Daughter of Cacophony (news)Letter October 2006 by: Oortje Is a daughter of Cacophony good enough to win a tournament? 1 Introduction 2 Who are the Daughters of Cacophony? 3 What does is take to win a tournament with them? 4 What's their weakness? 5 What makes them special? 5.1 Melpominee 5.2 Clancards 6 Deck Suggestion 7 Comparison with other clans? 8 Conclusion 1 Introduction. My name is Jeroen van Oort. Some people also know me as Oortje. I've started playing Vtes since (I think) 1996. Actually intense gaming started in 1994 when I got hooked to Magic the Gathering. But as for many of the "switchers" I was looking for more interaction. Over the years I played almost every clan available. Only a few clans/Skill-combinations were a real problem for serious play. The more exotic clans always gave more problems then opportunities. But I'm always willing to try something new. Please note: this is my first (news)letter. Not really revealing stuff in here, just my experiences. Enjoy! 2. Who are the Daughters of Cacophony? The Daughters of Cacophony are a clan consisting of only female vampires. Since I don't play World of Darkness, I have no knowledge of them outside the cardgame. It is obvious is that they are vampires who use their musical talents as main bloodpower. I have to admit that this sounds rather silly, but hey it's just a game. So what is available for them? In Vtes Daughter of Cacophony are only released in Bloodlines and in Legacy of Blood. You can choose to play them group 2/3 or 3/4. Group 2 has 5 vampires. Group 3 has only one. And group 4 has 4 vampires. Only 4 clan cards and only 12 cards that require melpominee. The other disciplines are presence and fortitude. Their capacities vary from 2 to 7. This makes them a rather small in numbers and low-capacity clan. 3 What does is take to win a tournament with them? This is hard to tell. I have seen lists of tournament winning decks and I wasn't impressed. I have seen a player taking only 1 action during a final and win it. So is there anything I can tell about winning, well, yes of course. Make sure your deck is able to get at least 2 victory points. No gamewins, no final (except for tiny tournaments). It is easier to reach the finals if you have a good way of ousting people for example bleed, vote or something else. It's not a good idea to spend the entire game at building. Your time is limited. But this, of course is common knowledge. When you are in the finals, it can become a little different. People start to value life a little more. Plus the fact that people influenced the seating order of the table. You need to oust methuselahs. How? Presence can help for bleeding and/ or voting, fortitude for combat, Daring the Dawn or maybe Freak Drive. The combination presence-fortitude sounds hopeful. Ventrue is a great clan and they have the same 2 disciplines. Maybe a Ventrue-Daughter bleeddeck for the win, it could be a killer. 4 What's their weakness? Low in numbers and low capability of blocking. As with any other bloodline clan the Daughters are not as common as basic clans. The second problem is blocking. Almost all Daughters have a disadvantage while attempting to block. Also it is impossible for them to divert a bleed to another methuselah. With this knowledge we have to consider combining them with another clan. To make sure we don't get killed in just a few turns by some player who uses dominate. For example Ventrue to play some deflections. 5 What makes them special? Nothing really. They are just as special as Arimanes, Akunanse and Samedi. An clan with 2 common disciplines and an odd one. Except that Arimanus have Howler as a splash* vampire and Samedi have the Baron as an exceptional minion. The daughters are all moderate and definitely not exceptional good. They have nice clan and discipline cards. *splash: a term I used in Magic for cards that would normaly not fit in a deck. For Magic: red blast deck with a splash of green cards. In Vtes for example a few Blurs in a Beast rush deck or a Howler-wall angle in a Setite deck. 5.1 Daughters of Cacophony have a unique discipline called melpominee. It has just 12 cards. I will point out only a few of them. Art's Traumatic Essence. A 1 stealth D action which taps an untapped minion and makes actions and blocks cost an extra blood. It can be removed by tapping the minion during the master phase and paying a pool. Incredibly strong. Very hard to get. It is easy to get rid of. Bleeding does more damage, but is at 0 stealth. Choir. A 1 stealth action at inferior which puts this card into play for one turn. At superior it is a D action to burn choir cards in play to do twice that amount of pool damage to your pray. A not deflectable damage source sounds ok. But you need a lot of melpominee minions. Common bleeds with presence do more damage. Echo of harmony. 1 blood, action modifier during a referendum. Inferior: usable by a not-acting vampire. 2 extra vote. Superior: Useable by a not-acting vampire when a vote is successful. Put the vote from the ash on this vampire. This vampire can call it as a 1 stealth action. Nice card, very good in combination with cryptic mission or charming lobby. But you need to be able to pass the vote. Madrigal. Action modifier during a referendum. Gain 2 votes. At superior as above, make vampires voting in favor gain 1 blood and voting against lose 1 blood. This card makes cross-table buddy's. It makes political actions pass without even having votes. (This is tested and proofed.) Very good of course if you have a lot of titled vampires. Very good with Conductor. (more about this later). The Missing Voice. Action modifier. -1 intercept for younger vampires and allies. Superior: +1 stealth. A stealth modifier always comes in handy. Unfortunately Phantom speaker. Action modifier. The block fails. The blocker cannot block again. Not usable if the blocker is older. Superior: and tap the blocker if the action is successful. A block-denail card, it all sounds great, but the limitation is the capacity. The average capacity of the daughters lies somewhere around 4. I know low capacity vampires are very popular and useful, but most players also have mid-caps, so this card is not reliable. And finally Sirens Lure. Action modifier. Only usable by a not-acting vampire. The blocker fails to block this action and this vampire taps and enters combat with that minion at the end of the action. Superior: as above, but this minion doesn't tap. Interesting if you play with an agro-weapon. You have more chance to make an action pass and be able to torporize a minion. I honestly don't want to send my Daughters into combat, because their skills are limited to defensive mostly. These cards direct me to an active deck. Maybe political, bleed or other actions. But certainly not to playing defensively. 5.2 They have an interested collection of clan-cards. Just 4, so I'll handle them all. Conductor. 1 Pool unique master. Put on a Daughter. While ready untapped or acting, all untapped and acting Daughters gain 1 additional vote. Hmmm.. Maybe it is interesting to play a lot of small daughters to generate votes. Concert Tour. Action +1 stealth 1blood. Gaint's blood effect during your next untap-phase. Good to replace the old 5tradition miniontap combo. Since Daughters are not that big, you might want to Clan Impersonate a big-cap and try the Miniontap trick. Hanging Fermata. Master out of turn. 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. Nice to make choir a little more playable, but it is still more efficient to just bleed. I'll leave this trick to somebody else. Paris Opera House. 2 Pool master unique location. Tap to give a daughter +1 stealth. Tap and tap a Daughter to give a minion you control +1 stealth. Very good card. Permanent stealth is very valuable certainly when you play presence bleed. And there is the Bastille Opera House. This is not a card that requires any Daughters. Unique location. Tap during a political action to gain X votes, where X is the number of ready Daughters of Cacophony you control. If you control no ready Daughters of Cacophony, you may tap and burn this card during a political action to gain 1 vote. Wow a third card that promotes to play political. And yet again it is about quantity not quality. 6 Deck Suggestion We discussed some good cards above. And I decided to make a deck with political cards. Now we must decide the major cards of the deck, the grouping, the splash clan and so on more and more into detail. If we play group 2/3 there are more vampires at our disposal. To be exact 6 in stead of 5. Possible crypt cards Celeste mel pre 3 Daughters of Cacophony G2 Muse ani for mel 3 Daughters of Cacophony G2 Delilah Monroe for pre MEL 4 Daughters of Cacophony G2 Angela Preston for MEL PRE 5 Daughters of Cacophony G2 Gael Pilet chi pre FOR MEL 6 Daughters of Cacophony G2 Yseult FOR MEL PRE 6 Daughters of Cacophony G3 Possible library card. Paris Opera House Bastille Opera House Conductor Madrigal Never forget to play a lot of staple-cards. Staple-cards are a pile of useful cards that should/could be in any deck. Staple cards: Dreams of the Sphinx Direct Intervention Barrens Carton van Wyk Blood Doll/ Tribute to the Master / Miniontap Aranthebes, the Immortal Delaying tactics The dilemma here is to play titles to ensure vote control or to play embraces which could potentially be worth 2 votes each. Let me explain the last bit. 1 Vote for the Conductor, 1 vote for the Bastille Opera House. If we play title they need to have a similar sect or play a divers set of titles. A similar sect can be achieved by going anarch and play barons. This sounds decent, but to become a baron you'll have to become capacity 5+. In that case you will rely much more on disciplined cards. If we go for the embraces the deck and play-style will be a little different. We don't want every embrace to live by the grace of not being blocked while hunting the first turn. So adding a few non-disciplined cards would help. Pool gaining with embraces will be much easier. Let me explain. The Consanguineous Boon gives pool for each Daughter or other clan. This already was proofed to be effective for other clans such as Toreador antitribu, Nosferatu and Lasombra with their weenie/embrace deck. Also the Tribute to the Master will give plenty of pool. The Tribute-Embrace combo gives a problem with conductor. All embraces will be tapped for hunting on the turn you play tribute, so they will not generate votes for the conductor. This will be significant delay for your voting angle. All the good cards seem to be masters: opera houses, conductors, tributes and staple masters. Since we probably play more then 20 of them we might just add a few Parthenon to make sure we can play them all and add a few more. This is what I and a few friends made of it: Crypt: (12 cards, Min: 13, Max: 24, Avg: 4,75) ---------------------------------------------- 2 Celeste mel pre 3 Daughters of Cacophony 1 Muse ani for mel 3 Daughters of Cacophony 2 Delilah Monroe for pre MEL 4 Daughters of Cacophony 2 Angela Preston for MEL PRE 5 Daughters of Cacophony 2 Gael Pilet chi pre FOR MEL 6 Daughters of Cacophony 3 Yseult FOR MEL PRE 6 Daughters of Cacophony Library: (90 cards) ------------------- Master (33 cards) 3 Conductor 2 Bastille Opera House 2 Paris Opera House 2 Creepshow Casino 5 Tribute to the Master 3 Dreams of the Sphinx 3 Parthenon, The 1 Fortschrift Library 1 Fear of Mekhet 1 Archon Investigation 1 Sudden Reversal 1 Secure Haven (secure the Conductor) 1 Pentex Subversion 4 Life in the City (blood management) 1 Blood Doll (blood control) 1 Major Boon 1 Jake Washington (Hunter) (blood management) Action (15 cards) 11 Embrace, The (oustingpower, poolgain, votes!) 1 Aranthebes, The Immortal (to contest other Aranthebes) 3 Thin-Blooded Seer (they can check the topcard of your library to savely play madrigal in combination with Veil of Darkness) Action Modifier (6 cards) 6 Change of Target (Wake cycling, life saver) Political Action (19 cards) 5 Kine Resources Contested 8 Consanguineous Boon 1 Rumors of Gehenna (a way to gain a 3rd master phase) 4 Conservative Agitation 1 Disputed Territory (take intercept or huntingground) Combat (6 cards) 6 Dodge Ally (1 cards) 1 Carlton Van Wyk (Hunter) Event (2 cards) 1 Anthelios, the Red Star 1 Veil of Darkness (could be another Anthelios) Combo (8 cards) 8 Madrigal 7 Comparison with other clans? I have seen decks with a similar concept: embraces with mucho masters. Other clans which can do and have done the same are Toreador antitribu and Ravnos. The Toreador can exploit there embraces with Foundation Exhibit, Art Scam and of course the power card Palla Grande. They have much more vampires to their disposal and very good clan cards. The daughters will not be this strong, but it will surprise the table. The Ravnos can also play embraces very well. The Ravnos Carnival can reduce the cost of action cards with counters equal to the number of Ravnos, so cheap embraces and sensory deprivation. The Week of Nightmares for plus bleed is usually the end of the story for most prey. The Laibon Ravnos even have access to extra votes. So they have +bleed, votes, stealth and +handdamage. I suggest you play Ravnos in stead of Daughters. But like fashion "so yesterday". This is new. These cool cards for Ravnos are pretty hard to get. Week of Nightmares, Ravnos Carnival, Gabrin, Path of Paradox and even Sensory Deprivation do very good on eBay. The prices are high. An other embrace clan is Lasombra. The Powerstructure is similar the Bastille Opera House, it gives votes equal to the amount of Lasombra, but it is no location, so it can not be stolen or burned. Lasombra are not as scares as the Daughters and have Deflection for defense. A good reason to play them. They are probably a little more reliable then the Daughters. 8 Conclusion. The Daughters have a lot of potential. With a little luck you are not killed the first few turns by a speed bleeder. And from there on you just have to bleed for a lot. I personally am convinced that this deck can win a major tournament. I know it is a little short conclusion, but hey! it either yes or no. Comments are welcome as always. Oortje Mail: internetoortje@hotmail.com