OFFICIAL VEKN LASOMBRA NEWSLETTER -- MARCH 2004 by sleeveboy Sorry for missing February's edition. I took the bar exam last month and that ate up most of my time! But now that that's over with, it's time for another close examination of the Clan of Night. Last time we focused on the clan's tradition strength: stealth bleed, as augmented by the Black Hand expansion. This month we will examine the Lasombra's oft-neglected third discipline, Potence. A couple other things, before we get started. First of all, if you read the newsletter, please send me an email and give me feedback! This is only my second Newsletter, so I'd love to hear complaints, compliments, and criticism of any kind. On that note, I'll be experimenting with the format of the newsletter over the next few months. This month I've included a review of the Lasombra Clan Trilogy as a departure from the usual fiction piece. If you'd like to see more content like this, please let me know. If you prefer fiction, tell me. If you don't care one way or the other and would rather I just focus on strict VTES stuff, shoot me an email. Bottom line: give me feedback! Ahem, on to the newsletter. STRATEGY Often when constructing Potence combat decks, players gravitate towards the cards that will give them the greatest return on damage in a single card. This stands to reason; after all, why settle for just +1 strength when you can have +2? Following this logic, players tend to choose Pushing the Limit over Undead Strength because the former grants you a guaranteed strike at +2 strength. Under this analysis the additional blood cost of PtL is, if not insignificant, a much smaller concern. Players assume they will recoup the cost with a Taste of Vitae and perhaps even treat the additional blood cost as negligible. But blood is a precious commodity, especially late in the game. There comes a time in every game where your vampires, as well as those of your predator and prey, will be hovering at 1-2 blood each. In the endgame, the 1-blood cost of a Pushing the Limit is no longer insignificant; playing it could mean the difference between staying ready and going to torpor. Also, because your opponents will be no better off in terms of blood, you will have fewer opportunities to Taste (if you even have Tastes left in your library). Suddenly a cost that once was negligible becomes prohibitively expensive. Perhaps most importantly, a lack of blood for combat cards means you'll also have less blood for those critical bleed modifiers and bleed actions you'll need to oust your prey. Hence the importance of both POT and zero-cost combat cards. Conveniently, Black Hand has given us an outstanding suite of POT/dom vampires that synergize wonderfully with Lasombra. By focusing to near-exclusion on zero-cost Potence combat with a heavy-POT crypt, we can reliably dish out 3-5 damage per round while saving our blood for Conditionings and Governs. Add Reunion Kamut and some other Black Hand staples and you've got a versatile, efficient bruise-bleed deck. More on that later. VAMPIRE OF THE MONTH: Banjoko What's not to like? He's what Lasombra players have been clamoring for since the release of the first Sabbat expansion: a 5-capacity vampire with all in-clan disciplines, plus DOM. And oh yeah, he's a Black Hand Seraph. Sure to be one of the most commonly used vampires from the Black Hand set, Banjoko fits well in just about any Lasombra deck. For starters, his DOM and Black Hand status make him an extraordinary bleeder and bloater. DOM speaks for itself, but pair him up with Black Hand-dependent action modifiers such as Council of Seraphim, Circumspect Revelation, and Art of Memory and he becomes a fearsome powerbleeder, as we saw in January's newsletter. With access to superior Govern and Scouting Mission as well as Reunion Kamut, Banjoko is potentially one of the most efficient pool-gainers in the game. Oh, and did I mention Watchtower: Greatest Fall? Including Banjoko in a Lasombra deck is a no-brainer for these reasons alone. Fans of pot/dom combat will love Banjoko. His DOM grants him access to Thoughts Betrayed, a useful card in strike-card-heavy metagames. Granted, it's not as good as a Grapple, but it's a useful option for when a maneuver-poor Lasombra finds himself facing, say, an Assamite. Take note that, with the release of Black Hand, there are now 12 Sabbat vampires under 6 capacity with pot/dom, 2 of which are Black Hand (with an additional 2 Black Hand vampires, Soldat and Henri Lavenant, at 7 capacity). This month's deck, a Black Hand-based bruise-bleeder, takes advantage of these new vampires. Let's not forget the other Watchtower cards, namely Four Ride Forth. With the help of Four Ride Forth and some OBT intercept, and maybe some support from Talley, the Hound, you've got the foundations of a light intercept-combat deck. I've never tried OBT intercept before, but Banjoko is well-suited to the task; expect to see this idea featured in a future newsletter. CARD OF THE MONTH: Ministry This month's deck doesn't feature a single OBT card, but it does feature a number of Black Hand tools, one of them being Ministry. So let's take a look at it. Ministry is a difficult card to use. It's powerful, sure: a disciplineless, non-conditional +2 intercept card is fantastic, and the conditional +1 bonus against acting Sabbat vampires is icing. But power comes with drawbacks, in the form of blood cost and non-replaceability. The former isn't too debilitating for Lasombra (particularly in this month's deck), but the latter is a serious problem. Lasombra that want to do something in combat other than S:CE have few maneuver options other than Shadow Step. The most practical alternative, Fake Out, can't be replaced till after combat. So you could easily find yourself in combat with 4 cards in hand after playing Wake, Ministry, and a Fake Out. This is bad news for a combat-inclined deck. Fortunately, there are several inherent Black Hand means of circumventing the card shortage problem. Two Black Hand library cards allow you to increase your hand size: Weeping Stone and Chronicle of the Lost Tribe. The former is expensive, but provides excellent economy for its cost. The latter can be stolen, but is free and easily defensible if you're running Ministry. Another possibility is Henri Lavenant. With his special ability, he can negate the drawback of not being able to replace after playing a Ministry. Alternatively you can use Forced Awakenings, but this can seriously backfire if other players are playing gobs of stealth, and it makes it cost-prohibitive to run Deflections. The best solution will ultimately depend upon your metagame. In sum: Ministry is a great card, but you can't just toss it into a Black Hand deck the way you toss Second Traditions in a prince deck. Careful planning, especially when playing the combat-challenged Lasombra, is in order. DECK OF THE MONTH Back in the day, building a pot/dom deck meant using big, clunky Camarilla princes. The introduction of the Giovanni and Lasombra into VTES changed that somewhat, but the overall superiority of Camarilla titles and cards meant that Eurobrujah was the best way to go. Black Hand changed all that. Now, with new vampires like Banjoko, Wah Chun-Yuen, and Soldat, you can build a lean, mean deck with strong midcaps. Reunion Kamut helps you pay for the vamps, and Ministry helps you block. In this crypt I've chosen to focus on POT and Black Hand membership: POT allows me to save blood for Ministries and Conditionings, and Black Hand gives me access to all those wonderful toys. Add Graverobbings and Dominate Kines to taste. This deck originally contained two Graverobbings, but I removed them at the eleventh-hour to make room for library-boosting cards (see Card of the Month section). This deck won the table the round I played it at our Prophecies league, but it was a pretty strange game. I won't spoil any of the prophecies, of course, but suffice it to say some of them tend to drag the game out a bit. Deck Name: Manos, the Hands of Fate Created By: sleeveboy Description: Uses the solid selection of mid-cap Black Hand pot/dom vampires. Reunion Kamut helps you bloat and save pool. Crypt: (12 cards, Min: 14, Max: 28, Avg: 5.25) ---------------------------------------------- 2 Wah Chun-Yuen cel dom pre POT 5, Brujah antitribu:3 2 Banjoko obt pot DOM 5, Lasombra:3 2 Soldat cel dom obf POT PRO 7, Gangrel antitribu:3 1 Tarbaby Jack dom ser ANI OBF POT 8, Nosferatu antitribu:3 2 Lisette Vizquel DOM POT pro 6, Lasombra:2, Bishop 1 Ignacio dom obt pot 4, Lasombra:2 1 Cameron dom pot 3, Lasombra:2 1 Christine Boscacci dom vic 2, Pander:2 Library: (84 cards) ------------------- Master (16 cards) 4 Blood Doll 4 Corporal Reservoir 2 Dreams of the Sphinx 1 Political Hunting Ground 2 Shakar 1 Elder Library 1 Weeping Stone 1 WMRH Talk Radio Action (12 cards) 4 Govern the Unaligned 1 Chronicle of the Lost Tribe 6 Reunion Kamut Action Modifier (8 cards) 8 Conditioning Reaction (12 cards) 4 Deflection 4 Ministry 4 Wake with Evening's Freshness Combat (36 cards) 2 Disarm 8 Fake Out 6 Immortal Grapple 6 Taste of Vitae 8 Torn Signpost 6 Undead Strength Equipment (1 cards) 1 Black Gloves -- THE COURT OF BLOOD Review: Clan Lasombra Trilogy (Shards, Shadows, Sacrifices) By Bruce Baugh The problem with good Vampire fiction (as in "the Masquerade"; other vampire stories have other issues) is that too often the characters sound like animated character sheets. Nothing breaks my suspension of disbelief faster than references to discipline and clan names. A good Vampire: the Masquerade story should use its source material to inspire intriguing characters and stories. Rather than use the source material as a crude template, a good story should aspire to take the setting beyond its rules and conceits. Richard Dansky's Clan Novel: Lasombra did a fine job of turning the Lasombra into a vivid, vibrant clan of bloodsuckers but fell short in some areas, particularly in its portrayal of Lucita. I never got the sense in that book that she was anything more than an ice-cold vampire-assassin-chick. Bruce Baugh's trilogy, however, not only reveals some fascinating, even repugnant aspects of Lucita's character, but also presents some wonderfully multifaceted interpretations of the Clan of Night and the vampires who comprise it. Not only that, but the story arc uniting the three books is quite solid. The trilogy focuses on two of the Sabbat's biggest obsessions: its wayward children, and the end of the world. At the start of book 1, Lucita is the most notorious of all the antitribu, having destroyed her famous sire, Cardinal Ambrosio Luis Moncada. Facing a midlife-crisis of sorts (or whatever a millenium-old vampire might comparatively suffer), she visits with her clanmates for inspiration: courtly antitribu in London; fearsome pirates, and North American nomads. Meanwhile the Sabbat, and the Lasombra in particular, want to see Lucita brought to justice. However, the Sabbat has another, more dangerous problem: a terrifying monster has risen from the Abyss. Pragmatism soon forces Lucita to join ranks with the Sabbat against this abomination. At the end of Sacrifices (book 3 in the trilogy) Lucita and the Sabbat emerge deeply shaken and transformed. The trilogy is superb reading for VTES fans interested in both the Lasombra and in how a vampiric society like the Sabbat might operate. Baugh creates some excellent characters based on the Clan of Night's talents and tendencies. There's Greyhound, a cardinal who walks around naked and eschews shadow manipulation in favor of brute strength. There's Mycsanta, a cardinal who communicates and interacts through a Dominated group of androgynous beings that speak simultaneously. Andrew Emory, the ingenious pack leader who captures Lucita, is an Embraced paraplegic who uses shadow tendrils to walk. Montano makes a guest appearance as well as a suitably inscrutable and alien shadow presence. The trilogy gets quite dark as one might expect a story based on the atavistic Sabbat. Lucita's descent into frenzy and adoption of the Path of Night is captivating if gruesome. There is a good amount of action and, with the exception of the slightly sluggish second novel, paced quite well. Also of interest to VTES players: there's a lot of attention paid to "Abyss mysticism" which appears to involve a clan-based variant of Thaumaturgy. Perhaps in future expansions we might see some Lasombra with THA? As a long-time Tremere and THA fan, I wouldn't mind seeing this come to pass. For anyone disappointed with the generally spotty focus of the clan novels, I highly recommend the Lasombra trilogy. Where the clan novels suffered from having to carry too many storylines and characters at once, the trilogy bears a lighter load, thus permitting a closer, gritter examination of the Clan of Night. The trilogy successfully brings life to the Lasombra we know only through cards and assorted scraps of background information, making it good reading for any VTES player. -- So ends this month's newsletter. Having finally finished the bar exam, I expect to revert to a monthly schedule. In the months to come, we'll explore some different voting decks, and then delve into the more atypical Lasombra decks: Shadow Twin/blood denial, Baltimore Purge, intercept wall, and whatever unusual ideas I can come up with. Also, now that the Gehenna preview is up and a new Lasombra vampire is on the horizon, we'll have plenty new to discuss. Morte ascendo! -Eric Manch sleeveboy@hotmail.com