The Death of Disciplines

[Bluedevil]

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Has anyone else noticed the number of tournament winning decks posted
lately that are disciplineless, or virtually so? It looks like the
"hypercompetitive" crowd is leaning towards a deck with (what I would
have thought, anyway) are way, way too many masters, and mostly
disciplineless actions.

This isn't an attempt to say the sky is falling or anything like that,
but it does look like a disturbing trend. Any thoughts?

 

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David Cherryholmes wrote:
> Has anyone else noticed the number of tournament winning decks posted
> lately that are disciplineless, or virtually so?

I take it that you mean the winning decks by Francois Morand (2
decks)
and Andreas Nusser, and not the winning decks by Errikos Oenguen,
Robyn
Tatu, Peter Charnley, Stefan Ferenci, Ben Swainbank, Ramon Moure,
Phil
Thompson, and Andrew Sackett (going back to the end of July).

> It looks like the "hypercompetitive" crowd is leaning towards a deck
> with (what I would have thought, anyway) are way, way too many masters,
> and mostly disciplineless actions.

I wouldn't say that a guy from Germany and a guy from France are
representative of a "hypercompetitive crowd".

> This isn't an attempt to say the sky is falling or anything like that,
> but it does look like a disturbing trend. Any thoughts?

I'd say that Andreas and Francois underscored that Ravnos and
!Toreador
breeder decks are strong archetypes, and that's about it.


- Ben Peal

 

[Bluedevil]

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fudjo wrote:

> I wouldn't say that a guy from Germany and a guy from France are
> representative of a "hypercompetitive crowd".

Hypercompetitive == played in large events. It's not a person, or
personality type, just a fact of the environment. People that expect
to need 2 VPs play different decks from those who can make the final
reliably with 1 and some change. Of course that's a generalization,
but it's what I meant by the word.

And I said "the number of", which you'd have to squint hard at to
mistake for "all". I don't know what else you meant by the list of
other players you rattled off.

> I'd say that Andreas and Francois underscored that Ravnos and
> !Toreador
> breeder decks are strong archetypes, and that's about it.

And the deck from Carcassone. It had a total of 18 cards in the deck
that required disciplines.

 

[Bluedevil]

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David Zopf wrote:

> If your conclusion is drawn from only looking at the actions, I'd say yes.

It isn't. When I said actions I meant "minion cards".

 

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bluedevil wrote:
> fudjo wrote:
> > I wouldn't say that a guy from Germany and a guy from France are
> > representative of a "hypercompetitive crowd".
>
> Hypercompetitive == played in large events. It's not a person, or
> personality type, just a fact of the environment. People that expect
> to need 2 VPs play different decks from those who can make the final
> reliably with 1 and some change. Of course that's a generalization,
> but it's what I meant by the word.

(I assume you mean GW here, not VP)

> And I said "the number of", which you'd have to squint hard at to
> mistake for "all". I don't know what else you meant by the list of
> other players you rattled off.

Ok, so by "the number of", you mean four (2 of which by the same
guy). Factoring in the other Carcassone decks that were listed,
as well as the decks of the finals of Day 1 and Day 2 of the NAC,
and the decks of the finals of the last chance qualifier at GenCon,
and Jarkko Suvela's deck at RopeCon (Finland), I think it's pretty
safe to say that the sky isn't falling, and the death of disciplines
has been greatly exaggerated.


- Ben Peal

 

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On 13 Sep 2005 09:59:30 -0700, bluedevil <david.cherryholmes@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Has anyone else noticed the number of tournament winning decks posted
> lately that are disciplineless, or virtually so? It looks like the
> "hypercompetitive" crowd is leaning towards a deck with (what I would
> have thought, anyway) are way, way too many masters, and mostly
> disciplineless actions.
>
> This isn't an attempt to say the sky is falling or anything like that,
> but it does look like a disturbing trend. Any thoughts?

Some.

- It could be indicative of the potentially game-bending effect some of
the Gehenna cards can have on your game.

- It could be thanks to the increased number of available non-discipline
cards that provide more and more options.

- It could be just a coincidence that such decks won a couple of
tournaments right now, appearing to herald a non-existent trend.

--
Bye,

Daneel

 

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"bluedevil" <david.cherryholmes@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1126630770.753954.291760@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...
> Has anyone else noticed the number of tournament winning decks posted
> lately that are disciplineless, or virtually so? It looks like the
> "hypercompetitive" crowd is leaning towards a deck with (what I would
> have thought, anyway) are way, way too many masters, and mostly
> disciplineless actions.
>
If your conclusion is drawn from only looking at the actions, I'd say yes.
But I think that is because there aren't that many valuable actions which
are discipline-based, outside of the bleed actions of presence and dominate.
Discipline based actions aren't as commonly focused on the goal of ousting
one's prey, or specifically defending one's self. Many of the good actions
are also clan-based (Art Scam, etc)

If you look at total disciplined card count (not just actions), as Ben
implied, then I think all is still well with disciplines, in general.
Although it also means that there may be a lack of discipline-based actions
which are held in high regard...

I think the 'too many masters Thing' might be a consequence of a current
popularity of Anthelios. It makes people more willing to include extra
masters for the express purpose of ditching them, only to retrieve them
later. We've been doing this for years with Fragment and Barrens, but with
only the goal of optimizing the current hand. Having them be retrieveable
brings that aspect of deckbuilding to a whole different level, which I think
is being explored more thoroughly than it has been in the past.

DaveZ
Atom Weaver

 

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David Zopf wrote:

> But I think that is because there aren't that many valuable actions which
> are discipline-based, outside of the bleed actions of presence and dominate.
> Discipline based actions aren't as commonly focused on the goal of ousting
> one's prey, or specifically defending one's self. Many of the good actions
> are also clan-based (Art Scam, etc)

While I agree that the best action card in the game (Embrace) has no
requirement, I disagree that there aren´t many valuable discipline based
actions cards. I will list a few (And I don´t list dominate and
presence bleed): Rutors Hand, Revelations, Mind Numb, Sensory
Deprivation, Temptation, Form of Corruption, Night Moves, Magic of the
Smith, Anima Gathering, Clotho´s Gift, Corruption, Charming Lobby, Far
Mastery, The Call and so on.

The current strong appearance of almost disciplinless decks has some
reasons:

- they are not only weak in the number of discipline cards they also
have a lot of master cards. Master cards are the strongest cards in the
game and the more the better, of course.

- there are some Gehenna events that can really brake a game and most of
them favor disciplinless play (masters or disc.less cards)

- embrace is the strongest action and it requires no disc. AND it is the
base of one of the strongest archetypes: breeding.

- the competitive players try out unexplored ideas and take ideas to the
extreme (e.g the disciplinless ravnos embrace). Soon others start to
ride the wave and some sort of "trend" appears. Most of these trends
disappear after a while, though. For a while TGB decks were in the same
position as the aformentioned decks are now and today you don´t see them
very often.

--
johannes walch

 

[Bluedevil]

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Johannes Walch wrote:

> - they are not only weak in the number of discipline cards they also
> have a lot of master cards. Master cards are the strongest cards in the
> game and the more the better, of course.

Until you choke on them, and they kill you.

I guess this is the sort of thing I was fishing for. Can anyone who
plays decks toploaded with master cards explain to me how you can
reliably look forward to not gagging? Of course you *could* throttle
the speed at which you run your deck, but IME your predator can plainly
see that you are gagged/pants-down in some way, and goes in for the
kill. How do you deal with that? Can you actually talk your
predators into not killing you? How do you do that? It strikes me as
largely a waste of breath.

> - there are some Gehenna events that can really brake a game and most of
> them favor disciplinless play (masters or disc.less cards)

There are, but I haven't really seen them played. They are getting
played in these near-disciplineless decks, but that makes a circular
argument.

> - embrace is the strongest action and it requires no disc. AND it is the
> base of one of the strongest archetypes: breeding.

"Strongest action", eh? That's interesting. When it got nerfed, I
think the general consensus was that it was mostly useless, except for
some corner-case decks. But now that the "disciplineless niche" has
been discovered and publicized, it's nerf turns out to be not much of a
nerf at all. In other words, if the card was changed because babies
making babies was seen as a problem, then it might be time to
re-consider what to do about it.

I know these are just a few decks, and maybe it is just a current fad.
But when someone can go to the NAC, get 30 minions on the table, and go
into the finals with 3 GW (IIRC), and then win it..... well, that's not
just a "win", that's stomping the whole tournament more thoroughly than
anything I can personally recall.

> - the competitive players try out unexplored ideas and take ideas to the
> extreme (e.g the disciplinless ravnos embrace).

I'll agree with the latter, but IMO the former is wrong. If by
competitive you mean "wins a lot", I see the most competitive players
as (often, not always) the most conservative. Which makes sense:
assuming we're all about equally intelligent and experienced, the odds
of any one of us having some blazing insight into something brand new
that stomps is pretty low. In other words, if it's a good deck, odds
are lots of other people have thought of the same thing.

--

David Cherryholmes

 

[Bluedevil]

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fudjo wrote:

> Ok, so by "the number of", you mean four (2 of which by the same
> guy). Factoring in the other Carcassone decks that were listed,
> as well as the decks of the finals of Day 1 and Day 2 of the NAC,
> and the decks of the finals of the last chance qualifier at GenCon,
> and Jarkko Suvela's deck at RopeCon (Finland), I think it's pretty
> safe to say that the sky isn't falling, and the death of disciplines
> has been greatly exaggerated.

Add one of Raille's decks in the JOL league. They are out there, the
number is increasing, and I'm pretty sure I'm not imagining it.

 

[Bluedevil]

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Sten During wrote:

> The extreme master deck doesn't get gagged, but it sure gags both prey
> and predator more often than not as they receive half the actions to
> respond to compared with what they had normally expected.

I know how "Master Card" decks work. I was talking more about decks,
like the horde decks, that actually are taking minion actions, and have
minion cards, but also have 30 - 40 masters in them.

 

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bluedevil wrote:
> Johannes Walch wrote:
>
>
>>- they are not only weak in the number of discipline cards they also
>>have a lot of master cards. Master cards are the strongest cards in the
>>game and the more the better, of course.
>
>
> Until you choke on them, and they kill you.
>
> I guess this is the sort of thing I was fishing for. Can anyone who
> plays decks toploaded with master cards explain to me how you can
> reliably look forward to not gagging? Of course you *could* throttle
> the speed at which you run your deck, but IME your predator can plainly
> see that you are gagged/pants-down in some way, and goes in for the
> kill. How do you deal with that? Can you actually talk your
> predators into not killing you? How do you do that? It strikes me as
> largely a waste of breath.
>

Granted, the Anson / Anarch Revolt madness doesn't work any longer, but
while it did it sure was a strong argument for master-heavy decks.

You could still build a deck around Anson/Huitz or Cybele plus
Parthenon. You could vote an extra master phase action as well. If
doing so, then you're happy to have Anthelios as several copies of
your master cards will be redundant after the first copy is played and
with multiple master phase actions you'll want to exchange those for
transient effects already played.

The extreme master deck doesn't get gagged, but it sure gags both prey
and predator more often than not as they receive half the actions to
respond to compared with what they had normally expected.

Sten During

 

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bluedevil wrote:
> Sten During wrote:
>
>
>>The extreme master deck doesn't get gagged, but it sure gags both prey
>>and predator more often than not as they receive half the actions to
>>respond to compared with what they had normally expected.
>
>
> I know how "Master Card" decks work. I was talking more about decks,
> like the horde decks, that actually are taking minion actions, and have
> minion cards, but also have 30 - 40 masters in them.
>

Among them 6-8 Parthenons.

 

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bluedevil wrote:
> Sten During wrote:
>
>
>>The extreme master deck doesn't get gagged, but it sure gags both prey
>>and predator more often than not as they receive half the actions to
>>respond to compared with what they had normally expected.
>
>
> I know how "Master Card" decks work. I was talking more about decks,
> like the horde decks, that actually are taking minion actions, and have
> minion cards, but also have 30 - 40 masters in them.
>

30 masters of which 4 Parthenon should be ok. 40, well, then I'd be
surprised if said deck doesn't have a reliable method of getting a
third MPA, at least if it doesn't want to suicide.

Several Dreams of the Sphinx will help. Barrens, Elder Library and
Specialization could be useful as could Brother's Grimm.

Sten During

 

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"bluedevil" <david.cherryholmes@gmail.com> schreef in bericht
news:1126706699.625452.307680@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>
> Sten During wrote:
>
>> The extreme master deck doesn't get gagged, but it sure gags both prey
>> and predator more often than not as they receive half the actions to
>> respond to compared with what they had normally expected.
>
> I know how "Master Card" decks work. I was talking more about decks,
> like the horde decks, that actually are taking minion actions, and have
> minion cards, but also have 30 - 40 masters in them.
>
let's take Andreas' deck as an example:

The masters:50% of the deck
of which 7 Parthenon, so an almost guaranteed 2nd master Phase.
The non-masters (also 50% of the deck)

that looks ok for me in this deck. Even with a 7 Master hand, you can play
2 of em, draw statistically speaking, 1 minion card, play that and discard
another master.

In his own turn this deck only really needs to have a couple of Embraces.
Outside of it's turn it needs a DI and a DT. All the rest is a bonus.