I had the charts all typed up in ascii real pretty, then through user error and "caching features" I lost it all. Thus, I'm clipping the combat article from the usenet posting. You can view the newsletter in it's entirety at http://whitestar.ddg.com/vtes/TorA04012000.html Deja still looks like it's screwing with me, so if this post comes out illegible, my apologies. 4/1/2000 Editors Corner - Ethan Burrow, Prince of Austin Ahhhh, sweet sweet Sabbat. By now you may have heard the official press release from White Wolf on the re-release of Sabbat as well as making V:EKN the official playing organization for White Wolf and V:TES. With new cards expected this year as well as continued support, the community both off and online are now alive and growing. Austin has swelled in numbers, and we now have close to doubled our players in the past two months. And they're hungry for cards! Bless White Wolf for providing it to us, in a release that will finally redeem the Sabbat set for it's "Stand Alone" status. Preconstructed starter decks in addition to booster packs with *new* cards apparently being rotated in. Cross your fingers fellow players :-) With several tournaments this summer, I hope to see many of you over the course of the next few months. I'll be hosting Praxis Seizure : Austin, then attending Praxis Seizure : Dallas, then I'm off to Atlanta - "The Homeland" as I'll now call it, to play at DragonCon. I'll be bringing 5 other Austinites with me, so we intend to have a lot of fun. No sleeping!!Card of the Month - Charming Lobby One of the big concessions I'll make about the 7/7 rulings was the change of voting rules. I was convinced it would damage voting and reduce that aspect of the game to a point where no-one would play voting anymore. I admit I was wrong. It made voting more interesting and balanced it with the rest of the game. It also made many wallpaper cards now very useful, and Charming Lobby is one such card. Pre 7/7 it was wallpaper. Nowadays, every presence voting deck packs a few of these. With the current rulings, you play the Charming Lobby, replace, and then announce a vote card in your hand (without playing it from your hand) that will be the actual vote. If Charming Lobby is not blocked, you play the vote you announced from your hand and replace it, and vote as normal. If it passes, the next vote passes automatically. This allows players to know what the vote is before they decide to block the vote. And also allows the player to protect their prized vote for later if the charming lobby is blocked. A good compromise IMHO. The inferior works like a Cryptic Rider, except no blood cost. So it is still useful on your weenie presence vamps to pass a lesser vote that the table may allow, only to ensure the big vote later. At superior, it gives you two additional votes, which may be critical to get past vote lock on the table. You can also play Bewitching Oration and Awe for good measure. Beware Pulled Strings and Kindred Coercion though. As far as card cycling, this card is a dream. You can replace Cryptic Rider and Bewitching Oration with this card to provide the same functionality in most cases, which leaves more room for more Political Actions, or combat defense depending on your playgroups style. Combat disciplines and Clans Basically recaps the chart from last month and uses it to compare clan combat options (i.e. another chart). ------------------------------ Ethan Burrow - Prince of Austin ethan@ddg.com http://whitestar.ddg.com/vtes/