OFFICIAL VEKN SAMEDI BLOODLINE NEWSLETTER : VOLUME I ISSUE III
In this issue:
Introduction: Dead Reckoning
Card of the Month: Hag's Wrinkles
Vampire of the Month: George Fredrick
Deck of the Month: Sneak Freaks
Introduction: Dead Reckoning
Papa Ogoun!
Big Nago man, Orisha Nago!
Ogoun Feray! All Ogouns are Ogoun.
Papa Ogoun, come here, I beg you, and eat this food!
Papa Ogoun, my blood is not for you.
-- Vodun Invocation (call to Ogoun)
It's time to get down to numbers. Looking at the discipline spread of
the Samedi doesn't take long, and tells us a number of things about
how the bloodline can be successfully mixed with other clans.
(If the chart below looks garbled, try changing it to a small absolute
font, such as 8-pt. Courier.)
Aus Cel Dom For Nec Obf Pre
Qui Thn
Inf Sup Inf Sup Inf Sup Inf Sup Inf Sup Inf Sup Inf Sup
Inf Sup Inf Sup
No. of vamps 1 - 2 - 1 - 3 3 3 1 1 5 1 -
1 - 2 4
Smallest cap 8 - 7 - 9 - 5 6 6 9 6 5 8 -
7 - 5 6
The first thing to notice is that there are no small Samedi: for
example, there's no 2-cap with inferior Thanatosis and no 3-cap with
inferior obfuscate and inferior fortitude. That's a pity: adding just
those two vampires (especially the 3-cap!) would make the Samedi as
formidable as a full-fledged clan. But because the Samedi come as
mid-caps and larger, they all share their core disciplines. All Samedi
possess Fortitude, Obfuscate and Thanatosis. They are well endowed
with Obfuscate: all but one have superior Obfuscate, two-thirds have
superior Thanatosis, and half have superior Fortitude. So Samedi decks
should generally include plenty of Obfuscate cards. That means they're
good to use in combination with clans with Obfuscate (Assamites,
Baali, Followers of Set, Malkavians, Nosferatu and the antitribu of
the latter two) or to lend Obfuscate to clans that need stealth badly
(Brujah, Toreador, Tremere, Ventrue and their antitribu).
The next most common discipline for the Samedi is Necromancy. Four of
them have Necromancy, although only the Baron has it at superior.
That's unfortunate; Necromancy's greatest strength is its flexibility.
There's little reason to put Spectral Intervention in a deck if most
of your vamps can't play it at advanced, but can play advanced Lost in
Crowds. Still, Necromancy gives the Samedi access to some very useful
cards, such as Ex Nihilio, Daemonic Possession and the Masquer.
The smattering of Celerity (2 vamps) and Quietus (1 vamp) makes
Samedi/Assamite decks viable, especially since a number of Assamites
have Fortitude.
The Samedi have very little Dominate (1 vamp), Auspex (1 vamp) or
Presence (1 vamp), so the bloodline has poor access to bleed bouncing
cards and vote-influencing cards. This will be a disadvantage for
Samedi decks, except when the Samedi are providing support to or
receiving support from other vampires with one or more of those
disciplines. Like the Assamites and Setites, the Samedi need to plan
their defenses very carefully.
Card of the Month: Hag's Wrinkles
Hag's Wrinkles
Thanatosis/Obfuscate
Action Modifier
Only usable on an equip action.
obf : +2 stealth
thn : Untap this acting vampire if the action is successful.
THN : As thn above, but at +1 stealth.
Nearly all Thanatosis cards are combat cards. The wonderful exception
is Hag's Wrinkles, an Action Modifier that makes equipment much easier
to play with. The biggest cost of equipment is the loss of a minion
action; by allowing your minion to untap and act again, Hag's Wrinkles
obviates this problem. It can also provide the stealth your minions
will need to equip successfully. Combined with others cards that allow
you to get the most from your equipment, such as Heidelburg Castle,
Hag's Wrinkles makes the Samedi the equip-masters.
Other cards attempt to solve the same problem. Disguised Weapon and
Gift of Bellona can make it possible to equip without ending up with a
tapped minion, and also reduce the frustration of having your
equipping action blocked. But Gift of Bellona and Disguised Weapon
have a huge disadvantage: they can only be used with weapons; only
melee weapons, in the case of the Gift. Hag's Wrinkles works with so
much more! Laptops. Sport Bikes. The Sargon Fragment and the
Changeling Skin Mask. Pier 13, Invaray: Scotland and the Palatial
Estate. Leather Jackets--untap twice, once immediately and once at the
end of your turn! Aaron's Feeding Razor. The Soul Gem of Etrius. Even
iffy equipment like Incriminating Videotapes and the Baleful Doll gain
new utility when paired with Hag's Wrinkles.
An amusing sidenote: in the RPG, Hag's Wrinkles is a low-level
manifestation of the discipline of Thanatosis. The corpse-like Samedi
can tear open their bodies and sequester objects inside themselves
without discomfort. I have to laugh when I use this card; I can
imagine Reg Driscoll producing, say, Veneficorum Artum Sanguis from
the hollow of his chest with no problem, but I lose it when he pulls a
Sport Bike or the Lyndhurst Estate out of his butt.
Vampire of the Month: George Fredrick
George Fredrick
Samedi
6 Capacity
FOR nec obf THN
Camarilla
You don't have to enjoy Christopher Shy's art to play the Samedi, but
if you do, this card is a treat. George Fredrick has the puffy,
nauseating appearance of a corpse that has ripened and bloated in the
sun. When you look at his illustration, you can almost smell the rot.
It captures the fearsome nature of the Samedi. Imagine this thing
lurching after you!
Not just a pretty face, George offers a powerful mix of disciplines
you couldn't get so cheaply before. Most interesting is the FOR + obf
combination. This is nearly as good as Lithrac's for + OBF for taking
lots of actions successfully, and it offers other interesting
possibilities as well. For example, George is the lowest capacity vamp
who can play Elemental Stoicism as an action, allowing him to treat
all aggravated damage taken in combat as normal; not bad.
Conveniently, George also has inferior Necromancy, so he can stack Ex
Nihilio on top of Elemental Stoicism and be utterly immune to damage
taken in combat. (We'll be looking at the pros and cons of that setup
in a future newsletter.)
If you're fond of the slave mechanic, but not fond of Tremere and
Gargoyles, note that George's disciplines enable him to be a
slave-like substitute for blocked minions of any clan. Imagine George
with Elemental Stoicism sitting off to the side while your other
minions take their actions. If any action is blocked, George throws
down Mask of 1,000 Faces and Dawn Operation. Or, if you can't be
bothered with Elemental Stoicism, he throws Mask of 1,000 Faces and
Kiss of Ra. Ouch. A slave Gargoyle wouldn't need the Mask, but
couldn't play Dawn Operation or Kiss of Ra, and wouldn't be able to
Freak Drive afterwards. Furthermore, after Mask is played, the
original acting minion is not prevented from taking the same action
under NRA.
And that's just the beginning! George is the cheapest vampire with
superior Thanatosis, and he can also play Hidden Lurker. Piece of
advice to anyone facing a Samedi deck: If you see George untapped,
don't block with any minion you'd miss. Otherwise you're setting
yourself up for the Samedi dream combo of Hidden Lurker, Trap, Rigor
Mortis, the Withering, and Compress. Expensive, yes: it costs one
action, five cards, and three blood. Risky, no: once George lands the
Withering--a hand strike!--his opponent has -1 hand damage and can't
play any cards that require disciplines--such as most strikes
(including most dodges and S:CE), most maneuvers, most presses, most
general nastiness and all damage prevention--for the rest of combat
(and beyond, if they survive). Unless you pull out a Disguised
Improvised Flamethrower on the first round or have a lot of Open
Grate, George is going to Compress you into a small, tidy package.
As a rusher, or against rushers, George can back up his THN with FOR,
leaving him little to fear from opposing minions. S:CE would be a
problem for him, however, as would Entombment, Coma, etc. One possible
solution would be to give him a Potence skill card so he can use
Immortal Grapple, but in my experience a rush deck works better the
less setup it requires.
George is an excellent mate to last month's Vampire of the Month,
Lithrac. Both are reasonably priced mid-cap vampires, and their
disciplines dovetail nicely. As icing on the cake, both are Camarilla
vampires, which makes them the best Samedi to mix into Prince decks.
Use them as mid-range support for Sheldon, Suhailah, Queen Anne,
Nikolas Vermeulen and Arika.
Deck of the Month: Sneak Freaks
Now that the Samedi have made it cheap to field vampires with both
fortitude and obfuscate, it is possible to build a very nasty class of
deck that has a ridiculous amount of stealth and takes an obscene
number of actions. I'm willing to bet that the first deck that uses
Samedi to win a tournament will be of this sort. This month's deck
illustrates why.
There's a lot of Freak Drive in this deck. No one who can store all
their cards in a shoebox will be able to build it without using
proxies. If you have an aversion to using proxies, as I once did, now
is a great time to get over it. Just be sure before the game to tell
everyone in unambiguous terms which card is being used as a proxy (I
favor Ascension, myself) and what it is a proxy for. Also, try to use
no more than one sort of proxy per deck. Having more becomes confusing
for you and your opponents both.
This deck requires little explanation. The weenies with inferior
Fortitude are used to bleed; if they are blocked, a Samedi swaps
places with them and either sends the blocker to torpor with Kiss of
Ra or sneaks past, using Faceless Night to tap the blocker if
necessary. After bleeding, minions should Freak Drive and get a laptop
or a bleed minion, play Freak Drive or Hag's Wrinkles, then play
Restoration. Pool defense is massive blood gain via Blood Dolls.
Combat defense is using Trap and Undead Persistence to take the rusher
down with you, with Ashes to Ashes there for emergencies. Enjoy!
Deck Name: Sneak Freaks
Crypt: (13 vamps, 4.08 average, 12 smallest, 24 largest)
Juan Cali (Ventrue-Antitribu, 3, for)
Lazar Dobrescu (Ravnos, 3, for)
Lolita (Toreador-Antitribu, 3, for)
Muse (Daughters of Cacophony, 3, for)
Ricki Van Demsi (Gangrel, 3, for)
Roland Loussarian (Ventrue, 3, for)
Tom (Blood Brothers, 3, for)
Vedel Esbreno (Ravnos, 3, for)
2 x Lithrac (Samedi, 5, for, OBF, thn)
2 x George Fredrick (Samedi, 6, FOR, obf, THN)
Jack Dawson (Samedi, 7, FOR, OBF, thn)
Library: 85
Masters: 17
Blood Doll x 8
Coroner's Contact x 2
Fortitude x 2
Heidelburg Castle x 2
Major Boon x 3
Minion: 73
Computer Hacking x 6
Rapid Healing x 2
Restoration x 6
Aaron's Feeding Razor x 1
Laptop x 6
J. S. Simmons x 1
Tasha Morgan x 1
Cloak the Gathering x 4
Faceless Night x 4
Freak Drive x 9
Hag's Wrinkles x 5
Kiss of Ra x 5
Lost in Crowds x 4
Mask of 1,000 Faces x 9
Ashes to Ashes x 2
Trap x 4
Undead Persistence x 4
I've had little time to test this deck, but I'm eager to get started.
The month since the release of Bloodlines has seen a lot of variety
emerging in my local playgroup, and a lot of unpleasant surprises for
the unwary. The unwary in my group includes the unfortunate victims of
"Les Serviteurs", the nasty minion-burning deck from the first Samedi
Bloodline Newsletter. The only cards that deck had from the new set
were the Baron and Egottha, not any of the new Thanatosis or
combination cards. For the next few months, the Samedi will have the
element of surprise. Make the most of it.
Thanks for reading. I'm interested in hearing any comments or
suggestions you may have. Send any submissions for future newsletters
to emmitsvenson@hotmail.com.