Banned Cards in VtES

Here's a (still surprisingly short) list of the cards that are (or were) banned for VtES tournaments in 2008. For each of the cards I will briefly explain why (and when) they have been banned:

• "Playing for Keeps" -- since January 9th, 1995
• "High Stakes" -- since January 9th, 1995
• "Cunctator Motion" -- since January 9th, 1995
  An ante is a forced bet in which each player places a card from his deck into the pot before the game begins. The player who ousts another players actually wins the forfeited card from the losing player. The concept was (as in "Magic The Gathering") never really popular, and the concept was dropped very soon after the release of VtES. So cards relating to ante, as those three above were banned for this reason.


• "Madness of the Bard" -- since July 1st, 1999
  The judgements of this card vary from "downright silly" to "very much fun", but in the end it prevents most players from freely communicating to each other, which is one of the cornerstones of a multiplayer game.


• "Return to Innocence" -- since March 14th, 1999
  A card which allows a vampire to bleed for 10+, is just too good for the game. In a typical tournament the comfort level in terms of having pool is something like 10-12. With that amount of pool you need two high-level bleed come through, but this requires considerable setup and/or amount of cards being played during these actions, or you need at least 3-4 "Kine Resource Contested"/"Conservative Agitations", but this also needs some setup. With RtI you can just bleed with "Daring the Dawn" and the only thing you'll have to worry about is bleed bounce.


• "Succubus Club" -- since January 1st, 2005
  Mass trading resources, especially with the now defunct tournament rules about table-splitting (at least for practical purposes), this led to absurd situation. Players Bob and John made a table split deal, with one of the them having a "Succubus Club" in play. After the deal both "trade" regularly their whole set of resources of vampires, master cards and other permanents back and forth, until they succeed in having ousted the other players.


• "Kindred Restructure" -- since January 1st, 2005
  The abusive technique for using "Kindred Restructure" (and to a lesser extent) "Dramatic Upheaval" was called "VP Sniping". The player with the "Kindred Restructure" in hand would wait where some predator was in sure ousting range (i.e. down to less than 5 pool or something similar) for the next turn. Then the "KR" would be played, and his new player, while having done nothing all the while, ripped of the reward for ousting from the original player. Furthermore with Kindred Restructre this player could arrange the table in manner which was most suitable for him, e.g. having a weak predator or prey or both.


• "Dramatic Upheaval" -- since January 1st, 2005
  The same arguments as for "Kindred Restructure" applies to "Dramatic Upheaval" as well, but to only slightly lesser extent, since it allowed to change seats with one player only.


• "Edge Explosion" -- since January 1st, 2008
  One of the driving engines of an "Imbued" deck, since it both allowed him to have a power for which he hasn't had the appropriate "Virtue", but may gain a "Conviction" for a successful action once each turn.


• "Memories of Mortality" -- since January 1st, 2008
  Very powerful when playing an ally deck, not only wasn't an opposing vampire with this card no longer allowed to block any ally, he couldn't hurt him anymore and the card was hard to get rid off.


• "Protect Thine Own" -- since January 1st, 2008
  This card provided a very cheap way to remove any non-Camarilla vampire, though it requires an IC member for using the card's full effect.

Earlier Card Bans and Revokes

• "Rowan Ring" -- from January 9th, 1995 to January 1st, 2000(?)
• "Stake" -- from January 9th, 1995 to March 14th, 1999
  The cards were banned because the corner-case paralysation rules which were dropped in VtES (as opposed to the Jyhad rules). Since extensive rewording would have been necessary the rules team decided to ban the cards. With the new wording of the VtES version of "Wooden Stake" and the CE version of "Rowan Ring" the "paralyse" mechanic was dropped and replaced by "send to torpor", so the ban could be lifted after the new version had been released.


• "Monocle of Clarity" -- from January 9th, 1995 to January 1st, 2000(?)
  The wording of "Monocle of Clarity" allowed easily to break the game, thus it was banned. For an example see the following thread. With the new wording of the CE version which limited the card's functionality to the current game state, not a future one, the card was allowed again.