Cards Limits
by James Coupe


At the simplest level:

- it's not how the game was designed (or is designed now)
- it's bad for newbies who can't use any cards they buy once they get too many of them
- it kills a number of specific strategies that use cards that aren't duplicated elsewhere
- it makes Malk Stealth and Bleed win.

There are other arguments too!

Starting at the top:

1) It's not how the game was designed.

When Magic was designed, Richard Garfield had (very wrongly) assumed that it would just be 
a casual thing. Most players would have no more than, say, a few hundred cards. They definitely 
wouldn't own every single card in the game, and other decks could contain surprises. This worked 
as a balancing factor, sort of, since none of the decks he was expecting would be hyper-optimized, 
and none of the defences would be either. Also, he could make some of the rare cards more fun or 
powerful, because no-one in their right mind would go out of their way to collect multiple of them.

So, once he got round to designing V:TES, it was well understood that this was all crap. People are 
obsessive and will go nuts. But not all of them, so you don't want to design a game that only works 
well for nuts or only works well for casual players. So what you want are balancing factors that 
mean that common cards can still be really useful and power decks in their own right, and that rare 
cards can be constrained. Lots of cards are like that in V:TES. Blood Doll is amazing and was common. 
Govern the Unaligned is super strong and was common. If you go through the uncommons and rares, 
a lot of them are more specialized, but not many of them are hugely more powerful. Two spring to 
mind that weren't well understood - Immortal Grapple (to make combat go) and Freak Drive (for 
repeat actions). But that's because all designers make mistakes, especially on the first design 
of a product!

But those aren't the only balancing factors. Master cards are powerful, but you can only play so many 
a turn (one, usually). You might have a great action modifier, but you can only use it once per action. 
Similarly, intercept decks can only throw down one of each reaction to block you (per vampire). 
So there's a lot of incentive to diversify your deck for action modifiers and reactions anyway - instead 
of 12 of one stealth modifier (Lost in Crowds, say), why not have 6 of two different cards? Or a mix of 
three? But the good part is that if 12 is right for you, you can play it, and no-one will stop you.

Similarly, you can't have too many actions or strikes, since you are limited in how many you can play. 
Various pieces of equipment have limits on them (such as Sport Bike), and other cards are limited to 
one per vampire (Ritual Challenge), only one in play (Mr Winthrop), or one per game (Ancient Influence). 
Which means you can have all sorts of diverse options for decks, but some strategies don't get out of 
hand without a LOT of work (e.g. the amount of aggravated hand damage from a Gangrel), or can't easily 
be repeated.

So, the game has always been built to not need limits. The game tries to offer those limits to you 
when building your deck, so you can make the best most efficient deck you can for whatever you're 
trying to do, but you don't have to go along with those "rules" if you can find a new, fun, inventive, 
or just plain efficient way to step outside them and do something good.

2) It's bad for newbies who can't use all the cards they buy.

Back in the day, the best and most common example of this was for voting decks. Imagine you're putting 
together a Presence voting deck. You've got some titled vampires, some votes, some Praxis Seizures or 
maybe Crusades, and so on. But you also want to have some Presence vote modification in the deck. Okay, 
as a newbie, I raided a commons box, or got some cheap cards on Ebay, or whatever. So I have quite a few 
copies of Bewitching Oration. Say you were playing with a 5CL. I've got 7 Bewitching Orations, but can 
only play five of them.

Now, I'm an oldbie who's been playing since god knows when. I've picked up cards here and there over 
the years. I have oodles of cards. I've got 20 Bewitching Orations and 7 Awe. So I can put five of each 
in. Awe isn't inherently overpowered (though it is very good), it's just that it's rare. And I can now 
put together more vote modification than you can. So my deck can be more powerful than yours. Newbie 
wants to put 7 vote modifiers into a deck, but they're Bewitching Oration. So they get smacked down. 
I can put in 5 of that and 5 Awe, and that's fine. What's the card limit doing here? Oh, it's helping 
the oldbies who have rare cards.

Not good.

3) Specific strategies that use multiples of a given card.

Again, back in the day, the best example of this was Immortal Grapple. Say I'm playing a combat deck, 
Brujah rush or Nos rush, say. I have to pound your vampires into the dirt. But you're playing Ventrue. 
You can tell me to piss off in some combats by playing X copies of Obedience (X = whatever, vary by limit), 
to stop me before I even get there. So I probably need to make the ones I do count. But you've got Majesty, 
and Staredown, and Catatonic Fear. 3 sources of Strike: Combat Ends, vs my 1 source of IG. Maybe 2 if we 
allow Psyche!, but Psyche! is a very different card - I've already had to waste my Torn Signpost and Undead 
Strength, or whatever else. So you can defend way, way more than I can attack.

This isn't the only strategy that suffers from this. There are plenty of others. When the Corruption card 
was introduced in Ancient Hearts, it was the only way of trying that out. What's the point of playing with 
only 5 copies? Maybe you could snaffle a weenie vampire - and I've done that with 8-12 copies in a Setite 
Presence deck I loved playing. But the card is screaming out to be used in large numbers. These days, of 
course, you can get other sources of Corruption counters, but that took many, many years! If you could 
only have 4 or 6 copies, it's almost useless.

Ditto, if you go over any expansion, any new ideas, there are often brand new cards doing really weird 
things that you can really enjoy playing with. But the designers have only allowed one or maybe two cards 
for the idea (possibly in very different disciplines or clans). So if you want to experiment with it, 
you may need to load up on it.

And there are some very interesting decks done this way. Weenie Cryptic Mission, say, was an amazing new 
deck type when it came out.

4) It helps stealth and bleed win.

This, for me, is the clincher. A lot of players advocating card limits say "Oh, but our decks are much 
more creative and interesting." Because you often can't have too many copies of a card in a deck, the 
deck loses focus. So, I can't play a great rush deck (not enough Grapples), so it turns into a rush deck 
with bleed and some intercept, and... Which is just great. These decks can and do wins tournaments. 
If you want to play those decks, you can, and can do well. LOTS of decks in the TWDA have more than 
one strategy to them, or a large combat sideline, or whatever.

But what most advocates of card limits ignore is... the card limit doesn't stop stealth and bleed. 
Take a Malkavian stealth and bleed deck. 20 actions - Computer Hacking, Govern the Unaligned, Scouting 
Mission, Dominate Kine, Mind Rape, Slaughtering the Herd... you've got a lot to choose from, even if 
you play a 5CL. Stealth modifiers, the same - Lost in Crowds, Faceless night, Cloak the Gathering, 
Elder Impersonation, Mask of a Thousand Faces, Spying Mission, Marked Path... Bleed modifiers: Threats, 
Bonding, Conditioning, Command of the Beast, Foreshadowing Destruction.

Really, this deck isn'tb eing touched by a card limit. It doesn't make it more interesting to see Bonding 
instead of Threats for 95% of players. And it's just power stealth bleed.

Now, think about my deck over here. Under No Limits, I can throw in 10 Deflections. Under a 5CL, only 5, 
and I'd need to go and find Redirections if I wanted to up that. Even under an 8CL, I'm hurt - but the 
stealth and bleed deck really isn't. Or Telepathic Counter. Or Telepathic Misdirection. Or I might feel 
that multiple Archon Investigations were worth my time - say a deck with 6 Blood Dolls, 6 Archon 
Investgations, a Barrens and 2 Sudden Reversals. That seems fine to me - but a 5CL would block that.

Or I want to rush the Malkavians, but can't get enough solid rush going on because you've killed my 
Immortal Grapples for when the Malkavians includes Dodge or Read Intentions or whatever. And I can't 
as easily repeat whatever the "right" action card is for when I get Obedienced - Ambush and Harass 
may not suit my defence as much as Bum's Rush. (Wait for a bleeder to be tapped or low on blood? 
That might sound like suicide to a combat deck.)

And that's the flip side of killing certain strategies that use key cards. Some strategies don't need 
key cards, because they have the flexibility to pick and choose what's right for them. So certain 
strategies die in a heap because they can't access cards, which correspondingly empowers other 
strategies. In No Limits, every strategy can be tried out using multiples. Or using 1 of every 
card. Or using a few here, a few there. Whatever you want.


But will this put newbies off? Maybe. It's hard to explain to them all of hte above when they don't know 
the game well, or at all. How can you help? Give them cards. Lend them cards. Give/lend them whole decks 
to play at games which use the above factors and see how they enjoy them. But let them play toolboxes 
with 4 of everything, too, so they can try out that style. Let them proxy cards ("Okay, I don't own 
enough White Phosphorus Grenades, so all the copies of Zip Gun in this deck are WPGs") at casual games, 
then they can go off and trade for what they need later, or crack open a box of boosters, or buy from 
a singles vendor, or... Then they aren't disadvantaged at all, and can start trying crazy fun strategies 
for the cost of a few dead commons and a bit of explaining what the card is. (It'll be there responsibility 
to make sure they bring the most recent card text, too!) They can try out a 10 War Ghoul deck without 
spending any significant amount of money.