While I enjoyed playing and watching an Imbued deck when the VtES expansion "Nights of Reckoning" was fresh out the print machine, I now detest seeing an Imbued deck in a VtES game. You might ask "Why?" and I will give you 10 good reasons why I hate the Imbued:- Imbued decks slow down the game
- Explanation: This often not because the Imbued player himself how to play Imbued cards, but the other players are often not very accustomed to the Imbued specifics. So they need constantly to ask what a specific card does or need to examine the numerous cards the Imbued player controls.
- Imbued do not interact well with other players, for example
- Explanation/Examples:
- Imbued cannot rescue vampires from torpor.
- Imbued cannot perform political actions, e.g. voting down an "Anarch Revolt" or removing "Year of Fortune".
- They cannot remove cards like "Smiling Jack" or take control of "Powerbase: Montreal"
- Other players do not interact well with Imbued.
- Explanation/Examples: This is not a problem with ally-based decks in general, since it usually affects only a portion of the controlled minions, but when cards don't affect all minions of a particular deck, this deficit matters.
- Imbued are (too) predictable.
- Explanation/Examples:
- More often than not you can calculate how much stealth or intercept an Imbued will have, when looking at the cards on the table.
- .. but it takes time and experience to calculate this quickly.
- Imbued have an extra role when compared with other allies.
- Explanation/Examples:
- An Imbued does not die when he lost his last life.
- There are several ways of regaining life for an Imbued.
- An Imbued is considerably harder to steal when protected by "React with Conviction".
- Imbued have defacto-permanent resources, to which other decks have only very limited access to.
- Explanation: Each and every Imbued can easily have (semi-)permanent +1 stealth or +1 intercept by using "Second Sight" or +1 bleed or +1 strength by using "Strike with Conviction". Through the recursion of the Convictions in the untap phase (or other means), this is a defacto permanent effect.
- The distinct feel of vampires & their clans is missing.
- Explanation: There are no clans, no bloodlines, only creeds. But still you don't play "Avengers" or "Judges" creeds, you just play "Imbued".
- There's little to no variation in an Imbued crypt.
- Explanation: Due to small number of Imbued (20 in total), there are too few variations in the crypt. Each and every Imbued deck worth its salt includes "Travis 'Traveler72' Miller" and "Jennie 'Cassie247' Orne", but I have yet to see an Imbued deck that features "Pedro Cortez" or "Francois 'Warder' Loehr" or "Xian 'DziDzati55' Quan".
- Imbued need two discard piles.
- Explanation: For ease of play, Imbued players need two ash heaps, one for the regular cards and one for Convictions, since they need to move back Convictions very frequently. Otherwise it just takes too much time for the Imbued player to sift through his ashheap each untap phase to search for Convictions.
- The disabling Gehenna events are just too good for the Imbued (or too bad for the other players using regular vampire crypts).
- Explanation: The Imbued can efficiently use disabling Events which screw all vampired-based decks, but not the Imbued, especially "Blood Weakens", "Veil of Darkness", "Slow Withering" and "Wormwood" are greatly diminishing the play of players relying on a regular vampire crypt.
Hopefully there will never be a (standalone) expansion (for Werewolves/Mages/Wraiths/Changelings) that introduces the same kind of mechanism set.
6 comments:
I'm disappointed that you feel this way about Imbueds. I myself love them. They make even the most experienced player think about their game. I personally I don't think they slow down the game. It's not the Imbued players fault that the other players don't read the cards. Now, after the ban of the two cards, I find the Imbued alot more fun to play. More things to do. I would like to see a another expansion for them. So they would work better in a Imbued/Vampire crypt.
regards Baaliprimogen
The too predictable thing is what turns me off. I'm not into games of permanents fighting permanents.
I can agree with lack of flavor and lack of diversity.
One of the worst things the Imbued have done is be so good that we got just absurd ally hosers for all sorts of disciplines/whatever.
I do not agree with most of your points. I played a lot of Imbued lately and neither have I been using up too much time nor the other players.
The key to this is as an Imbued player to pro-actively inform the other players about rules, cards and static intercept/stealth/bleed. E.g I use the time when other people are thinking about their turn to explain the "new" rules to players waiting. Also I announce things with all static stuff involved "try to block, can go to +3 intercept .."
Regarding events, it is true that you CAN play them with the Imbued without suffering for much of their direct effects. However you still have to cope with hand size problems and table hate leading to gang ups on you and also with card flow since you cant play more than one per turn and cannot discard anything then either.
I dont have two discard piles either, I just go through my discard pile during my predators end of turn and put the convictions in an order which I want them to place on my minions. Placing convictions takes 10s during my turn.
The lack of variation sure is a problem and frustrates me as Imbued player as well. But that can be easily fixed by introducing new Imbued cards (esp. crypt cards), my favourite would be as promos.
I agree here. Despise the imbued for all it's worth and would hate too see something similar.
I have yet to see an Imbued deck that features "Pedro Cortez" or "Francois 'Warder' Loehr" or "Xian 'DziDzati55' Quan".
Each of these imbued has been in a Tournament-Winning Deck in Atlanta. Just over a week ago I was top seed with zero copies of Travis, and flubbed out due to poor choice of seating.
There's more diversity in imbued decks than a lot of players think (even though I agree that there should be more).
If you see an Imbued player playing his deck slowly you can bet your ass he's got no clue what-so-ever about the game - which makes that player a bad reference for whatever argument against or for the Imbued you might think of.
Block/defense/combat decks can't play slowly if they're to have any chance at getting VPs.
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