Assamite Clan Newsletter November, 2005 By Tom Duncan This month's focus: The Contract Mechanic While the Samedi have the Dirty Contract, it is our Assamites who are famous for being hired killers. Along with Quietus and the inability to commit diablerie, it is what distinguishes our clan from the rest. A contract is fairly limited in scope - it allows one Assamite to enter combat with one chosen minion. One advantage the contract has over transient 'enter combat' actions like Bum's Rush or Ambush is obvious - your vampire gains an ability for the rest of the game, not just this turn. It's the same kind of advantage equipping with a Meat Clever has over using a Lucky Blow. However, I have found that using contracts might not save you very many card slots if you plan to get the most out of them. A dedicated rush deck using any other clan will likely need 10-14 rush actions, depending on library size and individual vampire's text specials. When you switch to contracts, you will probably want to use 9-12 cards. Unlike a Haven Uncovered, a Contract does not have a burn clause. Unless it is thwarted when played, the target can only remove it by taking a Violation of Trust action. If you are EVER playing in a game and someone plays, or even discards, a Violation of Trust, please note the date and time and e-mail me with the players name and decklist @ veknpontiac@yahoo.com. That I gotta see. Aside from the permanent rush action, what does the contract mechanic do for us? Sadly, not a whole lot. While the ability to enter combat is a major advantage for a clan with excellent combat proclivities, there are currently only two cards that require a contract in order to use, discounting the aforementioned Violation of Trust. Provision of the Silsila Type: Action Modifier/Reaction Requires: Assamite This card can be played as an action modifier or a reaction card. Usable by a tapped vampire. Only usable after a combat involving this Assamite and an opposing minion with a contract naming this Assamite. Only usable if the opposing minion is not ready and this Assamite is ready. This Assamite gains enough blood from the blood bank to reach full capacity, and the contract is burned. This is an excellent way to take advantage of the contract mechanic, if not the best reason to use it. Provision allows your assassin to fill up regardless of the amount of damage done or capacity of the opposing minion. Theoretically, an empty Ur-Shulgi could gain 11 blood for successfully inflicting 1 damage on a Courier. That's right - contracts can target any minion, even Allies. Well, except the one that can't... While the Provision provides an excellent benefit for using a contract, it also burns the contract in the process. If you didn't burn the target minion, you will need to put another contract on it if you wish to continue hunting it. I like to compare Provisions to Taste of Vitae, which is commonly used in Potence decks to counter hitback. Since the Assamites are thin on vampires with [POT] (none) and [pot] (3+ Web of Knives Recruits), but very adept at generating aggravated damage and/or additional strikes, efficient use of Provisions can be vital to keeping your assassins ready for battle. As Provisions is a Rare card found only in Final Nights, you may have to combine it with Taste of Vitae to consistently recoup blood lost during combat. Non-Assamite players in your area may not value their Provisions all that highly, so be sure to look for any trade opportunities! Whether or not our Assamites have Potence, we can use a contract to increase our hand damage with: The Khabar: Honor Type: Combat Requires: Assamite Only usable if this Assamite has been chosen for a contract on the opposing minion. Strike: make a hand strike at +3 damage. This can be devastating when you catch your opponent unprepared to deal with it. It is a hand strike, and so cannot be used in conjunction with a weapon strike. That is not to say, though, that a weapon cannot be used on additional strikes, or vice versa. Should you not have three Honors in your hand, beating your opponent with a Weighted Walking Stick and using an Honor as your finishing move on additional strike two or three is perfectly acceptable. Conversely, using Honor to burn off your opponents blood and ensuring their destruction when you land a hit with Kali's Fang on your additional strike has a bit of pinnache, as well. I advise combining this strike with a Shadow Feint, to help it strike true. Since both Provisions of the Silsila and The Khabar: Honor require a contract to use, you will need to be sure that your Assamites have plenty of contracts to fulfill if you intend to get maximum value from them. In the good old days of Ancient Hearts, you could only play a Contract as a master card. Given that combat-heavy decks tend to run a low number of masters, and that they also tend to rely on masters to deal pool damage, heavy use of master-card Contracts is a difficult proposition at best. Fortunately, with the release of Final Nights, you could pay a pool and take an action to enter into a Clandestine Contract, which puts a contract on a vampire of your choice AND gets your Assamite into combat with that vampire. Though the pool cost can be a bit expensive, especially for combat decks (which don't usually have much potential for pool gain), Clandestine Contract is much less likely than a master-card Contract to jam your hand during your minion phase. It has the benefit of providing two separate 'enter combat' action options when played. If you can multi-act with the Assamite who played the Clandestine Contract, you use the card's text to enter combat with the same minion again, without breaking the 'no repeat action' rule. Most recently, Kindred Most Wanted introduced a new kind of contract: Haqim's Law: Judgment Type: Master Requires: Assamite Master: contract. Trifle. Tap a ready Independent Assamite you control to put this card on a younger vampire. Every Independent Assamite is considered chosen for this contract. Any Independent Assamite may enter combat with this vampire as a +1 stealth (D) action. It will only benefit Independent Assamites, so don't try to utilize it with Tegyrius, Yazid, Joe Hill, Reza Fatir, Micheal DiCarlo, or Tariq Advanced. Additionally, this is the contract that can't target Allies, as the text specifies it must be placed on a younger vampire. While it's drawbacks are significant, Judgment's Trifle status means you can still use your master phase action to do something useful, like Minion Tap the elder Assamite you just tapped, or play Tension in the Ranks or Fame to capitalize on the dizzying display of combat prowess you are about to unleash. Remember that the contract will stick, so even if you want to wait a turn so that your tapped elder can get in on the fun, you can. If you plan to use Provisions to gird your assassin in the combat, don't let any of your opponent's Independent Assamites beat you to the kill - they are all chosen in this contract, too! Judgment is an excellent contract if you are using several mid-cap Assamites or running a star assassin and weenie horde full of maneuvers and Taste of Deaths. If you have Fame on the targeted minion, you could be able to dunk and rescue it several times, doing significant Pool damage to your prey that he cannot reduce, deflect, or cast votes against. Because Judgment chooses all Independent Assamites for a contract, they can all use Provisions and/or Honors when in combat with the chosen minion. Judgment is a rare found in the Kindred Most Wanted expansion set, so it's not likely you will have an abundance of them to include in a deck. Again, sniff around in other players' collections and see if you can come up with a trade. So how to best utilize the Contract mechanic for your Assamites? Let's look at one way we can try to do just that: Deck Name : Sign on the Dotted Line Author : Tom Duncan Description : Crypt [12 vampires] Capacity min: 2 max: 8 average: 5.75 ------------------------------------------------------------ 3x Fatima al-Faqadi 8 CEL OBF QUI aus for Assamite:2 2x Parnassus 7 CEL QUI aus tha Assamite:2 2x Yusuf, Scribe of A 5 CEL aus obf qui Assamite:2 2x Parmenides 4 CEL qui Assamite:2 1x Kalinda 6 CEL OBF tha Assamite:2 1x Abd al-Rashid 5 CEL QUI obf Assamite:2 1x Kanya Akhtar 2 cel Assamite:2 Library [90 cards] ------------------------------------------------------------ Action [9] 7x Clandestine Contract 2x Web of Knives Recruit Action Modifier/Combat [4] 4x Swallowed by the Night Action Modifier/Reaction [4] 4x Provision of the Silsila Combat [39] 4x Acrobatics 3x Blur 4x Thin Blood 6x Khabar: Honor, The 5x Psyche! 5x Pursuit 4x Side Strike 5x Taste of Vitae 3x Weighted Walking Stick Equipment [6] 1x Bowl of Convergence 1x Ivory Bow 1x Kali's Fang 1x Meat Hook 1x Poker 1x Sengir Dagger Master [15] 1x Auspex 2x Contract 1x Depravity 2x Fame 2x Haqim's Law: Judgment 1x Market Square 5x Minion Tap 1x Tension in the Ranks Reaction [12] 6x Black Sunrise 1x Precognition 5x Quicken Sight Retainer [1] 1x Mr. Winthrop With this particular build, we are relying on three cards to help us achieve victory: Fame (x2) and Tension in the Ranks. Until one of these cards shows, we will want to gear up with weapons and defend our Pool the best we can, while Minion Tapping and completing contracts to use our Provisions or Taste of Vitae to recoup the blood on our vampires. This is a good time to assess our predator's strength and determine his strategy. We will probably have to pick one of his vampires to make an example of at some point - just be careful not to cripple him too badly or let your prey go unchecked for too long. Once we have a Fame or Tension in play, we can pressure our prey in earnest. We need to use the Minion Taps to pay for our equipment and Clandestine Contracts, to which we are dedicating 6 and 7 Pool, respectively. It is important to gauge how our opponent will react to us in combat; if we suspect significant resistance, it is better to Tap for 2 or 3 and survive the upcoming combats. If our opponent is likely to try to dodge, maneuver away, or S:CE, we can safely Tap for 4 or 5 from Fatima or Parnassus back to our Pool. Ultimately, you want to put a Contract into play almost every turn. There are enough weapons in the build to keep our hit men hitting pretty hard. If you have enough Khabar: Honors to include 10 or so in your library, you can probably scale the weapons back to just Kali's Fang, the Ivory Bow, and the Sengir Dagger for that extra aggravated oomph. With the mundane weapons, you may want to add Baal's Bloody Talons, as well. Keep in mind, though, that sending vampires to torpor with aggravated damage increases the effectiveness of Provision while decreasing that of Taste of Vitae. Much like school/your job and your obsession with VtES, you will need to find the proper balance in order to prosper. A general lack of superior Obfuscate in our crypt means no Disguised Weapons in this build, but the Weighted Walking Sticks will help make up for it. Since Fatima will be doing most of our dirty work, I would advise letting her equip our unique weapons using her special ability, and having our other vampires take actions to get them from her if need be. This way, the weapon won't end up in our ash heap if we are blocked. The Ivory Bow will be useful when we run into guns and other long-range combat strategies. If this is prevalent in your area, consider swapping some maneuvers for Selective Silence and set the range to close. Less Obfuscate is also the reason that Shadow Feint does not make our combat package. Should you decide to play more crypt choices with [OBF], I'd recommend adding a few. Once we have our weapons in place, we should be able to bully most methuselahs. We can use Khabar: Honor and Taste of Vitae to keep our vampires full, and aggravated damage from weapons will allow us to use Provisions of the Silsila and reap the benefits of Fame and Tension in the Ranks. I have included four Provisions in this build, though you could use more. Since Provisions are not so easy to come by, I have used more Taste of Vitae. I have found that one Provision for every two contracts is usually sufficient. If you have 6x Provisions, by all means use them. Any more, and you may end up holding two or three at a time as your viable combat hand becomes smaller and smaller. I have often had a Provision cycle into my hand during a combat, and am able to use it by combat's end. This is also why I haven't added any non-contract rushes to the build - they make your Provisions and Honors dead in your hand. Since we have a splash of [aus] in our crypt, I have included a splash of it in the library. This deck will certainly not be able to stop a dedicated stealth build, but we may catch enough intercept to interrupt our predator's gear-up or political actions, or keep our prey from rescuing his star vampire from torpor at a crucial moment. The surprise value of the intercept is nearly as important as it's utility, in this case. Of course, dropping the skill card will reveal your intentions to all but the dimmest of opponents, but gaining superior Auspex for Fatima or Parnassus makes your Quicken Sights all the more valuable. Alternatively, you can give the skill to Parmenides to increase his capacity so that he can take the Clandestine Contract action. This could be a particularly effective move if your predator isn't using a whole lot of stealth, or is walled up and trying to oust you with master cards or political actions. You might try Thetmes and Bajazet in place of Fatima and Parnassus in your crypt. This will make your crypt a little larger, but the ability to turn the Khabar: Honor strikes into aggravated damage could be very fun (for you), and you would need fewer of the non-unique weapons. You would of course drop the transient [aus] intercept from the library and use the slots for Shadow Feints, or perhaps [obf] stealth to bolster the Swallowed by the Nights and make sure your Clandestine Contracts find their targets. An added benefit would be that your Judgments would have a broader target base with Thetmes than they do with Fatima. Since you would be dropping auspex, replacing Yusuf with Zahir probably wouldn't hurt, either. Alternatively, you could use Tegyrius for his superior Auspex and +1 strength. COMBOS to watch for: *Parnassus + Depravity, Contract + Khabar: Honor = 6 damage w/hands *Fatima + Walking Stick + Special Ability (Kali's Fang?) = Gain two weapons and a nervous adversary You will likely need to adjust your Contract deck to fit your local game, of course. If you often run into Animalism combat, you are likely to be Frenzied, and should probably steer away from equipment or pack a Sire's Index Finger. If politics is rampant, you may need to use Confusion of the Eye/Delaying Tactics/Poison Pill. This version is rather focused, but after playing it, you should be able to determine for yourself if/how you should adjust it toward one different aspect or another. Whatever you do, remember to have fun, and I hope I have provided at least a little inspiration for you to take advantage of one our clan's defining distinctions: the Contract. Lastly, I'll mention a trick-of-the-trade shared with me by veteran Assamite player Jeff Kuta: If you find yourself in a tough spot with one of your star assassins - low on blood and unlikely to survive combat with your prey's vampires, you can use the contract mechanic and a little salesmanship to get you out of a jam. Look across the table at your grandprey or grandpredator's minions. See anything you could remove from the ready region without much trouble? Try talking your ally into letting you play a contract on, and subsequently send to torpor, one of his weenie vampires. Promise to play a Provision of the Silsila to burn the contract, and to rescue the victim vampire from torpor with one of your other vampires. If you can send the vampire to torpor with aggravated damage (and thus minimal blood loss, if any), the proposition ultimately does not affect your ally's situation. You benefit by having your star vampire at full capacity, at the cost of two actions and two blood (the rush and the rescue). Why would anyone agree to such a deal? Surely your ally can name a minion of his predator or prey's that he would like to see removed from the ready region... The nature of the contract mechanic makes these kinds of deals very possible, and adds a layer of resiliency to your warriors that others just don't have. Oh, and one more thing: your cross table ally doesn't actually have to 'agree' to anything for the above trick to be just as effective! For more on Contracts, I highly recommend an article by The Scribe titled The Concept of the Contract, which can be found at his website www.thepathofblood.com. Look for the Strategy Articles selection on the left side of the home page. Find everything you need to know about playing Assamites at www.thepathofblood.com! Comments, Suggestions, and Submissions should be sent to: veknpontiac@yahoo.com