That night YY was just telling us that technically, playing to win simply means that at any one time, you are doing, where the table VP (and only the current table's VP) is concerned, a logical and meaningful action; AND in case there are no good logical and meaningful moves available, the action taken must be because that there are "no better options". Usually it is quite easy to determine whether an action is considered "playing to win" or not.
However, I've heard arguments about playing a game is to "have fun", and one should be able to play whatever deck he wants, in whatever ways that he likes, as long as he has fun in the process, and did not break any game rules. Other players should then make deals or build decks to either "meta" or "able to handle" those kind of decks. This issue only surfaces when we are faced with either decks who aren't interested in ousting, and play decision when the damage is fling randomly. (mostly Malkavian bleeds)
That is usually alright in casual play, but where tournaments are concerned, most (if not all) players recognized that winning is important to most others, and playing to win is a basic form of respect. I'd like to, however, extend this argument even to casual play.
I guess it is always alright to tell your table when you play a deck that does absolutely nothing. If one is trying to prove a point, or is involved in some Vtes mathematical experiment, or just on a crusade to see how long it'll take for a Methuselah to accumulate 1000 pool, I believe that the community will humor his deck(s) for a while. But if one established a reputation of having decks that do nothing to their prey ever, with absolutely no intention to oust, and hope to win by "time out" - then he will probably find that others on the table will become pretty unwilling to play with him.
Vtes is a social game - which is what attracts the majority of the players. It is a multi-player game, strong on intrigue, diplomacy, and rewards deviousness and aggressiveness. The foundation of the game is to kill your prey before the predator kills you - it is not just "Don't let Predator kill you" or "Do random things so that I get to laugh at people". If you build a deck, or play in a way where the objective differs from the concept of the game, it kinda destroys the table balance, and very often, that is not funny for many other players.
And when it is not fun for others, how could one have fun by himself?
Some players have decks that never intend to oust. Some players lost their interest during mid-game and started doing whatever seems to be funny at that point. Please don't. At least, please don't do that all the time. Due to the complex predator-prey relationship in a multi-player Vtes game, what a single player do affects the whole table, and therefore the level of enjoyment of a game is determined by the sum of the efforts of EVERY player and EVERY deck on the table. It is not simply a "just ignore me then" situation.
Of course, we must also give new players time to figure out how Vtes and the social element of the game works. Please don't condemn players simply because their Saulot bloat deck hasn't figure out how to kill, or their Malkavian bleeds are too random. It takes time for players to figure those things out, and getting angry at them isn't the best way to increase the blood pool in the long run.
So new players, or old ones who have lost that bit of memory during their torpor - remember this - playing Vtes is like a social gathering - it is not like most other CCGs. The game rules is one thing, the rules of the social group - the game objective of killing your prey(s) is what holds the game's social order together. Without understanding, and respecting this important aspect of Vtes, one cannot hope to become a member of the Inner circle. And if you really really really want to insist on playing only what you wanted to, there is always The Sims for you to torture.
(o.o)
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