Skip to main content

My Favorite Feature in Amaranth

If you haven't used it, Amaranth is a deck builder and card search utility.  You can find cards, build and save decks, and export them in a variety of formats.  And if you've ever played a deck and tweaked it, then you need to know about Amaranth's Versions ability.

We'll take a look at a deck that I have played for many years: a !Toreador Undue Influence bleed deck.  It's gone through many iterations.  I recently added two cards to bring it to 72 for Rudolf Scholz's V5 for Vendetta event.  The Archon Investigation proved very useful in round one of that event.  It's always useful to look at a deck's history.  You can recognize changes in your playstyle, the meta, and other effects that have altered your concept.

So what is the Version ability?  Quite simply versioning a deck allows you to keep a single copy of the deck saved on the server.  There's no need to title your decks v1, v2, etc. any longer.  That single deck can have many versions and each version can have details.  I like to list why I made changes, but you don't really need to fill in that field if you don't want to.

How to Version a Deck

To version a deck, simply click on Versions.

Click Tag This to create a new version of the deck.

Enter any text you think is appropriate for the new version.

Comparing Versions

When you click on a version in the Versions pane, you'll get a comparison with the current version of the deck.  You can see that comparison here.

If you want to compare two different versions, you'll need to make one of them the active version.  You start by clicking on the version that you want to make active.

Then, click Use.

Now you can open the Versions pane again and compare the active version (that you just replaced) against any other version.

If the current version is not tagged, Amaranth will warn you.

Seeing Your Deck Over Time

As I mentioned at the beginning, it can be really interesting to review a deck over the course of its lifetime.  I invite you to check out Undue Art Scam.  You'll notice that the name is no longer accurate: the deck doesn't even contain any Art Scam any more.  If you review the deck, it gone from 90 card down to 60 and back up again.  The crypt is rather different, including having Maldavis (ADV), at one point.

Do you have a deck with a long history?  How drastically has it changed?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The V5-Only Format

The idea of a V5-only format has been floated by BCP for some time.  Ideally, this is a way to level the playing field for newer players.  Some folks have, of course, lost their collective minds about the idea.  More ways to play VTES and easier formats to bring in new players sounds exactly like what the doctor ordered to me. Steve has been running several online tournaments this year, a subset of which were in the V5-only format.  I wasn't able to make his earlier V5-only events, but was able to make this last one.  Here are my thoughts about it.  Is V5-only worthwhile?  Let's find out. What I Played I had a few ideas that I wanted to experiment with: Queen Anne + obf/pre Princes, using Banishment (she's one of the oldest vampires available); Malk voters; Banu voters; and Nos Barons.  I'm glad that I didn't pick either of the first two as both of those showed up in the event.  I've previously won with a...
2 comments
Read more

Contesting Changes That Didn't Happen

It's been more than 18-months since Black Chantry Productions attempted to test a rule change for vampire contesting.  Given that my NDA has expired regarding that test and we have a new format in open playtest, I wondered if it was time to talk about resurrecting the potential change. Proposed Change This text is from the rules test and not my invention.  The highlight section is the proposed change: At any time during this phase, if a vampire has at least as many blood counters as their capacity, you can move that vampire face up to the ready region, unlocked. The counters are kept on them to represent their blood.  Counters in excess of his capacity drain off immediately as usual. If the vampire grants additional transfers, those cannot be used on this turn because transfers are gained at the start of the influence phase. If the vampire would contest, you may choose to remove it from the game instead of moving it to the ready region and distribute the pool on it among ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Let's Build: V5 Toreador with Fortitude

It's our great pleasure to provide the final Toreador spoiler for the new Fifth Edition boxed set.  Without further ado, let's meet Catalina Vega with artwork by Mitch Mueller.
Post a Comment
Read more