Followers of Set Newsletter Volume 6 Issue 2 Author: Michael Bailey Contents: 1) Introduction 2) Discipline focus: Obfuscate 3) Vampire of the Month: Count Ormonde 4) Honorary Settite: Sargon 5) Card of the month: Forgotten Labyrinth It’s been about 3 months since my last newsletter about my favorite clan. It’s been a busy few months with the release of 3rd Ed, the ACC and just weekly V:tes keeping me away from the old word processor (some may say that’s a good thing ? ) At any rate in this issue I’ll deal with Obfuscate as a discipline and what it brings to the settites in terms of ability and deck construction. For those of you who have been playing for a long time, most of what I’m talking about may bore you, but maybe you’ll find something that you’ve missed/ forgotten about. For newer players, I hope you find this as interesting reading as I found the older clan newsletters when I started playing the game. If you haven’t read the older ones, their definitely worth the time to have a look at. At any rate, I hope you enjoy the newsletter. Michael Bailey Discipline Focus: Obfuscate Unlike Serpentis, which is more like a “tool boxy” style of discipline, Obfuscate is mostly used to make sure you get to do what you want, when you want it. So what can it do, specifically for the followers of Set? Many of the actions that Serpentis provides are inherently at 0 stealth, and Obfuscate provides a good fix for these actions. Without Obfuscate, actions such as Entice, Form of corruption and Temptation are as easily blocked as a standard bleed, meaning you have to wait for just the right moment to play the cards or risk them being a waste of space in your deck. The best part of all these actions, as far as Obfuscate is concerned, is that none of them are bleeds, yet they have the potential to do either direct damage to your prey, or remove/ hijack their ability to deal damage to you. The practical upshot of this is that one card (forgotten labyrinth) can provide you with a way to either damage your prey or help slow down your predator which for a deck as uniquely aggressive as the Followers of set is a godsend. Obfuscate also empowers one of the main settite strategies, that of stealth-bleed. Stealth bleed is considered one of the main archetypes for ousting your prey, yet, a great deal of caution should be exercised when using it. Stealth bleed, more than any other oust mechanism, has the potential to be used by your prey to do their work for them by “bouncing” or redirecting your attack to their prey. Fortunately Obfuscate does contain built in fixes for this problem by way of cards such as spying mission in order to negate your own bleed (temporarily). Obfuscate also has another great staple card, Swallowed by the night. While it only delivers 1 stealth at inferior, at superior, it provides a maneuver in combat. Depending on your local metagame levels of combat and intercept this one card can provide both good offence and defence for a cost of 0 blood. What is even more useful about it from a settite point of view is that it has the same effect as form of the serpent. (Admittedly Swallowed is a superior card, as it has no cost) In a low/ limited intercept environment these 2 cards can provide a settite deck with all it needs in terms of stealth and combat defence. In a more intercept heavy environment they can still provide a good basis for your stealth engine and with the addition of a few extra obfuscate stealth cards can generally ensure that you get to do whatever action you were planning on performing. Additionally, Obfuscate provides the extremely useful power of “block fails” with Elder impersonation. EI is a great way to draw out your preys intercept capabilities by playing your various stealth cards, waiting for your prey to use their intercept and then playing EI. Although this also uses your stealth cards to perform, it is a great way to “cycle” your hand. Finally, it is worth mentioning the dangers of having too much stealth in a deck. If you are running a stealth based deck there are many times where your prey will simply refuse to block on the basis that it is better for them if they deny you the chance to cycle your hand to prevent you from drawing into more actions or action modifiers. If you do intend to use a lot of stealth in your deck I strongly advise some form of hand clearing ability in your deck such as Dreams of the Sphinx, Fragment of the book of nod, The barrens or even Lupine Assault. Vampire of the Month: Count Ormonde: Count Ormonde Clan: Follower of Set (group 2) Capacity: 5 Disciplines: OBF dom pre ser Independent Count Ormonde is by no means a flashy, fantastic vampire. He has no built in abilities such as bleed or awesome card text. What he does have however is an excellent discipline spread for nearly any group 1-2 or 2-3 bleed or vote deck. As a 5 cap he is the cheapest minion with this spread (Robin withers is the only cheaper at 4 but she lacks superior obfuscate). He can safely be added to either a stealth/bleed or stealth/vote deck purely to play cloak the gathering at superior in order to generate a little extra stealth with no fear that your investment will be wasted. In addition, he allows you to use the three probably most well known Serpentis action cards (temptation, form of corruption and enticement), without having to sink a chunk of your library or crypt into using them. Honorary Settite: Sargon Sargon Clan: Baali (group 2) Capacity: 5 Disciplines: cel dai obf pre Independent: Whenever Sargon successfully performs an action, you get the Edge. +1 strength. Infernal. Once again it is the Baali who make the grade when it comes to “honorary Settite” status. Sargon is probably the most well known enabler of the settite enticement style deck. His main problem is that for 5 pool, you’re only really getting 2 inferior disciplines and are causing your deck to “leak” pool in order to pay for the infernal cost. What you get for your pool however is the ability to entice at least twice per round which effectively makes your prey burn 6+ pool per round without the ability to “bounce” the punishment on to its prey. Taking the long view however a KRC vote and voter cap garners you more for your actions insofar as it to is “unbounceable” and can refill your vamps/ gain you pool. Having said that however, the settites suffer from a lack of inbuilt titles (there are some, just not a lot ) and must either take actions to gain votes (hierophant) or employ vote push on every vote it performs (card intensive). As a main pool drain technique however, multiple entice’ can provide very solid forward pressure. Card of the month: Forgotten Labyrinth Forgotten Labyrinth Type: Action Modifier Requires: Obfuscate Cost: 1 blood Not usable on a bleed action. [obf] +2 stealth. [OBF] +3 stealth. Although forgotten labyrinth has the major disadvantage of not being able to be used on a bleed action, the sheer numbers of non bleed aggressive actions that a settite deck can produce more than makes up for it. Votes, Enticement, form of corruption, temptation, these are just some of the actions for which FL is extremely good for. Although it costs you a blood to use it gives you 2 or 3 stealth in one card, freeing up deck space to be used for other activities. In a low intercept (2-3) environment it’s a great card and even in high intercept environments it can have its uses. FL is also a great addition to any deck that relies on non bleed actions to oust it’s prey be it votes, enticement, or an “tool up” deck (a deck that uses many permanents such as laptops, bleed retainers etc). If you read the previous newsletter you may note that this one does not have a deck list attached to it. This is for many reasons, the main one being that I’ve come to the conclusion that your mostly better off building a deck without the influence of others as it tends to stifle your own deck building idea’s and concepts. I am currently working on my deck for the new storyline event and if it does well I may post it in the next newsletter (or if it does really well, maybe someone else will do it for me in a tournament report ? ) Thanks again for taking the time to read this newsletter and as always, comments (good or bad) are always welcomed Cheers Michael Bailey