09/20/2002 Editors Corner - Ethan Burrow - Texas Justicar I'm typing this as I start my second homebrew of the Fall - a Saison Belgium Ale. It has a one hour boil that doesn't really require any effort compared to other beers, and I also have a wireless router, so I figured I'd be mega efficient and dork out in my back patio. My first brew, the Pumpkin Ale, I started fermentation a couple of days ago. And no Norm, the beer won't be ready by the time you get here. But it will be ready by Free States : Texas. As many people may have surmised, I've recently ran out of things to talk about regarding the Toreador-Antitibu. It seems that our clan is now seeing a lot more tournament play (I saw two Palla Grande bleed decks at the same table in the North American Championship), and while the Bloodlines gave us a few new toys to play with it didn't really spark my interest enough to continue to make newsletters. It's ironic that the Camarilla Edition would actually provide a whole new avenue for our clan to explore, and I now have quite a bit of stuff to explore now. I hope to keep a more regular pace on newsletters, and if anyone wishes to submit articles, decks, etc. I'll be more than happy to include them. I wouldn't be much of a Justicar if I didn't mention all the Texas events we have in store for the Fall. At the beginning of November we're going to hold our first V:TES mini-con - Free States : Texas, coordinated by the Prince of College Station - Oscar Garza. It'll have 2 sanctioned tournaments, one constructed and one limited over the weekend of the 2nd and 3rd. We'll be staying overnight saturday, so if anyone is in the area and can free up the weekend, we guarantee some good VTES. Then on November 16th, two weeks later, Andy Smith, Prince of Dallas is running a Storyline Tournament, which will be judged by Mike Ooi , Prince of Austin. I even hear rumours that Howard DeCastro, Prince of Houston, plans to throw yet another Storyline Tournament in his fair city...although I'm not certain of this information at press time. In any case we're hoping to generate enough attendence to reclaim our Qualifier slot. So if you're even pondering whether it would be fun to be Iron Jack's predator, I hope you'll come down and enjoy the 5th Tradition, Texas style. And not in the bad way...I was referring to the good way. Now on to the new goodies! ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Vampire of the Month - Creamy Jade Creamy Jade rounds out the 5 Cap level providing us with the remaining in-clan discipline at superior, with Cel and Aus being covered by the other two 5 caps - Mercy and Victor. She's also now the cheapest Toreador-Antitribu with presence, and should be in any bleed or voting deck you build. As with the other 5 Caps, she has all in-clan disciplines (one at superior) and a fourth discipline. This fourth discipline, vicissitude, normally wouldn't draw too much attention. But if you realize that Matteus also has Vicissitude, and at superior, it also becomes the 5th most common discipline for our clan - with dominate being the 4th most common. That coupled with Vicissitude's ability to provide stealth at inferior is what started me to delve into what I now think of as the other fouth discipline for the Toreador-Antitribu. And yes, I know it's only 2 vampires, but it is out of a total of only 16.... ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- New fourth discipline - Vicissitude As I previously mentioned, my initial reaction to Creamy Jade was mainly to add stealth at inferior Vic to give the clan so much needed stealth. The more I explored the discipline, the more I realized that there are quite a number of cards that become very useful, even at just inferior. Here's a list of some key cards that I found. I'm going to limit this newsletter to vicissitude cards that help voting and bleed decks, and focus on combat decks the next newsletter. Plasmic Form - The key card to making Vicissitude work for the Toreador-Antitribu. Gives us precious stealth at inferior. Gladly spend the blood, it's cheaper than Alacrity. The superior is not as useful, but if you manage to get superior and you're sitting next to two rush decks, you probably won't complain about the extra dodge. Changeling - Another key card. At inferior it's better than Aire of Elation, since it doesn't cost a blood (and we're not those silly Toreador's). At superior it adds yet another stealth to our arsenal, and doesn't cost a blood. It's because of this card that you may want to focus on getting superior vicissitude on at least one person. Inner Essence - Most useful to pay for Majesty to make it as free as Earth Meld is. Can also pay for Plasmic Form superior, or any number blood cost combat cards thanks to the Camarilla Edition changes. If you manage superior, you'll probably not turn away the free blood. So while not a key card, it'll help blood management if it's a problem. Chiropteran Marauder - The utility of this card at inferior is basically not needing to play celerity if you're playing with vicissitude. You'll need maneuvers to avoid potence grapple decks, or any other close range nastiness. Having superior will give you the ability to Agg back which is nice, although since I'm focusing on Bleed/Vote with this articles, you may want to focus on maneuvers...and possibly a surprise, rather than trying to Agg every combat. Malleable Visage - This card can potentially work real well with the Goth Band. With *so* many master counters starting to see play, it's starting to become rather vialble to put in Goth Band, and this card actually helps you protect them when they get blocked. Meld with the Land - Normally I wouldn't mention it, but it doesn't cost any blood to play.... I think the first two cards, Plasmic Form and Changeling go *very* well with most Toreador-Antitribu strategies. So far my efforts to 'bolt' vicissitude into my existing strategies are meeting with success. Since it's mostly the inferior that gives us the boost, it's not unreasonable to include 4-5 Vicissitude master skill cards as well as playing with the Tzimisce. There are a surprising number of them that have Pre/Aus/Vic, most noteably The Rose. I wouldn't be surprised to see more Tzimisce/Toreador-Antitribu decks, which to me seems very thematic. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jost's Surprise V3.0 - Creamy Remix - Toreador-Antitribu stealth bleed. Using the above methodology, I retooled my tournament winning Jost's Surprise deck by removing all the Celerity and replacing it with Vicissitude. The result manages blood much better, and didn't have any problem cycling, although if you don't get a good crypt may take a bit longer to setup. As usual, your mileage may very depending on your playgroup, but it was a very promising retrofit. Deck Name: Jost's Surprise - Creamy remix Created By: Ethan Burrow Description: Jost's surprise v3.0 - Toreador Antitribu stealth/bleed using Vicissitude instead of Celerity. Crypt: (12 cards, Min: 19, Max: 38, Avg: 6.75) 2 Matteus AUS CEL PRE VIC 10, Toreador Antitribu, Priscus 1 Lambach ANI AUS DOM pre VIC 10, Tzimisce, Cardinal 1 Lachlan AUS CEL dom PRE 8, Toreador Antitribu, Archbishop 1 Greta Kircher AUS CEL obf PRE 7, Toreador Antitribu 1 Sheila Mezarin AUS cel for PRE 6, Toreador Antitribu 1 Jost Werner ani AUS PRE 6, Toreador Antitribu 2 Creamy Jade PRE aus cel vic 5, Toreador Antitribu 1 Enid Blount aus dom pre vic 5, Toreador 2 The Rose PRE VIC aus pre 5, Tzimisce 1 Remilliard AUS pre 4, Toreador Antitribu Library: (90 cards) Master (19 cards) 1 Barrens, The 1 Dreams of the Sphinx 1 Hungry Coyote, The 1 Information Highway 1 Legendary Vampire 3 Palla Grande 1 Parthenon, The 1 Pentex(TM) Loves You! 1 Secure Haven 2 Sudden Reversal 6 Vicissitude Action (22 cards) 4 Art Scam 7 Enchant Kindred 1 Entrancement 1 Intimidation 3 Mind Numb 2 Propaganda 4 Revelations Action Modifier (11 cards) 2 Aire of Elation 2 Change of Target 7 Changeling Reaction (11 cards) 4 My Enemy's Enemy 6 Telepathic Counter 1 Telepathic Misdirection Combat (21 cards) 2 Aura Reading 1 Breath of the Dragon 7 Chiropteran Marauder 8 Majesty 3 Staredown Combo (6 cards) 6 Plasmic Form --------------------------------------------------------------------------- PAAD - 'Presence And Another Discipline' - Grouping rule update The addition of the grouping rule initially threw a wrench into my modular deck idea. Not being able to take advantage of any of the Camarilla vampires for my secondary modules was disheartening, since 4 of my core module vampires were group 1. However I went back to the drawing board, and discovered that the core module can still function adequately using only group 2 vampires. Therefore all my secondary modules still worked as built, and I could also build new modules using the new Camarilla vampires (or tweak existing ones) provided that the secondary modules follow the grouping rule for it's own module. I also think a couple of library cards were changed as a result of modifications for GenCon. 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. Modified to use only group 2 vampires to allow for modules to contain any group mixing. Crypt: (5 cards, Min: 17, Max: 22, Avg: 4.60) 1 Jost Werner ani AUS PRE 6, Toreador Antitribu 1 Sela cel obt POT PRE 6, Brujah Antitribu, Bishop 1 Ranjan Rishi DOM for PRE 5, Ventrue 1 Angela Decker pre 1, Pander 1 Rigby aus CEL pot PRE 5, Brujah Antitribu Library: (63 cards) Master (15 cards) 3 Blood Doll 1 Creepshow Casino 1 Dreams of the Sphinx 1 Information Highway 1 Major Boon 5 Minion Tap 1 Powerbase: Montreal 2 Presence Action (10 cards) 6 Enchant Kindred 1 Entrancement 2 Mind Numb 1 Propaganda Action Modifier (16 cards) 2 Aire of Elation 2 Awe 4 Bewitching Oration 1 Bribes 7 Voter Captivation Political Action (14 cards) 2 Anarchist Uprising 2 Ancilla Empowerment 1 Consanguinous Boon 1 Crusade: Toronto 1 Disputed Territory 1 Dramatic Upheaval 5 Kine Resources Contested 1 Reinforcements Reaction (2 cards) 2 Dread Gaze Combat (6 cards) 6 Majesty --------------------------------------------------------------------------- PAAD - 'Presence And Another Discipline' featured module Deck Name: PAAD - Vicissitude Created By: Ethan Burrow Description: With Group 3 including many vic/pre vampires, this module became possible. It works much like protean, except it does have some bleed capability and better blood management, but less stealth Crypt: (7 cards, Min: 17, Max: 31, Avg: 6.14) 1 Matteus AUS CEL PRE VIC 10, Toreador Antitribu, Priscus 1 Lambach ANI AUS DOM pre VIC 10, Tzimisce, Cardinal 1 Violet Tremain dom pre tha vic 6, Tzimisce, Bishop 2 Creamy Jade PRE aus cel vic pre 5, Toreador Antitribu 2 The Rose PRE VIC aus pre 5, Tzimisce 1 Hugo POT pre vic 4, Brujah Antitribu 1 Lolita for pre 3, Toreador Antitribu Library: (27 cards) Master (2 cards) 2 Vicissitude Action Modifier (6 cards) 6 Changeling Combat (12 cards) 1 Breath of the Dragon 4 Chiropteran Marauder 5 Inner Essence 2 Meld with the Land Combo (7 cards) 7 Plasmic Form ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- ELDB Limbo While the above decklists may lead you to believe that I have ELDB updated for Camarilla, I simply just modified the HTML to get this newsletter out. Todd J. Richter just released a version of the database that has all the cards in it, but unfortunately it doesn't include updated monger links. I tried created a set of PHP scripts that would update the ELDB database using Monger's database, but I have been unable to make the mdb file writable by PHP. Does anyone have any Access-ODBC/PHP knowledge that would help me get the database writable, or does anyone know how to quickly do a search and replace in Access' GUI to allow me to quickly update the Monger links in the ELDB database? If so, either start a new thread or email me privately. If I were to figure out the writable part, I might be able to provide future ELDB updates easily to the community via scripts tied to Monger. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- My next issue will be more combat focused, as we explore the brave new world of Vic/Cel. Till then, comments and submissions welcome. ----------------------------- Ethan Burrow - Texas Justicar http://texas.vekn.org/ http://monger.vekn.org/