--------------------------- Brujah-antitribu newsletter September, 1998 --------------------------- This should be a short newsletter this month, since there's only one topic I want to discuss. How Do Rush Decks Win? ---------------------- First of all, the construction of an effective rush deck basically relies on making sure that the deck can do two things: 1. Get into a fight. Using cards like Bum's Rush, Ambush, Haven Uncovered, Bloodhunt, and so on, the deck can take actions to get into fights. 2. Kick some ass. Once you get into the fight, you need to be able to have an effective combat which reliably sends the opposing vampire to torpor. Include cards such as Immortal Grapple to take care of as much combat defense as possible. But even when the deck has been constructed in this way, it is still difficult to win with. There are a few reasons for this, as well: 1. Lack of defenses. Since nearly 100% of the deck is devoted to effective combat, there just isn't room for the standard kinds of bleed and vote defenses. Also, hardly any effective rush clan has Dominate or Auspex. 2. Killing vampires doesn't oust people directly. When you torporize someone's vampire, you have not caused direct pool loss. To really make the player lose pool, you need to torporize all of their vampires (with no blood), so that they are forced to influence new ones. And this can be eventually thwarted with well-timed Blood Dolls. 3. Offense-as-defense is inefficient. In many non-rush decks, your vampires can take all of their actions against your prey, and still be able to defend against their predator, with Wakes, untaps, and so on. But the rush deck acts, it doesn't react. It has to play a precarious balance between killing its prey and keeping itself from being killed by its predator. So, with all of this stacked against you, the player of a rush deck needs to be rather savvy in order to win. Here's some tips: 1. Kill early, kill often. The nastiest way to kill your prey is to prevent him from taking any actions. Kill each vampire as it comes out, and your prey will soon be dead. 2. Know when your predator is not a threat. It's often tempting to kill your predator viciously, but remember that this is almost always unproductive. Unless you have no choice, lay off your predator when you don't think she will be too much of a threat. Don't get carried away by bloodlust and screw yourself. If your predator is so crippled that she dies, you'll get a brand-new predator with lots of pool and no torpored vampires. If your predator has a few minions in torpor and not-too-much pool, they'll likely spend most of their effort keeping themselves alive. Besides which, if your predator is a good player, they will know that keeping the pressure on you even when they're hurting is a good way to get themselves killed. 3. One pool at a time. That's the way the rush decks kill people. But if you're stuck without a rush card in your hand, don't waste an action. Bleed your prey. Maybe they'll block, and you'll get the combat you want. If they're Deflection-happy, you don't really have a choice but to rush the vamps with dominate/auspex, but otherwise each pool lost brings them closer to dying. Another idea for these idle actions: Inverary, Scotland. If your small-capacity minion is just sitting around and can't kill anyway, have him go pump up his bleed. Then, next turn if he's _still_ idle, he can bleed for more. Inverary doesn't cost pool like Laptop, and the blood paid can of course be regained through Taste of Vitae and/or simply hunting. 4. Focus on the job in front of you. While it may be tempting to go beat up that IC member across the table, don't do it unless you directly benefit (like from an Anathema). You can always _threaten_ to do it (idle threats are great), and perhaps you can get them to vote in your favor on a bloodhunt vote. ----------------------------- Comments/other suggestions? James -- James Hamblin hamblin@math.wisc.edu V:EKN FAQ Maintainer http://www.math.wisc.edu/~hamblin/faq.html "We _do_ kill people... that's sort of our raison d'etre" -- Spike