Introduction:
I'll start this newsletter by presenting myself. My name is Sten
During and I'm from the European arena, more exactly from
Gothenburg, Sweden. I'm relatively new - only played regularly
for a year or so.
TheLasombra has been kind enough to read, correct and comment
the content. However, these lines reflect playing the clan
from my point of view, not his. I thank him for his help.
My angle will always come with the VEKN tournament-rules as a
basic set of rules, not because they are by definition the best,
but because they are well-known and widely used.
I play for fun - it's fun to win. Whenever I take a try at a deck
it's to get at least 3VP from the table or die miserably at my
attempt.
Our playgroup, some 10 players, tend to counter and recounter
each others decks. We also tend to agree upon short-time deals
and believe that bleeds are meant to be bounced.
This will inevitably colour my opinions, but now at least you
know the background of my ramblings.
Definitions:
I split all games into three parts (may become four later).
Those are the start-game, the middle-game and the end-game.
The start-game lasts until the first 18-24 tranferpoints are
used, which usually corresponds to five rounds. After this
point we usually don't see many more vampires enter the table.
The middle-game continues until there are 3 players left.
This is where most of the actual game is played.
The end-game have two distinct sub-parts. When there are
only two players left the game once again changes character.
This is also where I may have to divide the game into four
different phases.
During this phase short-time deals become less frequent,
and when there are only two players left they either split
or fight it out without much finesse.
Deck building:
Toreador-decks tend to go into one of two categories. Speed decks
or Stall decks. The clan also lends itself beautifully to a mix
of the two, albeit an evenly mixed deck will usually be played
slower than the mix suggests. I'll point this out in the
tactical section.
I'll concentrate on a mixed deck this time. It's a modified
version of the deck I brought to the qualifier at Watford
this summer. It brought me 4, 1 and 0 VP. I got 1 in I game
where I broke the Prime Rule and moved too fast, see section
Tactics, and 0 VP in a game where I was caught between a
Potence-Dominate-rush-deck hunting me and my prey quickly learned
to start blocking, see section Countertactics. Another version
of this deck got properly humiliated during the Swedish
Championships getting 1, 0 and 0 VP at tables where one neighbour
and I contested who could gather most intercept, see section
Countertactics. Most changes after that has been in the area
of HOW to play it rather than which cards to exchange. The last
ten or so games with this deck have seen it take 0, 3 or 4 VP
with 25% of the games ending at 0 or 4 VP and the remaining
half at 3VP.
Deckname: Guns and Roses
Crypt
Anneke Tor 10 Justicar AUS, CEL, PRE, dom
+1 bleed. May attempt to block any vampire.
Anson Tor 8 Prince PRE, CEL, dom, aus
Two masteractions when ready
Tatiana Romanova Tor 7 Prince AUS, cel, pre
+1 bleed
Lydia Van Cuelen Tre 6 aus, pre, dom, tha
+1 bleed
Adrianne Tor 6 aus, cel, pre, pot
+1 bleed
Rake Bru 6 Prince PRE, cel, aus, pot
+1 hand damage against Ventrue
Black Cat Bru 5 CEL, pot, pre
Equip costs one less
Volker the Puppet Prince Bru 5 Prince CEL, pot
Cannot attempt to block Primogen
Calebros the Martyr Nos 5 Prince ANI, pot, obf
Any older Cam Vamp may steal
title unblockable by Calebros
Isabel de Leon Tor 3 AUS
Delilah Easton Tor 2 pre
Anoniette DuChamp Cai 1 pre, cel
Celerity actions or strikes costs 1 extra blood
Library 90 cards
Masters 25
Auspex 4
Presence 3
Blood Doll 7
KRCG News Radio
Powerbase: Chicago
Information Highway
Club Zombie
Powerbase: Montreal
Powerbase: Washington DC
The Rack
London Evening Star, Tabloid Newspaper
Heidelberg Castle, Germany
Art Museum
Creepshow Casino
Warzone Hunting Ground
Society Hunting Ground
Library 65
Archon
Autarkis Persecution
The Fifth Tradition 5
The Third Tradition 5
Embrace 2
Enchant Kindred
Atonement
Judgement: Camarilla Segregation
Modifiers
Aire of Elation 4
Reactions
Telepathic Misdirection 7
Forced Awakening 7
The Second Tradition 7
Retainers
J.S. Simmons, Esq.
Mr. Winthrop
Tasha Morgan
Equipment
.44 Magnum 4
Assault Rifle 2
Sport Bike 2
Palatial Estate
The Sargon Fragment
Pier 13, Port of Baltimore
Combat
Majesty 7
As you can see the deck is heavy on master cards with only one
copy of Anson. It's a risk, but the diversity of cards allows
you to choose tactics during the game and discard the cards
that no longer fit into the current game. Of course it helps
when other players refuse to believe that I'm playing the same
deck again.
And yes, it contains too many cards, but I simply don't have
the heart to lessen its diversity. There's too much beauty
in surprise, and maybe that's simply suiting for a Toreador-
based deck. The deck can be optimized, but then it will be
a different deck, so its current version is for tweaking for
those who like to play this kind of deck. If I want it
heavily optimized I'll simply build a new instead.
Tactics:
So we have a deck that can protect itself while multiplying
and equipping. However, Majesty is more than protection, it's
also a second action. The deck is more than able to regain
blood and pool and relies on several permanent effects
most of which are guns and intercept. The crypt tries to
compensate for the lack of bleed enhancers by having it
automatically.
During the start-game we're better off using Majesty during
actions compared to when we block as this deck is in a hurry
to get equipped and, well, evamped. Don't forget that Progeny
and Embrace are two distinctly different actions. You may
happily get one blocked, play Majesty and continue with
the other. If you get Pier 13, Port of Baltimore and/or
The Sargon Fragment early on you want to screen those
actions behind bleeds and less important equip-actions
in order to succesfully get them out.
If you feel you can't afford equipping an Assault Rifle,
choose that action as your first. You WILL get blocked
unless your neighbours are unable to.
During the middle-game you should bleed, equip and choose
blockers. There are enough of the one-only cards in this
deck to keep the other players off-balance. Be generous
with pool to your predator, but never forget to be equally
generous with threats. The pool-powerbases are there for
the protection of your predator. Make sure that they bloat
instead of bleed. Remind them that the pool can be stolen.
The created weenies are best off with Presence Disipline
cards, but that shouldn't prevent you from discarding
a dicipline-card unless you desperately need another
vampire with superior auspex. Created weenies should
be given discipline-cards from your hand, from the
ash-heap or from the library - in that order. I have
tried taking them from my library first, but with
this deck it simply doesn't work very well.
By now you'll have chosen one road to go dependent
on how your start-game turned out. You'll pick
up mastercards that give you a feeling of "maybe
I'll use this one later". Don't, discard them! The
reward is that you'll pick mastercards that make
you feel "YES!" instead. Which ones varies from game
to game.
Spare the Aire of Elations until one is enough to oust
your prey. You don't have that many so they have to
count, and besides, you want to look like a swarm of
1-2 point bleeders as long as possible, or your prey
will get wary and start playing a blocking game.
The sheer amount of small princes in this deck should
give you an edge during most referendums. Make deals.
Whenever your prey doesn't go for his/her prey block.
This deck is meant to disrupt your prey. Don't save
your intercept for your predator unless you're absolutely
forced to as you ought to be able to take a lot of pool-
punishment. Besides, you won't find any VP on your
predator until very late in the game ;)
During the end-game it's time to get those guns to wear
down your enemies. By this time you're either dead,
your predator is very strong or very weak. Concentrate
on the second strongest player on the table - you
should be the strongest if you get this far.
The Prime Rule for this deck is to choose WHEN you refuse
to take any forward actions, and trust me, there will be
at least one such opportunity during a game. The reason for
this is that you're bleeding slowly, so you actually want
your prey to influence out one vampire too many and
hurt his/her prey one extra time. The perfect opportunity
usually comes when you're sitting with two Telepathic
Misdirection and/or two Aire of Elation on your hand. Just
stop dead, give your predator a frightened look, move
to influence and end your turn.
I broke this rule at the second table during the Watford
tournament. Strangely enough by ousting my defenseless prey
and thus exchanging a non-existent blocker for one with
permanent intercept, permanent aggravated ranged damage
with Cats Guidance to boost - before I was finished
equipping. My only excuse is that we swedish people
aren't used to 32 degrees celsius ;)
The Second Rule is to know when to stop blocking. If your
predator can stealth even more than this deck can
intercept, ignore him/her. No reason to cycle their
deck for them.
Countertactics:
In order to play any deck well it's important to know
in advance when and why it won't perform as you want
it to do. When presenting the deck I wrote how it
performed during two tournaments. During the swedish
championships I was actually aware of the dangers
presented below. Running into intercept-walls played
by defensive players will stop this deck, and I was
properly stopped.
To kill this deck you may want to play a stealth-vote-deck,
a Potence-rush-deck or just concentrate on blocking and
intercepting anything this deck does before turn 8.
Without weapons or extra vampires it'll possibly bleed
its prey to death with the help of Aire of Elation,
but that should be about it.
Don't go too hard on its vampires in the start-game, or
you'll hunt a frightened bunch of good intercepters with
Majesty, Blood Dolls and the occasional Fifth Tradition.
You'll risk getting stuck in a world of pain as the
blockers' strikes for one damage eventually starts taking
its toll while you fail to decrease the deck owners pool
fast enough. Of course, if you can smash down the
vampires hard and fast enough this is no longer a
problem, but in that case only a Fortitude-based deck
would be.
To be hunted by this deck is worse. By the time you have
made certain that it's no threat to you your prey may
already have secured 2VP. The best way to protect your
back is to forbid all attempts to create new vampires
and stop Fifth Tradition. Anything with lots of intercept
and Majesty can protect its own back, so you don't have
to be overly scared that you're hurting it too bad.
If you're playing anything that bleeds and bounces bleeds,
well then just don't care about this deck. Just bleed
your prey and bounce any bleed for 2 or more. Don't go
too hard on the weapon equipping - you'll want those
guns in the face of your grandpredator later in the
game. However, never ever allow an Assault Rifle. Anyone
equipping one is either suicidal or knows something you
don't, and you really don't want to find out that your
predator replaced some of the cards with Blur. If you
KNOW you can steal that gun and/or the vampire with
the gun, then fine.
There are two cards killing this deck. I consider
Temptation of Greater Power and Hostile Takeover to
be one card. The other is Kiss of Ra.
Opinions:
I've seen a bias towards playing Aching Beauty in a deck
with several Toreadors. I've also seen such decks among
highly succesful decks among the published ones, but
being used to a playing environment bouncing bleeds as a
norm my opinion is this: Never stack Aching Beauty on
a bleeder.
In order to prove this I have educated/disciplined my
local playgroup. It's a bounce waiting to happen and I
always smile whenever anyone guarantees me bonus bleeds.
My score this far is three different players of which
none have failed to give me at least one VP per game.
Vote, equip, rush and Arson, but do not bleed if you
even suspect heavy bouncing from your prey.
Sten During