Hey gang. New forums. Nice!

Anyway, I have a couple of questions about banned cards. I understand why Rip-off is banned. That' card's been a game-stopper since launch. I've never come back from getting ripped-off in the first couple turns. Could just be my playing though...

That said, why are cards like Saturnalia, Secrets of Bubastis etc on the banned list? Specifically, is there a combo that caused these 7 cards to be banned? Is it just because they can potentially allow a (now) 5 cost or more character to gate into play on the first turn (if you get a few of them)? I'm just curious why, specifically this family of cards got banned.

thanks guys,

M13

The Mi-Go 13 said:

The combo decks that they spawned (using a Simple Kindness to go a bit large, to infinite) brought the point home on how broken they where. But even then, Nate hadn't seen those when the cards where banned. These cards where bad for the flow of the game in general.

- They increased the level of luck to playing the game. You're far more dependant on your opening hand then you are on skill.

- They made the domain system, and the planning ahead that comes with it obsolete.

That's the short of it; They where fundamentally flawed on so many levels. Yes, they where cool if you had them in your hand, and you can explode on the first turn. But it's more like the game playing you instead of you playing the game.

I do miss them, but they where like a bad habit.

Marius,

Thanks for the quick response. I figured that there was some bit of history with those cards and since I don;t play competitively, I miss out on a lot of the metagame (which, I admit, I prefer). Still, nice to see the FFG understands that once the gameplay goes, most of the players will soon follow.

Game well,

M13

Marius said:

With that in mind, would they be so bad if reduced to 1 per deck?

The_Big_Show said:

Depends on what you call bad, ofcourse. But that'll introduce quite a level of randomness towards games. If you luck out and draw it, you'll win. It'll make some games end in a very random and premature way...

according to ffg policy, the games now supposed to be more random, so what's the problem?

Marius said:

I mention it because I dislike banning cards. I am considering implememnting a 1 per deck for these cards instead.

I've never seen them used to the extent that they can cause an almost garanteed win. Even my most twinky local player has never tried that (though he plays almost exclusively mono-Hastur which is just as annoying).

The_Big_Show said:

Well, you can always choose to "unban" or "restrict" them at local tourneys; Just care to mention that in your announcement and it'll be fine. As long as you're having fun, right? At some point it'll break down the game, but when you're not have reached that point yet, then nothing should stop you from making a house rule to allow them.

In a way not to let Marius responds alone, we did have a problem with those cards in Poitiers.

Everybody used to play X4 of those reducers in a way to abuse reduction (and, comboed with Simple Kindness and wishes, that really abused!), and most of our games did end really fast. It was like the first served, the winner !!

Someone did played a rIpp-Off deck in Poitiers, and it was really silly. Now, th games tend to be a little more bit slower and strategical, like it tended to be in the early hours of the game. Now, let's balance what some peoples said about bannings. The new situation is game-friendly, indeed. You're not playing against the game itself, it's a lot more fun ...

Well, the problem with TR-o was TR-o itself: while Theosophist + TRo was an easy to spot interaction, it probably hampered the development of evil resource destruction decks.

After all, in 4x the chance of a 1st turn on the go Ritual-Ritual-Ripoff is 0.29 and, no matter how many cost reducers you add, is capped at 0.56.

On the other hand, if Theosophist Meeting had been ignored and a Synd-Agency ritualless road had been chosen, you'd have had an astonishing 0.68 chance of three resources out on first turn, on the go, which would have capped at 0.80 the more cost reducers you'd have added.

To put into perspective, the most rip-offy ritual decks had less chances of firing a three resources removal than the average Agency-Syndicate resource destruction deck, while the most rip-offy Synd-Agency deck fires a 3 resource removal almost twice a ritual rip-off deck can.

Clearly reducers rituals had problems, but the main culprit of T1 The Rip-off is The Rip-off itself.

Prodigee:

and, comboed with Simple Kindness and wishes, that really abused!

Uhmmm... I am getting lazy on finding combos, but I do not see any particular interaction between reducer rituals and wishes. Would you explain it?

well I might not be too explicit on this one. You're right, there's no particular synergy one wishes and banned rituals, except that they are both rituals ....

The Agency wish cost x and the Synd one 1. And, comboed with simple kindness, we did see strange ocurence :

Let's say A is the active player. He was able to play a ritual three times (play- returning it to hand-play-return it to hand- play) so he was able to play a 6 coster T1 with transient ressource. It occurs several times, as you needn't more than 1 banned ritual.

In case A was defender, he might play the ritual (or a wish) for nothing, then refresh with simple kindness and get his major domain back for a bigger event that screw up your strategy. I did face it and that sucked ! I think that doing this with the wishes is normal, good synergy ...*But the cost reducing rituals were so good they were able to make the coffee while playing !! Having the possibility to abuse in operations + story phase was a bit too much for me !!