A while ago, while I was still a fledging neonate, an Elder (I can't remember who, I believed he had done something to alter my memory) told me that though it might not be apparent to see the skill of each player with how they work during the various phases of Vtes, it is often apparent if you observe how they handled their Discard phase. Today, I can't agree more. Sometimes I felt that the Discard phase of Vtes is often the one with the most difficult decision to make, round after round.
Vtes's unique system of replace one card as you play one card assures you (normally) of 7 resource cards in your hand pretty much most of the game. In the best case scenario, you want to have the exact cards in your hand that you need - be it a bleed card, a bounce card, a combat card, or even just a wake card. You should have a Master card for every Master phase (at least 1), and all the right tools of trade to tackle the current situation at hand.
Most good deck-builders (or like me, good net-deckers) have decks that are pretty much prepared for most common situation - that is to say, we all have the cards that we need, somewhere in the deck, though may not be in the right ratio, and very often not in the right place - namely, not in hand when you needed it most. This is where the Discard phase comes in.
The Discard phase is just that, discard what you think you don't need, and hope to draw into something you do, which is of course, related to how you build your deck. So technically, every turn you get a chance to throw away something you don't need, and draw a new card to get something more useful.
But here's the challenge. For Master phase, most of the time you just play whatever Master you have, as long as you can afford it. This is usually because most decks don't have enough Master cards for you to make decisions round after round (unless you're playing my Misery Tour deck); during the Minion phase you do what you do anyway, and unless you really don't have any idea what you're playing, or your hand is really really bad, you shouldn't be too confused. And Influence phase, you influence, normally dictated by your pool, your cards in hand, your crypt and what you like - and you only have 4 (normally) minions to choose from - no rocket science there.
The Discard phase, however, present you with several scenarios for you to make decisions every round, over and over again, and IMHO, it really test your skill as a Vtes player.
The first case is the easiest, it's when you have all the cards you need, and you're very sure of it. Either the cards in your hand are truly optimized for your plans next round (or for your defense), and you have no need to discard any. This is really rare for most decks, but pretty common for straight forward decks such as Stealth Bleeders, or most weenie decks.
Most of the time you will have some card(s) that you would rather have traded for something else in your deck - for example, you hold a Deflection but has no wake cards, and all you expect all your Vampires to be tapped by the time your predator start to work on you. In this scenario you have to discard a card to hope for the wake, but which card should you discard?
This is where the understanding of your deck ratio, the chance of getting what you need, and the opportunity cost of either absorbing the bleed and therefore retain a potential card that you could use next round, or drop the plan A and hope to draw into the card that you need right now.
The Discard phase therefore requires you to do several things -
1. Predict, or guess what your predator/prey (table) will be doing and how you want to react to it.
2. What are the chances of drawing into the card that you have in mind, or some similar cards that you may need?
3. Do you have enough copies of the card that you're discarding, and will you need it later?
4. Your plans for the next round, do you already have what you need, and if not, do you want to discard potentially useful cards in hand now to hope for the right card that you can draw into.
Once you've decided on one or all of these, you will have to choose the card to discard. Sometimes it is easy, sometimes it is not. Even the choice of not discarding is not always easy to make, and always right, even though you may "think" you already have all the right cards. The opposite is also correct.
So a lot of thinking will go into the Discard phase, often more than all the other phases. (except maybe the minion phase, since there will be a lot of actions and reactions) The Discard phase if for you to reorganize, rethink, plan, and prepare.
I'm sure you will agree with me, that this is the most challenging phase to work on, most of the time.
(o.o)
No comments:
Post a Comment