Thoughts About the Current Situation

Greetings fellow Methuselahs,

I kinda didn't know what to blog about in the last couple of weeks. First the tournament I wrote about the last time was pretty uninteresting for me - I decided I didn't really want to get to Sweden at all costs so I chose my Salubri-only toolbox deck. The result was pretty much the one I expected. The deck itself performed well for an experimental and definitely non-tournament deck, on the other hand there were some unexpected setbacks (the Scarce penalty is a cruel mistress indeed, especially when applied cross-table!) and my final standing left a lot to be desired. But then again that was pretty much what I expected in the first place so no hard feelings, I still love the deck (...my precious!!).
(I took it to the tournament that took place last weekend again for different reasons and the result was very similar, at least I know for sure not to take the deck seriously. :-))

But that's not the point of this post.

The point is - the state of our beloved game has changed and the change is very probably irreversible to a large extent. The POD distribution system was confirmed as the direction VTES was going to take and so far it's been absolutely unclear (at least for me) whether it's gonna be the final nail in the coffin or it's just some precaution for the game not to meet its final death.
At the same time the Lilith's Blessing was banned for undisclosed reasons and undisclosed time period. The reasons are in fact pretty obvious - we all witnessed far too many games decided by the sheer power of the card that's really without equal, the only disadvantage being it can only be used once on each minion. There are many more or less interesting ideas as to how the card text should be reworked but most of them are pretty obvious. I don't consider myself experienced enough to judge the different solutions, in fact I'm not even really interested. The card itself was broken from the very beginning (A Bahari? What's that? Was it intended to be something bad or good or what?) and the solution came far too late for my liking.
However there are some positive aspects about the changes - f.ex. Ashur's Tablets + Liquidation won't be the ultimate solution for card flow optimization anymore and Villein is going to be the card it was intended to be in the beginning. We'll see how this would affect the global metagame, but I'm pretty convinced the TWD archives are going to see the renaissance of at least some interesting archetypes; we might even see some very new approaches to card and/or blood/pool management.

Next time I'm going for the win. Fellow Methuselahs, beware! :-)

Carpe noctem.