OFFICIAL VEKN BRUJAH NEWSLETTER, AUGUST 2004 trust is the greatest human error empty used me as a vessel ruthless you're not known for subtlety 10.000 Maniacs: Scorpio rising (1985) ______ A new Theo ______ Strategy: Entering combat options ______ Deckbuilding: Adding-Anti cards, ______ Deck: Insight ______ A new Theo With Gehenna one of the most used brujah vamps has recieved a gift as an advanced version. An advanced version with incredible disciplines for a 7 cap, but a serious drawback of which we ought to take care if you plan to use his new skills. Let's review him: Theo Bell Brujah, Group 2 Capacity: 7 cel dom pre POT Camarilla: Theo may enter combat with any ready minion controlled by another Methuselah as a (D) action. If you control a ready prince or justicar, blood hunts cannot be called on Theo. Theo Bell (ADV) Brujah, Group 2 Capacity: 7 aus dom CEL POT PRE Advanced, Independent: +1 strength. If there are any Gehenna cards in play, any justicar or Inner Circle member can call a referendum to burn Theo as a +1 stealth political action. If that referendum is canceled or fails, the acting vampire goes to torpor. Ok, now we've got the option to use a super 7 cap, with a serious drawback. But basically he is the lowest capacity brujah with all in-clan at superior, "the fourth brujah discipline" at inferior and even Auspex. It's drawabck makes him quite easily burnable if you have little care of him, though, and forces us to target any inner circle or justicar around the table, as they might easily toss him to the bin. But he was already a target for all those vamps anyway, and being the advanced independent, simply avoids the need for a PTO, we already knew that. But the last line allows us to put some deterrent, as if they are not carefull enough, it might be them who end up burned/in torpor, we need to make some room for political defence, though, but a somewhat noticeable amount of delaying tactics/vox domini should a good defence, specially if we've merged him. But in this case, I'll suggest premeptive action anyway. If we dare to play him at all, the best way to play him is merged, of course. Stacking the rush abbility on top of his skills and +1 strenght makes him a formidable combatant. 2 copies of each, and a few gift of experience/effective management might do the point, and if we go for the AUS angle instead of the classic DOM, then we can tag him with jeremy mcneil, though at a cost of a somewhat limited crypt. The fact that the Adv version has AUS is significant, too, as we now have a nice ammount of group 2-3 brujah & friends with cel, pot, aus and pre, adn allows us for another kind of game other than the rush/deflect. Even better, as both jeremy ADV and the basic has build in rush, we can save a lot of rush cards and stack instead transient intercept, so we can build a block and rush deck. Adding a few ousting cards like dragonbound, fame, path of lilith, tension or simply a few iron glares or enchant kindreds and we are done. About the ousting cards for combat decks in Gehenna a few new cards have appeared and some of them demonstrated their effect fairly well. The fact is that, nowadays, you have too many options for the card slots usually dedicated to this in a combat deck. Being some of them master cards it stretches even more our possibilities so better to pick up the more versatile ones and diversify among them. Leadership vacuum is really cool if you manage to trigger it, but the fact that we lack stealth disciplines (generally speaking) we might find out that we are unable to dunk all the vamps that burn it at a given turn. ______ Strategy: Entering combat options As important as how or combat is is how we manage to enter combat. Being there mainly 3 options, rush, block and get blocked, the 3 have serious pros and cons, and being able to combine them somehow might be the key for successfull combat & else decks. Rush: You'll enter combat whenever you want to, but not allways with whom you'd like to. And if you don't pack some kind of other defence, or bounce, you are obligied to rush backwards in order to survive most of the games, and the various havens that exist might end with you if they are lucky enough to draw them soon. The rush actions end up in combat, so it at least offers you the opportunitty to cycle your red cards for other cards you might need at every stage of the game Intercept: You might chose somehow with whom you enter combat, thought if the deck is not well balanced you might get stuck with blue cards and no red ones or on the cotnrary, after a few blocks you might get struck with lot of combat and no reactions. To avoid this problem we ought to add some permanent combat or limit the combat chain to very few cards. The obvious benefit is that we won't need to act backwards continuosly. But relying exclusively on this has its obvious problems too: When facing unblockable decks or heavy stealth that we aren't able to match, we'll need other options to survive. Get blocked: The basic option is heavy bleed/politics in order to get blocked. This option has usually a better ousting power, but if your prey manages to deflect you, or you are has more votes, or gain more pool than you are able to remove, will end stalling your game. This option also has the problem that you won't enter combat with the vamps you want to, and might found expendable minions in front of you commonly. Achieving a combination of the above options in a combat deck isn't easy: As a combat deck, at least 40 cards of the deck ought to be dedicated towards this goal, stacking 10-15 masters leaves room for mainly one of the above options, unless your crypt supplies somehow one of the options. But the key is ussually not to rely exclusively in one way, as you might get screwed by certain kind of decks whatever way you choose. And above all, it's unexpected. A few rushes in a block deck is always a good idea, as are unexpected intercept cards on a rush deck, or else. ______ Deckbuilding: *Anti* cards When building all-purpose decks, along with the question "how do I kill" should go the several "what if my prey/predator is[...]?" If your deck is a combat deck, then your combat module should be enough to survive/match almost all kind of combat. but should also force us to keep in mind what our main flaws are and how to solve them. Almost every deck has it's strong fields, where they try to excel any other deck of their kind. But in this game the balance is so extreme that we ought to build our decks against those archetypes that hurt us most. Ussually, experience with a deck is what teaches us most what decks bypasses our defences, if we pack any, and we might decide to add some anti cards, in order to harm them more than nullify their effect upon us. there are the classic anti-clan cards, most of which are pointless except if they combine with our main strategy: Cultivated blood shortage works really well for Attrition decks, so for malkavian dementia on trick decks, but none of them are able to save us. But it will be better if I focus on this month deck concept. We plan a deck around theo merged and other two brujah -menele and McNeil- so we ought to stack special defence for our vamp. Intercept might go well against most vote decks but the fact that Toreador Grand Ball and forgotten+elder exist forces us to add more anti-political cards. This might become an obvious problem if at our table there is no political deck, but that's a rather easy guess about your metagame. Adding 4 delaying tactics and a Vox domini, along with the intercept, might be enough. After all, it's the fear of ending up in torpor due to a delaying tactics what will save theo's life. Stacking anti cards forces us to add cycling cards. In this case I'll add a barrens instead of the overused dreams. Why? because this kind of combat decks really needs all cards it has, and the boost from dreams won't last through all the game. A real problem for this kind of combat decks are weenie decks of any kind. 3 cards are added against them: Carvers' meat packing (great with menele), nightmares upon nightmares and thirst. The 3 cards will enter play anyway, so we only need to be carefull and don't play the events without an opportunity to get rid of the "don't replace" clause at sight. Deck Name: Insight Created By: Tom Description: This month deck tries to apply all the above mentioned. Bassically, a bruise and block deck with a rather standard cel-pot combat set, and using the 3 key-vamps specials at full. As a mild intercept deck, we'll add some kind of permanent damage sources. As this dekc is, after all, a close combat deck, we'll add some copies of desert eagle, for they are cheaper and this deck doesn't have a good pool income. Use IG mainly when you rush, not when you block Crypt: (13 cards, Min: 20, Max: 38, Avg: 7,23) ---------------------------------------------- 3 Menele aus CEL dom POT PRE THA 10, Brujah:3 2 Jeremy MacNeil (ADV) AUS PRE POT cel chi 8, Brujah:3 1 Jeremy MacNeil AUS cel chi POT PRE 7, Brujah:3 2 Theo Bell (ADV) aus dom CEL POT PRE 7, Brujah:2 2 Theo Bell cel dom POT pre 7, Brujah:2 1 Volker CEL pot 5, Brujah:2, Prince 1 Rigby aus CEL pot PRE 5, Brujah Antitribu:2 1 Gengis aus cel pot 3, Brujah:3 Library: (90 cards) ------------------- Events (4 cards) 1 Dragonbound 1 Nightmares upon Nightmares 1 Thirst 1 Torpid Blood Master (15 cards) 1 Auspex 1 Barrens, The 3 Blood Doll 1 Carver's Meat Packing and Storage 1 Depravity 1 Elder Library 1 Erciyes Fragment, The 1 Fame 1 Giant's Blood 1 Gift of Experience 1 Guardian Angel 1 Rack, The 1 Vox Domini Action (4 cards) 2 Nose of the Hound 2 Sanguine Instruction Reaction (24 cards) 4 Delaying Tactics 2 Enhanced Senses 8 Forced Awakening 2 My Enemy's Enemy 2 Precognition 2 Quicken Sight 2 Spirit's Touch 2 Telepathic Misdirection Combat (40 cards) 4 Disarm 5 Immortal Grapple 1 Fast Hands 2 Psyche! 8 Pursuit 5 Pushing the Limit 5 Sideslip 5 Taste of Vitae 5 Torn Signpost Equipment (3 cards) 3 Desert Eagle And that's all for this month. Next issue we'll focus on politics. Smiling tom