Table of Contents: 1. Getting the Balance Right 2. Focus on the Family: Carlotta Giovanni 3. Deck: "Giovanni Family Reunion" 1. Getting the Balance Right In the August newsletter I discussed the merits of Dominate and Potence among the Giovanni. This month, I'd like to extend that discussion a little further to include the concept of the balanced deck. The balanced deck was an important development step in learning to play Jyhad, and although you won't hear it discussed much on the newsgroup anymore, it is still an important development point in the path to mastery of the game. An ideal balanced deck has available to it many different strategies. It does a little bit of bleeding, some combat, and it should be able to deal with voting, and have light intercept. Sometimes some pool gain strategies find their way into the deck, too. The greatest strength of the balanced deck is that it has the capability to act and react to any situation on the table. However, the balanced deck has a number of weaknesses. You can never be sure you have the ideal offense or defense at any given point in time. Because the deck is a jack of all trades, but master of none, it can be overpowered by a more focused deck. For these reasons, a balanced deck will typically not perform well in a tournament environment. However, in a typical local gaming environment, the balanced deck might hold its own. This lack of focus prevents much pre-game strategy, and tests the player's playing skill. In addition, the deck also exposes the player to a large number of different playing styles very quickly. Thus, even when the balanced deck performs poorly, it is still a wonderful teaching tool. I recommend constructing balanced decks from time to time. Even if the deck proves unsuccessful, I find that playing with one is a good way to develop and hone playing skills. The Giovanni are particularly suited to playing balanced decks. Between Dominate and Potence, the Giovanni can cover just about any strategy with strength, with the sole exception of direct politics (vote defense, on the other hand, works quite well). If you're particularly good at intimidation, a vote strategy is possible with a balanced deck (vote for me or I'll beat you up). Necromancy, being good for support, can help patch up whatever mistakes you make, whether you make them out of necessity for card cycling or not. Here's a quick rundown of available strategies with the Giovanni. Combat: The Giovanni have access to Potence, the best combat discipline there is. In addition, Zombies are slightly better than Wolf Companions are, and available to all Giovanni. Also, the Giovanni allies are also good in combat. Scapelli can hold his own pretty well. With Compel the Spirit, he becomes considerably better. Everyone should know by now the strength of the Ambrosius/Talbot's Chainsaw combo. Personally, I think that although giving Ambrosius the Chainsaw is simple and effective, there are better ways to utilize the combo. If you give a vampire the Chainsaw, then you can save Ambrosius for pulling Zombies from your ash heap and place them on the Chainsaw-wielding vampire. Then, the Chainsaw vampire will do extra damage each round, you haven't had to pay for the Zombies, and the vampire can just snack on the Zombies, regaining blood and preventing the Zombies from leaving the game by pathos counters. Lather, rinse, repeat. Throw in Heidelburg and you can attack twice as often each turn. As combat defense, the Giovanni have Obedience, Spiritual Intervention, and the threat of Potence combat. These are good combat defense abilities, and a balanced deck should adopt at least one of these strategies. I recommend focusing on less card- intensive combat strategies, as you will have limited deck space to devote to each strategy within your deck. Instead of loading up on Increased Strength, focus on something like Undead Strength and Disarm, with the occasional Immortal Grapple. Bleed: The Giovanni have Dominate, which covers all of your bleeding needs. In fact, with multi-use cards like Dominate Kine, Scouting Mission, and Govern the Unaligned (my personal favorite card in the whole game), you can increase your capability without detracting from your bleed ability. Bonding, Seduction, and Spectral Divination can give you a little stealth to get your bleeds through. Dominate offers good bleed defense as well with Redirection and Deflection. Another method of bleed defense is block and combat. Spectral Divination helps here, as well. The flexibility of the card makes it a good choice for balanced decks. One method of combining these strategies is combining Dominate bleed, Obedience, Spectral Divination, and Potence combat. (Yes, I can hear the strategy purists out there cringing right now. As I said earlier, balanced decks have drawbacks.) Vote: Vote offense is the one area in which the Giovanni are sorely lacking. As an Independent clan, they cannot be the recipients of titles until Giovanni Acceptance (another vote) is passed, or on a one-by-one basis by spending extra actions and card slots on Writs of Acceptance. Regina Giovanni, a 10-capacity vampire, is the only Giovanni with permanent votes. Stefano Giovanni has Presence and one vote-if he pays for it. The Mausoleum, Venice is strictly inferior to Ventrue Headquarters. There are just too many vote strategies that can shut down the Giovanni's meager votes, so I don't recommend trying to be a voting clan. Vote defense, on the other hand, is strong for the Giovanni. Dominate gives access to Pulling Strings and Kindred Coercion. Enzo Giovanni can threaten any voting vampire on the board with Potence combat. In addition, a commonly overlooked strategy in vote defense is a Bureaucratic Overload/Delaying Tactics combo. By defending the Overload with Delaying Tactics, you can quickly empty any weenie vote deck. In fact, since the majority of vote offense decks are weenie decks, the Overload is a good choice if you're playing a large-capacity vampire deck. Having a couple of these tricks up your sleeve will help protect you from the ravages of politics. Blood Gain: Blood Dolls are a great method for the Giovanni to increase pool. Not only do the Giovanni have their Hunting Ground, but they also have Leonardo (a spare Hunting Ground, essentially), Acquired Ventrue Assets, and Zombies. These cards can assist the Giovanni in regaining the blood they lose to Blood Dolls and other activities. A balanced deck shouldn't contain all these strategies, but one or two should help. I'm particularly fond of Leonardo, myself. 2. Focus on the Family: Carlotta Giovanni When Dark Sovereigns first came out, I distinctly remember the stir of excitement that Carlotta caused. Although most people thought much of the set was poor, Carlotta became a favorite of everyone, and was showing up in every deck. It didn't matter if the player was using a Toreador gun deck or whatnot; Carlotta was there. People didn't care if they couldn't use any of her disciplines. They were happy if they could just use her special ability. Let's take a look at Carlotta and see why. Carlotta is a 7-capacity Giovanni with superior Necromancy and Potence, and basic Dominate and Obfuscate. Hmm, that's a decent catchall set of disciplines, with no particular strengths, except for possibly combat. But wait, she has a special ability, too. As a +1 stealth action, she can pay 1 blood to replace any card in your hand with any card in your ash heap. Hey, that's a pretty nice ability. Never again will you have to worry about running out of a particular card. She's also a cardless way to prevent hand jam. Basically, Carlotta's power is useful, no matter what kind of deck you play. That's a good reason to consider her. However, I'd still not consider her for just any deck. Firstly, she costs 7 pool. Would you pay 7 pool for an ally that could retrieve cards from your ash heap? Of course not. Sure, a vampire is better than an ally, but if you aren't using her disciplines, that's essentially what you're buying. So, make sure that you're going to use her disciplines as well if you plan to stick her in a deck. Secondly, why do you need to pull cards out of your ash heap, anyway? Every time you play a card, you draw one. When you use her ability, you move a card from your hand to your ash heap. So, what if that card in your hand was the card you were looking for in your ash heap in the first place? Then you wouldn't have to use her ability. Usually, good deck design obviates the need for Carlotta's power. In this case, The Barrens is a good, inexpensive alternative to Carlotta. However, the best laid plans of mice and men gang aft a-gley, and all. I'm sure we've all been hand jammed at least once due to bad luck instead of bad deck design. So maybe there are 6 Majesties in your deck, but did you have to draw 5 in a row like that? These are the cases in which Carlotta becomes useful. Since she doesn't need a card to fish your ash heap, she can do it when your hand is at its worst (One of the greatest drawbacks to Whispers from the Dead, a card I don't like at all). She can potentially transform the least appropriate card in your hand into the most appropriate. However, this is not the sort of eventuality you should expect and specifically prepare for. Carlotta has a solid set of disciplines. For any Giovanni deck, I'd recommend her as potential high-end support even without the special ability. Thus, the special ability should be thought of as gravy. Stick to cards like The Barrens to guarantee card flow, and use Carlotta's special ability sparingly; if this game were a cookbook, The Barrens would be salt, while Carlotta's ability would be oregano. Although you can do more with Carlotta's ability, never rely on it; you should do reasonably well without it. There are two important considerations I must add, however. Carlotta's special ability becomes far more useful in a card limit environment. She, albeit expensively, can remove legally the card limit from a deck. Expect to see her more often as part of a Form of Mist bleed strategy, for example, even though she doesn't have Protean herself. For similar reasons, she is a popular choice for balanced decks. She can guarantee that you hold the strategy your hand lacks at the right time. This is a prime example of removing the least useful element of your hand to make way for the most useful. It's just more likely to occur in a balanced deck. All this talk aside, it remains that her special ability is useful, and her discipline combination is solid. She is a very good choice as a high-cap Giovanni. Just don't let her special ability woo you into thinking she's a miracle worker. Think of her special ability as gravy, not as meat and potatoes. 3. Deck: Giovanni Family Reunion This is a balanced deck. It uses the concepts above and combines them into a single entity. It may seem unfocused and confused to the trained eye, but it should still serve well as a deck with which you may experiment with many styles of play during the same game. Crypt: Regina Giovanni x4 Carlotta Giovanni x2 Francesca Giovanni x2 Gloria Giovanni x2 Rudolpho Giovanni x2 Cristofero Giovanni Mario Giovanni Library: Masters: Morgue Hunting Ground Acquired Ventrue Assets Information Highway x3 Heidelburg Castle, Germany Bureaucratic Overload Fragment of the Book of Nod Blood Doll x4 Minion: Ambrosius, the Ferryman x3 Leonardo, Mortician x3 Scapelli, the Family "Mechanic" x2 Zombie x4 Talbot's Chainsaw x3 Bum's Rush x3 Govern the Unaligned x6 Rampage x2 Jar the Soul x4 Possession Compel the Spirit x2 Release of the Shackled Soul Grave Robbing x2 Spectral Divination x6 Bonding x3 Delaying Tactics x2 Forced Awakening x4 Deflection x3 Obedience x2 Kindred Coercion x2 Undead Strength x4 Disarm x4 Immortal Grapple x3 Thrown Sewer Lid x2 Torn Signpost x3 John Baker Giovanni Newsletter Editor