[Strategy Event] Anthelios, the Red Star 
by Emmit Svenson - emmitsvenson@hotmail.com 

A Star is Born

Anthelios, the Red Star
Once per master phase, a Methuselah may spend a master phase action to
trade a master card in their hand for a master card in their ashheap.

When you're first flipping through the Gehenna masters, the Red Star
looks pretty innocuous. There are events that make 11-caps into
1-caps, that burn through monoclan crypts, that strip Camarilla
vampires of their powers, that put hordes of ghouls on the table. The
Red Star is just an appetizer, just the gateway event you need to
start your Gehenna snowball rolling downhill without winding up
beneath it.

Play with the Red Star at a 5-player table and you realize how wrong
you are. Your four ingenious opponents will come up with four times as
many uses for the event as you will. Of course they'll trade for
Minion Taps on the turns they bring out new minions. Of course they'll
fetch back their Hostile Takeovers, their Society of Leopolds, their
Pentex Subversions, their Direct Interventions. They may take less
master actions overall, but they'll have the masters they want the
most. Having your own stick of dynamite will not make up for giving
one to every other monkey at the table.

Call it Svenson's Law of Global Effects: All else being equal, it is
better to play an effect that hurts everyone than it is to play an
effect that helps everyone.

It's best explained with a mathematical analogy: if you're at a table
of five and you play a card that helps the whole table, you're only
getting 1/5 of the benefit of the card. Conversely, if you play a card
that hurts the whole table, you're only taking 1/5 of the pain. True,
in the short run you want to help, not hurt your grandprey and
grandpredator, but the short run is always shorter than the long
run…thus the name.

So if you're looking for an enabler Gehenna card, go with a magic
bullet that won't hurt you, or will hurt others more than you. Weenie
decks, pack the Slow Withering and Wormwood. Fatty decks, pack the
Thirst and Nightmares Upon Nightmares. There's only one sort of deck
the Red Star belongs in: master decks, decks with multiple master
phases.

The Parthenon Policy

Many decks include multiple copies of a unique, persistent master
because they need to get it into play as soon as possible. A side
benefit is that the deck then has extra copies in case the first copy
is burnt. Master decks, for example, usually pack multiple copies of
the Parthenon. Other decks might include many copies of Information
Highway, Heidelberg Castle, the Hungry Coyote, Smiling Jack the Anarch
or stealth locations.

The price players pay for having a better chance of getting the
crucial card earlier is that they must then dispose of the extra
copies so they don't have hand jam. The same is true for masters that
can only be used once a game, most notably Giant's Blood and
Temptation of Greater Power, and true to a lesser extent for masters
that are more desirable early in the game than late in the game, such
as Zillah's Valley, hunting grounds and the Arcane Library family of
blood-on-uncontrolled-vampire locations.

When the Red Star is in play, players may exchange useless copies of
in-play uniques or used-up one-shots for usable master cards in their
ashheaps. This gives all the players at the table more options for
managing their hands than if they only had their discard phase. But it
gives master decks a disproportionate advantage, because with two or
more master phase actions available, they may trade for a master and
play it immediately, rather than wait until the next turn.

Still, there are more popular ways to deal with hand jam. Master decks
have many options for card cycling, including the Barrens, the
Fragment of the Book of Nod, the Admonitions, Specialization, and the
incredibly useful Dreams of the Sphinx.  Putting these cards into play
costs a master phase, but once in play they can be used over and over
with no further use of master phases. Also, they can get rid of any
sort of hand jam, not just useless masters. Why use the Red Star when
these cards are available?

Because drawing from your deck is always a crapshoot. You might draw
the one master you need to save your life…or you might draw another
duplicate of what you want to get rid of. With the Red Star, you know
what your options are, and are guaranteed to get the best replacement
available to you, whether it's a life-saving Minion Tap or a
game-winning Anarch Revolt.

Gambit Acceptable

Many powerful master cards that are useful in the later stages of the
game are dead weight in the beginning. Gambit Accepted and Life Boon
are prime examples, as are cards that it could be a mistake to play
too early, such as Last Stand, Kaymakli Nightmares and Golconda.
Despite their power, these cards aren't as commonly used as other
cards with less opportunity cost. Decks with lots of copies of them
have to discard them often or choke on them; decks with just one or
two copies might not get them before they need them, or might have to
horde them for half the game before they can play them.

With the Red Star in play, these low-opportunity power cards become
much more practical. A copy drawn too early can be traded for
something immediately useful; a copy discarded can be retrieved when
needed. Again, all players at the table will receive this benefit, but
a master deck that can retrieve the power card and play it during the
same master phase has the widest window of opportunity for using the
card effectively.

The Trifle Tactic
Any master deck that plans to use the Red Star to its greatest effect
should include a selection of trifles: I suggest a quantity equal to
25-30% above their master count for best cycling. Not only are trifles
incredibly easy to cycle in a deck that gives you multiple master
actions, they also synergize with the Red Star. If you have no trifles
in your hand, you can trade an unusable master for one and play it
with no net loss in master phases: in other words, every unusable
Giant's Blood or Parthenon becomes a Life in the City. If you have two
in your hand, one is unusable, so trade it for a non-trifle using the
master phase action you gain from playing the first.

Life in the City is the most utilitarian trifle, and should go in
every Red Star deck. Remember you can play it cross-table to make
friends. Also consider the value of the Coven and Esgrima, since you
can retrieve a duplicate from your ash heap in order to contest the
first one you played.

The Sudden Strategy

You've got the Red Star in play, a dead master card in your hand, and
only one master phase left. Only one trade makes sense: getting an
out-of-turn master into your hand. Anything else in your ash heap can
wait until your next master phase.

Sudden Reversal is a great offensive choice. It's best used to kill
your prey's pool gain by burning Blood Dolls, Minion Taps and the
like. Of course, with the Red Star, they can get their pool gain
masters back again, but you still have the advantage, because they
can't play it again immediately. You can get the Sudden back before
they can. Matching them master phase for master phase, you win.

Direct Intervention is a great defensive choice. In any combo your
predator puts together, you can often identify one card to cancel that
will end up saving you more than one pool. The Red Star won't let them
get it back, but it'll give you the DI back if you so desire.
Considering that many people play with fewer DI than they would play
if they owned more, the Red Star might make DI more of a factor in
many playgroups.

Another OOT master worth considering is that old combat trump,
Rotshreck. Imagine if you will an Anson deck that instead of Majesty
uses the Second Tradition, Concealed Weapon, a Deer Rifle, a Magazine
of Dragon's Breath Rounds and Rotshreck. This will substantially
reduce the number of players at a table willing to rush Anson.

Anson or Rumors?

The Parthenon is a no-brainer. It goes in every master deck. Every
master deck should also include Anson or Rumors of Gehenna. Which to
pair with the Red Star is largely a matter of style.

Anson is the more reliable of the two options. You know you will get
your extra master action by your fourth master phase at most, and can
get it as early as your second phase if you use Zillah's Valley. He
has dominate, for deflection. His celerity and presence give you many
options for combat defense, or you can use Secure Haven and/or Secret
Passage to protect him. Jake Washington is another good defensive
option, a chump blocker who can stop no-stealth rushes and bleeds,
then rise again under the Red Star to block again. You might also want
to include weenie Toreador in your mostly-Anson crypt to use as chump
blockers and as the tapped vamp for Toreador Grand Balls. Being a
Prince, Anson has many great actions he'd like to take while
unblockable: the 1st Tradition, Parity Shift, Kindred Restructure and
Judgement: Camarilla Segregation are often useful. Since the Grand
Ball is burnable, and since you won't have the minion cards to take
many successful actions with Anson, you'll want to play the TGB on the
turn you plan to take an action. With the Red Star, you can fetch it
on the turns you need it. Finally, when Anson is Temptationed, Famed,
Sensory Deprived, torporized or otherwise compromised (or just empty
of blood after a Minion Tap), have him reach Golconda and bring him
right back into the fight.

Relying on Rumors involves a lot of hidden costs. You need to include
several copies of the vote card so you'll get it early. You also need
a way to stop people from blocking the action, a way to pass the
referendum and a way to keep people from voting it out of existence.
That adds up to a whole lot of minion cards, some relatively big
vampires or a lot of clever diplomacy. The Red Star complicates the
diplomacy angle: people are much more hungry for that second master
phase, but you're much, much less interested in giving it to them.

However, if you include the infrastructure to use Rumors in your deck,
you end up with a solid vote deck that can do more than just play
masters. Using Inner Circle members, Justicars and Cardinals works
well; their titles make it harder to get rid of the Rumors, and Minion
Tap + Golconda is even juicier with Arika than it is with Anson.
Angelica the Canonicus is worth a special mention, since her special
allows you to pack a great many corner-case masters knowing you can
cycle them usefully and retrieve them with the Red Star when they
would be useful. A mixture of small Ventrue and !Ventrue also works
well, giving you access to Ventrue Headquarters, Demonstration,
Loyalist and Elder Kindred Network as well as Daring the Dawn for
critical actions. Note that whatever vote defense you assemble will
also serve you well if you want to keep an Anarch Revolt from being
voted away.

Revolting Under a Red Star

Master decks often rely on Anarch Revolt (and its unique cousin,
Antediluvian Awakening) to provide ousting power, since they have
relatively few minion cards and correspondingly less minion power. The
Red Star makes Anarch Revolt decks easier to play by allowing you to
fetch burnt or discarded ARs from your discard pile. It may also
discourage other players from trying to vote the Revolts out of play,
which is not always a good thing. After all, if they stay in play,
they hurt you too. If they get voted out, you don't get hit by them,
and you can lay down a fresh supply every turn.

With three or four ARs in a deck, you keep a slow but steady pressure
on other players. Combine that with Sudden Reversals on your prey's
master-based pool gain, a few Personal Involvements and just one or
two punishing bleeds or votes and you can oust as reliably as any
deck.

With twenty or thirty ARs in a deck, you'll be playing a relatively
short game. All your energy must be focused on making sure players die
in the proper order: your prey first, you never. You are aided in this
effort by the nature of Anarch Revolt, which hits people in a
clockwise fashion starting with your prey. It's also wise to pack
insurance in the form of Life Boons and seat-switching votes.

The greatest problem you'll encounter when playing an AR-heavy deck is
that some players are simply unaware how the card speeds up the game.
You'll recognize these players quickly: they're the ones who transfer
out their second 7-cap vampire the turn after you play your third AR.
If they're your prey or great-grandprey, it's good news for you, but
if they're your grandprey or predator, you're going to have to work
hard to keep their victory point out of other peoples' hands. Life
Boon is your biggest friend here, and Red Star can help you get one
(and only one) in your hand for when you need it. Unfortunately, the
Red Star also allows other players to retrieve Sudden Reversals from
their discard piles, giving them an effective anti-Boon weapon…if they
thought to pack SR in the first place, that is.

As an aside, I recommend that anytime you see somebody get blindsided
by heavy AR you talk to them afterwards and explain in a friendly way
the various tactics to use when AR hits the table. Not anti-AR
tactics; anti-AR tactics are a waste of energy. Explain to them how to
ride the wave of AR, conserving pool, investing it only in minions who
can protect your pool, hit your prey hard and/or be minion tapped
immediately. Once your prey's looking sickly, watch out for
seat-switching votes and watch out for the Boon. Consider using early
diplomacy to get the Master deck to agree not to rob you of your
victory points. The ARs are impersonal; if you understand them and
adapt to them, you have a good shot at the table yourself.

People who don't know how to deal with AR can become enormously
frustrated. You hear a lot from people on this newsgroup whose hatred
for this card transcends their desire to win the game, and will
actually ignore their prey and their defense against their predator to
target an AR deck cross-table. If you are unlucky enough to play with
one of these killjoys, make a note of it for later use. You might be
able to manipulate them into going cross-table against other people's
decks if you can convince them they're "random" or "unfun".

Mageddon

This Anson-free deck makes the most out of the Red Star and multiple
master phases. Its cheap minions are used primarily to deflect big
bleeds and to sabotage votes, but they can also deliver a coup de gras
in the form of unblockable bleeds and votes. Pool gain is just a
trickle from Blood Dolls and Life in the City, but you shouldn't have
to spend much.

The deck does use more than a few Anarch Revolts, rating about 5.7 on
the AR scale. At AR ratings 5 and above, there's little danger of the
game running very long, so the deck is only 60 cards, guaranteeing
that you'll get to key cards like the Parthenon and Rumors of Gehenna
quickly. Your priority should be keeping your prey's pool gain to a
minimum, so try to keep a Sudden Reversal in your hand for Minion Taps
and Blood Dolls. This is more important that playing extra Revolts;
you want to be sure that the dominoes will fall in your favor before
you push the first over. And when pools are getting low, have a Life
Boon at the ready.

Crypt:
March Halcyon (1, for, Pander)
Sarah Raines (2, for, Gangrel)
Lana Butcher (3, dom for, Ventrue) x 3
Juan Cali (3, for, !Ventrue) 
Ingrid Russo (4, DOM for, !Ventrue) x 2
Katherine Stottard (4, dom for, !Ventrue) x 2
Earl (4, dom for, Ventrue) x 2

Masters:
Anarch Revolt x 9
Antediluvian Awakening
Blood Doll x 3
Demonstration  
Gambit Accepted
Life Boon x 2
Life in the City x 8
The Parthenon x 4
Personal Involvement
Sudden Reversal x 3
Ventrue Headquarters x 2

Events:
Anthelios, the Red Star x 2

Actions:
Govern the Unaligned x 2
Kine Resources Contested x 2
Rumors of Gehenna x 4

Action Modifiers:
Daring the Dawn x 3

Reactions:
Deflection x 6
Elder Kindred Network x 2
Loyalist x 4

Thanks for reading. I'm interested to hear other people's Red Star
ideas and experiences. Before sending an Anarch Revolt flame, please
show it to three other players and shitcan it unless they all agree it
is funnier and more interesting than anything that has ever been
written on the subject. This will save you from sounding hopelessly
dull and obsessive. Thanks again.