11/1/99 Editors Corner - Ethan Burrow, Prince of Austin While the turnout for Crusade Austin was nowhere near what I'd hope (It rained, several people had other commitments, etc.), we were surprised to find out that Mark Langsdorf is indeed alive. It was nice seeing you again Mark. Next time around we'll likely start doing the DCI sanctioned drafting rules. Has anyone had success/fun doing this with VTES instead of Sabbat? Seeing as how Sabbat is out of print now.... Vampire of the Month - Sheila Mezarin Probably the second best bleeder of the clan behind Jost, Sheila has several things which make her useful : - She has +1 bleed - She has superior presence and superior Auspex. See the second newsletter on Jost to fully utilize these two skills for our clan. - She has fortitude to expand her bleed actions. Building a deck with Sheila and Lolita, you can use fortitude action modifiers to make your bleeds more scary. You can also add Force of Will to your arsenal of bleed opportunities. Mixing Sheila and Lolita with Ventrue and other presence/fortitude vampires can yield a bleed deck that doesn't need stealth at all. All this at six capacity, and she's quite the vampire. While she can survive combat, with her inferior combat skills she's much more useful at bleeding. Card of the Month - Aire of Elation The only Presence bleed action modifier, this should be in any of your bleeding decks, as well as filler for most other decks if you need more bleed power. Be sure to note the 1 blood cost. While our Toreador cousins get more benefit from it than our clan does....it is not uncommon for our clans to mix in a deck. Besides, +2 Bleed at the superior is nothing to turn your nose up at. How your Playgroup will define how you build your deck. I've seen and been involved in enough threads on the viability of decks to realize that play environments for each city are very different. A deck that works in one city, may fail abysmally in another. While it may seem obvious to some, grabbing a deck from an archive and playing it "off the shelf" will probably not yield wins without taking a good look at the deck. In Austin, we have the good fortune of everyone bringing several decks each meeting. Never do we play the same deck twice in a seating, and sometimes we don't see repeat decks for weeks. With this kind of rotation, it's very hard to build a deck that can predict a certain defense strategy. We typically see a lot of combat decks (moreso than voting and equal to bleeding), but Potence/Grapple decks are not really common. Sure we have them, but we don't play them every game. Nor do we see a weenie dominate misdirection deck every game. Does this mean that most of our decks are not tournament caliber? ....Maybe. I ususally tweak decks before a tournament anyways, but not all decks in the archives are meant to be tournament worthy. They're meant to be fun to play, and try out new strategies. The point I'm trying to make is not many decks will work smoothly in all environments. If you find a deck your interested in, make sure to peruse it and gauge how well it will function in your current playgroup environment. Tweak it if necessary. But if it continues to lose in your playgroup, it does not mean it's not successful in others. Deck Medic/Strategy Corner This is a deck I built a while ago when people complained about the Assamites lack of any bleeding power. It has gone through a few revisions (it originally didn't have Akram and had more Toreador-Antitribu), and this is a great Bruise/Bleed deck with some light intercept. Due to it's slow start, lack of vote defense, and no ability to combat S:CE aside from Akram - I wouldn't recommend it for tournaments. But it's a lot of fun to play. >:-) While this deck focuses less on Toreador-Antitribu than other clans, it's a good example of adding a skill to the Toreador-Antitribu to make them really scary in combat. I hope Todd Banister will find it interesting. Deck name: Melek & Akram Created by: Ethan Burrow Description: Assamites and Toreador Bruise/Bleed, blending presence bleed with quietus/celerity combat. Crypt: (12 cards) [Min: 14, Max: 34, Avg: 6.09] 1 Abd al-Rashid (Assamite, 5, CE ob QU) 2 Akram (Brujah, 8, CE po pr QU, Primogen) 1 Alexandra (Toreador, 11, AN AU CE do PR, Inner Circle) 1 Antoinette DuChamp (Caitiff, 1, ce pr) 1 Delilah Easton (Toreador, 2, pr) 1 Harika Guljan (Assamite, 3, QU) 1 Ian Wallingford (Toreador Antitribu, 6, au CE PR, Bishop) 1 Jost Werner (Toreador Antitribu, 6, an AU PR) 1 Mariana Gilbert (Toreador, 4, ce PR) 2 Melek (Assamite, 7, ce OB pr QU) Library: (90 cards) 3 Aire of Elation 6 Ambush 1 Ancestor's Talisman, The 4 Blood Doll 4 Blood Sweat 2 Bum's Rush 3 Celerity 3 Coagulate Blood 1 Entrancement 9 Flash 5 Forced Awakening 1 Giant's Blood 1 IR Goggles 1 Jackie Therman 3 Legal Manipulations 1 Marijava Ghoul 4 Mind Numb 1 Minion Tap 1 Mr. Winthrop 1 Parthenon, The 1 Pentex Subversion 2 Presence 2 Preternatural Evasion 3 Pursuit 2 Quietus 2 Rapid Thought 2 Secret Horde 2 Side Strike 3 Sideslip 3 Social Charm 2 Sport Bike 5 Taste of Death 4 Taste of Vitae 2 Underworld Hunting Ground -- Ethan Burrow - Prince of Austin ethan@ddg.com http://whitestar.ddg.com/vtes/