES is better than no VTES.

best -

chris

On Nov 3, 11:30 pm, librarian <aucti...@superfuncards.com> wrote:

Personally I feel the game should do away with rarities. There is no
cash incentive or high rewards in tournaments anyway (like magic) and
if the focus is the game and the players then I think having the
ability to get the cards you need without spending a ton on the
secondary market would be awesome (of course there still may be more
expensive cards, but not like we see them now). And if someone were to
complain that more people were to have access to cards like Enkil Cog,
etc. then there is a problem with the game. Chase cards destroyed
other games entirely. And the only reason Magic hasn't gotten away
with it is the four card limit and it's long standing and large player
base. However, I guess that is what makes VTES "collectible."

On Nov 3, 11:30 pm, librarian <aucti...@superfuncards.com> wrote:

My apologies. I wasn't aware that this subject had been discussed
before. Didn't mean to take up group bandwidth with it.

On 4 Nov, 08:41, Christian <chrisi...@aol.com> wrote:

My experience is that it "blands" decks out. You get very restricted
when building nifty combo decks and combat decks suffer immensly. You
get only 4 immortal grapple in a potence deck, you get only 4 carrion
crows in an animalism weenie deck, but you have a number of different
viable S:CE cards for non combat decks, but even they get more bland.
So less diversity between decks which imo goes completely against what
I want to see when I play.

Try to play a couple of Highlander games (only 1 copy per card per
deck) and you get the impact it gets on the game while trying to build
a deck.

On Nov 4, 10:35 am, Abdul alHazred <hallonkul...@yahoo.se> wrote:

Yeah. That pretty much grabs it. There is absolutely 0 chances for an
Animalism/Celerity/Potence typed combat deck to be viable in a 4CL
environment. There is only one Carrion Crows and nothing that
duplicates it. There is only one Psyche! and nothing that duplicates
it. There is only one Immortal Grapple and nothing that duplicates it.
It would also kill all the dementation, sanguinus, and other bleed
decks that have only limited amount of options. On the other hand
there are 8 obfuscate stealth cards that you can use for practically
the same effect. For Dominate there are 3 action cards and 5 modifiers
that add to bleed unconditionally with a cost of 1 or 0. For Presence
the same numbers are 7 actions and 1 modifier. In Presence there are
also 4 combat end cards available. Thus the effect a 4CL would have on
already strong dominate and presence based bleed decks would be close
to 0, while it would ruin some of the already struggling deck types
like Celerity or Potence combat. There are several examples of whole
deck types that would be ruined by the 4CL, and most of them are
already struggling to be successful on a larger scale.

[NOTE: This has been discussed at-length before but not recently, so
I'm going to repost some information along with some examples. --KJM]

Why 4CL?  Why not 3? or 5? or 2? or 6?

Why is the game structure being blamed for your player's inability
or unwillingness to stop playing the same decks over and over again?

Do you all have a bleed deck?
Do you all have a combat deck?
Do you all have a vote deck?
Do you all have a bruise/bleed deck?
Do you all have an intercept-wall deck?
Do you all have an intercept/bleed deck?
Do you all have an ally (or Imbued) deck?
Do you all have a Camarilla deck?
Do you all have a Sabbat deck?
Do you all have a Independent deck?
Do you all have a Laibon deck?
Do you all have a <CLAN> deck?

Also, what makes your group believe that a 4CL will stimulate any
creativity or a 'wider range of combos'?

Consider:
   16 Bum's Rush   vs   16 KRC
or:
    4 Bum's Rush   vs    4 KRC
    4 Ambush             4 ConAg
    4 Harass             4 Neonate Breach
    4 Big Game           4 Finding the Path

How about this:
   20 Enchant Kindred   vs   20 Govern the Unaligned
or:
    4 Enchant Kindred   vs    4 Govern The Unaligned
    4 Social Charm            4 Scouting Mission
    4 Legal Maniplations      4 Mind Rape
    4 Public Trust            4 Slaughtering the Herd
    4 Propaganda              4 Spirit Marionette

How about this:
   24 Enhanced Senses   vs   24 Lost in Crowds
or:
    4 Enhanced Senses   vs    4 Lost in Crowds
    4 Eagle Sight             4 Cloak the Gathering
    4 Melange                 4 Faceless Night
    4 My Enemy's Enemy        4 Domain of Evernight
    4 Precognition            4 Spying Mission
    4 Spirit's Touch          4 Swallowed by the Night

How about this:
   20 Bleed actions   vs  10 Wake with Evening's Freshness
                          10 'Bounce' cards (either DOM or AUS)

    4 Bleed Action A  vs   4 Wake with Evening's Freshness
    4 Bleed Action B       4 On the Qui Vive
    4 Bleed Action C       2 Forced Awakening
    4 Bleed Action D       4 Deflection and 4 Redirection (DOM)
    4 Bleed Action E       4 'Bounce' cards and 4 'Reduce' Cards (AUS)

How about this:
   24 Rolling With the Punches  vs  24 Majesty
or:
    4 Rolling With the Punches  vs   4 Majesty
    4 Skin of Steel                  4 Staredown
    4 King of the Mountain           4 Catatonic Fear
    4 Superior Mettle                4 Putrefaction
    4 Infection                      4 Unholy Penance
    4 Armor of Vitality              4 Force of Personality

Do you really see this as the 'wider range of combos' that you and
your playgroup are looking for?  As a famous player once said:

"The main skill and challenge in building 4CL decks is figuring out
 how to get around the card limit. Once you have exausted 4 of every
 useful card you need, you spend the rest of the time trying to figure
 out how to make other cards do what you want circumvent the limit."

And why restrict DEFENSE so much?  You like quick, fast, death games?

Consider:
   16 Bum's Rush   vs   16 Obedience
or:
    4 Bum's Rush   vs    4 Obedience
    4 Ambush               [...]
    4 Harass
    4 Big Game

How about this:
   20 Enchant Kindred   vs   20 Deflection
or:
    4 Enchant Kindred   vs    4 Deflection
    4 Social Charm            4 Redirection
    4 Legal Maniplations        [...]
    4 Public Trust
    4 Propaganda

How about this:
   20 Enchant Kindred   vs   10 Telepathic Counter
                             10 Telepathic Misdirection
or:
    4 Enchant Kindred   vs    4 Telepathic Counter
    4 Social Charm            4 Telepathic Misdirection
    4 Legal Maniplations        [...]
    4 Public Trust
    4 Propaganda

The only real problem with an 'xCL' in VTES is that VTES is produced
specifically to be a game without card limits.  By artificially using
an 'xCL' you make the common cards, which are specifically created to
be plentiful in decks, less-good, and the rares, which are created to
be scarce in decks, are unaffected one way or the other.  The cards
are playtested within a NCL framework and they are powered as such.
Why do you believe that altering that power level will enhance your
group's creativity or a 'wider range of combos'?

And why introduce such randomness (4 in 90 instead of, say, 12 in 90)
into the game?  Is that something desirable to your group?

Or, do you have some fear within your playgroup that someone who
spends more on the game will have some kind of advantage over the
other players?  Are you trying to level the playing field in your
group by artificially restricting the number of cards a person can
play with in order to make everyone feel better, even though there is
zero evidence that more cards equals more wins?

Also, the VTES designer(s) and community dislike Banned/Restricted
lists and want everyone to be able to play with all their cards (since
VTES has no 'block' format) so an 'xCL' is undesirable.

Lastly, there are certain deck types which are DESTROYED by 'xCL'.
Just off the top of my head:
- Third Tradition/Embrace/Creation Rites/other 'embrace' decks
- War Ghoul/Shambling Hordes/Reanimated Corpse decks
- Cryptic Mission decks
- Theft of Vitae decks
- Shadow Twin decks
- Immortal Grapple decks
- Corruption decks
- Deep Song decks
- Horrid Form decks
- 419 Operation decks
- crazy Anarch decks, e.g. 30x Undue Influence
- crazy Trophy decks, e.g. 29x Trophy:Progeny
- crazy decks with lots of one card, e.g. Una, Turbo Baron, Khazar's

Kevin M., Prince of Las Vegas
"Know your enemy and know yourself; in one-thousand battles
 you shall never be in peril." -- Sun Tzu, *The Art of War*
"Contentment...Complacency...Catastrophe!" -- Joseph Chevalier
Please visit VTESville daily! http://vtesville.myminicity.com/
Please buy my cards! http://shop.ebay.com/kjmergen/m.html

Well your deck shouldnt reallly be 90 in the first place...
:P

That's debatable.  You should try playing a rush combat deck.
In any case, a 12 in 70 to 4 in 70 comparison still proves my point.

Is that all you got out of that post?  :P

Kevin M., Prince of Las Vegas
"Know your enemy and know yourself; in one-thousand battles
 you shall never be in peril." -- Sun Tzu, *The Art of War*
"Contentment...Complacency...Catastrophe!" -- Joseph Chevalier
Please visit VTESville daily! http://vtesville.myminicity.com/
Please buy my cards! http://shop.ebay.com/kjmergen/m.html

On Nov 3, 10:22 pm, Christian <chrisi...@aol.com> wrote:

The short version: Yes. People have tried this format (it was, for a
very short window of time, the official tournament rule. In, like,
1995 or something...) and the end result is that it breaks the game in
a bad way. The game was specifically designed to not use a per card
card limt. And the result of forcing a per card card limit into the
game is that certain deck strategies (i.e. the ones that use cards
that have a lot of similar cards that provide redundancy, like
Obfuscate and Dominate) don't suffer at all while others (i.e. the
ones that revolve around a specific card with no similarly redundant
card, like Immortal Grapple, Shambling Horde, or Cryptic Mission) are
completely demolished.

The long version: Kevin posted a very long description of what using a
card limit does. Which is dead on. To shorten the long version--if you
want to stealth and bleed someone with Obfuscate and Dominate, you can
use 20x Lost in Crowds and 20x Govern the Unaligned. Or, you can use
4x each of Lost in Crowds, Cloak the Gathering, Swallowed by the
Night, Faceless Night, and Spying Mission, and then 4x each of
whatever + bleed cards you have handfulls of. And in reality, the deck
using 4x of each of 5 different cards will be *better* than the deck
that uses 20x each of 1 card ('cause of the way the rules interact
with stacking cards--you can only play a single Lost in Crowds on a
given action, but can stack 5 different ones if you need to). Also, a
per card limit makes it much harder to play the game without spending
a ton of money--card limits often increase the necessity and power of
hard to get rare cards, and consequently, give players with more money
an advantage. For example, if you are making a Presence based vote
deck, with no card limit, you can use 10 common Bewitching Orations to
pass your votes as needed. With a limit of 4x Bewitching Orations, you
need to get ahold of 4x rare and expensive Awe and/or difficult to get
a hold of Perfect Paragon.

-Peter

Well, don't worry about that.  If you're receptive to the reasons why 4CL
is a bad idea (see KevinM's post), then we've done good work here.  It's a
much better use of our time than telling Peter he's a big dummy for
playing a four-player final in an unsanctioned, unrated event.

The funny thing is I saw this post and figured "Four-Card Format" meant
you were playing vtes with a deck that only had four cards in it, like a
variant of Duffin Draft.  I'm intrigued!

Taken from Lasombra.com

We should play with Card Limits (ie a 4 card limit).

    Suggestion:
    Playing with a card limit provides the following benefits:
    a) Increased Creativity
    b) Helps players with fewer cards (ie those who have spent less)
    c) Decreases the possibility of Boring Decks (ie cheese decks /
degenerate decks)
    d) Cards that are "Broken", aren't "Broken" if you only see 4 per
game

    Response:
    a) Reducing the number of copies of a particular card you can play
in a deck
    has nothing to do with increasing creativity. Some very creative
decks can
    only be made effectively with large quantities of specific cards,
ie Cryptic Mission,
    Corruption, Shadow Twin, Enticement. If a card or strategy exists,
you can
    make creative use of it using any number of copies, the only
question is how many
    copies does it take for that strategy to be effective, and
artificially limiting
    or prohibiting those decks takes away from the creativity of the
game.

    b) "If you limit the number of commons that someone can play, you
eliminate the
    effectiveness of someone who favors paying rent over buying lots
of cards."
    - jonathan bradford bailey 8/18/1995
    If you are playing a vote deck that would like to increase its
votes with action
    modifiers, the new player with Eight Bewitching Oration cards and
Zero Awe cards is
    hampered completely by a card limit while the person with a little
more money spent
    and 4 Awe and 20 Bewitching Oration isn't hurt by a 4 card limit
at all. The one
    who spent more money can put in 8 vote modifiers while the new
player can only put
    in 4. Clearly, a card limit does not help those players who have
spent less money.

    c) A card limit does not prohibit a deck from being boring. If
every action of
    every vampire is the same (ie, bleed with an action card) it is no
more boring
    if the action card is the same card every time (32 Computer
Hacking) or if it is
    a different card every time (4 Media Influence, 4 Social Charm, 4
Legal Manipulations,
    4 Intimidation, 4 Enchant Kindred, 4 Entrancement, 4 Propaganda, 4
Computer Hacking).
    The only part that may be boring is that your deck may not be
prepared for 32 +bleed
    actions so you will be sitting out the rest of the game waiting
for the game to finish.

    d) Whether or not a particular card is balanced is not in any way
affected by
    the number of times per game you see it played. As an example, it
is only
    necessary for a Return to Innocence to played one time for a 11-17
pool swing
    to take place. This swing is too much for one card, regardless of
the number
    of times it happens in a game. As such, card limits will not fix
the card, nor
    will card limits prevent this card from being "broken". As such,
the card is banned
    and the rest of the set is not affected.

For more views on card limits, read Mark Langdorf's archive of
articles on the subject.
You can find that archive here: http://www.io.com/~mlangsdo/RPGs/Jyhad/.

James Coupe also wrote a compelling recap of the arguments against
card limits here: http://www.TheLasombra.com/card-limits-coupe.txt.

Or a four-card limit (you can only have four distinct cards, but as many copies
of those four cards as you like), which is what I thought when I saw the subject.

On 4 marras, 11:36, "Kevin M." <youw...@imaspammer.org> wrote:

Don't be obnoxious. The man sincerely asked opinions on a 4CL. Why are
you being so aggressive about attacking the format when he isn't even
defending it? Do you just take every question as an argument? Or do
you just hate it when people question the status quo? We should all
just shut up and put up, is that what you want? Why do you hate
freedom, Kevin?

I'm not sure what this has to do with a 4CL, but just because you want
more Enkil Cogs and I want more Villeins doesn't mean that all cards
should have the same rarity.  KoT is a huge set, so yeah the rares are
kind of tough to get.  It can be tough to get enough of a common card you
want even.  The guiding philosophy for rarity in vtes these days (this
hasn't always been true) is that cards you want more of will be more
common.  Of course this isn't implemented perfectly and the design team
can't know what decks you want to build.  They do know that you might have
a few different decks with 8x Cloak the Gathering or 12x Torn Signpost
(see how this keeps showing up in multiples in starter decks?), but
probably won't have any decks that want to have 8x Enkil Cog.

I think a good example of a card that should've been rare but wasn't is
Houngan from Legacies of Blood.  I probably have like 15 of these and have
never had use for more than two of them at a time.  It's unique and only
goes in Samedi decks.  I'll bet 99% of the Houngans in print have never
been played.  Do away with rarity and you'll have as many Arcane
Appraisers as you will Deep Songs.  Does that make sense?  I have a deck
with 9x Deep Song.  Will you make a deck with 9x Arcane Appraiser?

Matt Morgan

Whoa, new format!  :)

Kevin M., Prince of Las Vegas
"Know your enemy and know yourself; in one-thousand battles
 you shall never be in peril." -- Sun Tzu, *The Art of War*
"Contentment...Complacency...Catastrophe!" -- Joseph Chevalier
Please visit VTESville daily! http://vtesville.myminicity.com/
Please buy my cards! http://shop.ebay.com/kjmergen/m.html

Is this a joke post?  Where's the emoticon?  PETER HELP!!!

Kevin M., Prince of Las Vegas
"Know your enemy and know yourself; in one-thousand battles
 you shall never be in peril." -- Sun Tzu, *The Art of War*
"Contentment...Complacency...Catastrophe!" -- Joseph Chevalier
Please visit VTESville daily! http://vtesville.myminicity.com/
Please buy my cards! http://shop.ebay.com/kjmergen/m.html

A plea to be nice, especially to new faces, should be no joke.

A plea to constructive discourse when it comes to topics appropriate to this
group should be no joke.

I smell a TWDA challenge!  Who can get the deck with the fewest distinct
cards in the archive?

So you believe that I wasn't nice and/or my post wasn't constructive?

As with suoli, I can't tell what you're saying.  Perhaps you could be
more direct so that I can understand you?

Kevin M., Prince of Las Vegas
"Know your enemy and know yourself; in one-thousand battles
 you shall never be in peril." -- Sun Tzu, *The Art of War*
"Contentment...Complacency...Catastrophe!" -- Joseph Chevalier
Please visit VTESville daily! http://vtesville.myminicity.com/
Please buy my cards! http://shop.ebay.com/kjmergen/m.html

So you believe the bit quoted above was constructive?

You don't believe it was overly aggressive in the context in which the OP asked
his question?

The direct statement: Posters should post with civility, and optimally out of an
earnest desire to find common ground.

If that's still too circumshrubbish:

Be nice.

Need to firm up those parameters, to avoid confusion:

"...including crypt cards".

On 4 marras, 17:37, "Kevin M." <youw...@imaspammer.org> wrote:

Probably not.

Damn, there goes my claim for fame.

I won the Ropecon 1999 tournament with a deck with five different library
cards: Info Highway, Misdirection (old and broken version), Computer Hacking,
Dodge and Fake Out.

Crypt was all the 1-caps in existence then, minus Uriah Winter and Julius
twice.

                HG

I can see where a certain type of person might find it a challenging
and/or direct question, but to be so touchy-feeley about challenging
one's beliefs?  Really?

Being direct and challenging one's beliefs isn't civil, now?

So it isn't truth or 'the best' that you're after, it's compromise?

I rewrote the post several times to 'nicen it up', and I believe that,
while challenging and direct, it falls under the definition of 'nice'.

Kevin M., Prince of Las Vegas
"Know your enemy and know yourself; in one-thousand battles
 you shall never be in peril." -- Sun Tzu, *The Art of War*
"Contentment...Complacency...Catastrophe!" -- Joseph Chevalier
Please visit VTESville daily! http://vtesville.myminicity.com/
Please buy my cards! http://shop.ebay.com/kjmergen/m.html