OFFICIAL VEKN CLAN VENTRUE NEWSLETTER Vol.II No.13 Dec. 2001 INTRODUCTION WAR COUNCIL - Bloodlines crawling out of the woodwork. AGITATION NATION - 'Tablewins' by Matt Green. CARD FOCUS - New Ventrue toys from Bloodlines. DECK OF THE MONTH - Daring the Dawn juggernaut. _________________________________________ INTRODUCTION It is good to be back, I see Mr Cooper and Mr Baker have done me proud with exactly diddly squat over the last couple of months. Lazy buggers. Been concentrating on Bloodlines and a lot of other clans lately making up for my time away so you will have to forgive the thin Ventrue content in this issue. I'm absolutely flooded with new ideas at the moment, been building decks like a madman. Anyway.... you go away for a while, come back and whaddya know everything has changed. We are Ventrue, the elite - we fear change :o) In this return from down under newsletter I'll cover the new set and how it impacts 'classic' Ventrue strategies and tricks, my games in Australia and offer an opinion on the recent gamewins ruling laid bare by my good friend Matt Green in this month's Agitation Nation. _____________________________________________ WAR COUNCIL - Bloodlines Played my first Bloodlines cards and I like what I see. The set seems to do exactly what it says on the tin - successfully introducing a lot of new fractious clans and encouraging players to develop more diverse deck types. A lot of the vampires will slot in nicely to existing decks and allow you to revisit those old skool decks with a little Bloodlines boost. Several of the new clans warrant going one step further and creating useful duo-clan decks eg. Lasombra / Kiasyd. As to the effect on the metagame when the dust settles I'm not sure yet, Blood Bros. alone are going to be a brutal force in the 'king of the ring' contest, Potence, Fortitude AND Octopod - ooh that 's gotta hurt. A number of powerful clan-dependant cards like The Slaughterhouse will paint big red kick me targets on their respective clans. Daughters of Cacophony go well with Ventrue, another two Permanent locations (one vote / one stealth), some solid weenies and some great assist cards bring a new angle to classic Ventrue decks. The scarce clans are as they should be. Less vampires, harder to use but powerful disciplines and effects with some excellent, eminently useable special abilities. There is obviously a lot of thought gone into the whole set, hurrah ! I really like the slave rule with regard to the Gargoyles taking over from a blocked 'master' clan member. It makes a combat orientated Tremere deck a real possibility as opposed to a laughing stock :o) Not put in a lot of thought yet but I'm SURE there is a great deck with Muaziz, Cardano and a whole bunch of Freak Drives and Gargoyles. All in all a great expansion, I see a lot of nasty, influential decks of the future coming out of the set. ______________________________________________ AGITATION NATION - Table Wins: Effects on deck design and metagame choices. by Matt Green. On Jan. 1st the V:EKN tournament rules will change to incorporate a different way of reaching the final table at a sanctioned Vampire tournament. At the moment, qualification to the final table is based on total Victory Points (VP) gained over the preliminary rounds, next month it will be based on the number of table wins a player has achieved, with total VP deciding ties. A player achieves a table win by getting the most VP on a table (at least 2). The reasons behind the changes have been thrashed out here and on other forums, and by and large the change is perceived as good for the game as it cuts down table splitting, reducing the chances of two players dividing up a table between them. The new environment does have an impact on deck choices and play styles though, which might just change the seating of the final table at your local tournaments. The choices a table win environment encourage players to make: -play more aggressively -play faster -cut fewer deals with other players From the offset intercept decks get a tougher time of it. Playing to be the last player standing will no longer be a viable strategy. Forward motion is needed in order to gain and least 2VP in 2 hours. This can be tough for some decks that would otherwise be painful to deal with. The Tzimisce and the !Gangrel look likely to have the most problems. Which is not say that those clans are not capable of forward motion, it's just more difficult for them. Auspex decks are going to be looking to Pulse of the Canille and Smiling Jack to get their point across. How much of their blocking ability has to be sacrificed to remain competitive remains to be seen. Also, expect to see more Dominate decks and weenie bleeders, especially in the early tournaments next year. Whilst the players adapt, the best way to ensure any table wins is to go with Dominate. Faster play will be needed to turn the 0.5VPs into table wins, unfortunately faster play leads you to make more mistakes which can cost you games. Step forward once again the Dominate decks. Focussed decks are easier to play because you have fewer choices to make. Likewise, combat decks have fewer options available to them than political and/or toolbox style decks, although I wonder about their ability to accumulate VPs. Of course, the EuroBrujah have Dominate so they remain an option until the environment settles down again. Dealing with other players is time consuming and as splitting tables becomes fruitless next month, I'd expect to see less of it. Political decks will bear the brunt of this, vote locks become more important especially for game swinging votes like Parity Shift and Kindred Restructure. Merely bribing a vote-strong player with a few pool or a good place is unlikely to cut the mustard. One card I'd expect to see more of, however, is Dramatic Upheaval. Sniping VP from under someone else's nose is an even better option now. Sniping 3VP then folding to the remaining deck is a viable gameplan. Given that it's just a single vote, a lock is less necessary too. Presence cards like Bewitching Oration and Awe, and to a lesser extent Cryptic Rider and Malkavian Rider Clause, become good tools for forcing an Upheaval through. Presence has the added ability to be able to bleed an opponent out from sub-10 pool in the same way as Dominate. The first couple of months next year are going to be fairly chaotic, especially with the new bloodlines cards coming into the mix. For one thing the UK metagame at least is going to get a lot less gentlemanly and a great deal more brutal. [that's not a pretty thought. Ed] Mattgreen. Thanks Green, a lot of food for thought there. I don't really know what to make of the ruling at the moment. As we have discussed a couple of times the game did need a shakedown, the UK metagame was starting to deteriorate into only dealmaking and no playing. Only time will tell if this was the right ruling to make ? ______________________________________________ BLOODLINES VENTRUE FOCUS The new set has delivered a lot of new ideas and possibilities, whilst studying them for hours a few cards in particular caught my beady eye with relation to the Ventrue : ****** Elemental Stoicism for/obf Combat Action for : Prevent 1 non-aggravated damage for/obf : The vampire treats all aggravated damage as normal damage for the remainder of combat. FOR/obf : +1 Stealth action. Put this card on this acting vampire. The vampire with this card treats all aggravated damage done in combat as normal damage. Burn this card if this vampire goes to torpor. Slots quite well into a high point Ventrue deck with Arika, Queen Anne, Suhailah and pals. Would provide another permanent level of damage prevention to help the lovely purple ladies club to stay in one piece. You could combo it up with Dawn Op. for a nice poke / prevent angle ? A bit weak IMO though, there is better ways to do that. ****** Sanguine Instruction +1 Stealth Action Choose a discipline this vampire has at superior. Put this card on a ready vampire of the same clan as this acting vampire. The vampire with this card has normal level of the chosen discipline. If the vampire already had the discipline, he or she now has the superior level of that discipline. The vampire's capacity increases by 1; the vampire is one generation older. Cannot be played on a vampire with a superior version of the discipline. WOW. What a great card. Forget the Ventrue, this is an extremely useful all-purpose card. The possibilities of multi-discipline decks improve, as it allows total flexibility in choosing which discipline is taught. It will fill in the gaps in a single clan deck (Tzimisce springs to mind - Dragos, Corine etc.) and further promote the use of 'off clan disciplines' which is IMO where the real challenges in deck building lay. I like the restriction of limiting it to the same clan, tempers the card - it could be a bit powerful otherwise. It is not a master card and as such frees up master slots for other useful stuff. It can also be used in conjunction with skillcards for some serious discipline development. It pumps up the capacity of the target vampire by one which is always good, useful for Soul Gem action if you can work it in somehow ?? ****** Denial of Aphrodite's Favour Dom/For Reaction / Combat This card can be played as a combat card or a reaction card. dom/for : Burn an action card a younger vampire plays that requires Presence (pre) as it is played. That card has no effect. Untap the acting vampire; that vampire cannot attempt the same action again this turn. DOM/FOR : Burn an action modifier or combat card a younger vampire plays that requires Presence as it is played. That card has no effect. A useful card for both the Ventrue and the !Ventrue. It is versatile in that it allows you to counter both Presence actions / action mods. and combat cards. Obvious use is with a 'Corporate Power' Type Ventrue base deck using Pot/For/Dom (Emerson Bridges etc.). ****** Renewed Vigour +1 Stealth action Obeah/Fortitude 1 blood for : Put this card on this acting vampire. During your untap phase, if this vampire is in torpor, you can burn this card to move him or her to your ready region. A vampire can have only one Renewed Vigour. [snip lots of other cool Obeah stuff] Another solid card for the Ventrue, Renewed Vigour perhaps as a precursor to Force of Will ? The timing of this one is purposely such that you cannot use it the same turn as the action, but it is still pretty useful as a backup. A full Ventrue line-up would be a lot more daunting if they were all tooled up with one of these 'get out of jail free cards'. The Ventrue can also put enough vote punch about to deter would be munchers, obviously this is no good against another player's vote dominance or weenie disposables but it helps, might even put a few in the Deck of the Month, see how it goes. __________________________________________ DECK OF THE MONTH - Ventrue Daring the Dawn. A bastard relation of the Ventrue / Gangrel deck that I posted in the Jan 2001 newsletter, but it works a lot better. Instead of forcing Protean, it uses the disciplines already available and a lot of Daring the Dawns. Nice angle with the Cull the Herds taking out any allies which stop the Daring the Dawn *and* allow you a peek at your prey's hand. It is a version of the powerful Ventrue toolbox deck with a nasty unblockable aspect. Interestingly, it was my number 2 choice for Gencon 2001. Martin Cubberley needed a deck on the day so I foolishly leant it to him :o) nearly did me in. Crypt: (12 cards) [Min: 8, Max: 36, Avg: 5.75] 1 Arika (Ventrue, 11, au ce DO FO OB PR, IC) 1 Emerson Bridges (Ventrue, 8, DO FO po PR, Prince) 1 Heather Florent (Ventrue, 6, do FO PR) 1 March Halcyon (Pander, 1, fo) 1 Queen Anne (Ventrue, 10, au DO FO PR ob, Prince) 1 Ranjan Rishi (Ventrue, 5, DO fo PR) 1 Roland Loussarian (Ventrue, 3, fo pr) 2 Rufina Soledad (Ventrue, 2, fo) 2 Sir Walter Nash (Ventrue, 7, DO FO PR, Prince) 1 Timothy Crowley (Ventrue, 7, an do FO PR, Prince) I think the version that I leant Martin had Jan Pieterzoon in replacing Heather ? Can't remember. Library: 90 cards (14 masters) 1 Banishment 4 Bewitching Oration 2 Catacombs 2 Conditioning 1 Conservative Agitation 1 Creepshow Casino 2 Cull the Herd 10 Daring the Dawn 4 Deflection 1 Direct Intervention 1 Dramatic Upheaval 1 Dreams of the Sphinx 4 Fifth Tradition: Hospitality, The 4 Force of Will 1 Foreshadowing Destruction 3 Freak Drive 1 Giant's Blood 2 Govern the Unaligned 2 Hidden Strength 2 Hostile Takeover 2 Humanitas 4 Kine Resources Contested 2 Kiss of Ra, The 6 Majesty 4 Minion Tap 2 Parity Shift 2 Resilience 1 Restoration 6 Second Tradition: Domain 6 Skin of Steel 1 Sudden Reversal 2 Superior Mettle 1 Ventrue Headquarters 1 Ventrue Justicar 2 Wake with Evening's Freshness I have fully bought into the school of thought lately of building decks that are the right size for the game but this one is HARD to keep below 90. As always the main problem is getting the balance of cards right for efficient flow and the required number of actions, mods., combat etc. I am always tempted to put more Kiss of Ra in the deck, one version had 4 in and seemed to work pretty damn well. Being 'Ra snogged' by a vampire rescuing itself from torpor is no fun at all. __________________________________________ Played a few games with the crew in Melbourne whilst I was round the other side of the world. Great bunch of guys, just like playing at home really - cool games, loads of beers, talking shop, getting totally lost at 3am in a foreign city looking for food you know the sort of night :o) Played my Eurobrujah 2001 deck and had Memories of Mortality slapped on all of my minions, luckily managed to avoid most of the War Ghouls and Garous kicking ass all around the table. Also gave my weenie Ventrue Anarch Revolt deck a go.. and got a damn good pasting, so a fair bit of tweeking needed there! Thanks to Stuart, Jason and the guys - you'll always find hospitality in the UK should you ever come over this way. That's me for this year, in the January letter: -More Bloodlines reports and ideas. -Agitation Nation - forward, focussed, flaccid or fine ? The reality of tablewins. -The reassertion of Camarilla might from the VTES re-release late in 2002 - what will it mean to our new game ? A great Christmas and new year to all on the group. My lovely and understanding wife is expecting our first offspring in June so my 2002 should be pretty great. I figure on starting Dad's weekly VTES lessons at the age of about 4 so watch out in the years to come :o) As usual, any interesting Ventrue decks, articles, opinions or rants mail me at Rob.Treasure@btinternet.com