Tariq and merging

Lönkka wrote: The guy said that "I cant think of a single tournament winning deck that uses it."

I showed him six examples.

No one said that you need to have X or Y amount of advanced vamps...

No.

tE said "Advancing vampires is one of the weakest new mechanics added", everything else is not relevant, and your ansver is "there are 6 decks in twda with basic and adv vampires in the crypt".

It's a bad argument.

In my experience, merging vampires is quite easy. 5 of the base vamp and one of the Advanced vamp in your crypt, 8 copies of Epiphany, and 2 copies of Wider View and you're good to go. People either don't realize or keep forgetting that Epiphany is freely cyclable with your non-Advanceable vamps. I have a handful of decks that involve merging, and I find them fun. The unfortunate part is that Epiphany is a rare from Sword of Caine and you need a bunch of them.

In my opinion, the real problem with Advanced vamps is the design of the vamps themselves. The base or un-merged Advanced versions are often not good enough to be useful on their own, and the merged specials are often not worth the effort.

When working on the Create-A-Clan rules years ago, I talked with LSJ about adding rules for Advanced vamps. His recommendation was to give the base and Advanced versions their usual points to spend, but have the option to save some of those points and double them for the merged specials:

www.tenerdo.org/cac.html#attributes

It's possible that LSJ had the same approach when designing official Advanced vamps, but I never asked him about it. The V:EKN Design Team's approach is to create base and Advanced vamps that can stand on their own and be useful without merging and without saving any "points" for the merged specials. For merged specials, we go with something that feels appropriately worth merging for and adjust based on playtesting.

BenPeal wrote: 5 of the base vamp and one of the Advanced vamp in your crypt, 8 copies of Epiphany, and 2 copies of Wider View and you're good to go.

All of this, exept 2 WV, are not easy. You are polluting both your crypt and library with useless cards, mostly for a questionable gain (votes?).

elotar wrote:

BenPeal wrote: 5 of the base vamp and one of the Advanced vamp in your crypt, 8 copies of Epiphany, and 2 copies of Wider View and you're good to go.

All of this, exept 2 WV, are not easy. You are polluting both your crypt and library with useless cards, mostly for a questionable gain (votes?).

5-6 copies of a star vamp in your crypt is perfectly normal. There are plenty of decks in the TWDA built around star vamps. The Wider Views help clean up your uncontrolled region later in the game if you're looking for another support vamp. Most of the time the Advanced version is still in your crypt after your initial draw, so Epiphany fishes it out of there. Hardly polluting.

As for whether the gain is questionable, that depends on the vampires. Like I said, some of them aren't good. However, with Epiphany you're talking about a +2 stealth action to gain something and untap. Getting, say, a 2-vote title at +2 stealth and untapping is remarkably good. But again, that gets back to the crypt cards in question.

As for polluting your library with Epiphanies...They're freely cyclable. You have a support vamp take a +2 stealth action and untap and the card is gone from your hand.

BenPeal wrote: 5-6 copies of a star vamp in your crypt is perfectly normal.

I think 5 is max (even maybe tech "5 in 13") and it's still not good, but necessary if your deck can't function without it. But still keeping in mind that having star vampire is always a disadvantage (everything else equal).

BenPeal wrote: Getting, say, a 2-vote title at +2 stealth and untapping is remarkably good.

Than we came to the second part of the question - +2 votes if cool if you got something like several 5 cap dorks playing fee stakes, but not so much for a star deck, where you can just put some voting powerhouse like Lutz or Arika.

BenPeal wrote: You have a support vamp take a +2 stealth action and untap and the card is gone from your hand.

and replaced with other Epiphany They are not coming one at a time at the middle of your turn, they will be clogging your hand during important combat, or when you is in need of drawing bounce, or just when you haven't enough minions to discard them all.

I think this is the only TWD which really used epiphanies:
www.secretlibrary.info/index.php?deck=view&id=19596

And it's because Kemintiri gaines +3 votes as vell as "justicarness" for merging, no combat in the meta and, presumably, in the fear of contesting Lutz/triphosa who still are better.

Really got no mood for working, so the list of vampires which are fine for merging in "Ben Peal's way" (from 37 with merged abilities)

Sarrasine - corruption counters are cool, but it's unnoing to put them
Tegyrius - +3 votes and parity shift good for assamites
Valerius Maior - you can save like 8 pool for not being infernal

...

that's all?