Introduction: This whole issue is dedicated to Dogma 60, a deck-building formula (or better: philosophy) I created a while ago that we are testing here in Munich at the moment. I was inspired by the Storyline format, by seeing what sort of deck many people play in Vienna, and especially by Martin Weinmeyer's creations - although I doubt that he would find any of his ideas about the game in this formula. It is also meant to build a framework for a new local meta game, one that offers new players more chances to get that necessary playing experience and not be ousted in turn four by another bleed nightmare, but without artificially lowering the threat level or even impose house rules like card limits. It is some sort of self-imposed limitation, but one that doesn't rule out effectiveness and on the way teaches some valuable lessons about deck building. It is not meant to be a rule, more as a challenge for anyone willing to get new insights into the game - be it a newcomer or a veteran player. Fiction: All things quiet on the Western front, I murmur to myself as I settle the sports back into the trunk of my rented Ford. The last two nights have been filled with numerous meetings, and each one I left with a greater feeling of authority. Strange thing, as my devotion to the Don's cause could be described as next-to-non-existent these days after the Kallista issue and all the pointless tasks over the last 18 months, the going back and forth between Munich and New York without ever knowing what the real deal is. Now all of a sudden I feel like Jesus Christ - "Only you, Dre, can save us now" sort of stuff . I stuff my corpse into the front seat of the car, prop Kallista's picture against the dashboard and light a cigarette. I feel quite satisfied: Not only is the Frankfurt problem solved, I also started some clandestine operation of my own. Nothing big, only some mortals keeping an eye open for a certain girl which seemingly had disappeared from my and all kindred's society, if it weren't for a cryptic email on an old business account back from my Munich days of last winter. The words still make my heart sink every time I think about them: "Just to let you know, I bear no bad feelings against you despite all that happened. We were both just toys in the hands of our lords. But at last I have found freedom. K." Not exactly a love letter, but still... I sigh, watch the empty parking lot and take another sip from my almost finished bottle of duty free Jack. Our paths will cross again, I vow silently - although not in the near future. The Cold Dawn has to move South, whereas the enigmatic woman - or more accurately her mail server - looms somewhere North from here. Well, those folks I recruited for my Independent Faction of the Cold Dawn should be on the watch - happy as they were about still being alive and having a good shot at staying alive for a while under the wings of the newly established authority. Man, Volker really pulled a crazy stunt here, although when I arrived Frankfurt was basically no man's land. He was eaten by the Chainsaw at last, R.I.P. and all that until it's your time again, the body count impressive even by the Don's standards, and until now no one dared to claim the city away from us Brujah. So I got headquarters to appoint someone suitable for the vacant position and advance that stuff through the official channels asap, gathered the remnants of our Central European Supply Chain and improvised a new organizational structure for them. I set up some of the arms dealers with bombs, they stay at home and listen to the radio, threatening the Big Bang to anything that moves without our approval. We caught one survivor from the other side, a sorry creature named Uriah Winter, he will lead us into what remains of the Ventrue structures in town. Yep, this was improvising, but nothing else I could do, and the Don seems to be reasonably pleased.. Now the car is ready to take me down to Munich - again. I insert a worn-out compilation tape labeled "Scrap Metal Pt. 2" into the stereo and make my way onto the Autobahn, old school EBM in my ears. No Kallista awaits me, just another search & destroy mission. This time we'll sort out the Stranger Among Us and his Cairo connection. "I want this nice and clean, with full coordination and support from HQ. We'll cover your backs here, you just get those figures out of the picture, capisce?" were the Don's instructions for this mission. I wonder why Theo Bell is involved then... Strategy: Here is the original Dogma 60 manifesto which I hammered together one night: Dogma 60 A little similar to the Happy Family formula, Dogma 60 is a set of guidelines to build a specific sort of deck. Dogma 60 does not pretend to result in more competitive decks, it's rather a philosophical approach to certain playing styles. The aim is to get to know the game from a different angle, especially to manage resources and play toolboxy. The rules for Dogma 60 are quite simple: 1. The library is 60 cards, with an emphasis on permanent effects (masters, equipment) 2. The crypt is clan-oriented and should have an average capacity between 4 and 5 3. The deck is designed to survive and should perform well even with a depleted library These rules are completely arbitrary, although (apart from rule 1) they pretty much reflect the way we played when I first started with Jyhad. Back in those days we had a card limit as well, note that Dogma 60 does not encourage this - but it leads to decks that are IMHO very much in line with the spirit CL players desire for their games. These are completely different from what I usually play today, i.e. neither focused nor relying on consistent card flow. In trying to play Dogma 60 decks I want to learn a couple of things: 1. How to design decks with a minimum number of cards 2. How to build better toolbox decks by finding out the "minimum defense module" required 3. How to value equipment, loquipment etc. in terms of viability in varying environments 4. How to value vampires, especially their built-in specials 5. How to handle "soft spots" in decks (other than just ignoring them) 6. How to win games by looking innocent ;-) Of course this concept limits the available strategies quite a lot, it puts a strong emphasis on the basic elements of the game: bleeding, blocking, combat. I do this on purpose to break out of the power deck building circle, which to me is basically trying to enforce your strategy upon the other players by limiting their ways to interact with you on their terms as much as possible (using extreme stealth or speed for example). These decks will have to bleed to oust their prey, they will get blocked and will have to fight, and they will have to block themselves and fight to survive. The name "Dogma 60" is intended to reflect the purist approach to movie making in the Dogme 95 group - play V:tES without special effects to tell the real story of the Eternal Struggle, so to speak... To be honest I designed a heap of decks according to these rules, mainly with the motivation to play clans that I normally always forgo. Not many of these creations have been thoroughly tested yet, with the exception of a Brujah Antitribu deck that I built first. This clan seemed to be one of the best suited as they have all those great masters available: Gang Territory, Waste Management Operations, Hungry Coyote, Heidelberg of course... The deck itself proved to be average in performance - once it died before doing anything effective, once it won a drawn out end game in real Dogma style against an Enticement deck where we both had run out of cards. It uses weapons to bruise and bleed, which doesn't really work well, and it spends a hell lot of pool on toys and vampires while the pool gain doesn't kick in fast enough. Further testing with other clans is therefore required. For this newsletter I put together some Brujah decks that follow the Dogma 60 (well, more or less), although I think that other clans are better suited for the formula. But I found that with a simplified "60 cards and permanents" goal in mind you can apply the idea to other types of decks - decks that are not necessarily toolbox, but instead evolve through two stages: concentrated build up and strong, early end game. Even with sixty cards you don't run through your library that quickly, but with Dogma 60 your deck will rely more and more on permanents as the game proceeds, thus giving you a theoretical advantage over decks that run out of steam when their card-intensive combos are exhausted. Marginal, I admit, but not hopeless. The biggest challenge is to get the necessary breathing space to actually do all the build up with equipment, retainers, allies etc. - that's where the Brujah Antitribu deck failed as the average capacity is close to five and the pool-gain not reliable enough. Decks: I have two decks for you this month, both following the Dogma 60 manifesto, though with different goals. One is a pretty regular Brujah Anathema deck which aims for permanent rush & kill capacity while collecting some reasonable pool on the way. It could well be 90 cards and probably should, but I wanted to make it lean and and forgo the Euro-Brujah angle for a change. Basically a test run to see how far the Dogma idea is workable for Brujah, especially to what extent permanent effects can replace the usual flurry of combat cards. The second deck is obviously a fun deck, which I designed according to Dogma 60 to get what I would like to call a proof-of-concept - a wacky mechanism implemented in a minimalistic fashion, with bolted on permanents like guns, HG/Blood Doll etc. Actually I struggled to bring this up to 60 cards... The idea started while thinking about more funny stuff to do with Arms Dealers. In this deck they are used to rush and torporize a well-prepared (Memories Of Mortality, Fame and Haven Uncovered) Uriah Winter (or whoever suitable your prey brings out - Royce would do fine) repeatedly and rescue him every time with Sense Vitality and/or Humanitas/Catacombs. So it's a Fame deck with the fallback option of weenie bleed. And yes, it violates Dogma rule No. 1, as it is a !Sal/Brujah/Uriah Winter deck... Another Theme for Destruction This is basically a low to medium capacity Brujah Archon/Anathema deck. As such and without any serious bleeding potential it plays rather slowly and tries to build up permanent rush (Archon) and combat (weapons) abilities, meanwhile cashing in on some poor anathema'ed worms. First time I played it I had neither Theo nor any prince in my starting crypt, PLUS a Tzmisce prey, so its performance was somehow not too impressive. Combat was effective, even without the toys that all got blocked by Dragos & Co., but not having an Archon or Theo for a long time really hurt - no rush, no fun. Biggest problem is obviously not getting the Archon votes through - with a dedicated vote deck on the table you must make deals like crazy, and if its sitting anywhere really near you you need Theo to make your points convincing. Still, S:CE seems to be a bit out of fashion here in Munich lately, so the weapons can make an impact - I used the IG mainly to prevent combat nastiness from my opponents. Crypt: (12 cards, Min: 10, Max: 27, Avg: 4,92) ---------------------------------------------- 1 Anvil dom CEL POT pre tha 6, Brujah, Primogen 1 Dre cel pot 3, Brujah 1 Hasina Kesi pot 1, Caitiff 1 Lupo pot 2, Brujah 2 Rake aus cel pot PRE 6, Brujah, Prince 3 Theo Bell cel dom POT pre 7, Brujah 2 Volker CEL pot 5, Brujah, Prince 1 Yuri cel pot pre 4, Brujah Library: (60 cards) ------------------- Master (12 cards) 4 Blood Doll 1 Celerity 1 Creepshow Casino 1 Depravity 1 Elysium: The Palace of Versailles 1 Guardian Angel 1 Heidelberg Castle, Germany 1 Rumor Mill, Tabloid Newspaper, The 1 Warzone Hunting Ground Action (1 cards) 1 Atonement Political Action (10 cards) 4 Anathema 4 Archon 1 Brujah Justicar 1 Praxis Seizure: Rome Reaction (5 cards) 5 Second Tradition: Domain, The Combat (27 cards) 5 Blur 2 Disarm 5 Immortal Grapple 6 Pursuit 4 Taste of Vitae 5 Torn Signpost Ally (1 cards) 1 Arms Dealer Retainer (1 cards) 1 Mr. Winthrop Equipment (3 cards) 1 Bastard Sword 1 Crimson Sentinel, The 1 Meat Hook The Winter Plague You don't have to use Uriah, if you prey has a suitable vampire in play (small, no combat disciplines), use her as the punchball. Wait until you have a good amount of minions and the necessary cards - you can play the Fame earlier, but you will need to bring the Haven and Memories into play in one go. So this deck really needs two master phases - that's why The Parthenon and the Rumors are there. Try to call a Rumors as early as possible, pass it with the edge and give everyone two master phases - so it might stay until you are ready to move. Bring out a steady flow of vampires, recruit Arms Dealers, equip, bleed a little, but try to look as innocent as a weenie deck can look. The Bombs are also for the Arms Dealers btw, so they can do some real suicide blocks - if the blocked minion S:CE or dodges, the Dealer may survive, if not he might take someone with him. Due to lack of cards (only two Memories Of Mortality, sigh) the combo will work only twice, but you can still swarm bleed seriously, so that shouldn't be the biggest problem you will face. I know that Salubri Antitribu and Brujah don't mix at all discipline-wise, and the Clan Impersonation/Sanguine Instruction is sketchy at best (only Wolf can do it out of the box), but even with one !Sal ready you can jump into torpor happily with any other minion, so don't be afraid to fight as long as you have the guns or bombs to take someone with you... Crypt: (13 cards, Min: 4, Max: 14, Avg: 2,23) --------------------------------------------- 1 Doris McMillon val 2, Salubri Antitribu 1 Kervos aus val 3, Salubri Antitribu 1 Wolf Valentine for VAL 4, Salubri Antitribu 1 Thomas Steed ani aus val 4, Salubri Antitribu 4 Uriah Winter for pot 1, Caitiff 1 Lupo pot 2, Brujah 1 Angel cel 2, Brujah 1 Vasilis pre 2, Brujah 1 Raziya Samater ani pot 3, Brujah 1 Dre cel pot 3, Brujah Library: (60 cards) ------------------- Master (20 cards) 4 Blood Doll 3 Fame 4 Haven Uncovered 1 Heidelberg Castle, Germany 1 Humanitas 1 Information Highway 1 KRCG News Radio 2 Memories of Mortality 1 Parthenon, The 1 Secret Horde 1 Warzone Hunting Ground Action (13 cards) 1 Army of Rats 1 Arson 3 Computer Hacking 8 Sense Vitality Political Action (4 cards) 4 Rumors of Gehenna Reaction (5 cards) 5 Wake with Evening's Freshness Ally (8 cards) 6 Arms Dealer 1 Loyal Street Gang 1 Slashers, The Retainer (1 cards) 1 Mr. Winthrop Equipment (9 cards) 3 .44 Magnum 3 Bomb 1 Catacombs 1 Ivory Bow 1 Sport Bike Final Notes: Thanks a lot for staying with me through this issue. The next newsletter will probably go along the lines of attempting the impossible, showcasing stealth + bleed and intercept decks using the Brujah. Please feel free to send me comments, ideas and praise to skaffen_amtiskaw@mail.ru. All abuse goes to /dev/null Kind regards Skaffen Chantry Elder Of Munich, Archon Of The Cold Dawn "The result is barren. An illusion of pathos and an illusion of love." (from the Dogme 95 manifesto)