This article is based on many arguments inherited from its predecessor, the article which discusses issues about card limits. In that article, we looked at one of the main differences between Jyhad and Magic, that in Jyhad individual (common) Library cards are not a constrained game resource, the real resource constraints being Blood Pool, Sequence of Play, Minions, and other factors.
In this article, we'll look at another important resource constraint that has not been covered in the previous article - deck composition.
Before we start, I'll make the (unrealistic) assumption that we rarely run out of library cards, and thus can ignore this factor during the discussion. Except for some highly discipline-concentrated decks, this assumption is, to a certain extent, justifiable. This assumption is made for the sake of the simplicity of the argument.
Each card (type) makes up a fraction of your library. That fraction determines the frequency of your drawing the card initially or as a replacement, hence determining the availiability of the card when it is needed. Naturally, for a card that is important to your strategy, you would like to put in more copies so as to increase the chances that the card will be in your hand when you need it. Unfortunately, the total ratio of all cards cannot exceed 100%. Therefore, the optimal ratio of each card in the library must be determined by carefully considering the cost against the benefit of including a card in your library. The process of putting together a deck based on these considerations is commonly referred to as deck-building.
The implications of the maximum allowable deck size on deck-building strategy will be examined at the end of this article.
In Jyhad, we have a different picture. Once you draw a card, the card sits in your hand and displaces another card, until you get the card out of your hand - by either playing it or discarding it (or until the end of the combat/action/vote in which you play the card, in the case of certain cards). Therefore, the cost of including the card in the library is the hand-slot occupied by the card, /throughout the duration until the card can be legally played or discarded/. It becomes apparent that, since different cards require different resources (especially Sequence of Play requirements) to be played, the cost of including different cards are NOT the same. Because of the complexity of the elegant game system, a detailed analysis of the duration for which we would expect each card to occupy the hand is downright unfeasible. Instead of spending millions of words trying to do that, here we'll look at one of the many, many factors that determine such - a phenomena I call the `triangle effect'.
For the sake of simplicity, we'll look at the jamming effects of cards that, unfortunately, turn out to be entirely unplayable, so that the only way of getting it out of my hand is by discarding it in a discard phase. Suppose, after a discard phase, I have 1 such card in the hand. (Barring card-discarding effects such as the Barrens) the card will sit in my hand until my next discard phase. In other words, the card occupies my hand for 1 full turn. Now, suppose that, after a discard phase, I have 2 such cards in my hand. The 2 cards will sit in my hand for 1 full turn, plus one of them will be sitting in my hand for the next full turn. This amounts to a total of 3 (rather than 2) card-turns the 2 cards occupy my hand. In the case that I end up with 3 unplayable cards after a discard phase, simple arithmetic would show that the 3 cards would be occupying my hand for a total of 6 card-turns. In addition, if I draw yet another such card into the hand before I'm able to get rid of all 3 cards, more than 1 card-turn (rather than just 1) will be further occupied by that drawn card. This is a trigonometric, rather than linear, progression, as we know it. Hence the name of the phenomena.
Of course, in practice, we would not be filling our decks with cards that easily become unplayable. However, the same principle is applicable, although in a more delicate way. Since cards of a similar type often require the same game resources to be played, these cards would compete with each other for the same resources to be played. The most obvious example is Master cards. Since you can usually play only one Master card per turn, several Master cards getting into your hand at the same time would create a bad jamming effect, because they all compete for your Master Phase to be played.
Another example is Action/Reaction cards. In general, each ready minion can only play 1 action card, or some number of reaction cards each turn. Therefore, Action/Reaction cards all (or rather, mostly) compete for the same resource, namely, ready minions, to be played.
The above outlines one of the chief drawbacks of `permanent' cards, such as location, equipment, and retainers. Most of them are Master cards, which compete with all other Master cards, or action cards, which compete with most other actions and reactions. Many of them also has a pool cost, and in some cases this can cause one kind of competition as well (if you only have 8 pool, you don't really want to play a SMG after playing a Magnum .44). In addition, Unique cards create an additional problem: once you get one out, all the rest becomes effectively unplayable, competing for your discard phase. Other permanents sometimes can reach `saturation' and become unplayable too: you don't really need more guns than minions, for example.
One might wonder, in the face of the above `triangle effect', why combat decks are so effective in general. This is because the `triangle effect' is only one of the many factors that determine how long a card sits in the hand. For combat cards, the combined effects of the following factors far override the `triangle effect':
This is pretty straightforward. Estimate the probability that the card is effectively playable, and multiply this by the expected improvement playing that card would have on your game position. Not that either of these estimations are easy, but this is much easier than trying to estimate the cost (the duration for which the card sits in the hand).
Needless to say, the actual game resources spent to play that card (Master Phase, blood, minion action, ect.) has to be taken into account when trying to calculate the benefits of the card. In this way, a discarded card has the sole (negative) effect of (usually) expending one of your Discard Phases.
Let's first look at the cost of putting a WwEF in your library. WwEF requires a tapped minion to play. In general, this is a very abundant resource in the game. Although a WwEF displaces a combat card in combat (including the combat which results from blocking facilitated by the WwEF), it does not do so any more than any other action or Master card. Since the card does not compete with most other Action/Reaction cards, but instead with only itself and other cards which have untapping effects, we can at least conclude that, in general, the cost of including a WwEF in the library is less than that of including most other Action/Reaction cards.
Looking at the effect of playing a WwEF, we first observe that playing the card does not use up a substantial constrained game resource, as is the case with most other Action cards (which taps the playing minion), some Reaction cards, and all Master cards (which use up a Master Phase, and sometimes pool). A tapped minion is, in the game, generally otherwise useless as a resource until untapped. The effect of the card is that the tapped minion can now act like an untapped one. Thus, a constrained game resource (the near equivalent of an untapped, ready minion) is generated. This resource can serve to allow reaction cards to be played. In addition, the minion can also attempt to block an enemy action. Since blocking generally requires an untapped minion, the need to block actions compete with the playing of action cards. Therefore, a WwEF retroactively serves to alleviate the jamming effects of action cards, in addition to reaction cards and, in some cases, combat cards.
The Sequence-of-Play requirement for playing a WwEF is, unfortunately, dependent on local ruling. If it can be played on any enemy action, then this is virtually no restriction once your turn is over. In the other case, where house rule requires that a legitimate reaction card or blocking attempt be made with the playing of the card, this is still in many cases an abundant resource.
From the above, we can conclude that, Wake with Evening's Freshness is a very efficient card, which `cost' very little (relative to many other cards) to include in the library (unless over-used to the degree that it competes heavily with itself), can frequently find chances to be effectively played, and often significantly improves the player's game position when played.
Both have the edge over WwEF that they actually untap the vampire, and that they are immediately replaced. Rat's Warning has the added benefit that it provides an optional press at Superior, and Cat's Guidance can optionally be used as an intercept card at Superior. These are significant benefits over WwEF. However, the use of both of them are more restricted than WwEF.
It is hard to give a haste evaluation as to which card is generally better. However, the Animalism untaps do require an additional resource - the skill of the playing vampire.
Studying the function of the Animalism skill, it is not as concentrated as some others, such as Celerity or Auspex. Animalism serves to carry out a bunch of miscellaneous functions in the game, with some half-hearted intercept. Untapping seems to be one of its main strengths. Therefore, it would be fair to say that the strength of the Animalism untap cards does not stem from the cards alone, but rather is drawn from the strength of the Discipline. The Animalism untaps allow you to utilize a skill, of which usefulness in other aspects is (in my opinion) quite limited.
When constructing highly concentrated combat decks, the maximum allowable deck size has to be taken into account. In this case, it may not be advisible to construct a deck based solely on the above mentioned cost-effect considerations of the cards. Basically, here the cost (that the card may sit in the hand for a longer period of time) may not be as important as the net effect of each card.