FOLLOWERS OF SET NEWSLETTER Volume 3, Issue 4 March 2003 Author: Wes ========================================================== TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction Setite Tactics - Is 'Corruption' a valid strategy? Deck Construction - Card Comparison Vampire Analysis - Petru Sipos Sign Off =================================================== INTRODUCTION It seems most of the newsletter writers are taking their sweet time between issues so I don't feel as guilty as I used to. My V:tES life has improved lately due to a bit of revival in this area. We once again have local games, mostly bi-weekly, so I have the opportunity to try out a lot of new strategies and tweak the old ones. Despite writing this newsletter, I do not play Setites exclusively. In fact, I try to play all the clans, all the discipline and all the concepts (except Malkavian Sneak and Bleed which I despise). I try to feel at home with all types of decks. After all, once you know how to play a certain type of deck, you also know how to defeat it. =================================================== SETITE TACTICS -- Is 'Corruption' a valid strategy? In my opinion no, it is not a valid strategy. The amount of effort and the amount of cards needed to steal even one minion is counter-productive to the benefit of actually stealing that minion. If the minion is a weenie, what did you gain really? If you spend ten Corruption cards and ten actions to steal a large minion, that's great, but meanwhile you didn't spend those actions and cards attacking your prey's pool directly, and she probably got more use out of that minion than you ever will. You likely don't even use the same disciplines. I believe that Form of Corruption is a much more efficient way to steal vampires from your prey. Not only can you play it and then not take any more actions to defend it, you can choose which minion at the time you burn the card. The capacity of the vampire doesn't matter, only the amount of blood on the minion, which suits the Setites fine since we have lots of ways of making minions burn blood. Simialrly, Temptation while not as strong as Form of Corruption offers another way to steal minions, albeit temporarily. It requires very little in the way of maintenance after successfully playing it. Just add a counter each master phase and use and abuse when it comes time to steal. I have seen lots of people attempt to build a cohesive Corruption deck, but I have yet to see one that actually scares me. Like Slaughterhouse decks, they seem to annoy their prey and then die. The point of this game is to oust your prey, and this strategy just doesn't do that very well. =================================================== DECK CONSTRUCTION - Card Comparison When determining if a card is worth including in my deck, I usually compare it to other similar cards to see how it fares. For example, Kine Resources Contested is the most basic pool damage card and I consider it far above most other damaging vote cards. Let's compare it to other damaging vote cards and see how they compare. (Note that I have limited this analysis to cards that are playable by any vampire, and not just Princes etc.) Kine Resources Contested (KRC) -- Most of the time, this means 3 damage to one Methuselah and 1 damage to another Methuselah. Most players throw seem to throw the extra damage at their predator. I tend to throw it at my grand-prey unless I need someone's votes in which case I will wheel and deal. In any case, this card can be considered your basic vote card and it is not unusual to see eight or more copies in any vote deck. It gets the job done with a miniimum of fuss and the fewest unknown variables. Domain Challenge -- The weenie killer... or so they say. This vote does one damage to every tapped minion, including the vampire that called the vote. In the right situation, this card could be great. Unfortunately, we never know who our prey is and it generally does us no good to do damage to someone across the table. Why should we be doing some other Methuselah's job for her? And why would I want to do a damage to myself if I could avoid it? You are also doing damage to every player at the table, and as Dubya is now aware, it does no good to piss off the rest of the world when you're looking for votes. In most cases, I'd rather have a KRC. Conservative Agitation (ConAg) -- People still play this card for some reason. Compared to KRC it is inferior in any game that doesn't have five players in it. If you are playing with five players, this card can dish out 4 damage to one player and 1 damage to another--very nice. But if you're playing a four player game, this card is exactly like KRC. And if you are playing with three players or less, it is markedly inferior and gets worse as the game gets smaller. When it's down to just you and your final prey (a point which all successful decks will hopefully get to) this vote does 1 damage to you and 1 damage to your opponent. Frankly, this sucks. Would you use a bleed action card that bleeds for 1 and also bleeds *you* for 1? No. So this card is only ever better than KRC in a five player game. Unless you absolutely know that you're in a five player game (not always a known in a tournament) and that all your ConAgs are clumped at the beginning of your deck, this card should stay out of your deck entirely. Anarchist Uprising/Ancilla Empowerment -- Like Domain Challenge, these cards do pool damage to *every* Methuselah and therefore should be avoided unless a) you know you can get away with it and b) nobody else can benefit from it. They also do damage to you, so they're better to play when you're using larger voting minions than with smaller vampires. There are of course other vote cards, but you get the general idea... Now let's look at two similar reaction cards. Redirection -- This Dominate card is slightly less popular than its cousin Deflection. Deflection is generally considered better because it is usable by weenies, as the only requirements are an untapped vampire with inferior Dominate and one blood. You can 'bounce' the bleed to any Methuselah you want, though typically this would be your prey. My Enemy's Enemy -- This Auspex card seems to be popular with some people. I still fail to see why. Bouncing bleeds to another Methuselah is always good because it takes pressure off you. But why would you put that pressure on your grand-predator instead? The theory is that your grand-predator has more reason to beat up your predator's vampires, which is true... however there are lots of reasons why they would not want to or be able to block this and therefore you may be helping to oust someone who is meant to be your ally. If you are down to a three player game, your grand-predator *is* your prey, but otherwise, they are probably someone you don't want to target. Despite these cards having different discipline requirements, the above two cards perform similar functions. Therefore... if My Enemy's Enemy is as good as people say it is, due to it being cheaper than Telepathic Misdirection and despite the fact that it targets your grand-predator... then *why* do people who use Redirection/Dominate/etc never bounce bleeds to their grand-predator as well? They don't because it doesn't help them win games. Just because My Enemy's Enemy is rarer than Telepathic Misdirection... and just because it costs one less blood does not mean that it is a better card. In fact, the control of where a bleed goes is arguably more important than the cost of the card. These decisions must be made when a deck is designed. You could very well end up in a situation where My Enemy's Enemy or Domain Challenge are useful, but this is an unknown. On the other hand, you can feel confident knowing that Telepathic Misdirection or Kine Resources Contested are going to come in handy at some point in any game. =================================================== VAMPIRE ANALYSIS -- PETRU SIPOS Petru Sipos Ravnos, Capacity 7 CHI SER ani for As a (D) action, Petru can steal 1 blood from a vampire in torpor. Petru, while not a Follower of Set, has superior Serpentis and is therefore worthy of discussion in this newsletter. Besides, *all* vampires are Followers of our dark lord Set. Some just don't know it yet. Like his Gangrel brother Mirembe, he is a vampire designed for weird combo decks. I don't recall ever seeing a deck built around Petru Sipos but there have probably been a few. If anyone reading this knows of any, please let me know. I'd love to see the deck. Chimersty and Serpentis do not seem to gel well together at first glance. Both disciplines offer some interesting action cards that could come in handy to a Ravnos or Setite player who chooses to diversify a clan deck. A Ravnos deck using Petru could play a Form of Corruption or a Setite deck using Petru could use a Sensory Deprivation. Using both disciplines in tandem is rather hard. Illusions of the Kindred comes to mind, but the combat effectiveness of Serpentis is questionable. Another possiblity might be to use Petru to bring out Mass Reality cards and then use Setites to Disguised Weapon out Ivory Bows and Assault Rifles or what-have-you. Granted, the Ravnos can do this pretty well on their own with Horrid Reality so this seems kind of redundant. You could use Enticement with Mirror Image for a nasty, nigh unstoppable 'bleed' for three. This concept worked quite well for me at a recent tournament when I combined Protean and Serpentis. I would play Computer Hacking backed up with Form of Mist and then Mirembe Kabbada would play Enticement also backed with Form of Mist. It was very hard for my prey to avoid losing 5 pool each turn. Petru's special ability is not that great. It could possibly find some corner-case use but you can't really plan around it that easily. Even if you know that vampires will be in torpor during a game, being able to steal one blood from one of them (and without inherent stealth) is of questionable benefit. All in all, Petru is a vampire that is basically only good as a combo vampire. Maybe eventually we'll have a combo that breaks him, but as for now, I'm just not seeing it. =================================================== SIGN OFF I hope you have enjoyed this most recent installment of the Follower of Set newsletter. As always, questions and comments are appreciated. Cheers, WES