Failure: the Rules

Hi folks!

Before you continue with reading please let me state that I still love this game, will always love it and my biggest wish is that v:tes will find a company again, so that we will see many more expansions and die in twilight home at the age of 80+ from an heart attack when our predator announces a bleed for 6 at 1 stealth.

So, with that said I'll continue with my original thought. There are many points in this game where I feel like there is either a big hole, a major mistake in planing or just a big big FAIL. In these articles I will show you my point of view. All these articles are 100% subjective, feel free to disagree and any comments are welcome (also criticism is very welcome).

The first and imo one of the most obvious flaw is the rule system itself. Before you start yelling at me and auto-defending the game like crazy, just please take a look at the following points:

1. No clear system

Isn't the fact that we need LSJ basically 24 hours a day to get things clarified not an indictment by itself? It doesn't matter if I take a look at the vekn.net, newsgroup or our national forum: the most commonly seen posts are about rules questions and these questions are not just asked by newbies. It quite often happens that 2 players who played this game for 10+ years and have been appointed to be a judge quite often argue about a certain card or effect. To run a tournament peacefully you often need internet access, so you can search for rulings. I mean I've even seen debates with players like Ben Peal involved and we had to stop the time for like 20 minutes until we found a proper answer. I am sure that there are some GEEKS out there who know every single LSJ post by heart, but thats for sure not the average v:tes player.

2. The epic fail of ruling: lack of objective factors

All the above wouldn't be too bad. In our modern society it's almost 100% sure that at least one player has mobile internet access so there is at least an ability to check the ruling. My biggest issue concerns the rules which totally lack any chance of ever being applied the way they should. Here are my favorites:

a) The time factor

So when is a player stealing on time (which is and should be illegal)? There are players who normally play fast and there are players who are just slow. When a fast player starts to play at the speed the slow player played during the game, is he stealing on time? He doesn't play slower than anybody else. Even though it's obvious that his change in behavior is due to the fact that he will have his tournament win with a time out. How do you measure that?

Or another example, which actually did happen to me at an EC on the last day, where every vp did matter: by prey was down to 1 pool with nothing in the ready region. All his vamps where in torpor at 0 blood. He had no master card or whatever that could give him pool. I had 5 ready minions, a Smiling Jack and an Army of Rats in play. He spent a whole minute to decide in which order to untap and what to discard and we timed out. I was denied my game win even though my prey would have died right in my untap phase. The judge was watching all this and didn't say a word.

Another example. At a final table in a Hungarian tournament the Tzimisce wall was about to win due to the time out (he was 1st seat). He checked every single ash heap every turn, read any card, because he claimed he doesn't know it and he has the right to read it (as if somebody who won an EC before and almost always plays wall decks doesn't know how Pentex works...). Our judge didn't do a damn thing. Oddly enough when Gulya made his vp and the Tzimisce wasn't winning anymore he suddenly had the fastest turns and started telling people they should play faster...

I could write a book of such examples. I started to play tournaments in 2004. Since than I have never ever seen a judge punishing somebody for stealing on time. In like 60%-70% of all these games the player who did steal time achieved his goal, leaving the other player who would have deserved the vp/gw (by rules!!!) totaly frustrated.

b) Play to win

This was discussed so often that I am tired of it, therefore I won't go into details. It is enough to quote the following from the vekn.net website: "For tournaments, playing to win means playing to get a Game Win if it is reasonably possible, and when a Game Win is not reasonably possible, then playing to get as many Victory Points as possible." The ruling here includes a totally subjective point. If we agree on the fact that 0,5 > 0 than this is one the most often violated rules in the game...

This article is not about proposing a solution, so don't come up with that please. However I will try to make some proposals in a separate article.

by: Mephistopheles