Harbingers of Skulls Newsletter Workshop and Discussion September 2003 Hello all, Once again, a HoS newsletter. They're few and in between, I know, but anything's better than nothing. This feature will focus on the following: 1. Milling - Anarchs Brought Us Brinksmanship - do we care? 2. WORKSHOP - A deck using milling 'outside the box'. - build a good miller. 3. DISCUSSION - The worth of 'surprise'. Like all my newsletters, besides sparking some new thought, I try to give some oversight on basic options - since there's been few HoS newsletters, I can and will still cater a little to the newsbies with 'basic options'. 1. Milling & Brinksmanship Of course, we've had a new set come along since my last newsletter: Anarchs. It stirred much discussion, mostly about the following new card: Brinksmanship. Brinksmanship Political Action Political Card - Worth 1 vote Called by any Vampire at +1 stealth If this referendum is successful, put this card in play. Any Methuselah who has exhausted his or her library and begins his or her untap phase with less than a full handmust attempt to withdraw. On that Methuselah's next untap phase, if the withdrawal fails, that Methuselah is ousted. If any Methuselah successfully withdraws, you are ousted. Why? Well, for those just joining us, the HoS are one of the few clans (other than those posessing animalism for Raptor, ani+obf for Feline Saboteur, or Courier, that have reasonable access to the 'milling' strategy. What is 'milling'? It is the 'destruction' of another player's deck by trying to move all their cards into their ashheap. Besides shutting down all parts of that player's deck that depend on cards-in-hand, it also offers that player the option to 'withdraw'. Normally, withdrawing is good (from the online rulebook): "9.2. Withdrawing from the Game If you have exhausted your library and begin your turn with less than a full hand, you have the option of withdrawing from the game. To exercise this option, you must announce your intent to withdraw during your untap phase. For the withdrawal to succeed, you must meet the following conditions: 1. None of your minions enter combat until your next untap phase. 2. None of your minions lose (or spend) any blood until your next untap phase. 3. You do not lose (or spend) any pool until your next untap phase. If on your next untap phase you have met these conditions, then you successfully withdraw. The withdrawal fails if you lose a single pool or blood, even if you gain enough to make up for the loss. If you successfully withdraw, you receive one victory point to add to any victory points you have already gained. Your predator does not get a victory point or any pool for your withdrawal." But with Brinksmanship in play, if you can prevent the withdraw, you can gain your oust and the victory point along with it. Now, I'm not going to discuss whether milling is a 'good', 'fun' or 'fair' decktype - most of this discussion has already taken place, and I'm just here to offer the HoS as many weapons as I can find for them. All other people opposed to milling can maybe find some ammo to use against milling decks. :) Now, the obvious connection of Brinksmanship with HoS is through The Slaughterhouse, a non-unique master/location that you can tap to burn up to 2 cards from the top of your prey's library. (Burn option.) It does cost a pool, unfortunately, and you will need plenty of them, since the average game takes up around 14 turns. Depending on the card-burnrate of your prey (and, hopefully, your last-man-standing opponent) you will need to mill through anywhere between 0 and 180 cards, with around half that number the minimum which you should be designing for. You can supplement this strategy with any of the other Harbinger's special abilities, but the speed they offer is limited. Ok, so let's say you're confident in milling your prey out of his cards. Then, you still have to prevent the withdraw: that is, force combat, minion blood loss, or pool loss on your prey. Contrary to popular belief, Anarch Revolt or other pool/bloodloss effects in the untap are not the way to go: your prey, if (s)he's smart, can order the untap events in such a way that the withdraw is succesful. So you'll have to take some sort of action yourself to manage that. Luckily, the Harbingers come pre-packed with Lazarene Inquisitor, a master that will allow a D action to remove blood from a minion. If "Inquisited" succesfully, your prey cannot withdraw. If blocked, combat will (very likely) occur - no withdraw possible. And, as I hope to show later on - there's some more possibilities. One last problem is that Brinksmanship is a political action, and thus vulnerable to being blocked, Direct interventioned, Delaying tacticsed, and a host of other reactions that mess around with votes. The vulnerability of being blocked is easily removed with the HoS, in the form of Daring the Dawn/Day Op, if you're willing to have a minion go to torpor. The other cards are more problematic, although you could try to pack Revelations to flush out those cards - but Revelations are actions in and of themselves. Then, if the vote starts at all, you'll still need to votes to make it succeed. IF you can manage the milling, the vote, and the preventing of the withdraw, you're set. Easy, right? Not really, as many people've commented. The HoS have a stealth 'issue', but that's not the key problem - the key problems are milling and the vote. Really seriously and dedicatedly going for milling means a lot of card slots, filled with cards that aren't doing ANYTHING for you until your prey's out of cards. Dangerous. For argument's sake, we'll not just slap in a 'minor milling angle' into a HoS/(!)Ventrue/Salubri deck - we really want to be milling. Anarchs gave some extra options of mixing minions with presence into the mix (Maldavis being most noted), together with cardinal benediction and the effects of the (!)Ventrue, it might be possible to make a nice little vote deck with all the masters you'd normally reserve for cycling and other nice effects being slaughterhouses. I'd however propose a different deck. 2. WORKSHOP/DECK - Slaughterhouse/Brinksmanship Masterdeck. There are some hurdles we need to take: - Dropping lots of slaughterhouses - Getting the vote through - preventing the withdraw - surviving until that moment The first of those issues points me in the way of a master-heavy deck with parthenons. Another nice master I've seen work well in master-heavy decks is Storage Annex. A benefit of that card would be that you can collect the small set of cards you'll only need a little bit - the vote-combination for the brinksmanship, and preventing the withdraw. Another ability of anson-based masterdecks is severe bloating through minion tap/golconda. This will help us survive. Anson is a prince with PREsence - so, barring anti-vote reactions, one AWE could be enough to get the votes we need. Preventing the withdraw? Well, if you're predator's not nice enough to bleed you when you accidentally have a redirection in hand, try to use the Lazerene Inquisitor. Won't work? Bleed for 1. Afraid they'll use a reaction card? Use Regarhagen's Hold. Afraid of block/obedience? Give Anson Aching Beauty. Voting? Well, you could mess around with giving anson a superior stealth discipline, but a combination of creepshow casino, alacrity and carnival should get you the stealth you need. So, after this peek into my brain on how to make a (fun, possibly) milling-masterdeck, I present the deck: Deck Name: Brinksmanship Masterdeck Created By: Tobias Description: Crypt: (12 cards, Min: 32, Max: 36, Avg: 8,42) ---------------------------------------------- 7 Anson aus CEL dom PRE 8, Toreador, Prince 5 Unre AUS dom FOR NEC ser thn 9, Harbingers of Skulls, Bishop Library: (87 cards) ------------------- Master (68 cards) 1 Aching Beauty *for preventing withdraw* 1 Bleeding the Vine 2 Carnivale *stealth for the brinksmanship vote* 2 Creepshow Casino 3 Dreams of the Sphinx 1 Elder Library *in a bloat deck, a superior Storage Annex* 1 Elysium: The Arboretum 2 Giant's Blood *good for bloating or filling up anson for the vote* 8 Golconda: Inner Peace 2 Information Highway 1 Lazarene Inquisitor 10 Minion Tap 5 Parthenon, The 2 Protected Resources 3 Regarhagen's Hold *destroy reaction-based defense at the withdraw* 17 Slaughterhouse, The *Are they enough?* 7 Storage Annex Action (2 cards) 2 Revelations Action Modifier (6 cards) 2 Alacrity 4 Awe Political Action (3 cards) 3 Brinksmanship Reaction (11 cards) 8 Obedience 3 Redirection Of course, to some, this might be the most abhorrent annoyance ever. How would you build a miller? 3. Discussion: the effect/power of 'surprise' Now, the previous deck might not win a tournament (or it might, you never know), but I guess it would boggle a lot of players if they saw it a first time without having read this newsletter (a theory I encourage you to test in your local non-newsgroupreading playgroup. The basic unfolding of strategy (bloat with anson, mill with slaughterhouse) is fairly obvious, and what to expect from the deck can be based on Anson-AR decks, but who knows how much of which card the deck is packing? Which leads me into a question I've been pondering - what's the worth of 'surprise'? A deck can be 'vanilla' - staple cards with predictable and dependable effects only. Guaranteed to perform its basic function well - but nothing else, and predictable. What's the worth of diversity? For instance, a !Toreador deck I saw in the Benelux ECQ used ONLY Entracement as its presence bleed card, and it packed 8 of them, if my info's correct. Someone once advised me to pack a small bit of Lucky Blow in my weenie computer hack deck. Why? Because using them upset the expectation of other players, and could screw up their easy calculation of 'I'll just lose 1 blood in combat against his minions'. I'm not really interested in 'off-the-wall' deck concepts here - although I love making those as well, I'm curious about the power of including 'strangeness' in a normally basic deck concept. One day, someone built a deck around Mirembe - I bet a table was surprised when the serpentis actions hit. That's borderline - halfway between a new concept, and slapping in a few surprise cards. Or the 1 or 2 Coma's in an !Malk bleed deck - while not an uncommon 'surprise', their (possible) inclusion adds a powerful and unpredictable aspect to that deck. So the question is: can you afford those cards in your tightly focussed tournament deck? And if yes - why? What are some good examples? I'll lead off with some cards from my decks, if you can add some examples as well, that'd be great. - Inveraray, Scotland, in a Rush deck. - Wolf claws, or a small amount of any other aggro, in an 'out-of-clan' discipline - Kiss of RA in a deck that 'accidently' has some FOR Well, that's it for this month! I hope I get some other ideas before Black Hand hits the shelves... :) -- Greets, Tobias