After playing a good number of Vtes games, I find that despite the exponentially huge permutations of Vtes possibilities, every Vtes game is just a variation of the same thing - an aggressive opening, patient mid-game and the inevitable rush to oust. That said, I don't think it is actually possible to exhaust all the possible scenarios of Vtes given the incredible amount of freedom and randomness built into the mechanics of the game itself.
You see? Vtes is a great, great game.
But is Vtes actually constrained, despite in a very minute way, by the very nature of the fact that it has a finite number of cards, and therefore, a finite number of combinations and permutations, making it a game that can be exhausted in terms of all the possible encounters that one can meet in a lifetime? Let's explore this by looking at the way of playing a Vtes game in general.
Every good player with a reasonably competitive deck will tell you that the beginning of the game is very important. Perhaps the most important in the whole game, as it sets your pace, prepare your means to victory, and when played well, create your defense and put you in front of all your opponents right on day 1.
So, what you always need is an aggressive opening.
An aggressive opening is not defined as multiple attacks, or high intensity attacks towards your prey. In fact, very often it is the opposite. Good players like to remain in a reasonably low profile to avoid attracting too much attention to himself in the fear of, at the very least, the prey taking too much of a defensive stance while the predator is awarded the freedom to at least cripple you - in another words - table hate.
Therefore an aggressive opening usually refers to quick influence of vampires, preparation of defense mechanism, acquisition of important assets, and a good but not overly excessive offensive action to prepare the eventual demise of the first prey.
All deck types have means of doing this. Combat decks show off their capabilities by sending one or two of their immediate opponents' minions to lala land; Wall decks put on enough intercepts and deterrents to tell the predator to look the other way; Bleed decks and Vote decks concentrate on getting enough cold bodies to prepare for mid-game attacks and even decks without a clear objective will try to talk the predator/prey into doing whatever you would like them to do.
Simply put, you need your prey to go forward and your predator to look backwards. An aggressive show of strength is usually good enough to achieve a certain level of that, and sometimes, that aggressiveness can simply be in the form of aggressive bargaining, threatening, or even plain begging. But it has to be aggressive.
Once the opening phase is over, the mid-game is usually spent in quietly preparing the position to kill off everybody while fending off your attackers. This part of the game is very interesting, and very dynamic. Sometimes it passes very quickly, with snowballing effect once the first player is ousted, sometimes it takes forever as all or some of the players in good position attempt to out-maneuver the opponent.
It is here where players start looking out for potential VP-thieves and arch-nemesis. Here players with good judgment of the table might, and very often take actions to slow down the player which they think is the main obstacles to their path towards dominating the table - it could be that DOM bleeder that is killing off your predator, or the voter who is gaining the vote superiority, or perhaps just the weenie player whom is putting too many minions on table. Here, patience really counts as one must be sure that he can eliminate enough preys to win the table, before taking rash actions that might land him in an unforgiving place.
Of course, it is not likely that a player will always have a chance to win the table, so sometimes, the mid-game leads to a rush to get those VPs. Could be all the VPs available on the table, or just that single one you have a chance to get before being ousted yourself. This last phase is a mad and hectic phase for Methuselahs, as they must make the decision at some point to just go, and damn the torpedoes anyway.
It seems to me that every Vtes game falls into this category of process, at least for me. Different opponents and different table seatings influence the way I operate a deck - such as who to influence first, what to do first, and who to target first. But in essence every game is a variation of these dance-steps, and every game, at the end of the day, is the same. But the possible decision making and crisis management process is so diverse with so many different decks that one can play and will face, the chances of any game being the same, is really quite low. Not to mention that the memory loss we suffer as we go torpor everyday.
So I guess I have to agree that Vtes is a finite game. But I think the fun it offers is nearly infinite.
(o.o)
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