This one ended up being much longer than expected. Check V:EKN Texas for better formatting - http://whitestar.ddg.com/vtes/ _______________________________________________________ 12/30/2001 Editors Corner - Ethan Burrow, Prince of Austin While you'd think I was going to talk about the Daughters of Cacophony first, I actually decided to mention some things about the Baali this newsletter. Actually, it's because I wanted to explore the Daughters more, and some of the Baali stuff is rather straighfoward, so I chose to do the easy one first ;-). Some people have questioned whether the Infernal vampires were worth it, and after playing with them I've concluded that the answer is yes. Their disciplines and specials make them worth more than the pool you pay for them, thus the Infernal term to compensate. Aggressive strategies benefit from them, while conservative ones probably won't. Baali are meant to go fast and hard, not play the waiting game. While I'll leave most of the Baali strategy to the Baali newsletter, I will touch on them from time to time, as well as mention how they can help Toreador-Antitribu decks. I'll be going to the Lafayette tournament on Jan 12th. So if anyone is willing to make the trip, the Austin/College Station contingent will be there. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Vampire of the Month - Sargon There are 3 Baali that mix well with Toreador-Antitribu, and the youngest one is Sargon. While he only shares 2 disciplines at inferior with our clan, his specials make up for it. Sargon doesn't have Auspex, but then again he's not your defensive guy either. Compared to the other two 5 capacity Toreador Antitribu, Sargon matches up fairly well. None of them have superior Presence anyways, and his specials make up for the lack of a superior. With his Celerity and +1 strength, he'll take full advantage of your Celerity combat. Not quite Miller, but sadly he'll kick more ass than Donatien (unless you're playing with Potence). If table votes are tight, remember to act with Sargon first since it doesn't have to be a bleed for you to get the edge. You might get lucky and get the edge for future actions such as votes and diablerie. Most Toreador Antitribu decks don't have a problem with mild bloating. So as long as your defensive strategy doesn't fail, you should have enough pool to pay for Sargon to make your prey's life miserable, as long as he's the only Infernal vampire in your deck. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Card of the Month - Sense the Sin If you plan on playing with Baali and Toreador Antitribu, this card is a good one to include. It's off discipline is Auspex, and it's inferior is much the same as all other Auspex cards with the exception that you need to be older than the acting vampire in order to use it. The inferior Daimoinon isn't interesting unless you play with Followers of Set, but the Superior Daimoinon is where you reap the utility of the card. A heavy bleed modifier that doesn't cost blood. Provided you have a Baali with superior Daimoinon in play and a reasonably old Toreador Antitribu with Auspex in play, this versatile card should be in multiple quantities in your deck. Offense or Defense depending on the situation, an ultimate toolboxy yet very utilitarian card. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Homework Assignments - an exercise in creative deckbuilding I received several submissions for the assignment of creating a Followers of Set deck that can not only withstand a stealth-bleed deck, but win the table. Of those submissions, I felt two were of worthy caliber to present them to you here. While both did an excellent job of dealing with stealth-bleed, one clearly won out on the winning part of the assignment. Never the less, both were exceptional deck designs, and I wish to present both to you with my comments : --------------------- RUNNER-UP Deck Name: AUS_SER with Guns Created By: GreySeer Description: Defend Pool by reducing bleeds and light intercept against other threats. Otherwise your standard snake toolbox deck. Crypt: (12 cards, Min: 17, Max: 37, Avg: 6.50) 2 Nefertiti cel DOM OBF pot PRE SER 10, Followers of Set 1 Francois Villon AUS CEL chi obf pot PRE 10, Toreador, Prince 1 Greta Kircher AUS CEL obf PRE 7, Toreador Antitribu 2 Hesha Ruhadze ani obf pre SER 6, Followers of Set 2 Aisha ani aus PRE ser 6, Followers of Set 2 Victoria AUS cel obf 5, Malkavian 1 Nepata obf pre ser 4, Followers of Set 1 Zoe AUS cel obf 3, Malkavian Library: (90 cards) Master (17 cards) 2 Archon Investigation 3 Blood Doll 2 Heidelberg Castle, Germany 4 Minion Tap 2 Obfuscate 1 Opium Den 1 Storage Annex 1 Temple Hunting Ground 1 Vast Wealth Action (21 cards) 3 Edge Vitiation 5 Enticement 3 Form of Corruption 1 Hidden Pathways 2 Mind Rape 4 Night Moves 3 Temptation Action Modifier (12 cards) 2 Elder Impersonation 2 Faceless Night 4 Forgotten Labyrinth 4 Lost in Crowds Reaction (26 cards) 8 Ecstasy 5 Enhanced Senses 7 Telepathic Counter 6 Wake with Evening's Freshness Combat (10 cards) 6 Flash 4 Majesty Equipment (4 cards) 1 Palatial Estate 3 Sniper Rifle I liked this deck a lot simply because I also thought Aus/Ser was a viable solution. It handled a stealth-bleed predator very well. I was able to reduce a bleed of 5 at 2 stealth by 4 to a bleed of one. I also managed to burn 2 minions in one game using Archon Investigation. Putting a Sniper Rifle on Aisha was a nice touch, and had enough casual intercept to stop key actions. Unfortunately I felt it had a few pitfalls which could be corrected in future iterations : The crypt wasn't ideal. I doubled up on minions more than I liked, and speed favors the stealth-bleed deck. I needed two minions untapped to reliably defend my pool, which meant only one action per turn if I'm lucky. This negated the Enticements unless I wanted to risk getting heavy bleeds. I was also unfortunate enough once to contest Greta when I started with 2 Aisha's in my opening crypt. The crypt should try to be more spread out to allow for bringing out 4 minions without wasting time and pool to 'fish'. 6 discplines. There were times I couldn't cycle a Flash or Mind Rape. Although once I stole Iliana via a Form of Corruption, it was nice to surprise my prey by bleeding for 3. It needs more forward motion to be able to win games in our competitive local Meta-Game. While your own local group may find success with this deck, I found that in Austin it survived well, but it's prey ended up winning the game. --------------- FINALIST Deck Name: FoS Vote_Bloat Created By: Curevei Description: Crypt: (12 cards, Min: 16, Max: 35, Avg: 6.33) 1 Nehsi aus for OBF PRE PRO SER 10, Followers of Set, 2 votes 1 Khay'tall aus DOM OBF PRE SER 9, Followers of Set 1 Kephamos dom obf pre SER 8, Followers of Set, 2 votes 1 Amisa OBF pre pro SER 8, Followers of Set, 2 votes 1 Sarrasine aus nec OBF PRE ser 7, Followers of Set 1 Qufur am-Heru cel OBF PRE SER tha 7, Followers of Set 1 Hesha Ruhadze ani obf pre SER 6, Followers of Set 2 Sir Marriot D'Urban aus obf PRE ser 5, Followers of Set 1 Nepata obf pre ser 4, Followers of Set 1 Hadrian Garrick obf pre 4, Followers of Set 1 Khalil Anvari pre ser 3, Followers of Set Library: (90 cards) Master (20 cards) 1 Barrens, The 6 Blood Doll 2 Dreams of the Sphinx 1 Information Highway 2 Minion Tap 1 Obfuscate 1 Opium Den 1 Parthenon, The 3 Presence 2 Storage Annex Action (7 cards) 3 Charming Lobby 4 Enchant Kindred Action Modifier (27 cards) 2 Awe 6 Bewitching Oration 5 Bribes 4 Cloak the Gathering 2 Cryptic Rider 2 Forgotten Labyrinth 1 Spying Mission 5 Voter Captivation Political Action (19 cards) 2 Anarchist Uprising 2 Ancilla Empowerment 5 Consanguineous Boon 2 Conservative Agitation 2 Free States Rant 5 Kine Resources Contested 1 Rumors of Gehenna Reaction (3 cards) 3 Wake with Evening's Freshness Combat (11 cards) 11 Majesty Combo (3 cards) 3 Swallowed by the Night While a less original concept, this deck succeeded in completing the homework assignment. I won 2 games, one of which I had the stealth bleed deck as my predator. It leads me to believe that the Followers of Set can win a tournament using the stealth-vote-bloat strategy, with Presence bleed as a backup. I've found that Serpentis, while versatile and possibly a devastating offense, is not reliable as the primary discipline of a deck. Note that this deck doesn't even have one serpentis card. I want to point out that table dynamics does play a part in the success of the deck. Generally as the prey of a stealth-bleed deck, the entire table (including your prey) will very likely help pass your Consanguineous Boons. Use your Free States Rant to make deals before you tally the blood loss. And using Dreams of the Sphinx and Storage Annex to optimize card flow is key. I won each game with a 9 card hand. --------------------------------------------------------- NEXT HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT With Bloodlines out and 10 new disciplines to choose from, Ian Forrestal just got a bit more valuable. But is he worth it? Build any deck using Ian Forrestal and at least one new bloodlines discipline. I'm curious to see if anyone can come up with something abusive, to see if Ian is really a broken vampire. Be creative, and I look forward to your submissions -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PAAD - 'Presence And Another Discipline' modular deck Since my Modules article, I haven't really touched much upon them. Recently I went into a creative deck building rut, and then starting thinking about the modules idea again. I also found that I wanted to include certain cards in each of my decks, such as Powerbase Montreal, Dreams of the Sphinx, Entrancement, etc. of which I don't have many copies of. So I decided to practice what I preached, and sat down to think of a module concept that would still be competitive to play in our local environment. One of the reasons why my favorite clan is the Toreador Antitribu is simply their discipline spread and their vampire selection. Versatility is key to my strategies, and Presence is the only discipline that has a decent range of cards for all playing strategies. It's the primary vote push discipline, argueably the second bleed discipline, has plenty of Strike: combat ends (enough to convince people that combat was a lost cause several years ago), and finally still has a few toolbox cards like Mind Numb and The Summoning to boot. It seemed like a good singular discipline that might hold it's own. And what if you combined Presence with another versatile discipline? How robust would the deck be? Using the second displine to fill in some of the gaps that Presence left out (such as stealth, maneuvers, etc.) I set out to create several modules that could plug and play with the main presence module. I initially picked a discipline (which one doesn't matter for the purpose of this explanation) and then built a 90 card deck with a 12 vampire crypt based off of Presence and the other discipline. I then removed all the vampires that included the second discipline, and all cards based off that second discpline as well. I was left with two modules: 7 vampires and 27 cards of the secondary discipline and 5 vampires and 63 library cards for the rest of the deck which I will now call the Core Module. I then proceeded to pick several other discplines, and create 7 vampire crypts with 27 card libraries for each of these modules. I want to mention now that the numbers of 7 and 27 are ultimately arbitrary, and weren't mathmatically chosen. It was just the simple construction of a deck based off of previous experience, and then splitting them into two seperate components. I built about 3 modules and proceeded to play them without indicating which deck I was playing (although I had described the PAAD concept to a couple of players previous to playing). I discovered that the core module was robust enough that I would reliably get VP's every game. And depending on which module I was playing, as well as table seating, I would sometimes win the game. In fact, PAAD was more successful in our playing enviroment than I had anticipated. I have since built over 10 modules, and continued to tweak not only the secondary modules, but the core module as well. I'm curious if it's possible to slowly achieve a perfection of what cards are in each module (and possibly the core as well). I welcome any constructive comments on how to enhance the modules, and I'll include the core module as well as a few secondary modules at the end of this article. The beauty of this deck building strategy didn't become truly apparent to me until after Bloodlines was released. As I got new cards that seemed to fit into other deck types, it was easy for me to modify a module with Bloodlines while leaving the core alone - not concerned that I would adversely affect the deck flow. I was able to build a couple of new Bloodlines decks simply by building a secondary module for PAAD instead of needing to collect a lot of cards. It vindicated the concept of modules to me, as I was able to field Bloodlines modules that didn't roll over and die. I only purchased 10-14 boosters within a week of release, and had about 2 or 3 viable modules. When I want to build a new deck, sometimes I am content to just focus on building another module. Allows for some creativity while still playing a viable deck (at least I've found this to be true so far). After building several modules, the predictability of what deck I was playing diminished rapidy for the rest of the playgroup. Each deck has it's own personality, and even after influencing out 2 vampires and playing 6 cards, it's still difficult for people to predict what I will do. All they would know is 'Oh, it's a PAAD. I wonder what the other discipline is?'. Here is the Core Presence Module as it looks today : (BTW, thanks to David Anderson-Dávila for adding Monger links as a feature for ELDB!) Deck Name: PAAD (Presence And Another Discipline) Core Module Created By: Ethan Burrow Description: This is the core module for the PAAD deck. It contains all the votes, master cards, disciplineless cards, and presence cards to utilize the main strategy of the deck Vote/Bleed. The secondary module augments and toolboxes the deck. Crypt: (5 cards, Min: 17, Max: 20, Avg: 4.60) 1 Gideon Fontaine PRE 3, Ventrue 1 Rake aus cel pot PRE 6, Brujah, Prince 1 Mariana Gilbert cel PRE 4, Toreador 1 Violette Prentiss dom PRE 4, Ventrue 1 Jost Werner ani AUS PRE 6, Toreador Antitribu Library: (63 cards) Master (14 cards) 3 Blood Doll 1 Creepshow Casino 1 Effective Management 1 Information Highway 5 Minion Tap 1 Powerbase: Montreal 2 Presence Action (11 cards) 6 Enchant Kindred 1 Entrancement 2 Mind Numb 1 Propaganda 1 Sanguine Instruction Action Modifier (19 cards) 2 Aire of Elation 2 Awe 4 Bewitching Oration 4 Bribes 7 Voter Captivation Political Action (11 cards) 2 Anarchist Uprising 2 Ancilla Empowerment 1 Disputed Territory 1 Dramatic Upheaval 5 Kine Resources Contested Reaction (2 cards) 2 Dread Gaze Combat (6 cards) 6 Majesty Now that you've been exposed to the concept and seen the Core Module, I present to you this months featured Secondary Modules for PAAD : Deck Name: Protean PAAD Module Created By: Ethan Burrow Description: Module for the PAAD deck that adds stealth and more combat, especially Aggravated damage for more scare factor against interceptors Crypt: (7 cards, Min: 22, Max: 34, Avg: 7.00) 1 Nettie Hale ani cel pre pro spi 5, Ahrimanes 1 Zachary CEL for OBF PRO pre 7, Gangrel Antitribu 1 Andreas AUS CEL dom PRE pro 9, Toreador, Primogen 1 Miller Delmardigan aus CEL PRE pro 8, Toreador Antitribu, Bishop 1 Nehsi aus for OBF PRE PRO SER 10, Followers of Set, 2 votes 1 The Siamese ani PRE pro SPI 7, Ahrimanes 1 Chandler Hungerford PRO 3, Gangrel Library: (27 cards) Master (3 cards) 3 Protean Action (2 cards) 2 Shadow of the Beast Action Modifier (5 cards) 5 Earth Control Combat (17 cards) 2 Body Flare 3 Claws of the Dead 6 Earth Meld 3 Form of Mist 3 Quick Meld ---------------------- Deck Name: Necromancy PAAD Module Created By: Ethan Burrow Description: Module for the PAAD deck that enhances your ability to get your actions to succeed. Also has some card recycle ability, with several toolbox cards for versatility. Crypt: (7 cards, Min: 20, Max: 35, Avg: 7.00) 1 Rafaele Giovanni cel NEC obf 6, Giovanni 1 Rudolfo Giovanni NEC 3, Giovanni 1 Sarrasine aus nec OBF PRE ser 7, Followers of Set 1 Sutekh cel NEC OBF pot PRE SER 11, Followers of Set, 2 votes 1 Stefano Giovanni DOM nec pot pre 6, Giovanni 1 Isabel Giovanni DOM NEC pot 5, Giovanni 1 Augustus Giovanni AUS cel DOM NEC POT pre 11, Giovanni, 2 votes Library: (27 cards) Master (3 cards) 3 Necromancy Action (8 cards) 1 Haunt 2 Jar the Soul 5 Summon Soul Action Modifier (6 cards) 6 Call of the Hungry Dead Combat (3 cards) 3 Spiritual Intervention Equipment (1 cards) 1 Sargon Fragment, The Combo (6 cards) 6 Spectral Divination --------------------- Deck Name: Serpentis PAAD Module Created By: Ethan Burrow Description: Module for the PAAD deck that augments the aggressiveness of the bleed strategy. Makes PAAD-Serpentis seem mostly like a standard FoS toolbox deck. Mostly an exercise in seeing how most disciplines work with PAAD, even if it is in-clan. Crypt: (7 cards, Min: 18, Max: 30, Avg: 6.00) 1 Khalil Anvari pre ser 3, Followers of Set 1 Aisha ani aus PRE ser 6, Followers of Set 1 Hesha Ruhadze ani obf pre SER 6, Followers of Set 1 Nehsi aus for OBF PRE PRO SER 10, Followers of Set, 2 votes 1 Aabbt Kindred for pre ser 4, Followers of Set 1 Sir Marriot D'Urban aus obf PRE ser 5, Followers of Set 1 Kephamos dom obf pre SER 8, Followers of Set, 2 votes Library: (27 cards) Master (5 cards) 1 Khobar Towers, Al-Khubar 1 Opium Den 3 Serpentis Action (10 cards) 2 Dismemberment of Osiris 2 Enticement 1 Form of Corruption 1 Lure of the Serpent 4 Summon the Serpent Reaction (5 cards) 5 Ecstasy Retainer (1 cards) 1 Priestess of Sekhmet Combo (6 cards) 6 Form of the Serpent -------------------- Deck Name: Animalism PAAD Module Created By: Ethan Burrow Description: Module for the PAAD deck that adds defensive capabilitiles such as untaps and intercept. Couple of other forward motion cards to augment existing offense. Crypt: (7 cards, Min: 21, Max: 35, Avg: 7.14) 1 Aisha ani aus PRE ser 6, Followers of Set 1 Alexandra ANI AUS CEL dom PRE 11, Toreador, Inner Circle 1 Bear Paw ANI for pre pro 5, Gangrel 1 Cailean ANI dom OBF POT PRE 10, Nosferatu Antitribu, Archbishop 1 Hesha Ruhadze ani obf pre SER 6, Followers of Set 1 Juanita Santiago ani pre spi 4, Ahrimanes 1 Howler ANI obf PRE SPI 8, Ahrimanes Library: (27 cards) Master (3 cards) 3 Animalism Action (5 cards) 2 Army of Rats 1 Shepherd's Innocence 2 Tier of Souls Reaction (14 cards) 6 Cats' Guidance 1 Falcon's Eye 6 Guard Dogs 1 Speak with Spirits Retainer (5 cards) 1 Owl Companion 2 Raptor 2 Raven Spy I plan on showcasing a Secondary Module per newsletter, at least until I run out of module ideas. If you have any PAAD modules that you would like to submit I would love to see what everyone comes up with. Ethan Burrow - Prince of Austin saark5@yahoo.com http://whitestar.ddg.com/vtes/