============================================== Daughters of Cacophony Playbill, December 2005 ============================================== I. Introduction II. New Legacy of Blood Vampires III. New Legacy of Blood Library Cards IV. Cards of the Month: Sanquine Instruction, Persistent Echo, and Spontaneous Power V. Vampire of the Month: Yseult VI. Strategy of the Month: Choosing your Group VII. Deck of the Month: DoC/Ventrue Baron Vote Deck VIII. Conclusion ------ Introduction ------ Hello, and warmly welcome in this cold season to the Daughter of Cacophony Playbill. I’m Hyllan and I’m your new co-editor along with Forrest Nielsen. If all goes well, we will write a couple of Playbills each. This one is my first shot and it will focus on the bridge between the new cards and strategies and the old ones. The Daughters of Cacophony has been granted five new vampires and six new cards. The cards complement some of their previous strategies, but also add some new ones. They’ll all be explored in coming Playbills. Now to some news from the community. The Daughters have had several successes in the Nergal Storyline Tournaments. Andrea Ravera won in Torino with a very interesting Daughters of Cacophony Choir/Procurer deck. Bless Andrews was #1 into the final in Hobart, playing a DoC deck. Bless chose to play Nergal, and by my interpretation of the tournament report, he won. Also, Forrest Nielsen reached the final in Baltimore with a Choir deck. Congratulations all of you! ------- New Legacy of Blood Vampires ------ * Sayshila * Capacity: 7 Group: 4 Disciplines: FOR, MEL, PRE, dem Text: Independent: During a referendum, if Sayshila is ready, you may tap her to give another titled vampire you control 2 additional votes. Opposing minions cannot use presses to continue against her. * Yseult * Capacity: 6 Group: 3 Disciplines: FOR MEL PRE Text: Sabbat: When Yseult plays a card that requires Melpominee, you may draw an additional card. Discard afterward. Yseult cannot block vampires with capacity above 4. * Antionette Dubois * Capacity: 4 Group: 4 Disciplines: for mel PRE Text: Independent: Toreador and Toreador antitribu cannot block Antoinette. -1 intercept. * Rosemarie * Capacity: 3 Group: 4 Disciplines: FOR, mel Text: Camarilla. Combat cards that do not require fortitude cost Rosemarie an additional blood to play * Aimee Laroux * Capacity: 2 Group: 4 Disciplines: pre, for Text: Independent. You may use four transfers and burn 1 pool to give Aimee an additional level of Melpominee. Aimee cannot play reaction cards. ------ New Legacy of Blood Library Cards ------ * Death of the Drum * Type: Combat Cost: 1 blood Rarity: C Requirement: cel, mel, MEL Text: Only usable at long range. [cel] strike: 1R damage [mel] Strike: 2R damage, only preventable by cards that require Fortitude or Visceratika. [MEL] As [mel] above, and the damage is aggravated. * Phantom Speaker * Rarity: C Type: action modifier Cost: None Requirement: chi, mel, MEL Text: Only usable when this acting vampire is blocked (before tappling the blocker) [chi] Cancel combat and do not tap the blocking minion. [mel] The block fails and the action continues. The blocking minion cannot attempt to block this action again. Not usable if the blocking minion is an older vampire. [MEL] As [mel] above, and if the action is successful, tap that blocking minion. * Persistent Echo * Rarity: R Type: Action Cost: None Requirement: aus, mel, MEL Text: +1 stealth action [aus]: Untap a vampire with Melpominee [mel]: Put this card in play and put a card that requires Melpominee on this card face down. You may look at the card at any time. Any vampire you control may burn this card to play the card on it as if from your hand and as if he or she had basic Melpominee. [MEL]: As above, and the vampire may play the card as if he or she had superior Melpominee. * Blessed Audience * Rarity: R Type: Action Cost: X blood Requirement: aus, mel, MEL [aus]: (D) Tap X-1 allies or younger vampires controlled by your predator or prey [mel]: As above, at +1 stealth [MEL]: As above, and this vampire can increase his or her capacity for purposes of selecting the targets of this effect. The cost of this action is increased by one blood for each point of capacity gaines (chosen when the action is announced). * Conductor * Rarity: R Type: Unique Master Cost: 1 Pool Requirement: DoC Test: Put this Card on a Daughter of Cacophony. While this Daughter of Cacophony is untapped or acting, each untapped or acting DoC gets an additional vote. * Hanging Fermata * Type: Master out-of-turn Cost: None Rarity: C Requirement: Daughter of Cacaphony Text: Play during your influence phase. No Choir cards are burned during this influence phase. Not usable if you played a Hanging Fermata during your last turn. ----- Cards of the Month: Sanquine Instruction, Persistent Echo, and Spontaneous Power ----- * Sanguine Instruction * Rarity: C1 Type: Action Cost: None Requirement: Ready vampire Text: +1 stealth action. Choose a discipline this vampire has at superior. Put this card on a ready vampire of the same clan as this acting vampire. The vampire with this card has the normal level of the chosen discipline. If the vampire already had the discipline, he or she now has the superior level of that discipline. The vampire's capacity increases by 1; the vampire is one generation older. Cannot be played on a vampire with the superior version of the discipline. * Persistent Echo * Rarity: R Type: Action Cost: None Requirement: aus, mel, MEL Text: +1 stealth action [aus]: Untap a vampire with Melpominee [mel]: Put this card in play and put a card that requires Melpominee on this card face down. You may look at the card at any time. Any vampire you control may burn this card to play the card on it as if from your hand and as if he or she had basic Melpominee. [MEL]: As above, and the vampire may play the card as if he or she had superior Melpominee. * Spontaneous Power * Rarity: Promo Card (R) Type: Unique Master Cost: 2 pool Requirement: None Card text: Put this card on a vampire and choose a Discipline. This vampire gains 1 level of the chosen Discipline. While in play, this card counts as a master: Discipline card. What we have here are two new cards and one old that allows vampires without Melpominee to take part in the singing lessons. Sanguine Instruction has been around for quite some time now and I have to admit that I rarely see it used or use it myself. It can only be used to teach vampires of the same clan and all DoC vampires already have Melpominee in some fashion. Clan Impersonating is a wasted action if the only purpose is to be Instructed. Sanguine Instruction is also an action, and thus potentially dangerous for a bloodline with limited access to stealth. There are just so many other actions I’d rather take. I can imagine myself throwing in a copy or two in a mono-clan DoC-deck, but generally, for the purpose of teaching out Melpominee, Sanguine Instruction is a bad card. Persistent Echo is one of the new cards, and a very versatile one. It allows all vampires, regardless of clan, to play Melpominee cards. Sure, it requires an action for no immediate effect, but it also works as a sort of temporary Storage Annex for the chosen card, helping your card flow and cycling both Persistent echo and the card you put under it. Unlike Storage Annex it doesn’t swallow a master phase action, and my personal experience is that DoC decks tend to be heavy on master cards anyway. So, what to put under Persistent Echo? Siren’s Lure can be stored for use by Sandra White, Sarah Raines or Emerson Wilkershire to protect Sayshila or another key vampire. Phantom Speaker, Blessed Audience or even Toreador’s Bane can be stored for use by a large supportive vampire, such as Arika, Marcus Vitel or one of the Daughters’ new Ishtarri friends. The [aus] version of Persistent Echo - untapping a vampire with Melpominee of any capacity – is actually quite good and combos well with one of Sayshila’s special abilities, Angela Preston’s special and with one of the new masters, Conductor. The other minion phase untapping mechanism I usually see played with the DoC is Firebrand. It’s a common and it gives a permavote, but it requires two anarchs and a successful referendum to be useful. For untapping, Firebrand is probably better for a vote deck, while Persistent Echo defends its place in a non-vote DoC deck with [aus/AUS] bleed defence support. Depending on the choice of crypt and discipline spread, potential candidates for playing this card are Franciscus (1 cap, [aus], group 2), Isabel de Leon (3 cap, [AUS], group 2), Juan Cali (3 cap, [aus], [for], group 2), Maldavis (4 cap, [AUS], [pre], [for], group 3) and Michael Luthor (4 cap, [aus], [pre], group 3, good special). They can also be sacrificed for a Persistent Echo-stored Siren’s Lure when the need is great. Those benefiting the most from the last Card of the Month, Spontaneous Power, are likely the Anarchs and the Bloodlines. For the DoC it opens up the possibility to have other clans than the !Tre help them with voting and choiring, without having to take an action to accomplish it. The usage of the card can easily be adapted to one’s crypt draw, which I consider to be one of its main strengths. Want to give Rosemarie [MEL]? Fine. Want to give Aimee [PRE]? Of course. Want to give Emerson [mel]? He’s all in for it. Spontaneous Power has the sad disadvantage of being unique, so you probably wouldn’t want more than 1 or 2 in a deck. ------ Vampire of the Month: Yseult ------ * Yseult * Capacity: 6 Group: 3 Disciplines: FOR MEL PRE Text: Sabbat: When Yseult plays a card that requires Melpominee, you may draw an additional card. Discard afterward. Yseult cannot block vampires with capacity above 4. Like almost all other bloodlines, the DoC got a group 3 bridge vampire with Legacies of Blood. And what a vampire! Gaël pales in comparison to this answer to our LSJ prayers. Except perhaps for blocking, being an anarch, and playing chimerstry cards, there is nothing Gaël can do that Yseult can’t do better. Yseult will be the new staple vampire in every DoC deck. Her built-in discard special is nice and useful, especially since it unlike Learjet works on reactions. It’s obviously great in a Choir deck for either getting rid or Choirs or cycle to more ones. It will help a vote deck jammed by Voter Caps or vote push, cause you’ll almost always have some reason to play a Melpominee card in a DoC deck. Her capacity is large for a Daughter. Yseult with a Signet of King Saul can only be blocked by a 7-cap if she plays Phantom Speaker. Even without the equipment she will still have the use of Phantom Speaker quite often. She will be able to untap all other group 4 Daughters except Sayshila with a Firebrand. She can become a Baron. With Blessed Audience she can tap 3 younger vampires or allies, freak drive and Concert Tour, for the total cost of 6 blood. Also noteworthy is that she is Sabbat. There aren’t lots of Sabbat cards worth the trouble for the DoC, but Yseult makes it slightly more attractive to make a Sabbat DoC deck with her, Muse and Into the Fires, using Crusades to get permavotes. Stealth Ritus could be worth playing in such a deck because of the Daughters’ good blood gaining potential. Yseult’s disadvantage follows the proud traditions of the bloodline by limiting Yseult’s blocking capabilities. A big blow for all evil plans on Death of the Drum + Rötschreck decks. While Gaël’s lesser disadvantage of never being able to have more than 1 intercept could be worked around with some motivation and cards giving others –stealth, there seem to be few ways around Yseult’s fear for the older Kindred. Wormwood seems like a lot of work for a little gain. But a quick search on Monger shows that while Yseult cannot block 659 larger vampires, she can still block 256 weenie vampires at unlimited amounts of intercept. And most of the time, Yseult won’t be used for blocking anyway. She’s so much better at everything else she does. ------ Strategy of the Month: Choosing your Group ------ I will push my fondness for Melissa Barton aside and leave group 1 outside of this strategy discussion. With the arrival of Yseult, most DoC players will play group 2-3 or 3-4 anyway. * Vampire comparisons * The layot of the table stands for: (Group 2-3 number| Group 3-4 number) Maximum capacity: ( 6 | 7 ) Minimum capacity: ( 3 | 2 ) Vampires with mel ( 6 | 4' ) Vampires with MEL ( 4 | 2' ) Vampires with pre ( 5 | 4 ) Vampires with PRE ( 2 | 3 ) Vampires with for ( 5 | 5 ) Vampires with FOR ( 2 | 3 ) Out-of-clan disciplines ( chi | dem ) Camarilla vampires ( 1 | 1 ) Sabbat vampires ( 2 | 1 ) Independent vampires ( 3 | 3 ) Laibon vampires ( 0 | 0 ) Titled vampires ( 0 | 0 ) 'Aimee Laroux can be given mel and MEL without cards being played. If counting that, the numbers are 5 and 3. * Playing group 2-3 * The first thing that should be said is that group 2-3 with its 6 vampires is larger than group 3-4, which consists of 5 vampires. Group 2-3 will potentially add 1 more vote to Bastille Opera House, but otherwise it’s the disciplines and abilities of the vampires rather than the number of them that will make a difference for a DoC deck. Group 2-3 is a good choice for a MEL vote’n’bloat deck with Madrigal, as it consists of 4 vampires with inherit MEL. The Deck of the Month is such a deck. Group 2-3 also has a slight advantage for Choir decks, as it haves Ian Forestal and more mel/Mel vampires. Qadir is another group 2 old pal for the DoC. While he’s still the only vampire who can gain 9 blood from Concert Tour without using Clan Impersonation, he has gotten some serious concurrence from Mata Hari. * Playing group 3-4 * A quick observation shows that the group 3-4 part of the bloodline has widened its capacity span both upwards and downwards. Both cases are excellent. Cheaper vampires means you’ll have a vampire to kill your prey with faster, and bigger vampires means you’ll have a vampire who benefits more from capacity-modified cards. Another observation is that the DoC have gained more [PRE] and [FOR], while dropping only slightly on [mel] and [MEL]. In conclusion, the individual group 4 vampires seem better than the group 2 vampires, as all the G4 vampires have access to a superior discipline in some fashion. The Daughters have gained a new supporting clan with LoB, the Ishtarri, with Fortitude, Presence and Celerity as in-clan disciplines. While sharing Presence and Fortitude with the Daughters, they may also benefit from the Missing Voice and Death of the Drum at outferior. Two of the Ishtarri also has Auspex as an out-of-clan discipline, one of them at SUP. They Ishtarri make excellent anarchs. Unfortunately, teaming the Daughters up with the Ishtarri still won’t solve the DoC’s problem with bouncing and reducing bleeds the easy way that (!)Toreador and Ventrue do. The equivalence to Ian in group 3-4 is Mata Hari, who can play Concert Tours for 8 as well as Hanging Fermata, and Paris Opera House. She also allows you to play masters such as Ventrue Headquarters, Feraille and Demonstration. She has two votes, shares fortitude at inferior with the Daughters to prevent damage and freak drive and can cloak the Daughters with her [OBF]. Her [aus] allows her to play many of the Daughter’s discipline cards at outferior. She can tap a lot of vampires or allies at relatively low cost with Blessed Audience, and stealth will hardly be a problem for her. As a Red List minion she’s always in danger of being rushed, so either a common skill card or Spontaneous Power should be used to give her [FOR] or [pre]. Legacies of Blood definitely strengthens the Concert Tour bloating machine, with a new 6-cap and a 7-cap. Teamed up with Mata Hari, group 3-4 will probably be the choice for a Concert Tour deck. Group 3-4 will likely also be the choice for the soon-to-be-feared DoC combat deck, as [FOR] and [MEL] will be the disciplines used. ------ Deck of the Month: DoC/Ventrue Baron Vote Deck ------ This deck of the Month is a pre-LoB deck with the LoB addition of Yseult. The purpose of the deck is to give the DoC permavotes and more good locations by going anarch, and bloodgain a lot while voting by using perfectionists and Madrigal. The Ventrue are there to bounce, block and contribute with more mid cap vampires who can go Barons. Unfortunately I haven’t bought enough cards to be able to see how the new Melpominee and DoC master cards would fit into the deck, but if you can try them in it, do it. Crypt: (12 cards, Min: 14, Max: 23, Avg: 4,75) ---------------------------------------------- 1 Gael Pilet chi pre FOR MEL 6 Daughters of Cacophony 1 Yseult PRE FOR MEL 6 Daughters of Cacophony 1 Celeste mel pre 3 Daughters of Cacophony 1 Boss Callihan dom for pro PRE 5 Ventrue 2 Angela Preston for MEL PRE 5 Daughters of Cacophony 1 Ranjan Rishi for DOM PRE 5 Ventrue 2 Delilah Monroe for pre MEL 4 Daughters of Cacophony 1 Catherine du Bois for obf pre DOM 5 Ventrue 1 Muse ani for mel 3 Daughters of Cacophony 1 Edward Vignes for DOM PRE 6 Ventrue Library: (90 cards) ------------------- Master (23 cards) 8 Galaric`s Legacy 5 Blood Doll 4 Perfectionist 1 Powerbase: Los Angeles 1 Bastille Opera House 1 Anarch Railroad 1 Paris Opera House 1 Ventrue Headquarters 1 Creepshow Casino Action (7 cards) 1 Reformation 1 Fee Stake: Perth 1 Fee Stake: Los Angeles 1 Fee Stake: New York 1 Fee Stake: Seattle 1 Fee Stake: Corte 1 Fee Stake: Boston Action Modifier (11 cards) 5 Missing Voice, The 4 Echo of Harmonies 2 Voter Captivation Political Action (24 cards) 16 Kine Resources Contested 2 Firebrand 1 Rumors of Gehenna 5 Conservative Agitation Reaction (8 cards) 8 Deflection Combat (8 cards) 6 Majesty 2 Staredown Ally (1 cards) 1 Carlton Van Wyk (Hunter) Combo (8 cards) 8 Madrigal This deck has been played and tweaked quite a lot of times. It had some Wakes in the early versions to use with Deflections, but Firebrand, Powerbas:LA, Angela’s special ability or simply leaving a Ventrue untapped proved to be a more efficient use of card slots. If you face another vote deck with it, don’t panic. Go slow. This deck can antivote almost as good as it can vote. Resort to poolgaining and casual bleeding for 1 if necessary. You will get out your crucial permanent locations and votes in time if you cycle a vote card now and then. If you get Rumors of Gehenna, give everyone with enough votes two master phases. You’ll probably have better use by it than them; this deck goes a lot smoother with two master phases. If the other vote deck has lots of permavotes you should wait to go Baron until you have two Fee Stakes in your hand and can use them during the same minion phase. That will give you 4 votes against in a referendum for burning a Fee Stake, which is usually enough protection. If your predator or prey is a deck with permarush or lots of rushes, your only option is to be fast as fell. This deck can’t handle a dedicated combat deck. If your grand-predator is better for you than your rush predator, you can attempt to backoust. The same advice goes for having Arika as predator. This deck relies on too many locations to be able to handle Arika. Backoust if it’ll get you in a better position. Intercept decks can be tricky. Casual +1 or +2 intercept can be handled, but even if this deck can get up at +5 stealth by using all locations and the Missing Voice, a heavy intercept deck will ruin its day. If your predator is a dedicated block deck, the best alternative might be bleeding for 1. A lot. If your prey is a block deck… well, go for the kill as hard as you can and hope you’re lucky. ------ Conclusion ------ That’s all for this time, folks. I’d like to thank Forrest for his suggestions to this Playbill and for helping me with crosschecking. Merry Christmas all of you, and hope the gifts you get contain lots of VTES cards! /Hyllan