VEKN Brujah Newsletter May 2003 Introduction: It's already late for May, the Anarch Set is looming ahead, and I don't expect to write anything remotely intelligent after just a few hours or days of contact with the new cards. So I thought to just try and get this month's issue done before the pre-relase mayhem starts this weekend, tie up some loose ends and release it into the significant background noise that is the speculation about a new set. Fiction: The verdict Not so much a word just a piece of paper It spells Armageddon, a being condemned to extinction We grab arms to get on with it (and enjoy our ignorance to emotions) Faced with our pathetic ecstacy She's screaming now... hounded down A trigger pulled, a click... You cannot create a black hole without getting sucked into the void (from Angel's scrapbook) New Cards: Leaked goodness - what the Anarch Set appears to do for the Brujah I never expected any extraordinary boosts for the Brujah from the Anarch set, and I'm positively surprised by what was revealed or speculated so far through the previews and some posts on this group. One and a half very solid vampire, with Juggler and the Advanced Jeremy MacNeil. Here are there card texts: Juggler Brujah 7, CEL DOM obf pot Camarilla. Once each combat, if the range is long, Juggler may burn 1 blood to strike: dodge and gain an additional strike. Once each combat, Juggler can burn 1 blood to get one maneuver. Juggler is rather interesting in that he combines the old and new school of Brujah fourth disciplines: Dominate and Obfuscate. In terms of standard clan disciplines he's a CEL/pot for 7, which is not much even if you take his "Pay one for Flash and/or Acrobatics" special into account. But the whole Dominate thing makes it worth, not only for Thoughts Betrayed in all decks that involve killing minions at long range, but for vanilla Deflections or Conditionings. Not to mention that he's our first real stealth-bleeder, though Obfuscate also has it's uses for more boom-bastic wepaons than Magnums... Jeremy MacNeil Brujah 8, AUS cel chi PRE POT Advanced, Independent: Jeremy can enter combat with a younger vampire controlled by your predator or prey as a d-action. Merged: Anarch Baron of Los Angeles The advanced MacNeil adds a second vampire with an inherent, yet slightly limited rush ability to our clan's ranks. Together with Theo Bell and Beast we are looking at a very promising core for a cel/POT rush deck that doesn't need any rush cards in the library - a significant boost for the mid- to high-cap variant of that strategy, as it frees up desperately needed card slots. The utitlity of the advanced mechanism itself remains to be seen. It's obviously good if your deck uses multiple copies of that character anyway, though the differing special abilities may explicitely prohibit one or the other card (as in the all-rush, no cards variant hinted on above). Note that the merged Jeremy is so far the only Anarch vampire we know of - and he brings them votes as well, which is what I deem most useful about the merging so far, since I want to leave all speculation about the usefullness of the Anarch mechanism itself out of this newsletter as long as I don't have a clue about what "being Anarch" offers. Finally one other card text was quoted on the newsgroup the other day - I don't have any confirmation at the moment, but it looks plausible: Sword of Troile: Unique melee weapon; 3 pool; Brujah; Strength +2 damage each strike. The vampire with this card has superior Potence and superior Presence. Each strike the bearer makes at close range must be with this weapon if possible. The bearer cannot use maneuvers to go to long range. Looks like some bait for us not to play .44 anymore... But seriously: It's not complete bollocks, but quite expensive and ironically boosting the disciplines you won't really need when wielding it. Complete overkill an Pascek, that's for sure, good stuff to boost the generic CEL/pot folks that runs around at 5 capacity, but that alone wouldn't tempt me to give the rest of the guys'n'gals, like, Bastard Swords. The restriction on strikes is quite harsh, especially against opponents that fight back - no "dodge and additionals"... There is some synergy with Brujah in the fact that our discipline booster actually is a weapon (so Al's Army Apparatus has it in store), still it's not concealable, so that probably spells Obfuscate in one form or the other. Decks: Two this months, both of them falling into the fun category. One is the long-promised Salubri/Brujah crossover affair, the other one an evolution from last month's "Vote with a bullet", which got prompted by a mail by Keith Thompson who basically asked "Why no Anathema?" In reply I guess I mumbled something insubstantial, but he got me thinking. It turned out to be not so trivial to turn a bruise'n'bloat deck (it had guns and Boons) into a rush'n'bloat deck, because there's some extensive infrastructure for the votes involved. Which I basically threw out in favour of a CEL/PRE crypt, Bewitchings and Oxford and a lot more determined rush. Deck doesn't like intercept walls and many voters on the table, for obvious reasons. Dope, Guns'n'Fucking In The Streets Crypt: (12 cards, Min: 11, Max: 24, Avg: 4,58) ---------------------------------------------- 1 Angel (Brujah 2, cel) 1 Antionette DuChamp (Caitiff 1, cel pre) 1 Black Cat (Brujah 5, CEL pot pre) 2 Brachah (Brujah 5, CEL for PRE) 4 Rake (Brujah 6, aus cel pot PRE, Prince) 1 Uma Hatch (Brujah 3, cel pre) 2 Volker (Brujah 5, CEL pot, Prince) Library (90 cards) ------------------ Master (15 cards) 4 Blood Doll 4 Celerity 1 Elysium: Palace of Versailles 4 Haven Uncovered 2 Oxford University Action (6 cards) 6 Bum's Rush Action Modifier (7 cards) 2 Awe 5 Bewitching Oration Political Action (12 cards) 6 Anathema 2 Archon 1 Brujah Justicar 1 Praxis Seizure: Barcelona 1 Praxis Seizure: Geneva 1 Praxis Seizure: Rome Reaction (4 cards) 4 Second Tradition: Domain, The Combat (39 cards) 8 Blur 7 Concealed Weapon 8 Flash 7 Psyche 4 Sideslip 5 Taste of Vitae Equipment (7 cards) 7 .44 Magnum The following deck is a typical result of an abstract problem - like the crazy "Build a deck that only uses Normal" challenges I remember from a few years ago: Combine Brujah and Salubri. Why? To close a triangle between the Salubri, Gangrel Antitribu and this newsletter that began in January. It's not a terribly obvious thing to do, as the discipline overlap is next to non-existant. Gwendolyn has aus/FOR to the Salubri's Auspex/Fortitude/Obeah, but the only sensible thing to do with her would be Tap/Renewed Vigor bloat, and that I thought would be too obvious. It's still Plan B for this master-heavy Fame deck though. The "secret tech" involved is Renewed Vigors often overlooked Obeah inferior, "move a vampire from torpor to his controller's ready region". It's outclassed by Sense Vitality in this respect, but the dual use for bloating makes the Salubri option viable IMO - especially with a Repulsion on top for +2 stealth rescues. The Brujah side uses Fortitude to Freak Drive and, well, be big so there's some stuff to Minion Tap. Combat module is the minimum for effective pummeling, TS/IG/Pursuit on a CEL/POT crypt. And before you all send your mails: In thought about Anathema/Vitae Block, but in all honesty I'll leave that to the Ventrue - heck, any clan that can muster some sort of synergy with the Salubri that goes beyond using Rake to call the votes and Nose of the Hound to do the victims in... Renewed Hatred Crypt: (12 cards, Min: 20, Max: 36, Avg: 6,67) ---------------------------------------------- 1 Gwendolyn (Brujah 11, aus CEL FOR POT PRE tha, Inner Circle) 2 Jimmy Dunn (Pander 4, CEL for POT) 3 Matthias (Salubri 7, AUS FOR nec OBE) 2 Maxwell (Brujah 9, CEL FOR POT PRE PRO) 2 Miriam Benyona (Salubri 5, AUS for obe) 2 Pug Jackson (Brujah 6, CEL for POT pre, Primogen) Library (90 cards) ------------------ Master (23 cards) 6 Fame 8 Haven Uncovered 1 Humanitas 5 Minion Tap 1 Parthenon 2 Tension In The Ranks Action (12 cards) 4 Bum's Rush 1 Rampage 7 Renewed Vigor Action Modifier (7 cards) 4 Freak Drive 3 Repulsion Reaction (9 cards) 5 Telepathic Misdirection 4 Wake With Evening's Freshness Combat (39 cards) 7 Immortal Grapple 4 Pulled Fangs 10 Pursuit 5 Resilience 5 Rolling With the Punches 8 Torn Signpost Final Words: Well, that's all for the moment, can't wait to lay my hands on the Anarch stuff, and see you in a month's time with all the new goodies. Thanks for reading Skaffen www.8ung.at/colddawn "No one seems to care anymore as I wander through this night all alone No one feels the pain I have inside Looking at this world through my eyes (Anathema, 'Anyone, Anywhere')