Suggestion:
Playing with a card limit provides the following benefits:
a) Increased Creativity
b) Helps players with fewer cards (ie those who have spent less)
c) Decreases the possibility of Boring Decks (ie cheese decks /
degenerate decks)
d) Cards that are "Broken", aren't "Broken" if you only see 4 per game
Response:
a) Reducing the number of copies of a particular card you can play in
a deck has nothing to do with increasing creativity. Some very
creative decks can only be made effectively with large quantities of
specific cards, ie Cryptic Mission, Corruption, Shadow Twin,
Enticement. If a card or strategy exists, you can make creative use of
it using any number of copies, the only question is how many copies
does it take for that strategy to be effective, and artificially
limiting or prohibiting those decks takes away from the creativity of
the game.
b) "If you limit the number of commons that someone can play, you
eliminate the effectiveness of someone who favors paying rent over
buying lots of cards." - jonathan bradford bailey 8/18/1995
If you are playing a vote deck that would like to increase its votes
with action modifiers, the new player with Eight Bewitching Oration
cards and Zero Awe cards is hampered completely by a card limit while
the person with a little more money spent and 4 Awe and 20 Bewitching
Oration isn't hurt by a 4 card limit at all. The one who spent more
money can put in 8 vote modifiers while the new player can only put
in 4. Clearly, a card limit does not help those players who have spent
less money.
c) A card limit does not prohibit a deck from being boring. If every
action of every vampire is the same (ie, bleed with an action card) it
is no more boring if the action card is the same card every time (32
Computer Hacking) or if it is a different card every time (4 Media
Influence, 4 Social Charm, 4 Legal Manipulations, 4 Intimidation, 4
Enchant Kindred, 4 Entrancement, 4 Propaganda, 4 Computer Hacking).
The only part that may be boring is that your deck may not be prepared
for 32 +bleed actions so you will be sitting out the rest of the game
waiting for the game to finish.
d) Whether or not a particular card is balanced is not in any way
affected by the number of times per game you see it played. As an
example, it is only necessary for a Return to Innocence to played one
time for a 11-17 pool swing to take place. This swing is too much for
one card, regardless of the number of times it happens in a game. As
such, card limits will not fix the card, nor will card limits prevent
this card from being "broken". As such, the card is banned and the
rest of the set is not affected.
For more views on card limits, read Mark Langdorf's archive of
articles on the subject. You can find that archive here:
http://www.io.com/~mlangsdo/RPGs/Jyhad/.