Official Nosferatu Antitribu Newsletter Volume 2 Issue 4 ---------------------------- In this issue: Vampire of the Month: Aeron Cards of the Month: Instinctive Reaction, Stunt Cycle Strategy of the Month: +Strength vampires Decks of the Month: Matt Morgan's Qualifier-winning deck Introduction: Far overdue, but now I have plenty to keep me writing. Archives of clan newsletters are now not only being kept at www.thelasombra.com but also by White Wolf at http://www.white-wolf.com/VTES/newsletter/nl_date.html – much thanks to them for acknowledging the newsletters. Vampire of the Month: Gehenna gives us two new vampires: Name: Aeron Clan: Nosferatu antitribu Group: 3 Capacity: 9 Discipline: aus pro ANI OBF POT Sabbat Archbishop of London: Minions opposing Aeron in combat take an additional point of damage during strike resolution if the range is close. Once each combat, Aeron may burn a blood for a press. Name: Skidmark Cardtype: Vampire Clan: Nosferatu antitribu Group: 4 Capacity: 5 Discipline: aus pot FOR OBF Sabbat: When Skidmark is acting, you do not replace any cards you play until the end of the action. We'll talk about Skidmark next month. Aeron is a great, great vampire for our clan. An archbishop title, outside Auspex and Protean, an optional press, and extra damage at close– and better yet, she's still Group 3! While some people will be a little off-put by her being a large 9-cap, at least her title isn't on a 10-cap like our other Archbishop. Aeron is the only clan vampire with Protean, but the Auspex combines nicely; that gives us 3 group 2/3 vamps with inferior and one with superior. Suddenly Auspex is our most widely-held out-of-clan discipline! And basic is sufficient to do all sorts of nasty things like using inferior Revelations or Aura Reading to peek at hands and/or discard from them, which is a very useful ability for a clan who really wants to know what's coming next. It also opens up more avenues of intercept, including Read the Winds which is just great. A few Auspex skill cards mixed in opens up all the superior Auspex intercept boosts; Eagle Sight, Precognition and Spirit's Touch all provide handy superiors, and Telepathic Misdirections are nothing to sneeze at either. Nose of the Hound is another nice option: +1 stealth rush with a maneuver is great, as it's like a Bum's Rush at stealth that replaces immediately. Aeron's extra point of damage at close range is roughly equivalent to a point of bonus strength. The damage is environmental, which is better, but only applies in the first strike resolution, which is a worse. But Aeron's not likely to be flinging a lot of extra strikes around, so for most purposes you can think of her as being +1 almost-strength. This gives us _five_ +strength vampires, all between 7 and 9-cap. SMASH SMASH! The blood-for-press is also very nice, as it may let Aeron inflict that extra damage multiple times (or avoid those nasty Tremere strikes, depending.) Aeron also has that Archbishopric, and ANI/OBF. Referendums she calls with Animal Magnetism start at six votes in favor with the vote card, and that's pretty powerful before you add other titled vamps in. Those six votes are more than any other !Nos that's not a 10-cap can manage with Animal Magnetism. Since the !Nos have a cheap Priscus and two cheap Bishops, Aeron adds very nicely towards making an effective !Nos vote deck. Outside of the clan, Aeron combines well with the Nosferatu (-tus? –ti? whatever) Shahid and Ellison Humbolt, as well as the Gangrel Torvus Bloodbeard – all three of these have ani/pro/pot/obf with two or three superiors. (I've been testing a Torvus/!Nos vote/rush deck, if it keeps doing well I'll write about it next time.) Aeron's specific discipline combo lends itself well to rushing: Nose of the Hound to rush, use its maneuver to keep things close, Grapple and Wolf's claws and Carrion Crows to your heart's content. Flesh of Marble is also really nice for Aeron, due to the lack of !Nos damage reduction. Card of the Months: Instinctive Reaction / Stunt Cycle While Gehenna has no library cards specifically for !Nos, there's several cards that we can put to good use. Name: Instinctive Reaction [Gehenna:C] Cardtype: Reaction Discipline: Animalism Only usable when your predator is acting. [ani] +1 intercept. [ANI] As above, with an optional manuever during the resulting combat if the block succeeds. Instinctive Reaction is superb for Nosferatu Antitribu wall decks, and pretty good for the rest of them. It joins the outferiors of Falcon's Eye and Speak with Spirits as the only cards that allow reaction-intercept at inferior Animalism, and that's very important. Many of the smaller vampires only have [ani], and Beast as well – being able to surprise people with intercept from Beast is not a bad thing. Instinctive reaction (at the inferior) is usually better than Speak with Spirits, which only works against bleeds instead of all predator actions, and doesn't cost a blood like Falcon's Eye (which can be against anyone.) The restriction about only being used against your predator is only a mild flaw in my opinion. Most of the actions that you'll want to be blocking are going to be predator actions anyway. It won't help you against bounced-bleeds, but those are not likely to have their stealth continually pumped to get past you. It also won't help against your prey going backwards either, or in stopping him from hunting or rescuing vampires after you smash his puny vampires into torpor-jelly. But mixed in with permanents and/or other forms of intercept, it can really boost the usefulness of some of the low-cap vampires. It's very nice to be able to count on them getting in the way of bleeds while your big vampires do the heavy lifting. At superior, it adds in a maneuver, which is very useful for !Nos, whose combat engines often want to try to dictate the range to either Grapple or Sewer Lid. Since the maneuver only applies when you're blocking, you'll get to see which way your opponent wants to go and either counter his plan or enforce your own will on the combat. And did I say Thrown Sewer Lid? There's now another range-combat option… Name: Stunt Cycle [Gehenna:C] Cardtype: Combat Discipline: Potence Only usable at long range. [pot] Strike: 3R damage, and prevent 1 damage from the opposing minion's strike during this strike resolution. If the opposing minion has Celerity [cel], he or she can burn a blood to prevent all damage from this strike. [POT] A above, but for 4R damage and prevent up to 2. The much-maligned-already Stunt Cycle. One extra point of damage over the traditional Lid, _and_ damage prevention; but Celerity minions can prevent and there are an awful lot of those. The usual range restriction for Sewer Lids apply to the Cycle as well, but it loses the press. Technically, the damage prevention might not apply if the opposing minion dodges the Cycle, but if they're dodging, you won't have any damage to prevent either. The prevention won't help at all against environmental damage or Ghoul Retainers, but it's not like there are other Potence strikes that can prevent that, so that's a wash. Against Celerity decks, it's my opinion that Stunt Cycles are not at all a bad option. Yes, they can prevent the three (or four) for a blood – but spending that blood is the rough equivalent of getting hit for one unpreventable, and Celerity decks already have issues with blood management. Also, a lot of Celerity decks are already packing dodges (Acrobatics or Sideslip, most commonly) and thus would already have combat answers to the Sewer Lid. Auspex/gun or Celerity/gun decks are _very_ common these days. A [POT] vampire being able to prevent the first .44 shot entirely while still inflicting at least one blood loss on the opponent is actually pretty handy; without Celerity they get pasted for a lot. Also, if the Celerity minion is acting first, you'll get to see what his incoming strike is first – if you mix Lids and Cycles, you'll really put him to task trying to decide if he needs to dodge or strike, and you'll get to pick your response to suit his answer. Also, the Celerity deck will actually have to have blood to prevent the strike. If the CEL vamps are empty or you have some environmental damage to add to it (like Murders or Carrion Crows) they may be hard-pressed to stay out of torpor. At superior, very few ranged strikes aside from Assault Rifles are going to hurt at all; you can add a few Stunt Cycles into a close-range deck to help protect against somebody out-maneuvering you to long and playing a Breath of the Dragon or other nasty range strike. Environmental damage may be a concern, but !Nos can Carrion Crows right back to make that a zero-sum game (if not to our advantage with Murders of Crows tacked on.) As a side note for non-!Nos decks: Stunt Cycle can just ROCK in pre/POT decks, like oh for instance Brujah or !Brujah decks. Rigor Mortis at outferior and a Stunt Cycle as the first strike means that your opponent needs to be sending 3 points of ranged damage back at you in his first-and-only strike in order to scratch you _at all_, and even most CEL decks simply can't manage that without the expensive Assault Rifle. And look at that… Cailean just happens to have both PRE/POT and a way to set range to long. Imagine that! Heh heh. In practice, I'm expecting that a lot of Lid-heavy decks may start splashing a few Stunt Cycles in for the added damage against non-Celerity decks while still having a bunch of Lids for the CEL targets. It's still a little early to see what the optimal ratio is, so get testing, people! Strategy of the Month: +Strength As mentioned above, the Nosferatu Antitribu have a nice range of +Strength vampires. Beast, Calebos and Julio Martinez all have +1, Mateusz Gryzbowsky has +2 and Aeron has a semi-bonus in the form of an environmental at close. Five vampires is plenty to build a deck around, and there are lots and lots of vampires from other clans that have discipline synergy depending on your deck – especially Torvus Bloodbeard who has pot/ANI/OBF and +1 strength. Yes, all your +strength minions also have [POT]. You might think this makes the +Strength redundant; after all what is one more point of strength when compared to the Increased Strength/Torn Signpost/Pushing The Limit combo? There are other considerations, however. Let's assume for a moment that you're not playing with Potence cards at all. Every time you get into a combat with a 1-strength vampire, you're tangibly ahead before any cards are played. For every strike they make, you hit back harder. This puts the burden on _their_ deck to play cards to balance the combats. Long-term, a lot of decks may not have the combat cards in hand (or even in the deck) to consistently even balance this, and for a clan that is known for having lots of Animalism untaps and the ability to intercept like mad (see previous newsletters for the Wall deck notes), repeatedly punching for 2 adds up. It also adds a nice bruise aspect, before cards are played, to your bleed actions. Lots of people use weenies these days, either as their crypt or to offset big vampires. +Strength vampires on the table really strike fear into weenies; 1 and 2-caps simply can't afford to take 2-damage hits while retaining their usefulness. Being able to run bruise-and-bleed without needing to play bruise cards is a pretty nice effect; you can devote more cards to making the bleeds painful, via Spying Missions, Tier of Souls, Laptops, or whatever else you desire. Since the +Strength vampires in our clan all have [POT], we won't ignore that either. Immortal Grapples will make sure they don't throw back tricky strikes like Thefts or Comas and let you press to round 2 to pimp-smack them a second time. (IG also stops S:CE and Dodges, but that's a card that they're playing while you play none, which is still often to your benefit.) Strikes like Undead Strength and Pushing the Limit can ramp up the damage done, as can Torn Signposts/Fire in the Blood/etc. Obviously you may want to sprinkle a few Lids/Gates/Cycles for people who out-maneuever you. Consider that if all your vampires have +Strength, you don't need to devote as many [POT] cards to damage – there are some other very useful Potence cards that don't see as much use because people are busy focusing on the strikes. Relentless Pursuit is a often-overlooked card choice – pressing and cycling two cards can really help unjam a combat deck, and if your deck is flowing well, just use it at the inferior. Add some Arsons or Fractured Armament/Shattering Blows – recent environments have been very location/equipment heavy. If you're using a Happy Families-style deckbuild strategy, reducing the amount of cards devoted to standard POT strikes gives you lots and lots of flexibility to play more non-Potence cards. For !Nos, that may well turn into more untap and more intercept, which is a huge plus, or more maneuvers to keep them in arm's reach. Tastes of Vitae are also very nice in an all-plus-strength deck, obviously. Finally, when all your main vampires have Potence and +Strength, there's an added bonus. Every single time you enter combat, your opponent either plays a card to offset your +Strength in some fashion, or faces a potential Disarm no matter how much blood they have, and that is huge. After you show a Disarm, the intimidation factor goes up significantly. If you've got some combat cards backing up the +Strength to counter their avoidance, you may be tearing off arms willy-nilly, and with all the new cards boosting combat-ousting (Path of Lilith, Dragonbound, Carver's Meat Packing, etc – more on those in upcoming letters) those Disarms can really put an extra hurt on. Deck of the Month: Matt Morgan won the DC/Maryland/VA Qualifier last month with the following deck. Included are his comments about it. Deck Name: Call me Julio Created By: Matt Description: POT/DOM is always good. Let's add permanent rush, +strength, Nosferatu Kingdom and a bad attitude! Crypt: (12 cards, Min: 20, Max: 37, Avg: 7.33) ---------------------------------------------- 1 Agatha obf POT 4, smash for cheap! 1 Beast ani OBF POT 7, rush, +1 strength 1 Cailean ANI dom OBF POT 10, Archbishop, set range 3 Julio Martinez ANI DOM OBF POT 9, Bishop, +1 strength, int sp 1 Mateusz Gryzbowsky ANI OBF POT 8, +2 strength 1 Nigel the Shunned ANI obf POT 5, bad little dude 1 Olivia OBF POT 5, Bishop 1 Ox ANI OBF POT 6 2 Tarbaby Jack ANI dom OBF POT 8, Black Hand, +1 transfer You can see from the crypt that an important part of playing this deck is being incredibly lucky. I drew Beast in three out of four games and I drew Julio in every one. How'd I get so lucky? Dunno, I got a horrible crypt draw in a casual game on Friday. Library: (90 cards) ------------------- Master (13 cards) 4 Blood Doll --Not enough unless you're lucky (like I was). 2 Dominate --Didn't really use them, but they were supposed to justify the crypt spread. If there's no Julio, a Tarbaby or Cailean and a Dominate master is nearly as good, right? 1 Dreams of the Sphinx 2 Fame 1 Information Network --Played it, but never tapped it. 2 Nosferatu Kingdom --Absolutely essential. Always got one after the other, though. 1 Shanty Town Hunting Ground Action (12 cards) 6 Bum's Rush 6 Govern the Unaligned --Almost always played superior. Action Modifier (4 cards) 4 Conditioning --Because Colin said it was a good idea (he's right). Reaction (15 cards) 8 Deflection 7 Wake with Evening's Freshness --Replace one with Mylan Horseed as soon as Gehenna is legal. Combat (42 cards) 3 Behind You! 4 Carrion Crows 10 Immortal Grapple 6 Taste of Vitae 10 Torn Signpost 9 Undead Strength Combo (4 cards) 4 Swallowed by the Night I've discussed some of the combat above and in other threads. In many ways, it's your basic Potence package. The key is the guys with +strength. The first time they beat someone down, they'll need a few cards (or a lot of cards) to do so. After that, a Grapple might not even be necessary. Pure goodness. An earlier version of the deck used Guardian Angels to avoid agg pokes and similar, but I took them out of the final version reasoning that most of the combat I see in tournaments is potence combat or guns and also that considering the expense of my minions, my masters should gain me pool, not cost pool. I also had some Gang Tactics in an earlier version just because I think the art on them is hysterical and they're kind of useful. They were ultimately dropped for maneuvers because it seems more useful to me to be able to hold the maneuvers and play them in combat as needed than it is to assume I'll want close range on a certain action. Now that I've won a tournament with this deck, I might put them back in just for fun. ---------------------------- -John Flournoy