OFFICIAL VEKN CLAN VENTRUE NEWSLETTER Vol.II No.5 Jan.2000 The first official Southampton tournament has been and gone, a few choice quotes from the day- "Sodding hell it's dark in here" "mmmm this is some tasty sausage and chips" "Your rushing WHO?" "I'll prevent your 679 damage with these 112 Fortitude cards" INTRODUCTION FOCUS ON THE CLAN - Natasha Volfcheck and Helena Casimir BEATS vs NON-BEATS - "Ha ha you can't catch me !!" DECK OF THE MONTH - 1st Draft Ventrue / Gangrel PLUG SLOT ________________________________________________ INTRODUCTION Our green and pleasant land is indeed a melting pot for the fey and fairie. Our kind have historically been grouped around the capital and the south of England, with several other watchful individuals residing in outlying areas. On Saturday 13th January, ten Methuselahs came together in the first power struggle in Southampton. The Sabbat raided in force with Caliean, Lambach and Miller in the frontlines but the resilient Gangrel from the New Forest and Hyde Park slapped them back into line. I am sure that the Southampton crown will be changing hands frequently, but after an apocalyptic struggle the proactive militant branch of the Gangrel have the key to the city. For now. ________________________________________________ FOCUS ON THE CLAN - Natasha Volfchek and Helena Casimir Natasha Volfchek 9cap, Prim, +1bleed, +1stealth on PA's FOR PRE cel dom pot Helena Casimir 9cap, Prim, +1bleed DOM POT PRE cel for The oddball Ventrue wannabee Princes are a strange pair. For my money they never quite make the final cut in most decks of mine. They both have the same disciplines in different incarnations, Helena having the upper hand with three at superior. Natasha always seems like a solid choice for a Ventrue deck with her +1 stealth on votes, but as I said she usually falls second place to a mid point Prince. Helena has good superior disciplines but does lack superior Fortitude which always scares the crap out of me in a 9 point Ventrue. I put together a Ventrue punch / vote toolbox affair with one of them in (Natasha I think) a while ago (see Corporate power in back newsletters) and it did not cut it. Maybe a bit of a harsh environment to test it in (all beats weekly Southampton games) but just did not feel right. I might try it again with a similar crypt and just go for prevention and Disarms and take out the Torn Signposts and other +hand damage? The bottom line is their title. They both have decent disciplines, some nice additional stuff, lovely pictures and are good in bed.... but without that extra Prince or Justicar usefulness they have little or no access to intercept, a lot of the 'power' votes, the 5th Trad and so on. Of course you could argue that all it takes is a simple action to elevate them to the lofty Princedom. This of course would be totally wrong, it takes a Praxis Seizure, probably some vote push, an assumption that the vote won't get blocked, an action of nearly 1/3 of your pool, a bunch of card spaces and a tiny bit of luck. There is such a massive yawning chasm of a gap between the title of Primogen and Prince. The title of Prince is worth so much more than that simple extra one vote. Both of them are fully paid up members of the exclusive Jyhad high cost Primogen club. If I remember rightly, all of the original clans have one or two Primogen that are shall we say 'a little expensive'. __________________________________________________ BEATS vs NON-BEATS. A lot of talk on the group lately about combat decks and the degenerative qualities of 'some' types of deck. I would like to pose the question : "Which deck is more likely to win a tournament - combat or non-combat?" At the very simplest level all decks break down into these two categories : BEATS In this category I include ALL decks that are designed to get into combat and smear the opposition across the table. Be it IG pain, intercept, rush, swarm, strike: go to torpor, Assamite long range, guns etc. etc. etc. the list goes on and on, they all have one common denominator - greater efficiency through erasing competition. A lot of players build a beats deck with the snow plough ideal, that is to cut a swath through your prey (whilst suppressing your predator) to get to their pool unobstructed. Certain other players I could mention disregard the pool completely and go purely for kills. The second type of player is IMO the more dangerous as they are usually unpredictable and are out to burn through combat cards and rack up as many scalps as possible (shudder). NON-BEATS This (rather large) category is made up of all decks that avoid / ignore combat and favour any other method of advancement other than combat. Sneak / bleed, vote, tempt, weenie, prince, blood gain, stonewall, random as well as all those speciality decks doing really off the wall things that defy categorisation. The reason I am rambling on about this is that it never fails to amaze me about this game just how difficult it is to predict the balance of power between the above two categories. When preparing for a tourney I try and guess the spread of decks that I will face but I'm usually way of the mark. A great skill in our game is to be 'ready' for any eventuality, easy to say - exceptionally hard to do. Tournaments are impossible to predict at the best of times, metagames change and your shiny new deck that did so well last month could get creamed by a slightly different environment. We have all experienced the nightmare of turning up to a 'all combat' tourney with a sneak bleed deck or vice versa - could either be a VERY easy run or Dante's 4th level of hell, who knows how it will turn out ? It really is up to you to play the game to the best of your ability and use every means at your disposal. Moment of clarity >>> (THAT is one of the main things I love about this game in particular. Other games have variation, social interaction, huge player input, planning and forethought but IMO no other game has them all!) When trying to predict the spread of decks at any given tourney, I tend to work on the following premise for a 15 player tourney, which breaks down a bit like a weather forecast- 3-5 Sneak and bleed 3-4 Vote 2-4 Combat (4-6 with Sabbat War ??) 3-4 Weird decks Clouding over later in the day with light intercept in general and possibly 1 dedicated intercept deck. (Saying this the number of combat decks has increased with Sabbat War. I'll wager that the tourney average of pain is up 20-30 % which is pretty scary!) As I said earlier, my bazaar tourney predictions are usually wrong ! (see Southampton January) but if you prepare for the above, there is not a lot that can surprise you and in theory you should be able to handle most eventualities. Sometimes a deck can be SO powerful in one or two areas, it can ignore other areas, this is where focus decks come into their own. If your weenie Potence armripper deck kicks so much ass that there is not usually any vamps left around to vote or bleed you, then hey... do you need intercept or votes ? Hell no, put in more Torn Signposts ! Anyway, the original question (I think) was combat vs non combat. I don't think there is a winner and as always with VTES, many different factors influence the outcome. In general though it is IMO much easier to win with a non-combat deck, the speed ousting that is possible makes it a lot simpler to capitalise on mistakes and holes. ___________________________________________________ DECK OF THE MONTH For some time I have been trying to make a workable deck with the Ventrue and Gangrel. Following some helpful (and not so helpful ...sarcastic bastards, you'll get yours) emails from the last Newsletter I have cut the deck down a bit and am looking for a few opinions. I have tried to include as many action cards as possible, I think there is 19- 20 in at the moment for the first, pre Force of Will action. Seems to have inadvertently gone a bit toolboxy, oh well worse things happen at sea. Have not given it a proper airing yet, whaddaya think I should add / get rid of ? Are there enough Force of Wills ? RURAL BUSINESS. Crypt: (12 cards) [Min: 12, Max: 36, Avg: 6.00] 1 Chandler Hungerford (Gangrel, 3, PT) 1 Courtland Leighton (Ventrue, 4, do fo pr) 2 Iliana (Gangrel, 7, DO FO PT th) 2 Ingrid Rossler (Gangrel, 9, AN do FO PT, Prince) 1 Ranjan Rishi (Ventrue, 5, DO fo PR) 1 Raven (Gangrel, 5, an FO PT) 1 Ricki Van Demsi (Gangrel, 3, fo pt) 1 Rufina Soledad (Ventrue, 2, fo) 1 Sir Walter Nash (Ventrue, 7, DO FO PR, Prince) 1 Stanislava (Gangrel, 11, AN CE DO FO PT, IC) Library: 90 cards (14 masters) 1 Backways 1 Blood Doll 1 Conservative Agitation 4 Daring the Dawn 3 Deflection 1 Direct Intervention 1 Dreams of the Sphinx 4 Earth Control 4 Earth Meld 2 Fifth Tradition: Hospitality, The 4 Force of Will 2 Forced Awakening 4 Form of Mist 3 Freak Drive 1 Gangrel Justicar 1 Giant's Blood 2 Govern the Unaligned 2 Humanitas 1 J. S. Simmons, Esq. 5 Kine Resources Contested 1 Kiss of Ra, The 1 Legendary Vampire 2 Masochism 2 Minion Tap 3 Movement of the Slow Body 1 Mr. Winthrop 1 Praxis Seizure: Cairo 1 Praxis Seizure: Houston 2 Protean 2 Rapid Change 4 Rapid Healing 2 Resilience 2 Restoration 1 Rumor Mill, Tabloid Newspaper, The 2 Second Tradition: Domain 2 Skin of Steel 1 Sudden Reversal 3 Superior Mettle 1 Tasha Morgan 2 Threats 2 Unflinching Persistence 1 Ventrue Headquarters 4 Wake with Evening's Freshness __________________________________________________ Right, i'm off to do some work, I will sign off until next month. PLUG SLOT (in danger of becoming a regular feature) The January plug is for my buddy Ed who has opened up an excellent games shop in Southampton UK called 'Hidden Fortress'. Two floors with the 1st floor kitted out purely for tourney play (tables, munchies, toilets, pub across the road etc.) I'll get him to post the address etc. as he wants to start up regular V:TES tourney's. Woo Hoo! Send any interesting Ventrue delights to - Rob.Treasure@btinternet.com -More decks. -More degradation, humiliation and defecation when Agitation Nation comes back to your silver screens. -Other cool things.