Official VEKN Malkavian Antitribu NEWSLETTER, March 2006 VOLUME V, Issue III 1. INTRODUCTION This time we're going to discuss Malks/!Malks with Fortitude... and the best benefits we can get from this Discipline. After the months wasted on trying to use damage prevention in a Malkavian deck, I finally stumbled on a deck from the Czech National 2005 finals - it just used Fortitude to untap with Freak Drive, nothing more! Sometimes we overlook a simple idea, trying to build something very complex... Anyway, I'm very grateful to Ravnos (creator of the deck) for the idea - though my Deck of the Month isn't exactly the same. 2. A BIT OF THEORY (mostly for newbies) I'm a noob myself - not a first-day player, of course, but still a novice. And I can remember that I greatly underestimated Freak Drive at first. There wasn't anything spectacular in the card - it didn't provide pool, it didn't torporize enemy vampires etc. etc. That's why I'm obliged to explain WHY Freak Drive is a great card to the other newbies now - and, overall, why the ability of performing several actions per turn is so important. There are at least three primary reasons of it: 1). "Extra vampires". As you should know, an average game length is 12-15 turns, and most vampires won't appear on the first game turn. For simplicity, let's assume that we need vampires only to perform some actions. In most decks this isn't true, since our vamps can play reactions, and their votes constantly affect the game, but for some successful decks this is ALMOST true - for Setite S&B, for instance, or for Ishtarri vote & bleed. Performing a single action per turn, a large vampire will perform not more than 10-12 actions per game, and that won't be enough to justify paying his cost. Having eight Freak Drives or Forced Marches in a deck provides eight more actions, which is almost the same as having an extra vampire! 2). Acceleration. If your vampires can play acceleration cards like Govern the Unaligned, Fourth Tradition or The Call, a possibility of performing second action per turn will allow you to accelerate AND pursuit the primary strategy of your deck. Ventrue are so good since they have Dominate to play Govern, Fortitude to Freak Drive and Presence to play a political action with the full benefits afterwards. Malkavians with AUS/DEM/for/obf can play The Call, untap with Freak Drive and use their DEM/obf to bleed. 3). The surprise factor. If you demonstrate your aggression from the very beginning, your predator and your prey (at least) will concentrate on stopping you. Sudden strike is the best tactics, and "untap cards" are very good in this. Your prey may feel safe having 12 pool, but if you have three vampires, and each of them will perform two actions per turn - say, bleed and Kine Resources Contested - you are likely to oust him in one turn. And the power of surprise makes the intervention of the other players very unlikely. 3. CARDS OF THE MONTH Name: Freak Drive [Jyhad:R2, VTES:R, CE:U/PV2, Anarchs:PG, LoB:PA2] Cardtype: Action Modifier Cost: 1 blood Discipline: Fortitude [for] Only usable at the end of a successful action (after resolving the action). Untap this vampire. [FOR] As above, but usable even if the action is blocked (play after combat, if any). Freak Drive is one of the most expensive uncommons in the whole game - it's priced at $5, even though there are two starters with two Freak Drives each. Guess why? It's the "untap card" with the least number of restrictions - inferior Fortitude is enough to untap after a successful action, and superior will untap even after a blocked one! Moreover, your vampire can play any number of Freaks in a row just for one blood each - to perform three or more actions per turn with a devastating result. No-Repeat-Actions rule enables only one bleed action and only one political action per turn, but there are decks that really need to play 3+ actions per turn with a single vampire. Thus, the price of the card isn't a surprise: it's needed in many decks and in large quantities. After all, there is Una that plays Freak Drive for free, and some players enjoy playing her with 50 Freak Drives or even more: they just hunt and cycle Freak Drives to find the needed cards! Name: Forced March [KMW:C/PAn2, LoB:PI4] Cardtype: Action Modifier Disciplines: Celerity & Fortitude A vampire can play only one Forced March each turn. [cel][for] Only usable when an action is successful. This vampire untaps. [CEL][FOR] +1 stealth, and at the end of the action, the acting vampire may burn 1 blood to untap if the action is successful. This card is initially "fixed" to disable possible "madness" when a single vampire performs a LOT of actions in a single turn. Forced March can be played only once per turn - and the restriction is really needed, since this card costs no blood. At inferior, this card is almost always better than Freak Drive, since it's free. Superior version is quite different from the superior Freak Drive. +1 stealth is a huge benefit for Celerity and Fortitude, since these disciplines normally don't provide stealth. The closest cards are Alacrity (two blood is too much for +1 stealth and one optional maneuver) and the various Dawn/Day Operations that send your vampire into torpor. Forced March is a first NORMAL stealth modifier available for Celerity and Fortitude, and the card would be playable even without the untap effect :) Obviously, +1 stealth greatly increases chances of success of the action, and, consequently, chances of untapping. If you aren't planning to perform more than two actions per turn with a single vampire (which is difficult enough anyway, thanks to the No Repeat Actions rule), Forced March would be better than Freak Drive, if your vampires have the needed Disciplines. Celerity and Fortitude are mostly combat disciplines, and the most obvious deck idea with them is a multirush with guns, maneuvers and additional strikes (specialty of Celerity) and damage prevention (specialty of Fortitude). Having +1 stealth for a rush action is extremely good - you almost always kill the intended victim, not just a random fodder. Forced March made old vampires with Celerity and Fortitude much better, just because they can play this card now. The combat-oriented vampires with CEL/for got the most significant boost, since Freak Drive is much worse for them. Pug Jackson Jummy Dunn and Richter, for instance, were excellent CEL/POT combatants even prior to Forced March, but now they can untap for free! Unfortunately (or fortunately), "normal" CEL/FOR vampires start from 8 capacity, but you may find a true "combat stars" among them: omnipotent Hrothulf with inbuilt rush, weapon-proof Count Germaine, vicious Jalan-Aajav and Karsh. Stanislava and Gwendolyn also have CEL/FOR, and Forced March makes these uber-powerful Inner Circles even better. Name: Zillah's Tears [BH:C/PTo2] Cardtype: Action +1 stealth action. Requires a ready Sabbat vampire. Put this card on this acting vampire and move 1 blood from the blood bank to this vampire. This Sabbat vampire can burn this card any time after this turn ends to untap. A vampire can have only one Zillah's Tears. This card is one of the most overlooked cards in the whole game. Surely, it's much worse than the true "untap cards": you don't gain "extra actions", you just "store" your action for the future use, but Zillah's Tears has some advantages, too. Firstly, you may untap the vampire even during another player's turn, if you desperately need to block an action or play a reaction. Secondly, Zillah's Tears doesn't require ANY disciplines, so even 1-cap Sabbat weenies can play it. Finally, playing this card is obviously better than normal hunt, and you may play it even if the normal hunt is prohibited. Probably, the most important advantage of Zillah's Tears is the fact that it doesn't wait in your hand. If you accumulate, say, three Tears, you will get +3 actions on the crucial turn, but you won't be forced to keep three Freak Drives or Forced Marches in your hand. That's why you may find Zillah's Valley in decks with Fortitude and "more powerful" Freak Drives/Forced Marches: untap with Freak, play Zillah's Tears and free your hand for the primary cards. 4. VAMPIRES OF THE MONTH Name: Anatole, Prophet of Gehenna [FN:U, CE:PM] Clan: Malkavian Group: 2 Capacity: 8 Discipline: dom for AUS DEM OBF Camarilla: If Anatole is ready during your master phase, you may look at the top 5 cards of your library and then shuffle the top 5 cards of your library. +1 intercept. Anatole has all three clan Disciplines at superior and +1 intercept. This is already good enough, but if your deck uses his Fortitude, he is really worth his 8 pool, even without any title. Being an "anti-Malkavian patriot", I must note that Kite is almost always better than Anatole due to lesser capacity and a title, but Kite doesn't have Fortitude. Even if you don't have any Fortitude cards, this makes him immune to Kiss of Ra, which is very good for a blocker with +1 intercept. Anatole also has superior Obfuscate that provide maneuvers from Swallowed by the Night and grands a lot of good bonuses from the other stealth cards. With Freak Drives, Anatole able to play several actions per tunr or just act and stay untapped to block hostile actions. Anatole's ability shouldn't be neglected, too. Many decks play five cards per turn or even more, and it's really good to know what you are going to draw. After using the ability, the more cards you will draw, the better would be your chances to draw the needed cards if you know that they were among the top five. For instance, you may know that three top cards are stealth modifiers, and this would justify playing an important action having only one such modifier in your hand. As you see, sometimes Anatole's ability almost "increases your hand size" :) Name: Jason, The World's Voice [CE:V] Clan: Malkavian Group: 3 Capacity: 8 Discipline: for AUS DEM OBF Camarilla primogen: If Jason is blocked, the blocking vampire burns 1 blood after the resulting combat. Once per action, Jason can burn 1 blood to get +1 bleed. In a Dementation-based stealth-bleed deck, Jason is even better than Anatole - he has a title, and he can get +1 bleed. His "anti-blocking" ability is also good enough, though you aren't going to let your opponent block him just to make them lose one extra blood. All clan disciplines at superior, inferior Fortitude, a possibility to get +1 bleed and even a vote - what else do you want? Looks like Jason was specially designed for a stealth-bleed with Freak Drives: he has all the needed abilities and nothing more. Name: Artemis [Sabbat:V, BH:PM] Clan: Malkavian antitribu Group: 2 Capacity: 6 Discipline: aus cel for DEM OBF Sabbat. Artemis is one of the "classic" vampires in Kindred Spirits stealth-bleed decks without Fortitude: he has two primary disciplines at superior (DEM and OBF). Obvously, Dolphin Black is better, but these decks need superior Auspex only to deflect bleeds with Telepathic Misdirection, and having one vampire with superior Auspex is usually enough. Stealth-bleed decks cannot play several copies of a given vampire anyway, as they need a lot of vampires in play as fast as they can. In a deck with Fortutude Artemis is just awesome. The difference between 6 and 8 capacity is really huge, especially in a Malkavian deck that is extremely vulnerable to rushes: losing a smaller vampire isn't a disaster as losing a big one. That's why Artemis is better than Anatole in such deck, while Jason's +1 bleed ability may compensate for the increased size. Artemis is a "jack-of-all-trades" that even possesses inferior Celerity besides the inferior Fortitude - he can even play Forced March! Our clan is really proud of him. 5. DECK OF THE MONTH Deck Name: FOR Malks! Created By: Ilya Ginsburg Description: Malkavian S&B with Freak Drives, Calls and superior Madman's Quills Crypt: (12 cards, Min: 15, Max: 32, Avg: 5,91) ---------------------------------------------- 2 Anatole dom for AUS DEM OBF 8 Malkavian 2 Jason for AUS DEM OBF 8 Malkavian 2 Artemis aus cel for DEM OBF 6 Malkavian Antitribu 1 Uncle George aus dom obf DEM 5 Malkavian Antitribu 1 Persia aus obf DEM 5 Malkavian 1 Kite obf pre AUS DEM 7 Malkavian Antitribu 1 Midget obf pre DEM 3 Malkavian Antitribu 1 Yorik dem obf 3 Malkavian Antitribu 1 Jeremy Talbot dem obf 4 Malkavian Library: (90 cards) ------------------- Master (17 cards) 3 Information Highway 3 Dreams of the Sphinx 1 Barrens, The 3 Sudden Reversal 5 Blood Doll 1 Perfectionist 1 Pentex(TM) Loves You! Action (27 cards) 3 Madman`s Quill 6 Call, The 1 Blessing of Chaos 2 Zillah`s Tears 15 Kindred Spirits Action Modifier (30 cards) 8 Freak Drive 6 Confusion 4 Elder Impersonation 4 Lost in Crowds 4 Faceless Night 4 Spying Mission Reaction (6 cards) 6 Telepathic Misdirection Ally (2 cards) 1 Repo Man 1 Carlton Van Wyk (Hunter) Equipment (3 cards) 1 Ivory Bow 1 Learjet 1 Tapestry of Blood Combo (5 cards) 5 Swallowed by the Night This deck is similar to the standard Kindred Spirits stealth & bleed, but average capacity of its vampires is slightly higher due to Jason and Anatole. The slower start is compensated by 8 Freak Drives and 6 The Calls that ensure you the same number of actions per game, or even more. As long as the vampires can bleed only once per turn, and our vampires can untap, the deck has much more non-bleed actions than a traditional S&B. The Call is extremely advantageous, especially early in the game (+3 pool and +3 transfers), and you are almost guaranteed to get a vampire able to play it at superior - there are five of them, and they are older than the other vamps. Zillah's Tears "store" extra actions for the future. Madman's Quill is one of the primary cards in this deck, since the untap cards allow playing it at superior with the devastating bleed bonus. Note that while this isn't an intercept deck, there are three vampires with inbuilt +1 intercept and one more (Persia) can get +1 intercept for 1 blood - you are almost guaranteed to get at least one of them. This greatly increases your chances against decks based on +1 stealth actions like voting or equipping. When possible, you should put Blessing of Chaos and Ivory Bow on your primary blocker that's going to stay untapped in the dangerous situations. Tapestry of Blood is just another "action sink" that can be used to bleed responsively - to burn the cards that could deflect your bleeds from your prey to somebody else. As long as the bearer untaps at the end of turn the Tapestry was used, your primary blocker would be the best for it. Allies are used mostly as "cheap fodder" against rushes. This deck is more vulnerable to the rush than the traditional Kindred Spirits deck, since the vampires are larger, and losing Anatole or Jason would be very painful. Losing an ally would be much better, especially losing Repo Man that will be useless after fetching Learjet anyway. That's all for March, As usual, all comments and ideas are appreciated. Yours, Ector