Followers of Set Newsletter – Volume 5 Issue 6
Followers of Set Newsletter
Vol. 5
Issue 6
Author: Daniel Figueiredo
Table of Contents:
1) Introduction: KMW General Impressions
2) Prayers Answered (and unanswered): New Clan Options
3) Sign-off
Introduction:
By now almost everyone should have seen or at least read about the new
cards in KMW. While it may be too soon to risk an opinion about the
impact and changes to the game that this new set introduces, it is not
too early to give out a first impression (that may change). First of
all, what's the best addition to the game that this expansion brings?
The Red List and Trophy rules. While some may think the game already
has too many rules and clans/disciplines/whatever, I think there is
always room for more, as long as it is well-thought, balanced and adds
new flavor and interest in the game, not just complications.
In my opinion the new rules in KMW do just that, bring cool new
strategies to the game, that not only tie in with the back story well,
but also provide new story and strategy hooks for the future. Who's to
say in future Storyline events we won't be seeing vampires added or
removed from the list? Maybe even the option to include any major
vampire appearances in such storylines, or record who had the most
diableries, bled for more pool or survived the most combats and tally
these to elect new Red List candidates? And this is just one of many
ideas that can happen.
Anyway, the new rules help combat decks a lot more than the other two
major "classic" strategies in the game (vote and bleed). Combat decks
tend to have fewer master cards in them already, diminishing the
weight of losing a master phase action to mark a Red List minion. The
semi-permanent rush ability also helps diminish a little the number of
rush actions you need to include in such decks. Instead of 6Bum's
Rushes for example, you can include 2Red List cards, 2Bum's Rushes and
2other combat cards. All this depends on your crypt of course, but I
digress…
Next comes the ENORMOUS help the Baali (and other infernal minions in
general) get with KMW. Before the Baali were all about "Will I survive
long enough to get a VP? To have fun at least?". Now it seems they
have become a solid and potentially game-winning bloodline on par with
the Blood Brothers and Ahrimanes (or whatever bloodlines your local
metagame thinks are the strongest). The only question now is:
Sargon/Huitzilopocthli or Maureen/Cybele? But that's a question I'll
leave for the Baali to answer. The power they get does help the
Followers of Set, if only very indirectly, since they share two out of
three in-clan disciplines and in KMW we get equipment that grants both
Serpentis and Daimoinon at the superior level, making Baali/Setite
crypts as easy as they will ever get to make.
With the Red List and the Baali White Wolf has done a superb job.
Unlike Anarchs, who took a long time to become more than just "more
trouble than they are worth", the Red List and Trophy rules seem to
need no further help in at least getting many players to try them out
and make them work. More options are always welcome and the door is
already open for more Red List minions, Alastors, and cards only
useable by Red Listed minions. Speaking of Anarchs, they get some love
as well, as do the Gangrel antitribu. Anarch Secession alone opens up
SO MANY new deck possibilities for the Anarchs, I bet this will be the
single-most sought-after rare in the expansion.
So, as an expansion in general, KMW is a success, better, it excels!
The design team really did a good job in solving three "problems" in
the game. 1) The lack of that "oomph" the Anarchs needed to make them
good. 2) The total lack of any reason besides fun to use the Baali and
infernalists in general. 3) The need to always print more Gangrel
antitribu in any given set so that they would have available crypt
options for both their sub-clans (and the fact that they were the only
"clan" without a pre-con starter). Now they can print an equal number
of all Sabbat clans in any expansion since the extra crypt needs of
the Gangrel antitribu are taken care of.
And what about the independent clans? Well, I cannot say that the
expansion excels in that department, especially since KMW in theory is
supposed to focus on them. Three of the four only have 8 vampires to
choose from in group 4, and the Ravnos have 9. Add group 3 and they
still have 10 or 11 choices only. This still does not add up to a
decent number. Of course this isn't the end of the world, and KMW does
bring enough of them to try some new decks. But group 2+3 remains the
best choice for them in most deck types; even more for crypts based on
clan and not discipline combinations. But between new clan cards and
new cards for their exclusive disciplines, they all get enough new
stuff to entertain and become more competitive until future expansions
can truly allow more varied crypt selections for group 3+4.
Prayers Answered (and unanswered): New Clan Options:
Now we get to the good part. :) After many expansions with so few new
vampires and cards for the clan, KMW brings a much needed help. The
Followers of Set get 6 new vampires, our first advanced vampire, four
new clan cards and four new Serpentis cards. Wow! That's a lot of
stuff! And that's not counting any other cards in the set that help us
a lot, but are not exclusive (Serpentis can be considered exclusive ,
since virtually zero decks out there would use Serpentis and not use
Followers of Set, unlike Necromancy for example, that has all those
cool Necromantic bloodlines).
In the new Vampire department, we get Ankh-Sen Sutekh, Black Lotus,
Cagliostro, Neferu, Reverend Djoser Jones and Sahira Siraj. Um… cool
names, but, so what? I'll tell you what.
All great new minions, 4 of them fantastic for traditional clan-based
decks or decks based on their 3 in-clan disciplines and 2 (Sahira and
Black Lotus) that help with more out-of-clan oriented decks. Speaking
of out-of-clan disciplines, I realize that many players were/are
concerned about group 4 and new groups in general adding viable new
discipline combinations to use. These players will be a little
disappointed with the new Setites I guess. Group 2+3 had Potence,
Necromancy and Dominate as the strongest/easiest out-of-clan
disciplines we could add to our arsenal, followed to a lesser extent
by Thaumaturgy and Auspex. Besides placing Thaumaturgy in the "main
team" of out-of-clans in lieu of Potence, the available combinations
remain pretty much the same, at least for now. But this isn't
necessarily a bad thing. And we still have less than half of group 4
for the independent clans, so there is room for a lot more. I think
it's better to have new options slowly introduced than to have them
forced on us now when we don't have enough even for traditional clan
decks. Group 4 Ravnos will have some trouble building an in-clan
discipline deck for example. And with 11 vampires available to them in
groups 3+4, the in-clan crypts they have are even more limited and
will probably be exactly the same for quite a while (as will the
out-of-clan crypts, but that's natural when you choose a crypt based
on uncommon discipline combinations). The point is: the new Followers
of Set are good, and different faces (and special powers) even if in
old decks should be reason enough to give them a try! Last issue I
covered a bit of Advanced Kemintiri, and in future issues I will go
back to her and analyze the other new ones individually, for now I
just wanted to give you a look at them as a group.
The new clan cards for the Followers of Set are the best good news for
the clan in KMW! Since Final Nights didn't we get any new clan toys,
and now we get four good ones! With Ferraille and Hierophant we can
build vote decks like never before! Basically a Ventrue Headquarters
that can't be burned or stolen and a Camarilla Examplary/Primogen
title rolled into one! I think that now we don't even have to become
Anarch to have a seriously good vote deck for the clan. Want to become
anarch? Great as well, now even our titled vampires can do so, not
losing their votes. Want to make a Camarilla vote deck? GO AHEAD!
Waters of Duat coupled with Samat Ramal-Ra or Amenophobis and you will
have a weenie Prince horde in no time! Want to make a Sabbat vote
deck? Be my guest! Black Lotus and Ezekiel + Waters of Duat can work
together to help you have an army of weenie Archbishops in no time.
Waters of Duat has to be the best embrace card the independents got.
Just one blood, at stealth and even lets you get a discipline like the
good old embrace! Perfect for almost any Setite deck, be it
corruption, vote, stealth bleed, wall (ok... maybe not wall… but
that's not the card's fault). And since the clan is a notoriously bad
blocker/wall clan, Crocodile Temple dwindles the blood off any minions
that perform D actions against you so that you can focus more on the
offensive side, all the while having great synergy with cards like
Temptation, Consignment to Duat and Form of Corruption.
Not all is that great though. While we do get 4 new Serpentis cards,
we get actually only one new card effect. Let's see…. We get: 1) A
card that lets us put corruption counters (the weaker, non-stealing
kind) when we get beat up. 2) A card that lets us put corruption
counters or burn blood when we block our predator. 3) An expensive
bleed modifier/conditional one-time untap effect. 4) A grapple,
practically an inversed Immortal Grapple. Hmmm…. now… we could already
bleed more for free with Revelation of Desire, gain permanent
conditional untap with Temptation, put corruption counters much more
easily and not depending on stuff other than passing actions or being
blocked (both certainly easier than waiting for a combat deck to maim
you, setting up an effective blocking module or going through the
trouble of limiting your crypt with AUS+SER vampires) using
Corruption/Reformation and Venenation. We certainly couldn't grapple
though! :)
And that's just counting Serpentis. If we factor in Presence, we can
bleed even more cheaply and effectively, if we factor in the Followers
of Set themselves, we get Nefertiti and Cagliostro who can also put
corruption counters one way or another. Weigh the Heart, a new dual
discipline card that requires Serpentis and Auspex ALSO gives us more
bleed or non-stealing corruption counters. For free but considering
the rarity of such a discipline combination it is far inferior to
almost any dual discipline card out there. Last but not least we get a
Daimoinon card with a Serpentis inferior that let's us treat
aggravated damage from a strike as normal damage. A good, free card
that helps our defense, ironically one of the best new Serpentis cards
in the expansion. And the only new effect that corruption counters get
is Neferu's special, which is VERY good.
In future issues I will analyze each card separately and try to come
up with effective strategies to make them good additions to our decks.
Certainly our new grapple merits a revisit of both Serpentis combat
and POT + SER decks (that now thankfully depend a little less on
Potence). At the moment not many new deck strategies come to mind
since almost all of the new cards only strengthen either corruption or
stealth bleed decks. I'd like to ask everyone to help me as well. Any
other new deck strategies you can think of? Any surefire combo to
generate large amounts of corruption counters or a less card-intensive
way to generate them at least (the major problem with corruption
counters, still)? Looks like we will have to surprise our opponents
with new twists to old tricks.
Less exclusively for the clan we get a new Obfuscate card which is
fantastic! No more PTO on us! Parity Shifts? (Insert future
Baron-Requiring nasty political action here)? Not one of them will
ever bother us again unless their perpetrator auto-passes them or we
get caught unprepared. :)
The new Presence card is also very good. A less-expensive Pulse of the
Canaille (cumulative with pulse as well) for Presence lessens the need
for many bleed action cards once you put it in play.
And we get a dual Obfuscate + Presence discipline card as well, a
block fails that can be cancelled. Not that strong in practice and
many will realize that when they bleed for 3 and use True Love's Face
only to see their prey pay 1pool instead of losing 3 to the bleed. Or
when you try to pass a KRC and the same thing happens. The card has
its uses, but Elder Impersonation and even the conditional
Approximation of Loyalty are far better since they only require one
superior discipline. Dual discipline cards usually get either new
effects that at least one of their respective disciplines doesn't have
separately (Iron Glare) or stronger versions of effects that they have
separately (Forced March). True Love's Face and Weigh the Heart don't
exactly get any of that.
Sign-off:
As you can see there is a lot of new stuff, and this issue was just a
general glimpse of it all. All cards in KMW mentioned here or not
still have a lot of secrets to be discovered, and I will slowly, with
your help (and Set's) find it all out! Thanks everyone for reading and
please comment, flame and maybe even praise if appropriate. : )