My two cents on the substitution rule:
@Sevs: I have to admit that even though what we did with the nymphs was perfectly legal, I do agree that something similar should be prevented in the next war, because it exploited a loophole in the format.
Perhaps there should be a different kind of substitution penalty, one that always applies, and that applies whether you win or lose. (Right now, subbing and losing costs nothing, only subbing and winning, and in round 8, subbing was free) Maybe something like 'discard 3 cards from deck to substitute a game. That way, for a substitute win, you'd discard 3 and salvage 6, and for a substitute loss you'd discard 27. (assuming the 6 salvage/24 discard rules we've used most of this war)
This would also prevent people making 'strategic substitutions' to try and 'manage' their vault totals and get under the threshold to field a certain number of decks. I don't know how many teams have used this or even realized it's possible, but we did it once to avoid having to build an additional deck the next round if we won. (the game inthisroom subbed for me vs earth one round) There was no reason I couldn't have played that game; we just didn't want the +6 salvage if we won, because we'd have had to play an extra deck the following round if we did. That's also legal, but isn't in keeping with the intent of what substitutions were meant to do. I suppose you could still make such a strategic substitution even if you used my 'discard 3 regardless of win/loss' idea, but at least it would cost something even on a match loss.
@Rootranger: I actually agree with Root's point here (a rarity for us to agree on something!) but interestingly, I once proposed a solution to this very issue in one of the other subforums and he shot it down :p If there were ways that weren't based on luck to win nymphs and more ways to win marks (like more events giving them) then at least all of the skilled players would be able to obtain them, and this point would become less of an issue. The marks are only worth anything vs PC, and that's probably why nobody cares that Beef has played decks with multiple darkness marks; it's never affected whether he won or lost, and is extremely unlikely to ever do so.
@scaredgirl: Pretty much agree with this entire post; it's basically what I've been trying to say above. My sub idea would affect the situation where we had ffun play with 4 nymphs, by requiring a 3 discard penalty win or lose, but it wouldn't affect strategic substitutions at all, except by shifting the thresholds at which it becomes advantageous by 3, which still leaves the same problem.
What about this idea? If you substitute, we could use the same loss of salvage penalty that currently exists, but have subbing also modify the threshold for next round's # of required decks by the same amount.
Example: Team Zanzarino has 65 cards in their vault after round 3. By the current rules, this requires them to build one deck in round 4. (30-65 cards = 1 deck) If they win, they will salvage 6 cards and have a 71 card vault, and be required to build 2 decks, which might be undesirable. Under current rules, they could substitute to avoid that salvage if they win. Under my proposed idea, if they subbed, they would lose their salvage (just like this war) but the threshold for 2 decks (and all other thresholds) would drop by 6, so that they only need *60-92* cards to be in the 2 deck threshold, rather than 66-98 as normal, because of the sub.
This would (if I've considered every possibility) prevent strategic substitution by making it impossible to avoid a threshold by giving up potential salvage. A loss would be unaffected by these rules, but a win would be, and I think this would restore subs to their original purpose and prevent abuses. (or at least make people pay a cost to abuse the rules)
