Assamite Clan Newsletter Volume 2 Issue 9 (October 2001) Written by Todd Banister Review since last newsletter: Since the last newsletter, I have been experimenting with the new cards from Final Nights and have fallen in love with the Clandestine Contract and Provisions of the Silsila combo. These two cards have single handedly allowed me to begin playing with the elders of the clan, something that I previously had no success in doing. I am still in the learning process with the new cards but I can definitely see that my decks are becoming a lot more dangerous as I continue grow with the clan. Main discussion of October: Efficiency in actions Part One: Finding the need Like so many other wonderful games, if you peel away the multitude of layers within V:TES, you will see that at its core, Vampire is simply a game of resource management. Some of the most recognizable resources include a Methuselah's supply of blood, pool and cards within their library. But perhaps the most critical resource that a Methuselah has at their disposal is the actions of their minions. The only way a Methuselah can collect victory points is by careful use of these actions each turn. As most players know, the reason why weenie style decks tend to perform so well is due to the high number of actions that its minions have access to each turn. In order to compete with the weenies, decks that focus on larger capacity vampires need to be more efficient with each of their relatively few actions. With a greater number of disciplines, special abilities and votes, larger vampires tend to do well as long as the deck is given enough time to set up. So how do the Assamites stack up against the other clans in regards to actions? Honestly, not as well as I would like. Take a look at this list: "Top 10" in average capacity of vampires within a clan Lasombra - 6.60 Followers of Set - 6.54 Ventrue - 6.54 Assamite - 6.45 Tzimisce - 6.40 Toreador - 6.36 !Toreador - 6.33 Tremere - 6.29 !Malkavian - 6.26 !Tremere - 6.23 Every clan in this list except for the Assamites (outside of the lone Spying Mission) has access to a discipline(s) that contains actions and action modifiers that enhance bleeds. Obviously, the Assamites will have to take a ton of bleed actions for one in order to match what the other clans can do with just a few actions. Another interesting fact from this list is that every clan in the top eight besides the Assamites have access to either a minimum of 12 permanent votes or have Presence as a built-in discipline. With only six permanent votes, the Assamites are going to have a difficult time keeping up politically with these clans. Also, note that every clan below the Assamites on the list has Auspex as a built-in discipline, which gives them a strong defense. Being without a built-in bleed, defense or vote enhancing discipline (and being the fourth largest capacity clan) means that in order for the Assamites to survive, the Methuselah needs to be creative and get more out of his minions that anyone else. With an average capacity within the clan of 6.45, typically the Assamites are not going to influence a horde of minions into play. Chances are that you will be controlling only three or four assassins during a game. Can you really fight with only three Assamites? Sure, but its definitely not going to be easy. How important is getting that fourth assassin out? More than you might think - let's take a look. (Note: the following paragraph deals only in raw generalities. I fully understand that you're not going have all of your vampires out on turn one and such. It's only to prove a point.) If you control 3 vampires over a course of a normal game which lasts 12 turns, you can expect to have up to 36 available actions. But of course you can't take that many actions as you are typically going to have to leave at least one vampire untapped in order to block. This will reduce the total number of available actions to around 24. In a normal game, a few of your vampires will need to hunt from the results of combat and you might even expect to perform a rescue action or two. This further reduces the number of available actions to around 20. And again, in a normal game you will need to bleed your prey for around 12 to 15 pool in order to collect your hard-earned victory point. If you're only bleeding for one each time, this leaves you with only 5 to 8 "open" actions and that's not a lot of room for error. On the other hand, if you instead have 4 vampires to work with, the number of "open" actions increases up to 15 to 20. This can make a huge difference in the game and your victory points with only one more minion on your side. Part Two: Finding the cure Within the game, there are a lot of cards that can assist in the clan's quest for more efficient actions. Just a few of these include (outside bleed enhancers): Action - Atonement, Eternal Vigilance, Guard Duty Action Modifier - Freak Drive Combat - Form of Mist, Majesty, Psyche, Shadow Body and Telepathic Tracking Master - Metro Underground Reaction - 2nd Tradition, Cat's Guidance, Forced Awakening, Obedience, Rat's Warning and Wake with Evenings Freshness Each of these cards allow a vampire to either block multiple minions, continue blocked actions, untap in and out of combat, and even restart completed combats. All of these allow a single vampire to act or simulate acting multiple times in a single round on a given turn, thus increasing the efficiency in the minion's actions. But, in order to maximize the efficiency of a single card, the desired effect should be permanent. When taking a look at the permanents, you will see that they are geared towards assisting in blocking rather than acting. Atonement is the best weenie-buster in the game but it does take a lot of work in order to set it up and to continue to protect it. Guard Duty is a nice card that allows one minion to protect a single location from directed actions multiple times. Eternal Vigilance allows a single titled Sabbat vampire to untap and attempt to block multiple minions per round. Metro Underground allows you to untap one of your vampires at the end of your turn for the cost of one pool. These are all very useful cards but it would be great if there was a permanent that allowed your vampires to take multiple actions per round. Actually, there is just such a card… Rutor's Hand: Action, Thaumaturgy, 1 blood (Inferior) Put this card on the acting vampire. The vampire takes 1 aggravated damage (damage not preventable). Beginning with your next turn, the vampire gets one additional untap during each of your minion phases for the remainder of the game. (Superior) As above, but the aggravated damage may be prevented by burning 3 additional blood. Who can use it: Being that Rutor's Hand uses Thaumaturgy should not pose the Assamites too much trouble as a quarter of the clan has access to it as an out-of-clan discipline. Of the six Assamites that have Thaumaturgy, all of them have superior Celerity, five of them have Quietus and Obfuscate (four each at superior) and three of them even have inferior Auspex. Perhaps the most interesting fact of all may be that four of the six have an inherent +1 bleed accounting for all of the extra bleeders in the clan. How to make the action successful: In order to make the Rutor's Hand action successful, you will need to understand the two drawbacks of the card. First, the action only carries +1 stealth and thus will probably need additional stealth in order to be completed, as other players are sure to try to block the action. Second, if the card is played at inferior, the acting vampire takes a point of unpreventable aggravated damage and is then sent to torpor. Obviously, once in torpor you will need to do everything you possibly can to get the vampire out in order to prevent them from being burned by diablerie. Thus, unless you can play the card at the superior level, you will need to have multiple vampires out before you should even attempt this action. Another point to think about is to always play Rutor's Hand as your first action in the round so that you have as many rescue from torpor actions as possible. If possible, try to use rescuers that have Celerity and Quietus in order to give any potential blockers something else to think about. Sometimes the threat of them and combat is enough to scare away the block attempts. Also, two excellent cards that will assist you in bringing the Assamite out of torpor include Humanitas and the Catacombs. Each of these cards grants an additional stealth on the rescue attempts and lowers the cost by a blood. If the card is played at the superior level, you can bypass the potential risks of visiting torpor by burning an additional three blood during the action. By adding a few Thaumaturgy skill cards and Veneficorum Artum Sanguis into your deck, you should be able to make the Rutor's Hand a much safer card to play. One final point, you can conceivably save blood on the acting vampire by playing the card at the inferior level, but if you have a choice, always choose to play it at the superior level instead. The risk is simply too great for the minor savings in blood. Remember that you can always get the blood back later but you can't get your vampire back if he has been destroyed. How to use it afterwards: Once you have access to the extra untap that the Rutor's Hand supplies, you are probably going to want and regain some of the blood that the action cost you. Fortunately for the Assamites, regaining lost blood is not as difficult as it once was. Perhaps the easiest way is to go ahead and hunt with Succulent Vitae. For most of your Assamites, this will give back two blood and save an additional blood later when playing a Quietus card thus recouping most of the initial cost. Another way is to visit the loyal Ghouls of Plaza Moreria and retrieve the blood that they have claimed for you. Additionally, you can always try to take someone else's blood by picking a fight with them. Once in combat, you can either steal their blood using Theft of Vitae or play a Taste of Vitae after pounding on your victim using Blood Sweats or a Dagon's Call. But if its combat that you seek, why not reveal a Clandestine Contract and play a Provisions of the Silsila after sending the victim back to the grave thus filling up completely. Once your assassin is back to proper strength, it will be time to start taking advantage of the extra untap each round. Seeing how much work it is for the Children of Haqim to oust another Methuselah, it is almost mandatory to use one of your two monster's actions each turn to bleed your prey. With the Rutor's Hand, you will be able to sustain forward pressure on your prey. With the additional untap, you will be able to do any number of things including gaining pool by using a Khabar: Loyalty or a Heartblood of the Clan action, call a vote with the support of Alamut, create a baby using the Embrace, leave your assassin ready to block actions or even go beat someone up. One interesting thing that the Hand allows you to do is to reenter combat using a Clandestine Contract after the victim escaped from the initial rush action. This makes it very difficult for a famous vampire to continue to run away. So what are you waiting for? You don't need that extra hand or eye. Quickly go cut your hand off, pluck out your eye and give Rutor's Hand a try. I think your going to like what you find. October's Deck Idea Clinic: The Crypt: Al-Ashrad (9) CEL QUI THA aus obf Al-Ashrad (9) CEL QUI THA aus obf Al-Ashrad (9) CEL QUI THA aus obf Parnassus (7) CEL QUI aus tha Parnassus (7) CEL QUI aus tha Parnassus (7) CEL QUI aus tha Kalinda (6) CEL OBF tha Zahir (6) CEL OBF qui tha Yusuf (5) CEL aus qui obf Abd al-Rashid (5) CEL QUI obf Parmenides (4) CEL qui Fida'i (2) cel qui Total Capacity of Crypt: 76 Average Vamp Size: 6.33 AUS - 7 (all at inferior) CEL - 12 (1 at inferior and 11 at superior) OBF - 7 (5 at inferior and 2 at superior) QUI - 11 (4 at inferior and 7 at superior) THA - 8 (5 at inferior and 3 at superior) The Library: (90) Masters (15) 2x Blood Doll 2x Dreams of the Sphinx 1x Fame 1x Giants Blood 1x Heartblood of the Clan 1x Humanitas 1x Market Square 2x Minion Tap 1x Tajdid 2x Thaumaturgy 1x The Rack Actions (17) 5x Clandestine Contract 2x Embrace 1x J.S. Simmons 3x Khabar: Loyalty 1x Mr. Winthrop 4x Rutor's Hand 1x Ghouls of Plaza Moreria Action Modifiers (9) 2x Cloak the Gathering 5x Provisions of the Silsila 2x Succulent Vitae Combat (34) 1x Acrobatics 3x Blood Sweat 1x Exuding Blood 6x Flash 5x Psyche 6x Pursuit 3x Side Strike 6x Taste of Death 3x Theft of Vitae Equipment (4) 1x Ivory Bow 1x Kali's Fang 1x Sports Bike 1x Veneficorum Artum Sanguis Reactions (11) 1x Eagles Sight 1x Enhanced Senses 7x Forced Awakening 1x Precognition 1x The Spirit's Touch Deck Comments: As you can see by the crypt, only Al-Ashrad will be ready to play the Rutor's Hand at superior as soon as he is influenced out. Due to this fact and that Al-Ashrad will be able to play the Khabar: Loyalty on anyone else in the crypt makes him the perfect vampire to bring out first. There is also a nice supply of forced awakenings in the deck to help out in the early stages of the game when he will be your lone weapon. Each of the other vampires with Thaumaturgy will need either a skill card, use of the Veneficorum Artum Sanguis, or several rescuing vampires before they can try to gain the free untaps. Within the library, you will see that this deck has a lot of different tools that you can use in a bunch of ways. The embraces are included to take Heartblood actions, rescue attempts with Humanitas and sacrifice themselves by committing diablerie after the Tajdid is in play. You have a ton of ways to get blood back on your assassins using Giant's Blood, Ghouls of Plaza Moreria, Provisions of the Silsila, Succulent Vitae, The Rack and Theft of Vitae. Also included in the deck is a group of very well rounded combat cards capable of burning several victims and a small set of light intercept cards. By combining the Rutor's Hand with the Clandestine Contracts, you should be able to dish out a healthy supply of forward pressure on your prey. Coming in the next newsletter: I will try to break away from the old sure-fire ways in combat and try to bring the fight back to close range. I'll also continue to work on my new personal project for the Assamites and hopefully will be able to unveil some info to you shortly. So until then, make all the rivers run red... Todd Banister Prince of Atlanta Scribe of the Assamites Please send all comments and stories using the Assamites to: vtesratings@white-wolf.com