Official VEKN Malkavian Antitribu Newsletter, August 2006 VOLUME V, Issue VIII 1. INTRODUCTION I intentionally wait for the spoilers of Third Edition, and they didn't disappoint me. This is going to be one of the best sets in the whole game - maybe, even the very best one. Almost all rares are playable, and there are long-awaited reprints like Powerbase:Montreal and War Ghoul. Our clan, and the Sabbat as a whole, got an impressive boost, and it's simply impossible to review all the gained goods in the one newsletter. So, I will divide this pleasure between several newsletters :) 2. OUR NEW STARTER Our clan just got its SECOND starter, which is surely very good. Though the starter has less expensive cards than the other starters of 3rd Edition - just Melange and The Call (I don't think that Enchanted Marionette is going to be expensive), it's simply the best starter for a novice. You may safely recommend a novice to get two !Malk starters and assemble something like this: Crypt: (12 cards, Min: 16, Max: 33, Avg: 6,0) ---------------------------------------------- 2 Apache Jones aus for obf DEM 5 !Malk 2 Uncle George aus DEM dom obf 5 !Malk 1 Beauregard Crueller aus dem obf 4 !Malk 2 Rodolfo pro AUS DEM OBF 8 !Malk bishop 2 Persephone Tar-Annis cel pot AUS DEM OBF 8 !Malk 1 General Perfidio Dios dem obf AUS 5 !Malk bishop 1 Harold Zettler vic AUS DEM OBF POT 9 !Malk 1 Bloodfeud obf 2 !Malk Library: (80 cards) ---------------------------------------------- Master (13 cards) 4 Blood Doll 2 Dementation 2 Effective Management 1 Institution HG 2 Secure Haven 2 Vox Senis Action (12 cards) 2 Call, The 10 Kindred Spirits Action Modifier (28 cards) 6 Cloak the Gathering 8 Confusion 4 Elder Impersonation 8 Eyes of Chaos 4 Lost in Crowds Reaction (8 cards) 4 On the Qui Vive 4 Telepathic Misdirection Ally (2 cards) 2 Escaped Mental Patient Combo (7 cards) 2 Deny 5 Swallowed by the Night Combat (8 cards) 2 Behind You! 6 Read Intentions Though it certainly quite far from the professional Kindred Spirits deck (the most painful is the lack of Sudden Reversals and Spying Missions), I wouldn't enjoy being a prey of this deck :) Unsurprisingly, the starter should be also very good in drafts. The crypt quality is unbelievable: good 5-caps with superior Dementation, very good Obfuscate weenie, standard 4-cap filler, only one 9-cap vampire plus a collection of very playable 8-caps with DEM OBF - most with +1 bleed, one with useful equipping ability. I'm just amazed! No 10-caps giants that aren't appropriate in S&B, no 8-caps and 9-caps with unplayable abilities, and, most importantly, no vampires without the primary disciplines like Damaskenos, Ohanna and Greger Anderssen in the CE Malkavian starter. The same could be said about the library. Personally I never play cards like Malkavian Game, and Crusades are obviously not needed here, but generally the percentage of unneeded cards is very low. And you are going to bless the provided equipment during the draft: Deer Rifle and Leather Jackets will save your vampires, and Sawed-Off Shotgun will at least revenge for them. 3. TO COMBO OR NOT TO COMBO - THIS IS A QUESTION I have to admit that the remains of my past Magic experience still remain in my mind :( When I hear a word "combo" I think about the world-breaking card combinations that immediately win the game. Yes, I know that such things aren't possible in VTES, but there are still very powerful combinations of permanent cards that greatly improve your position and increase your chances of winning. Madness Network + Victoria provides 3 pool per turn (1 for the Edge, 2 for Victoria's ability). Madness Network + Homunculus enables bleeding after each player's minion phase, at least for 2 in case of Rachel Bradywine. And so on. The latest discussion at the newsgroup convinced me that the term "combo" is widely applied to the any combination of cards that work well together. This forces me to call for a different term to denote a permanent combo, since the principles of playing these are totally different: if you want to play combos, you just include many copies of the needed cards, but if you want to play permanent combos, which are often unique, you need to fetch them from your library. What about a "hardcombo" term that should be opposite to "softcombo" based on transient cards? I'm going to use this term for now, until somebody suggest a better one. Why do we need such term right now? Because Third Edition provided a whole bunch of cards to implement hardcombos, in addition to the well-known ones (Sibyl's Tongue, Fortschritt Library, Magic of the Smith etc.) Thus, you can build competitive decks that will rely on fetching them! 4. VAMPIRE OF THE MONTH Name: Luc Clan: Malkavian antitribu Capacity: 5 Disciplines: dem, vic, OBF Sabbat. Luc gets +1 stealth on diablerie actions. He may give you +3 hand size until your next untap phase as a +1 stealth action. Luc is the brilliant support vampire for a deck that needs a large hand. This will be helpful for any deck, especially for combat-oriented like rush or intercept. His ability is much better than just "+3 hand size" - it's "+3 hand size and discard three cards each your untap phase". I'd say that even a location with such ability should cost 5 pool, and we have a vampire that can hunt, resque, diablerize (even at +1 stealth), play Sibyl's Tongue, etc. etc. :) Cycling to find certain cards is usually nicknamed "digging", since you "dig" through your library. Luc is a brilliant "digger" - he is guaranteed to dig three cards per turn (maybe more if somebody would attempt to block him), and your vampires will be able to cycle much more cards with the increased hand size. What should you dig for? Parts of your combo and cards needed to fetch these pards, like Sibyl's Tongue. If you need to fill your ash heap quickly, Luc will serve too. Though he's not as powerful as Liquidation, and he doesn't provide any pool, he allows you to select what to dump, and you'll never burn the crucial part of your combo. This works especially well if you can use cards directly from your ash heap, like Convictions. Luc is obviously very good with Imbued - he can Cloak them and provide a lot of Convictions. You have to include some Obfuscate-based stealth cards to make sure that Luc will succeed, and this seriously limits his application. If your deck is going to have a lot of stealth cards anyway (which is typical for a hardcombo deck), this is no limitation for all. If not, you may use Luc as any other support vamp with superior Obfuscate, to Cloak his own action and actions of your primary vampires. Though you can use Luc in a traditional Kindred Spirits deck, his Disciplines aren't ideal for that. Inferior Dementation allows bleeding only for 2, and though superior Obfuscate is nice, it usually isn't crucial. Usually, the only vampires with inferior Dementation that qualify are weenies or AUS/dem/obf vampires that can bounce bleeds. But stealth-bleed decks utterly need to cycle the unneeded cards, so I won't be surprized if Luc becomes very popular there. Spending an action of 5-cap to cycle the unneeded stealth modifiers is much better than bleeding for 1 with every vamp, and, after all, Luc can finally dig up a Dementation skill card! 5. CARDS OF THE MONTH Name: Inconnu Tutelage Cardtype: Event Inconnu A Methuselah may spend four transfers and remove a vampire in his or her uncontrolled from the game to search for any card in his or her library and put it into his or her hand (discarding and shuffling afterward). The power of this card is immense: you can fetch not just a single card, but a new card each turn (or even two cards in the one turn if you manage to get 8 transfers and two unneeded vampires in your uncontrolled region). Now we have a reliable recipe of assembling any hardcombo: take 5-6 Sibyl's Tongues and Inconnu Tutelage, fetch the Tutelage first, then fetch all your combo with it. If your combo consists of only two cards, and you happen to draw one of them, you can fetch the second part directly, without the Tutelage. To activate Inconnu Tutelage, you have to pay a high price, mostly in transfers. By default, if you don't have unneeded vampires in your uncontrolled region, you'll have to get one for 4 transfers and 1 pool, and then spend another 4 transfers to fetch a card. This guarantees that nobody would use use Tutelage each turn to keep an ideal hand: your hardcombo should be really powerful to justify using the Tutelage. For instance, your Tariq may play Atonement, merge via Gift of Experience, then recruit Deviki Prasanta and get some Disciplines to increase capacity even further. Your Enkidu may need only Fueled by Heart's Blood and a Fortitude skill card to enjoy all benefits of Amaranth, Forced March, Freak Drive and damage prevention cards. As you see, a reliable hardcombo usually consists of 2-3 cards. You may have other cards that "would be nice to add", but they aren't usually as crucial as the primary ones. So, you will generally pay the price for fetching these cards quite easily, without special cards like Kindred Intelligence or Clotho's Gift, especially if your hardcombo includes a certain vampire, and you have 5 copies of that vampire in your crypt (or even more). If you're playing Tariq, Una, Enkidu or any other "one-man show", you are going to have 1-2 unneeded copies of your "star" that can be easily feeded to the Tutelage. Thus, the card looks like a natural addition to any "one-man show" deck, if you can face the consequences (see below). The worst disadvantage of Inconnu Tutelage is the fact that it works for all players, and you will be the last to get its benefit. Just imagine what would you do if your predator played this card? Naturally, you should immediately fetch Direct Intervention, Sudden Reversal or Wash, if you have them. If he uses this card, then the combo is near, and you aren't going to allow anything spectacular to happen. This effectively limits usage of Inconnu Tutelage to the cards that are unlikely to be canceled - Events and seemingly innocent cards like Fortitude skill card for Enkidu. I don't believe that players are going to include Not To Be just in case of Inconnu Tutelage + Events deck, so you may fetch your events and play them almost safely. Fortitude can be canceled, but it requires a lot of skill to understand that you fetched this simple card, not a Regent or something unique, and it isn't a bait. As far as I see now, the major function of Inconnu Tutelage is fetching the "silver bullets". There are multitude of them in the whole game, and if your deck isn't likely to fall their victim, you will generally be HAPPY to allow the other players to defend against the degenerate decks that we all are tired of. For instance, let's imagine that you have Inconnu Tutelage in your hand, your prey, Filthy Joe, plays that horrible mindless disciplineless weenie horde, and your grandprey, Honest John, is going to be ousted soon. "Hey, John, do you have Aranthebes?", - you ask with a wide grin. "It's somewhere in my deck, but not in my hand", says John with a sigh. "Then fetch it NOW!", - you say and play Inconnu Tutelage. Now Filthy Joe has just two turns of free bleeding left. Even if that munchkin has his own Aranthebes to contest John's, somebody is likely to block it, and you can fetch Direct Intervention during your turn, just in case :) Die, mindless weenie scum! God knows how are we tired of losing games without any mistakes of ours, just for being preys of such decks. The same could be said about the mindless bleeds for 4 or more - everybody knows that they are risky, they can be bounced, and so on, but only Archon Investigation can really inspire fear in the dark hearts of heavy bleeders. Who is mad enough to bleed for 4 with a precious vampire if his prey USED the Tutelage? Thus, Inconnu Tutelage is a great "regulator" of weird decks. Unfortunately, this includes your deck if it relies on a single vampire - there are a lot of ways to paralyze vampires, from Pentex Subversion to Sensory Deprivation. Be sure to learn these cards and be prepared for them. Dying from the card you played yourself won't be pleasant at all... Though I'd like to rebuild my old Enkidu deck with Inconnu Tutelage, I won't even start while PTO still remains unchanged, because THEY would have at least one, and if you allow them to fetch it, you are going to lose. After all, you cannot fetch both your combo AND Direct Interventions :( Name: Heart of Nizchetus Cardtype: Unique Equipment. Cost: 1 pool. During your untap phase, if the bearer is ready, you may draw up to three cards from your library and then move the same number of cards from your hand to the bottom of your library. This card is a wonderful "digger" just for one pool, and you don't even have to spend an action! The Heart is going to be used in every combo deck. It works only for you, and you are going to find what you need pretty fast. You cannot fill your ash heap, but you don't always need it; sometimes you prefer keeping your library large enough. If you have some ways of returning cards from your ash heap (Waste Management Operation, Sudario Refraction, Reinforcements etc.), you may even try to play a small deck and "fit" your library to your needs! Even in "normal" cases, there are cards that we want to have early, and there are cards that we prefer to have later, like Week of Nightmares or Palla Grande. Heart of Nizhetus would be very helpful in such cases. Note that you may combine its effect with shuffling your library, that can be achieved by any fetch cards. This may be good, if you want to return some of the dumped stuff back, or bad, if you hope not to see it again. You can control this effect yourself! A stealth-bleed player can get rid of the stealth modifiers if his prey makes no attempts of block it. If the next prey has some intercept, he can play Sibyl's Tongue to get something good AND shuffle the library, getting good chances of drawing stealth. This card makes a good combo with Anatole. As long as you know the top 5 cards of your library and draw three of them immediately, you don't have to guess what cards you will get when you replace the first two cards you will play this turn. Note that Imbued also can play this card to dig for their Powers, Convictions and Events. Name: Sibyl's Tongue [BH:R2, 3rd:R2] Cardtype: Action Clan: Malkavian antitribu Cost: X blood +1 stealth action. This action costs X blood, where X is the number of Sibyl's Tongues in your ash heap. Choose a card by name. Search your library for a copy of that card, show it to all players, and move it to your hand. Discard down to your hand size and shuffle your library afterward. If you read my newsletters regularly (please take my apologies for all that crazy stuff you had to read during the past two years), you don't need any new description of our "hallmark card". I use it almost in every deck, and you can read my review of the card in May 2005 newsletter. Why am I including Sibyl's Tongue into my "Cards of the Month" section again? Obviously, you should always keep this card in mind when you even start thinking about building a combo deck, and we're talking about such decks now. But, actually, I included this card for a different reason: this card seems to have "stealth", since most players tend to forget even about its existence :) I don't exaggerate even a single bit! I've traced the newsgroup for a week or more and spotted several talks about Inconnu Tutelage. Why nobody even mentioned Sibyl's Tongue? It's the only way of getting Inconnu Tutelage early, without wasting several slots for its copies. This really astonishes me, as my first thought, naturally, was "Luc's digging for Sibyl's Tongue, plays it for the Tutelage, then I quickly assemble ANY combo with Luc, Tutelage and the remaining Tongues" :) Another example is much more frustrating. Look at the Sibyl's Tongue review in the VTES Player's Guide (p.83) "The ability to retrieve a card from your ash heap and return it to your hand is a powerful effect that few vampires with Necromancy have access to". Haha! The actual ability (to get any card from your LIBRARY, not ash heap) is much more powerful, and no Necromancers have access to anything similar! AFAIK, there are no !Malks with Necromancy :) This mistake isn't just a clerical error, it clearly demonstrates that the author never played this card... which is a pity, since it deserves being played. Seriously, guys, never forget about Sibyl's Tongue. It can "hide" quite well, but it's still here - I even own some copies! :) When you see a powerful new card that you'd like to get early, but extra copies of the card would be useless (as with any Event), the first card you should think about is Sibyl's Tongue, not Fortschritt Library that can be played only once per game, possibly by another player. You can always include some support !Malks to play the Tongue - Luc, General Perfidio Dios, Roger Farnsworth or Colonel. This card really deserves much more attention that it currently has. Good news: when you will open your 3rd Edition boosters, you are going to get some Sibyl's Tongues - the card was reprinted as R2. You'll have a chance of playing this wonderful card, and, I swear, if you do, you'll never forget it anymore. 6. DECKS OF THE MONTH Deck Name: Turbo-Wormwood Mk2 Created By: Ilya Ginsburg Description: Luc replaces Roger in bringing out the Gehenna Crypt: (12 cards, Min: 15, Max: 20, Avg: 4,5) ---------------------------------------------- 4 Luc dem vic OBF 5 !Malk 3 Travis "Traveler72" Miller DEF MAR 5 Martyr 2 Lupe "Cabbie22" Droin DEF VEN 4 Defender 2 Paul "Sixofswords29" Moreton DEF VIN 4 Visionary 1 Francois "Warder" Loehr DEF JUD 3 Judge Library: (86 cards) ------------------- Master (18 cards) 1 Fortschritt Library 4 Visit from the Capuchin 1 Rose Foundation, The 1 Church of Vindicated Faith, The 3 Vampiric Disease 1 Strained Vitae Supply 2 Society of Leopold 1 Millicent Smith, Puritan Vampire Hunter 1 Powerbase: Los Angeles 1 Blood Doll 1 Slave Auction 1 Servitor of Irad Action (13 cards) 8 Lock 5 Sibyl`s Tongue Action Modifier (8 cards) 8 Cloak the Gathering Ally (2 cards) 1 Moise Kasavubu 1 Carlton Van Wyk (Hunter) Equipment (5 cards) 1 Tapestry of Blood 1 Crusader Sword, The 1 Sport Bike 1 Sniper Rifle 1 Heart of Nizchetus Event (15 cards) 1 Unmasking, The 1 Thirst 1 Slow Withering, The 1 Restricted Vitae 1 Recalled to the Founder 1 Nightmares upon Nightmares 1 Anthelios, the Red Star 1 Wormwood 1 Edge Explosion 1 Fall of the Camarilla 1 Blood Weakens 1 Torpid Blood 1 Fueled by Heart`s Blood 1 Veil of Darkness 1 Dr. Marisa Fletcher, CDC Conviction (15 cards) 8 Second Sight 4 Strike with Conviction 3 React with Conviction Power (10 cards) 2 Champion 2 Surge 3 Project 3 Rejuvenate This is a variation of my "Turbo-Wormwood" deck (see the April newsletter) with Luc instead of Roger Farnsworth. Luc is slightly bigger, and he cannot use Black Hand-specific cards (Admonitions and Black Hand Ritual), but his ability should make the deck much stronger. Instead of the lost cards, this deck got Heart of Nizchetus. With Luc and the Heart you're almost guaranteed to play a Gehenna card each turn! Deck Name: Mata Hari Combo-Vote Created By: Ilya Ginsburg Description: obf/for/PRE voting deck with serious digging Crypt: (12 cards, Min: 21, Max: 28, Avg: 6,416) ---------------------------------------------- 4 Mata Hari aus for qui CHI OBF 7 Ravnos 2 Ubende for obf qui CEL PRE 7 Ishtarri 2 Mukhtar Bey obf pot FOR PRE QUI 7 Caitiff 3 Luc dem vic OBF 5 !Malk 1 Antoinette cel obf AUS PRE 6 Toreador Library: (90 cards) ------------------- Master (17 cards) 1 Infernal Pact 1 Ventrue Headquarters 1 Ferraille 1 Legendary Vampire 1 Auspex 1 Waste Management Operation 1 Demonstration 1 Ancestor Spirit 2 Dreams of the Sphinx 2 Information Highway 4 Blood Doll 1 Direct Intervention Action (8 cards) 5 Sibyl`s Tongue 1 Heart of the City 1 Aranthebes, The Immortal 1 Priority Shift Action Modifier (26 cards) 6 Freak Drive 6 Voter Captivation 5 Cloak the Gathering 4 Forgotten Labyrinth 2 Elder Impersonation 3 Lost in Crowds Political Action (19 cards) 4 Diversity 10 Kine Resources Contested 3 Domain Challenge 1 Disputed Territory 1 Crusade: Geneva Reaction (5 cards) 5 Telepathic Misdirection Combat (8 cards) 8 Majesty Equipment (2 cards) 1 Heart of Nizchetus 1 Shilmulo Tarot Event (1 cards) 1 Inconnu Tutelage Combo (4 cards) 4 Swallowed by the Night This is a stealthy voting/bleeding deck based on 7-cap voters, enforced by various masters that increase votes and bleed (Ventrue HQ, Ferraile, Ancestor Spirit, Legendary Vampire, Demonstration). Luc, Shilmulo Tarot and Heart of Nizchetus provide so strong digging that you'll need Waste Management Operation to return cards back. Use Infernal Pact to teach Mata Hari Presence, and with the Auspex skill card she will be able to bounce with Telepathic Misdirections. You may easily make the deck fit to your metagame by using the right "silver bullets": Secure Haven against Rush, Archon Investigation against heavy bleeds and so on. Please, don't ask me why ALL the primary vampires have Quietus - this was a surprise for me, but I didn't find any good usage of this Discipline here. That's all for August. As always, all comments and ideas are appreciated! Yours, Ector