V:EKN MALKAVIAN NEWSLETTER, FEBRUARY 2002 - TACTICS AND POSTURE ISSUE This month I thought I'd try something a bit more ambitious and depart from the usual Malkavian inspection to investigate some broader tactical issues. Some of the thinking for this newsletter was inspired by some recent observations. While doing some documenting of games and their outcomes, I was surprise by how often my game overviews tended to go something like: Player A (often this was me) took lots of actions, beat up on his predator and prey a little, and made everyone else nervous. A ran out of steam as the table turned against him and ousted him. Player C laid low, built up while everyone else was beating on each other, and swept up the table. And in a recent game, a player with a combat deck beat up his predator's vampires, beat up some of his prey's vampires, did some cross-table rushing. He dominated the table but was ousted without ever getting close to ousting his prey. It was suggested that his tactics were more annoying than effective. His reply was: "What else can I do? I'm playing Assamites!" What can you do? How do you fend off your predator, apply pressure, and eventually oust your prey, and control the table, all without appearing too dangerous and bringing the table's wrath down upon you? The multitude of different answers to this question are the essence of the game. Generally, the answers come in the forms of different decks and cards and clans. In this newsletter, rather than looking at how you can build and play your deck, I'll be looking at how you can play the table. First I'll try to define the different postures you can adopt towards other players at the table. For now, I'm ignoring predator and prey relationships, and just trying to list different potential attitudes and relationships you might try to establish with another player at the table. Postures: 1. Oust: When in Oust mode you are trying to drain the targeted player of his pool. Get him out of the game, and off the table, as fast as possible, using any and all offensive resources at your disposal. 2. Probe: Adopting a Probing posture towards a player means launching attacks to reduce her resource. But the pace is slower than Oust. And resource drain may be only a secondary goal. Often the primary goal in a probing attack is to gain information about an opponent's deck and hand and to get a sense of how he will respond to you. 3. Cripple: With a Crippling attack your goal is remove a critical resource, typically a specific lynch-pin minion, and thus limit the players ability to continue to make forward progress and/or defend himself. 4. Destroy: In Destroy mode you are trying to eliminate a players capacity to act or defend himself at all, generally by removing all of his minions. 5. Thwart: With a Thwart posture you try to keep an opposing player from succeeding at whatever he is trying to do, but do it in such a way that his primary resources are generally left intact. Bouncing or countering bleeds, blocking and playing Obedience or S:CE are basic Thwarting tactics. 6. Deter: In a Deter posture you use implied or an actual spoken threat to control another player's behavior. Generally, the threat indicates a shift from a current, relatively benign posture, to a different, more aggressive posture towards that player, should he take, or fail to take, a particular action. 7. Assist: In an Assist posture you actively (or passively) help another player to improve his position, defend himself, and/or apply forward pressure. 8. Ignore: Ignore is pretty self-explanatory. When Ignoring another player you adopt a wait-and-see attitude (or a nothing-I-can-do-about-it or a don't-care attitude) and take neither offensive actions towards that player nor try to Deter or Thwart him at all. OK, so there are the various postures I came up with. Like with most taxonomy systems I've oversimplified a bit for the sake of setting up neat categories. And like some classification systems, I'm hoping those additions to the V:TES lexicon will still be somewhat useful. In the next few sections I'll try and show how. Postures Towards Your Prey This is easy. You should be always trying Oust your prey, right? Well, generally, no. Most tables are going to have a Bad Guy that everyone wants to get rid of. Often, the Bad Guy is the first person to adopt an Oust posture. Being too aggressive too early can be very costly. Taking particularly aggressive actions towards your prey, actions like calling 2 KRCs or making more than 2 bleeds in a turn, is a sure signal to your prey and to the table that you are moving in for the kill. Expect your prey, and perhaps the entire table, to take appropriate defensive action and adjust their postures towards you accordingly. Often it is better to consider what posture your prey is adopting towards his prey. If he's going for an Oust then you can probably safely do likewise. If he is Probing it might be wiser to Ignore him, conserve your resources, and watch the outcome. Or do some Probing of your own. Ideally, you want your prey to expend his own resources to drain the resources of his prey, but then fail to oust him. The strategic value of camping, and Ignoring your prey, is something that is not often considered. But sometimes that's exactly the right move, even when your hand gives you other options. Allowing your prey move forward aggressively and then eventually Crippling him and/or Destroying him before he can finish the job is how combat decks can set themselves up for an easy 1-2 kill and win tables. Cripple your prey too early you're just pouting him on the defensive and creating more work for yourself. If your prey is in camping mode and Ignoring his prey then you've got some problems. Not only is your prey conserving and building his resources, but he's not chipping away at his prey either. Its going to take some work to take down prey #1 and still more take down #2. You need to either change the situation or get to work. Sometimes making your own benign posture explicit is all that's required to get your prey moving forward. A simple no-strings-attached statement "I won't be bleeding you my next turn" can be enough to get your prey going forward. Sometimes you just have to Oust the bugger. Postures Towards Your Predator When considering what posture to adopt towards your predator you can look first at what posture he has adopted towards you. Trick here is to consider not only what he did last turn, but more importantly, what will/can he do next turn. Some excellent players are masters of adopting ignoring-my-prey nothing-to-see-here posture. They build up and wait for their prey to let his guard down and reduce his own pool. Then they pounce and get the oust in same turn they make their first bleed. Plan ahead, and don't let this happen to you. But generally, you can take your cue from your predator. If she's just Probing your defenses its often wiser to eat small bleeds than to tip your hand or dedicate too many resources to shutting down a predator that wasn't going to oust you any time soon. When a Predator shifts into Oust mode he can no longer be ignored. If you stay in Probe mode, and don't respond to the threat, then you're in a race you're going to lose. You can go to Oust mode vs your prey and race him around the table. Or deal with the problem more directly. Thwarting your predator is always nice option, when available. Thwarting defenses generally don't require much resource expenditure on your part. Bouncing or countering bleeds usually leaves your predator in a position to continue to defend himself, but also in a position to continue to the attack the following turn. Sometimes your best defense requires Crippling, Destroying, or even Ousting your predator. Before adopting any of these postures, give Deter a try. A few words can save you a lot of actions. A predator you can rely on Ignoring you is a valuable asset. It could be by agreement, or because he's entangled with his predator, or he just lacks the capacity to move forward. But if you are safe from harm, then that's someone you want in the game as a bleed buffer or late-game-snack. Look for opportunities to Assist, but watch for a change in strength that could allow for a change in posture. Cross-Table Postures My default cross-table posture is Ignore. If I need the vote support, or expect something in return, I'll actively Assist someone cross-table. But mostly my cross-table-buddy is on his own. I'll save my actions and minions to deal with my predator and prey. Once in a while, I'll see someone complaining someone cross table is "Just letting him oust me", or not applying enough pressure one way or another, or setting someone up for a sweep. Mostly this is nonsense. Table sweeps don't happen nearly as often a Chicken Little says they will. People get ousted. Someone cross-table need only be supported to the extent that it serves your interests. Sometimes you'll see a sure sweep (at least of you) in the making or a deck will show up that is just too sleazy to live. On rare occasions a cross-table Cripple, Destroy, or Oust can work. But this is rare. Before adopting such a posture consider the strength, speed, staying power of the offending deck. How many turns, players, and VP before it gets to you? Unless you Must Act Now you're probably better off conserving your resources or directing them at your prey. Postures and Deck Construction The different postures you can use effectively and who you can apply them to is dependant on the composition of your deck. This is something worth considering during deck construction. How will I treat my prey? My predator? What are my default postures in the beginning? The middle? The endgame? A weenie potence deck might seem like it can only do one thing -beat up minions. But the deck seems more interesting when you consider all the postural options it has available to it. The downfall of pure bleed decks is that everyone knows they are in Oust mode right out the gate. They don't have much to say to their predator, and nothing to say cross-table except "You're next". The lack of postural options means everyone knows what's coming and will plan appropriately. When building a deck, the question of "How will I play it?" can be just as important as "What will I play?". Just like you're mom told you -- good posture is important. -Ben Swainbank