V:EKN Official Toreador Newsletter March 2006 Introduction: So, the new expansion has been legal for tournaments for quite a few months now. It would seem that Legacies of Blood has made an impact on the tournament earlier than what is usual. The normal six months of trying the new cards out were a mere weeks now before the first tournament winning decks relying on the laibon clans were a fact. That said I haven't really returned to playing clan Toreador for some time now. The lure of Legacies of Blood has simply been too strong. My only real attempts ended in utter failure, but more on that at the very end of this newsletter. ------------------------------------------------------------ When Toreador are not Toreador: I'll focus this newsletter on the non-Toreador aspect of the clan. More to the point when Toreador are used in decks basically dependent on another clan. I'll quickly pass by the more obvious use of Toreador vampires when clan is unimportant. Small capacity Presence bleed / vote decks. Block and disrupt decks based on Auspex, the likes of which totally dominated the last EC-qualifier last year. The last of the archetypes is the low-cap celerity gun deck. More specific is when Toreador get to fill out an !Toreador deck in order to keep disciplines tighter in combination with a wish to keep capacity down. As disciplines go the clans are perfectly intermixable so it's more a matter of getting a pre/cel/aus deck together than an aim at one clan. Let's have a look when named vampires become fillers in other decks. Fahd a-Zawba'a has to be the first Ishtarri printed. A capacity four vampire with cel/for/pre is a standard vampire for that clan. As they, together with the three other laibon clans lack in numbers Fahd should make a welcome addition. Sir Henry Johnson isn't too bad in an Osebo, Brujah, !Brujah, True Brujah or Guruhi deck. It's one of several “trade off” vampires we all resort to when there are no more “perfect” vampires to have. Capacity four with two disciplines at inferior for all of the clans above is fair enough. Where Enid and Edith Blount fits in the universe eludes me. Apart from their explicit interaction they only share aus and vic. That would imply that they would find a home with the Tzimisce, but at cap five with only two disciplines at inferior I doubt that they'll have much luck finding an avid fan base in that camp. Enid does have a place in an aus/pre/vic deck though. I guess it'll probably be a voter with some intercept and aggravated damage to keep players off your back. Aus/pre/vic does actually place you with clan Tzimisce, so let's have Enid become an honorary Tzimisce. Edith Blount is also a possible filler in an Osebo deck. I'm not entirely comfortable with a capacity five vampire without a single superior discipline. Still, aus/cel/pot may have its usage. Another Toreador to find a home among the Osebo is Yvette the Hopeless. At capacity 3 with cel/aus she makes excellent fodder when you need to protect your high capacity combatants for a turn or so. There are a number of other smallish Toreador as well, but they all fall into the grouping trap and can't be combined with the Osebo in a constructed format. Radeyah is as close as you come to a misprinted Brujah or !Brujah. Cap six with CEL/pre/pot is overly expensive especially as her specialty is unlikely to matter. In a Brujah/!Brujah bruise/bleed deck she'll shine as her being Toreador helps whenever Aire of Elation is used for pushing a bleed. You'll find Sigrid Becker and Adrianne there as well as I've seen with players who are desperately short of vampires, but at cap six with nothing more than pre/pot/cel to show for it they really aren't fit for the job. Kallista, Master Sculptor belongs to a club of its own. Pre/pro/aus/cel. She shares her membership with Andreas, the Bard of Crete and Miller Delmardigan, Teacher of Bahari. When bleeding is of less importance and presence is discarded the club is joined by Dylan, Ellen Fence, the Tracker and Marcellus. It's been a while since I last saw one of these block/multiple aggravated strikes decks, but with Quicken Sight available I'm just waiting for one of these to crop up again. Lucina and Christopher Houghton are costlier alternatives for those who are more inclined to team up with Khalu, L'Epuisette, Marthe Dizier, Szechenyi Jolán, Mother of Horrors and Xaviar. Muhandis is the Toreador who wanted to be an Ishtarri – and failed. At capacity eight there's simply no excuse for an inferior discipline combined with a nasty drawback. He's slightly better suited for a no brains act, and act again type of deck, be it bleeding for lots of rushing vampires Assamite style. His for comes in pretty handy in those decks, and with Truth of Blood available he becomes outright nasty in a bruise/bleed deck focusing on Assamites with auspex. If fortitude doesn't interest you he could make company with Joaquin Murietta as well. The latter is in reality a more likely candidate as the vampires who really shine at combining AUS and QUI are group 2. Makarios, the Seducer is a Follower of Set who's unable to make it past first base. Untitled at capacity 8 with no obfuscate to show for the effort he's unlikely to make it anywhere. Fleurdumal is another story though. A potential Malkavian/!Malkavian totally lacking and obfuscate might seem unlikely. However aus/dem/tha is a useful combination in itself with stealth, intercept and nastiness in a neat little package. The vampires with those disciplines also have a tendency to show titles as well. Francois Villon has been used as a honorary Ravnos several times and Helena (Adv) makes a good Baali by herself, especially if merged. Madame Guil has some potential in a potence oriented Follower of Set deck. At first glance most of the mid capacity Toreador lend themselves to an Anarch vote deck. The main problem, as always, is that they're somewhat large to afford being blocked every time they attempt an action. An aus/cel Baron deck with concealed .44 Magnum is a viable option. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Deck-concept of the month: Mata Hari and Helena (preferably merged) team up and use Toreador Grand Ball to full effect. Toreador Grand Ball is worded so that Mata Hari hosting the dance will have reverted to being Ravnos when it's time for her not to untap as normal, so she untaps anyway. Helena (Adv) or merged is Infernal and doesn't care about the untap clause on Toreador Grand Ball anyway. The question is how to make a deck around this funny pair. My own attempts have become too cluttered with clan and sect dependent cards for Mata Hari to use and never become focused enough. I'd be happy to read what your perverted minds can come up with. Sten During