Theorycrafting: What would be the effects of banning Govern

If Govern were banned, every deck that doesn't use Govern would obviously be the same. Every deck that uses Govern would be less good, based on the assumptions that a) Govern the Unaligned is one of the best cards in the game and b) it is put in the deck for a reason (the former being quite a good reason). Scouting Mission just isn't as good a card. It typically only sees play in decks that want to use both Govern and Scouting at superior with an untap in between.

Actually I think the gap between Govern and Scouting sets kind of a bad precedent in card design. One extra blood off a vampire gives you an extra pool damage to your prey or one extra pool down. Now who wouldn't pay that? What about a 3 cost card that gives you 5 down or 5 forward? Balanced? I don't think so.

A more interesting question might be what if Govern had never been born at all? Govern makes 3 down the gold standard for acceleration and 3 forward the gold standard for bleeding with a card. How different would the game be if Govern had never existed?

Josh Duffin explored some of these kinds of questions a few years ago: groups.google.com/d/msg/rec.games.trading-cards.jyhad/13ze5eQ4H4k/aJpsxbMK0KgJ

Removing a good discipline's best card(s) is not a good way to do balancing, if that's the point. A more cautious and likely more functional approach would be to do small incremental changes, i.e. removing the good-but-not-best cards and see how it affects the game. Seeing how GTU or deflections are likely the most common discipline cards in the game, they have innumerable interactions in VTES games. It would be completely impossible to determine what removing a card like that would do to the game (except, possibly, the result that DOM would be less good). If you want dominate less good I would recommend removing the less prevalent cards, say obedience, seduction or bonding, and see how that works out.

I, for one, do not agree that removing GTU and using scouting mission would be "almost the same". One transfer is quite regularly the tipping point between one extra action or not, which in turn can mean a huge difference. Four sup GTU means four extra transfers and that's something that can quite easily win games. GTU is 50% more powerful than scouting mission, 50% is a lot.

Jeff Kuta wrote: This is consistent with my other data mining based on post-KoT TWDs. Govern the Unaligned is a great card, but removing it from the game would not have a huge impact. People play with Dominate for bounce first and foremost. The huge dropoff in number of TWDs with Deflection & something else demonstrates this very clearly.

This might be a problem of definition. What do you call "play Dominate"? 3 Keith Moody and 6 Deflection can be fit into pretty much any deck, but I wouldn't say that makes it a Dominate deck. Govern is not a card that can be splashed because it is not card efficient for bleed only (modifiers such as Conditioning are better) and the superior must be played by the bigger caps in the crypt. Also both Deflection and Conditioning provide most of their effect at whereas the power of Govern is its versatility that needs to be exploited.

Your data pretty much show that is more played than , which is not surprising since => .

EDIT
Boris the Blade already said almost everything I was gonna say. Just reason why Govern is not played more is because it truly shines with . When Deflection and Conditioning are good with also so they can go to more decks.

Hijecking the thread for just a second, though in a related extension of Jeffs point.

Jeff Kuta wrote: TWDA Entries since April 1, 2010 (after HttB):

TOTAL: 473
Deflection: 172

...People play with Dominate for bounce first and foremost.

I agree completely. I've seen tons of people staple [dom] on things like [CEL] guns just to Deflect.

One discipline having transient bleed cards and bleed redirection was a design flaw, even without considering Deflection's ludicrous free "don't tap" clause at superior.

As an aside
473 post HttB Decks
172 (36%) had Deflection
144 (30%) Telepathic Misdirection

[Full disclosure] I didn't cut the comments in the search, so that number might be high if people included the full card name text as commentary.

There were some decks that had copies of both, but I didn't try to count them. Regardless, "About 2/3's of tournament-winning decks redirect bleeds" seems like a reasonably accurate take-home message.

I doubt losing GtA would significantly change the bounce dynamic......a bleed doesn't have to be "Arika Governs with Conditioning" to be worth redirecting.

Boris The Blade wrote: What do you call "play Dominate"? 3 Keith Moody and 6 Deflection can be fit into pretty much any deck, but I wouldn't say that makes it a Dominate deck. Govern is not a card that can be splashed because it is not card efficient for bleed only (modifiers such as Conditioning are better) and the superior must be played by the bigger caps in the crypt. Also both Deflection and Conditioning provide most of their effect at whereas the power of Govern is its versatility that needs to be exploited.

Your data pretty much show that is more played than , which is not surprising since => .

I 100% agree with your analysis. I think that your conclusion (people splash more than design for ) only reinforces the idea that banning Govern the Unaligned would not have a huge impact on the game.

Scouting mission is a reasonable replacement for Dominate decks without Presence. Enchant Kindred will show up more in typical Ventrue Law Firm decks to provide an alternate route for acceleration.

From Day 1, Dominate has always had the best actions, action modifiers, and reactions. The only way that discipline will ever be brought into line power wise (a debatable point) is if one of those three legs is completely taken out. I don't see it happening, though I don't really mind the discipline as it is.