Deck Building Ain’t Hard

A combination of two things inspired this post.  First, there’s the newsgroup topic about how someone’s group isn’t having fun wherein I emphasize the need for people to build new decks regularly.  Second, there’s the ongoing conversation with Azel in the comments section of the first Virgo post.

One distinction paramount to framing the discussion is whether we are talking about building any deck or building a good deck.  Building any deck can be a matter of slapping together the minimum number of cards and promptly being eviscerated by someone who built a competitive deck.  The extreme, therefore, is irrelevant; however, as with most things, there’s a spectrum and I’m more concerned with people building passable decks than with them building some sort of masterpiece.

There’s a line, somewhere, between the desire to build a masterpiece and the general desire to build decks well.  I think these get confused in people’s minds even when there’s no real interest in trying to build the best deck.

Different CCGs have different thresholds of viability.  Even choosing the opening hand wrong for a Wheel of Time deck means losing an hour or two later (if you are quick).  Rather than take the approach of looking at a number of CCGs, I’d rather focus on the one that makes a difference to me these days and one that people often complain about in terms of length of time building decks.

Yes, it’s time for another V:TEScentric article.

What seems to give people trouble with building V:TES decks is … I’m not sure what it is for any particular person.  I could guess, but I don’t think it matters.  Nevertheless, here are some possibilities.

1. Most cards have small effects and the game in general is about building off of numerous small effects, whereas many other CCGs have cards with more obvious strengths.
2. There are a lot of disciplines, and there are tons of ways to combine disciplines.  Other CCGs may have deckbuilding components with more obvious themes.
3. The lack of card limits radically increases the number of choices.  With a four card limit game, most good decks are likely to play four copies of the best cards and look for support elsewhere or specialty plays elsewhere.  With V:TES, whether to play 6 copies of a card or 8 copies may be agonizing.
4. There are lots of clans and multiple sects.  I don’t know that this is anywhere near as troublesome as the number of disciplines because it’s just so easy to build monoclan or like-clan decks.  Most people don’t build a deck for each clan in the game, so a simple place to start in one’s deckbuilding career is to build decks for clans never played before.

There are different types of deckbuilders as CCGers have a large variety of desires and eschews.  It’s amazing sometimes, actually, how stubborn some people can be about what they won’t build.  Anyway, I can’t cover every personality type and what they are looking for and what they aren’t, so my focus is on helping people who aren’t terribly experienced with the game build rather ordinary decks.  Even if ordinary doesn’t cut it, maybe there’s something about philosophy that will help.

Fortunately (as I left this hanging above), building a viable V:TES deck isn’t terribly difficult.

Bleed Bounce

The single most desirable element in a V:TES deck is bleed bounce.  Yes, it’s arguably not the best defense in the game.  Even if it isn’t, bleed bounce isn’t (just) a defense.  Bleed bounce is the most efficient way to win the game being both an extremely powerful defense combined with an, on average, medium level of offense.

Any deck without it better have a great reason why.  As to quantities, an old belief was in minimum six in a 90 card deck, but I’m more of the minimum eight or 10% of the library.  There is a maximum that makes any sense, of course, even for bounce that doubles as intercept.  I ran 20 bounce cards in a major tournament and discarded a number in the finals, though that was mostly due to using ones that didn’t work against larger vampires.

But, what about bloat?

Bloat

Some argue bloat is the best defense since it doesn’t limit itself to any particular attack strategy (well, ignoring that combat stops your ability to act and most bloat comes from actions).  What do we mean by bloat?  It matters.  I tend to think of the term referring to substantial bloat, such as Tap & Cap, Con Boon, and the like.

If we are talking about any level of bloat, then only the most aggro weenie decks can get away without it.  If we are talking about substantial bloat, then there are pros and cons to relying upon it instead of something else.

One of the dumbest things I’ve ever done was to forget to put Blood Dolls in decks.  Whether it’s BDs, Vessels, Minion Taps, or Villeins, there needs to be a strong reason not to play with the blood management masters.

I put the number of Blood Dolls at five, i.e. in an eighty card deck, a minimum of five slots should go to them.  If I play Vessels, I’ll probably play more or combine them with Villeins.  Back when Minion Tap was worth playing, I’d play at least six or play less and add some BDs.  With Villeins, I’ll tend to run four or five and play some BDs.

Wakes

I started with bleed bounce because it is both offense and defense.  Bloat can turn into offense by enabling bringing out more minions.  Waking is squarely in the realm of defense, the realm of not getting ousted.

In certain environments, I can imagine not caring a lot about wakes and certainly some deck types don’t gain much from them.  But, if there’s anything that boggles my mind more than why people so often short the number of wakes they play, it’s probably just why people continue to play Elder Library.

Unless you think you are a better deckbuilder than I am, and you probably do, minimum 10% wakes.  The days of six WWEF in a 90 card deck ended for me at least five years ago.  Even for my unordinary decks, it’s unlikely I’ll play few wakes.  After all, the wakes in the game worth playing are either Freak Drives that cost no blood or give +2 intercept.

Stealth

Moving from how not to get ousted to how to oust, it was probably after Bloodlines came out that I really thought about how important stealth is in the game.  I was trying to decide how to best win with !Salubri and realized that Kennies (Embraces) with Dominate (this was before Camarilla Edition made Embraces something of a specialty play) was not the best way to go about it.  Kennies with Obfuscate made a lot more sense because it doesn’t matter how good your actions are if they don’t go through

While I’ve done many, many things with !Salubri and finally decided to play !Salubri vote in a major (2007 NAC, day two), my current view on building a !Salubri deck with comfortable viability is to graft/splash Obfuscate.

Stealth enables victory.  Given an infinite amount of time and an infinite amount of your predator not killing you, getting actions through will eventually oust your prey.  Contrast with bruise and bleed’s philosophy.  There’s a reason evasion bleed has been many times more effective in the history of the game than B&B.  Okay, smash all of your prey’s vampires, now watch the table rescue empty chump blockers.  Not to say that there aren’t good B&B decks, weenie B&B decks have that winnie magic.  But, it’s so much less work to just not have people block.

Other evasion can be as good but rarely is.  Crocodile’s Tongue is not Lost in Crowds.  It’s not even Resist Earth’s Grasp.

The other reason to stress stealth (delivery) over payload (+bleed or whatever) is that it’s actually really easy to find payload.  Computer Hacking, bleed retainers, bleed equipment – common like dirt.

Many decks aren’t going to be stealthy.  It’s just not worth forcing stealth on every deck.  But, if trying to build a viable deck is an issue, it’s better to start by looking for where stealth is easy than where it isn’t.

Enchant the Unaligned Spirits

There’s a reason that Govern the Unaligned, Kindred Spirits, and friends show up so often in successful decks.  In one card, you get offense and defense, sort of like bleed bounce only bounce doesn’t require a successful action.

I don’t play these much anymore, but then, I don’t play ordinary decks much anymore and too many of my decks aren’t really viable.  While I’m no fan of Social Charm and Legal Manip, even Enchant Kindred makes a huge difference over not having these sorts of two-way cards.

Voltron

Putting it together, my idea of an ordinary deck is going to have 10% wakes, 10% bounce, 5-8 blood management masters, 10-20 stealth cards, and …?

Maybe a better way to envision the process is to thing about where to find the things you want.  Bounce only really comes from two sources.  Stealth is best from Obfuscate, but there are other possibilities.  Govern is Dominate, Kindred Spirits is Dementation, Enchant Kindred or Public Trust or Undue Influence are Presence.  Dominate + stealth, yeah, that’s a winning combination.  Auspex plus bleed plus stealth – I think that has worked, too.

It may sound like I’m being overly limited in how to quickly throw together new decks.  The reality is that AUS and/or Dom are everywhere in this game.  Evasion is pretty damned common as well.  What about vote decks, you say?  Combat decks?

Vote Decks

I think too often people play too many votes.  I have two ordinary tournament winning vote decks (Mellow-Yellow Drama, Pale Panda Warriors) that have a fair number of votes – 17 out of 80, 14 out of 75.  I’m not thrilled with having an ordinary deck be more than 20% vote cards.  Vote decks can (almost) always bleed, and vote damage is often pound for pound much higher because a successful vote won’t be bounced.  If you want an idea of an absurd vote deck, check out the Guruhi precon.

Stealth isn’t as important in vote decks and room needs to be devoted to things like establishing vote control, but the other principles of bleed bounce, wakes, blood management masters still apply.

Combat Decks

I think of two sorts of decks when I hear someone say combat deck:  rush; intercept combat.  B&B is a bit different in that it’s far more successful if it never gets into combat.

I would imagine that building a decent rush deck is one of the harder things for people to do.  I don’t feel qualified to dispense advice as I’ve never had any tournament success with rush.

Intercept combat, I’m much more comfortable with, whether people who play with me agree is questionable.  The main problems I see with people playing intercept combat are relying upon too few minions and putting too little ousting power in.  It’s possible to win games by not dying, but it’s a hard way to advance in larger tournaments.  It’s still worth considering stealth since, at some point, you are likely to need to get actions through to be successful.  Propping up empty chumps works against an intercept deck that destroyed its prey’s minions just as much a rush deck that has.

The problem is striking the right balance.  If you don’t run enough intercept, mighty stealth will annoy you; if you don’t run enough combat, fighty decks will annoy you; if you don’t run enough preykill, not getting any VPs will annoy you.  Judging the metagame well is a big help, where a stealth bleed deck can pretty much hope for the best against anything.  A low stealth, high combat environment means very different card choices from a high stealth, low combat environment.

Good Stuff

V:TES has tons of good stuff cards – cards that are just generically useful in lots of situations.  Information Highway, Sudden Reversal, Wash, Direct Intervention, .44 Magnum, Ivory Bow, Heidelberg, Parthenon, Carlton van Wyk, Mylan Horseed, and on, and on, and on.

Once you get the basics of your deck in, made sure you had enough blood management, made sure you had enough wakes, made sure you had enough bounce, top off with whatever good stuff you prefer, there really isn’t a whole lot (or any) space left.  Bam!  New decks just roll off the assembly line.

Then, if you don’t like your decks, well, changing them shouldn’t take that long or be that painful.  There are a lot fewer things going on in this game mechanically than people seem to think there are.

But, what about ideas?  First, if you haven’t built a deck for every clan, do it.  If nothing else, it will force you to think about the strengths and weaknesses of each clan and make you familiar with a lot more cards.  If you haven’t built a deck with every discipline, do it.  Same reasoning, plus since you probably aren’t going to be using just one discipline, the number of combinations means building an absurd number of different decks. 

Honestly, there are some really terrible deckbuilders out there who post decks publicly.  I find that they focus way too much on flavor, specific vampires, convoluted strategies, and the like to where they miss that even unique decks should be viable and play good cards.  I’m not going to worry about how someone wants to build their one vampire, nine discipline deck that wins off of The Path of Lilith and Leadership Vacuum.  I’m concerned with those people who really can’t seem to frame basic deck construction to where somehow they are discouraged by the idea of building 1+ new decks a week.

Inheritance

In theory, Heirs to the Blood will be out soon.  Has me thinking of building bloodline decks.  Unfortunately, I’m bored with most of the bloodlines.

Why?

Ahrimanes

I’ve pretty much always been bored with Ahrimanes.  Spiritus is a workman’s discipline, but it’s so dull.  Animalism and Presence lack synergy.  The vampires don’t have any interesting abilities.  If High Top wasn’t unique, there might be something interesting to do with the clan cards.

Other than the tedious intercept combat variations, the evasion bleed deck was funny for about half a game, and voting is blah.

Need:  Not bleed, not stealth, not intercept, not combat, not untaps.  Something interesting to do with actions, like a non-unique ally (they are sterile after all, so no babymakers).  And, of course, the game needs an Animalism/Presence card that does something useful for the clans with the disciplines.

Group 4 is shafted with one vampire with no Animalism and another with no Presence and a 6 cap with inferior Spiritus.  Some group 5’s with clan disciplines or who share nonclan disciplines would help.

Baali

Interesting things to do, terrible vampires to do them with except the 10 caps and their mighty combo deck potential.  Not a fan of combo decks.

The clan cards are wild and crazy and not generally unplayable, except they require Baali.  They would be so much more interesting with noninfernal vampires.

Daimoinon just isn’t that strong.  Certainly not as strong as it should be.  Conflagration is okay but seemingly overrated.  The other two combat cards are way too narrow.  Sense the Sin has to do too much of the work and the inferior has synergy problems with the clan.

Need:  In terms of vampires, it depends upon how you envision using the clan, I like all clans being viable for clan decks, so I see them needing filler vampires who make it worth playing multiple Baali.  Daimoinon needs untaps, real combat defense to go with Conflagration, more cost reducers than Nergal, a better disciplineless bounce card.  Blood gain would be interesting, something like a Darkness Within card for Dai.

Blood Brothers

Painfully boring.  Sure, there are the joke decks – stealth bleed, voting.  But, every time I go to build a serious BB deck, I end up with the same archetype, an archetype with the same vast problem of being able to survive real predators.

Unwholesome Bond is so abusable, assuming nobody interacts with you all game, which happens all of the time in competitive play.  Rest of the stuff is vastly inferior to other cards in the game.

What’s up with the lack of clan cards?

Potence/Fortitude is an option, except they tend to suck in terms of having those disciplines at superior.

Need:  Non-unique ally that isn’t overcosted.  Reason to play more than one circle – there are already plenty of reasons to focus on a circle, assuming you find any reason to play them at all.  Pool defense (preferably) or bloat.

Daughters of Cacophony

Often my favorite bloodline.  One that I have thought has had the most options.  I’ve done those options.  Legacies of Blood didn’t open up anything new for them to do.  Melpominee, for some reason, has all of these cards based on capacity when the oldest Daughter is 8.  Better used in superstar trick decks.

Choir decks are best when you play no copies of Choir, which I’m fine with as it’s a completely uninteresting mechanic.  Tourette’s Voice and Death of the Drum sit out there with no support.  Voting gets old, in my case, old fast.  Without vote bloat or Dominate, pool retention is a huge issue.  Done the Dominate thing to death.

Need:  Reasons to care about Death of the Drum and Tourette’s Voice.  Since intercept is mostly out of flavor, stealth reduction would be something to support TV while getting into combat for DotD.  Fat Daughters would be useful, though out of flavor.  Clan card that did something different.  Where I usually hope for non-unique allies because playable ones are cool, I could see a unique one in their case.  Roadie would be a good title for a non-unique.  Demanding Producer could be unique.  Could do instruments as equipment, since burdening the game with a bunch of guitars, keyboards, et al would be inane, some unique magic, clan-specific harp would be more plausible.  A babymaker would make Choir fans happy but emphasizes too much the idea of generating tons of Daughters for their open ended cards.  Cards that key off of a Choir being in play might be interesting, but the reality is that DoC aren’t important enough in the game to completely develop the Choir mechanic.

Gargoyles

When Gargoyles first came out, I couldn’t believe Visceratika.  It would have been a sexy discipline for a clan that didn’t have two combat disciplines.  Combat ends, continue action, stealth – yeah, those are precisely what you need when you have Potence and Fortitude.

There’s all sorts of interesting things to do but not the vampires to do them, except in annoying Tupdog decks.  The slave mechanic annoys me as I really am not interested in Tremere/Gargoyle decks.  I like my crypts to have all of my disciplines (and Flight).  Independent Gargoyles is doable and grafting Dominate plugs one pool defense hole, but really, lots of combat potential with sketchy intercept on vampires that are above 4 cap is weak sauce.

Besides, Potence and Fortitude are boring disciplines.  Visceratika and Flight would be much more exciting if there was bleeding or voting or bloating or permanenting going on.  All of which can be done for the short time before you get ousted.

Need:  Vampires in group 5 that are worth playing.  Good disciplineless bounce card.  Cost reduction of Visceratika, more cost reduction for their incredibly expensive cards.

Harbingers of Skulls

They seem like they wouldn’t be bad, until you go to play them.  Pool defense is there, multiaction is there, bleed is easy to find in the game.  While bleed is easy to find in the game, group 2 HoS aren’t cheap.  Group 4 HoS are better than I thought but of mixed sects and have discipline holes.  The big problem I see these days is that Necromancy is no longer a stealth discipline.

Back in the day, Necromancy was even kind of stealthy with just Spectral Divination.  But, intercept started showing up everywhere and Necromancy didn’t advance in the path of stealth.

So, HoS have to worry about generating pool damage and getting actions through.  No meaningful offensive combat in their disciplines.  The Aus/Nec card was a waste – should have done something cool … and good.  Clan cards are surprisingly weak.  I rarely get any value out of either Erebus Mask or Lazarene Inquisitor.

The specials drew a lot of attention for my groups once upon a time, but they are all over the map.  Agaitas is fine for people who like combo, but I’ve never gotten any value out of nuking weenies, everyone having Necromancy, etc.

Need:  Stealth or combat.  Thing is they lack a unique discipline, so anything in disciplines tends to help better clans more.  Nec/For card would make sense.  Better Aus/Nec card would make sense.  Playable Aus/For card would be interesting, especially if it had something to do with voting to prevent helping !Ventrue, Stickmen type decks.  Reason to do blood denial would go with Lazarene Inquisitor.  They have their own discipline in the RPG, so there must be something to draw upon.  Maybe a Nec card with a clan requirement.

Kiasyd

I’ve always struggled with how the Ahrimanes have been more successful than the Kiasyd.  The former I see being Tzimisce-lite, the latter being a Lasombra variant (less vote, less breed, more fight).  I can only chalk it up to people not finding the Kiasyd more interesting.  Dominate plus stealth?!?  Who woulda thunk?

I’m bored with the Kiasyd as well as I’ve run out of new things to do that would be remotely interesting.  Cards that do stuff and The Crutch* does not for an exciting cavalcade of possibilities make.  It’s too much like so many of my other decks.

*  Dominate

Need:  Changeling allies, one that’s not unique.  Further separation from Lasombra, like more fight or something.  Expensive Mytherceria cards so that cost reduction actually means something.

Nagaraja

Yes, I’ve played Nagaraja decks, couple of times at least in storylines.  Just pointless.  The “wow, we’d be better as Giovanni” clan.  The LoB clan cards do nothing for them, which is sad.

Need:  Remove scarce rule from the game.  Reason to play existing clan cards.  Good Aus/Nec card that separates them from Giovanni.

Salubri

I want to like them.  I was a huge fan in the RPG, but then, I like Fortitude in the RPG.  Spirit Marionette is obnoxious.  Too many Obeah cards are silly.  I don’t know that anyone else has ever played a Peacemaker deck, certainly, there’s no reason to.

Renewed Vigor just doesn’t thrill me.  It’s great and all, but it’s a dull mechanic that we saw with Fifth Tradition back in the day.  I don’t like playing obnoxious decks, yet there’s little else to do offensively besides SM.

Need:  Remove scarce rule from game.  Allies.  Lots of allies.  Maybe those ridiculous ally relevant cards will see play.

Salubri antitribu

I’m probably more associated with the dorks than any other clan, yet I like far better clans like Tzimisce and Daughters.  I just don’t play good clans in tournaments.

Things I’ve done with the dorks include Obfuscate stealth bleed, Necromancy casual Smiling Jack tap bleed, vote.  I’ve even built the god awful normal !Salubri decks that play Valeren and do melee weapon combat.

Need:  Valeren still sucks, needs useful effects.  Vampires suck, need vampires who have the clan disciplines.

Samedi

One of the few clans in the game that still interests me at the clan level.  The thing about Hag’s Wrinkles is that it just gets better with every new piece of playable equipment.  Plus, I rarely see people do anything interesting with Samedi.

Of course, Little Mountain Cemetery opens up some interesting possibilities that don’t involve Dominate.  Reanimated Corpse is so totally my kind of card, but I’m not interested in building Fletcher’s decks.

I could continue working on my Samedi vote deck as it’s kind of amusing.  Obfuscate makes things possible.

Unfortunately, group 4 Samedi are unbelievably awful, so it’s just more of the same group 2/3 (or just 2) stuff.  I can’t see how group 5’s will make 4’s playable unless there’s a 5er with the special “Samedi get 3 free levels of clan disciplines, so you know, you might have Fortitude and superior Thanatosis.”

Need:  Cost reduction, i.e. Path for Than, Than cards that are playable instead of the mindbogglingly bad ones that currently exist, reason Samedi would want to avoid getting smacked in combat, e.g. “Opposing minion gains +3 Strength for the remainder of combat and burns 1 blood each round.”, to justify Ashes to Ashes and Dust to Dust, For/Obf card, playable vampires.

True Brujah

Amazingly cool cards, horrendously awful disciplines for them.  No stealth, no intercept, no bounce.  Scarce penalty to make sure you get ousted as quickly as possible.

The Descent Into Darkness thing has never worked for me.  Almost nothing has worked for me except vote bloat in a deck that didn’t need Trujah for anything, even if I did get off Rewind Times and used Synesios’s ability to get extra master phase actions.

Just makes me sad to go to build Trujah decks as there are so many things I want to do and they all end up equaling doing nothing in practice.  The multiaction ability is a trap that leads to decks with way too many actions and not a coherent plan for winning.

Need:  Remove scarce rule from game.  Good disciplineless bounce card.  Stealth and/or intercept and/or evasion.

Because.

Why am I bored with the bloodlines?  I’m bored because I’ve built so many decks.  It’s hard to find things I haven’t done *and* that other people haven’t done too often (I hate building other people’s decks, don’t mind playing them, but hate building them).  On the other hand, there are tons of things I haven’t done with bloodlines, most of which are horrendous nutpunchers but some of which aren’t.

I hope that new cards address needs and don’t just add a bunch of wallpaper to the game.  The important thing is trying to dewallpaper old cards by making new cards that make the old much stronger.  Salubri allies – c’mon, how hard is that?  Not that crap like giving life to an ally is ever worth a card slot, but one can try.

Libra II – Zodiac I

It would be easy to be inspired by real Libras at the moment.  Whether it’s a friend of mine who did a lot for me in recent years or a relative who did far more for me throughout my life.

Libra
“I balance”
positive: justice, intelligence, charm, gentleness, emotional balance
negative: laziness, procrastination, indecision, argumentativeness, pleasure-seeking, temperamental – Linda Goodman’s “Love Signs”

I can relate so well to some of these traits that, on the one hand, playing a Libra inspired character should be easy, but on the other, it might not be enough of a stretch to be noticeable roleplaying.

My Libra inspirations are/were both very congenial.  One was a great flirt, the other great to flirt with.  The problem with flirts in games I play is that the expectation or common situation is that of a character trying to form an intimate relationship.  People do flirt just because flirting is awesome in itself, but that sort of character may just end up confusing (other) players.

At what point does being argumentative as a character get confused with being argumentative as a player?  I find players are often argumentative, and I also find that in character arguments just bog games down with stuff I don’t care about.

Going back to something mentioned a while back in another post, subtlety in PCs or NPCs is likely a waste.  By definition, intended portrayals are missed or misunderstood.  Characters need to have defining characteristics.  Sure, hedonism could be taken to an extreme, but does that really translate into anything noticeable?  Actually, maybe it does with a character in my Conan campaign.  He (or the player) are argumentative, pleasure-seeking, lazy …  Regardless, too many of these Libra traits strike me as too subtle.  I don’t see a character with these traits blowing players away, which is kind of what makes for great RPG characters.

The extreme with Libra, of course, is to do that wacky Neutral thing from AD&D where, instead of being plausible and normal, the Neutral alignment was supposed to balance against other alignments in some sort of ultracontrary way.  Too much good, time to be evil.  Too much evil, time to be good.  More appropriate to a lunatic or to a supervillain (most of which should be lunatics), a character who is obsessive about balancing against perceived extremes would be notable.

Bumby, I hope to get around to more on these subjects.  I should really post something about mahjongg, the game that started me on the track to being a gamer.  A Libra had a big influence in my learning that when I was 7-8.  Maybe soon.

Libra I – Zodiac I

Libra
“I balance”
positive: justice, intelligence, charm, gentleness, emotional balance
negative: laziness, procrastination, indecision, argumentativeness, pleasure-seeking, temperamental  -  Linda Goodman’s “Love Signs”

I wish I had more time these days.  I’m actually quite partial to Libra, though I believe I only have one planet in it.

Balance

When it comes to games I don’t preach anything like I preach balance.  So, why bother ranting about how better game balance makes games better?

So, Heirs to the Blood is the next V:TES set and it’s a bloodlines set.  I considered the ludicrous idea of taking one of each original bloodline (no Abomination) and making a 12 vampire, 12 clan crypt – perfect balance of clans.  Fortitude should be the easiest crossover discipline.  Cool concept for a theme deck (my theme decks are almost always mechanical themes rather than flavor themes) and just painful in practice.

Enough with the joke decks.  Balance could be refering to a balance of elements.  Maybe a deck inspired by Libra should be toolboxy even in a way I’m normally opposed to, which is toolboxy without any core.  If I go down this path, I could say a balance of bleed, vote, and combat, except I’m tired of vote decks right now.  Could balance stealth and intercept.  Aus/Obf for … nah, been there, done that.

There’s trying to balance tables.  Some decks are much better for that than others.  Eagle Sight, voting, crosstable bleed reduction, intercept locations, etc.  The history of the game for me is one of no effort to table balance to one of too much effort to table balance.  Build a deck just to table balance?  Bah.

There’s always trying to find balanced cards, except that way seems a path of madness … ooh, The Path of Madness.

Going beyond balance as a theme, for some reason, I get to thinking about True Brujah when I think of Libra.  I note that there are at least two decks I wrote out and never built.  At least one is awful as it has no meaningful pool defense or bloat.  I have the hardest time getting Trujah decks to be functional.  The only time I ever had one that seemed to work I hardly played it and it was only running Trujah for some Free States Rant/Rewind Time action.  An interesting thought I just got was to build a balanced crypt of Trujah and Guruhi with Guruhi Animalism providing intercept and Trujah independentness providing independent voting while the two clans sharing two disciplines.  If I find some time, maybe I’ll remember to build this.

Actually, the whole idea of two clans, one doing one thing for a deck, and the other doing something else for the deck (probably offense from one and defense from the other) is always so appealing in theory, but I can never justify it in practice.  It’s too awkward when I consider how easy it is to find multiple elements out of one clan or a particular discipline mix shared by all.  For instance, finding bleed these days is simple, so any deck can have offense.

Of course, mashing two clans together to play the clan toys of each of the clans may make more sense in my card limit games.

This is probably the last day of Libra this year, at least in my time zone.  Procrastination rears its ugly head again.  Well, off to some pleasure-seeking sleep … as soon as I write part two of Libra.

Virgo II – Zodiac I

So, I kind of fixated on analysis in the other Virgo post.  What, then, can I do to talk about using Virgo for gaming that has a non-analytical element?

I looked up famous Virgos and found lists of people I wouldn’t consider all that famous.  Too many actors and whatnot.  Only one name really stuck out and that was Mother Teresa.

Whatever the reality of history is, I’m pretty sure that Mother Teresa’s name is the one most associated with service to others.  A PC can be complex, but most NPCs really should be focused, I’d even say symbolic.

So, a Virgo PC could try to play up timidity and crankiness or whatever.  The Virgo NPC, however, is likely to add more value by being a “Mother Teresa” sort.

Then, I started looking at famous events during Virgo’s part of the year.  I became less concerned with particulars and started thinking about the actual time of the year.  School years usually start in Virgo’s time.  Weather may get much cooler.  Summer is coming to a close as we feed into Fall.

One of the things about history that I didn’t have taught to me until college was that stuff happens for a reason.  Prior to college, it was all about memorization of names and dates with no context.  In actuality, things are interconnected to where events arise out of what’s going on, whether it’s discovering new lands, technological advancements, or whatever.

Am I getting at something?  Actually, yes.  Suppose you are putting together a RPG campaign.  What might happen this time of year (well, actually a week ago and for a month before that, as now it’s Libra’s part of the year)?  What is important about the end of Summer, about changes in temperature?

People, events, what else?  How about associations and symbols?  Virgo is supposed to be associated with the Sphinx.  Now, I don’t play in any games currently which feature sphinxes, but if I needed a personality for one on the fly, boom shaka laka.  Maybe, I want someone to be sphinxlike in some way.  Corn?  Flowers?  Nations such as Brazil and Switzerland?  Cities such as Boston and Paris?  Hunt around a little online and esoteric connections are everywhere.

But, yeah, if I were going to work on making a Virgo character for a RPG, I’d probably go back to fixating on analytical.

Virgo I – Zodiac I

Really should stop missing my astrological windows.  In some parts of the world, I couldn’t even get these in in September.

Virgo
“I analyze”
positive qualities: clarity of thought, discrimination, courtesy, service to others, practicality, self-honesty
negative: criticism, crankiness, timidity, pessimism, inferiority, hair-splitting

The one thing I can remember about Virgos is being analytical.  I know some quite analytical Virgos.  Ah, analysis – that’s something I can relate to.

What Is Good vs. Why It’s Good

Is it more important to know what is good or why something is good?  Sure, the goal should be to understand both.  It’s interesting how sometimes someone, including myself, can get lost in trying to answer one without taking the bigger picture into account.  Of course, any decent analysis of what is good begs the question as to why and studying why things are good generates a list of what is naturally.

Taking CCGs …  I quite enjoy rating cards.  I don’t do as much of it as I once did, but then, I don’t write articles anymore or playtest anymore.  And, with V:TES being the only CCG I regularly play, it’s hard to care as much about analysis.  Okay, this whole paragraph was an aside.

Why is Govern the Unaligned better than Scouting Mission?

It’s not always the case that more effect for higher cost is better in V:TES.  I don’t rate Pushing the Limit as better than Undead Strength.  Could argue that there’s greater diminishing returns with dealing combat damage than with bleed or “banking”.  Rather than try to get technical when I’m tired, I think there’s an intuitive basis for why the former is better.  Card economy, action economy.  Two Governs do as much as three Scouting Missions.  You pay for it in blood but save it in actions.  Clearly an action isn’t worth just one blood.

Why isn’t an action worth a blood?

Both are finite resources, but I’d put actions as (usually) the greater constraint in a game.  I could talk about hunting.  Some players are aware of how seriously I take hunting.  Probably not the time to go into it, but I’d note that the power in hunting has little to nothing to do with gaining blood.

Why is Enchant Kindred a better card than Scouting Mission?

They have the same text, yet the former is far better.  Sadly, the answer is one that people either get or don’t get and so probably isn’t all that exciting.  Ban Govern and they might end up being equal or SM might end up being better.

Does analysis make players better?

Anecdotally, I, myself, could point out many instances where people who just do and don’t think do better than those who think.  I certainly think far more about the CCGs I play than a lot of better players.  Then, I find that some strong players do analysis and the analysis is wrong.  What’s going on?

Well, obviously, there’s more to success than thinking.  How many sports fans think they know better how to run a team than the professional coaches?  And, we see all of the time in life how some people have better instincts than those who may know more.

On the other hand, there’s the theoretical analysis that I tend to favor versus the practical (ooh, used a Virgo word in this article) analysis that a strong player may do.  No matter how brilliant the former may be, it’s the latter that is likely to pay off.

I can get back to the earlier question.  I’ve known good players who didn’t think about why something was good but just knew what was good based on such things as how often they saw stuff played or the like.

Thinking About Winning

For all that it seems like some people succeed whether they have any analytical sense or not, I’d still put forth that for most of us, the better we understand why things are good or bad, the better we can do (under the grand assumption that someone applies what they know to maximize results … I can’t imagine anyone who wouldn’t be interested in maximizing results, can I?).

2009 NAC, No, But …

I can’t imagine going to this year’s V:TES North American Championships.  I used to not care, but after the 2007 experience, I’d really like to go.  Still, I’ve missed every year except when it was in Los Angeles.

But, I’m very interested in a question thrown out to the newsgroup about what to expect.  Hey, metagaming.  It’s part of what makes CCGs fun even if it ends up being counterproductive when you actually play in an event.

So, what do I expect?  Maybe, the better question is:  what concerns me?

Weenie Animalism or Auspex worry me.  Really, weenie Auspex should never get ousted unless it’s next to a weenie combat deck.  Weenie Animalism’s benefit is being a weenie combat deck while still having enough survivability to fend off the brutal pool-removing decks.

Dementation bleed is probably more likely than Dom/Obf or Pre/Obf or, these days, even Ser/Obf.  Doesn’t matter a huge amount, the defenses remain much the same.  A deck that doesn’t have some sort of plan for brutal bleed is a bad deck, so I wouldn’t be specifically worried about these.

Stealth vote can get by walls and can wreck weenie/breed decks (Ancilla Empowerment, Anarchist Uprising) and Imbued.  I wouldn’t expect a lot of Imbued, but I could see about two Imbued players.  The reason for hating on them is less a function of the environment and more because playing against them is so tedious.

I agree with extrala – http://extrala.blogspot.com/ - about Ventrue Law Firm being popular again.  Yet another reason to play weenie intercept.  But, the more interesting thing to me is how many copies of Delaying Tactics to play to fend off voting.  If I really cared enough to metagame, I could see playing something straightforward, like weenie Obfuscate, since that will mean extra deckspace for hosers, and running a boatload of DT.

Fear of Mekhet?  If I were playing a vote deck, probably.  If not, maybe something more flexible.

Anyway, back to expectations rather than answers to those expectations.  Rush?  Somebody, I’m sure.  Deep Song rush is readily available.  But, I just can’t get too excited by the likelihood of having to deal with it.

Midcap or fattie wall?  Entirely likely to see something like Carna wall or maybe David Tatu will trot out Masika wall, so it’s worth considering.  But, since I’m already worried about weenie walls, it shouldn’t significantly affect my metagaming.  Does bring up the question as to how much antigun plays are worthwhile.  Always kind of questionable to get too esoteric with antigun plays.

Breed?  I see Nos breed/boon being highly likely.  Breed has so many dangerous decks whether Palla Grande, Clown Car, Death Star, or whatever that I’d rate breed decks a top level threat.  It’s why I see stealth vote being a desirable metagame choice or, again, weenies.

But, then, there’s Scourge of the Enochians and maybe The Fourth Cycle.  The latter I wouldn’t expect to matter in more than about one game, if at all.  The former seems necessary to me unless it will affect you as well.  Yet, as I’ve seen countless times with hosers, they don’t work as planned.  People will hope that others play them.  They will not show up at the right time.  They will punish the wrong decks.  People will cut deals.  Etc.

Combo?  Eh, I really don’t take combo too seriously.  Yes, there are decks out there that can all but win in one turn, but how often do they fail?

Ebony Kingdoms strategies?  Hardly.  I am all things variety and new and I can barely generate any enthusiasm for EK.  Maybe some will try stuff out just to do something new and different or to see if there’s real potential in Laibon strategies with the new cards, but I’d be utterly unconcerned.  For one thing, what do they do that causes a concern that other decks wouldn’t?

Tap bleed, a la Vignes?  Ruben is probably going, so it will probably show up in an at least one event, but does the possibility really justify something like more wakes or more bounce and justify them more than another deck may justify metagaming?  Then, I don’t like the deck in the metagame I envision.  Not that other people metagame as I expect, but I don’t like it against weenie Animalism and I don’t like it against vote.

Weenie vote?  I don’t see it being in these days, especially with the threat of Scourge of the Enochians.  Of course, breed vote decks have weenies, but I think they are less risky.

Weenie bleed?  Eh, it’s easy enough to get above 2 in capacity to avoid Scourge.  But, does weenie Presence really work differently than Vignes?  Does weenie Dementation, another of Ruben’s favorite decks, really work differently from midcap stealth bleed?  Are people really going to worry about weenie Dom with Target Vitals?

10 caps?  Yes, and 11’s.  People have got to trot out their Enkil Cogs, after all.  So many 11 caps now to choose from that people who like fatties will want to do something with them.

I don’t expect to see unusual amounts of certain disciplines.  Serpentis seems to be the only discipline underplayed where The Eternal Mask decks should probably be more popular than they are (if still not going to be hugely significant in the grand scheme of things).

Will DI2 be noticeable?  Probably not.  It has seemed to finally start leeking into decks.  Will DI’s, Suddens, and Washes fly fast and thick?  I don’t think they will.  I just have this sense that, as usual, the game’s counterspells will be woefully underplayed.

Is it worth olding one’s vampires to dodge Neonate Breach?  I’ve actually done such in a midcap deck and in a deck that ran some cheaper dudes.  But, if you can’t deal with votes in general, it probably doesn’t matter whether it’s Neonate Breach or KRC or Parity Shift or Reckless Agitation.

Mono-Daimoinon?  Sadly, probably not.  As much as some of the old D.C. crew may be getting back into the game, I don’t know if there’s the same temperament for wackiness.

My pick for winning deck?  It’s dumb to try to guess on decks, much more meaningful to try to guess on players since it’s players that win the game and not decks.  But, I’ll guess a wallish Ahrimanes deck.

Ultimate Combat! – Basic Deck Construction

As I mentioned in my ConQuest post, I might be playing UC! more regularly in the future.  I’ve never seen any analysis on the game, but there are some principles I have in mind when going to build decks.

Belt Rank

UC! was one of the few CCGs ever to restrict deck construction by rarity.  There are four ranks of decks:  white, brown, black, gold.  I’m not that into building white belt decks anymore as I think I’ve covered enough archetypes.  While some deck concepts can’t feasibly work as white belt decks, I find that the real difference between belt levels is in consistency, in particular consistency of power generation.

Power

I didn’t get the overriding importance of power generation when the game had a playerbase (1995-1997, let’s say).  Now, I try to squeeze almost every bit of extra power generation into any deck.

There are similarities to Magic.  In Magic, you have mana ramp decks.  In UC!, every deck should be.  The difference is due to the importance of card advantage between the two games.  In Magic, it’s vastly important and playing cards to make mana may be direct card disadvantage for improvements in card quality; there are other aspects of mana generators that aren’t direct card disadvantage, but that’s getting off on a tangent.  In UC!, every card played is replaced and there’s typically a small enough window in which the replacement hasn’t occurred yet that really the limitations on card play have to do with limits of power generation.

Almost every deck, very possibly every single deck, needs to run x4 Mantra of Power.  Even if it’s blown on something it didn’t need to be used for, it cycles virtually for free.  Next up is having a minimum of x1 Gi Patch for each foundation type that the deck needs to play.  These days, I try to play all four foundation types as much as possible even if I have no cards that need a foundation type just to have Gi Patches for every foundation type to accelerate and increase power generation.

Then, we run into belt level considerations for other power generation.  A white belt deck can probably run Yamashita’s Belt and every other level should, possibly in multiples even though you can only have one in play at a time.  But, Elixir of the Gods or Bear’s Jaw, being gold belt cards, takes away ultrarare space from decks, crucial to white belt decks, significant to brown belt, and maybe not so important to black.

Speaking of Elixir of the Gods, it was one of the first two gold belt cards I cracked when I began playing UC!.  For a long time, I didn’t think much of it, certainly didn’t like it as much as Bear’s Jaw.  Now, I want it in every deck as it’s just such a hot first turn drop to accelerate into brutality.

On the other hand, for Magic players who are used to needing a significant amount of mana-producing land to hit land drops, I find that UC! decks can get by with lower percentages of foundation.  Besides the ubiquity of Mantra of Power and Gi Patches, there’s the discard rule that, in a pinch, can be used to help smooth out power generation.  On the other hand, that same discard rule means that it’s possible to unload excess foundation to get to kill cards, so the analyses of how much foundation to run is not straightforward at all to me.

Speed & Strength

Overrated?  There was a time when I was thinking that people probably overplayed Speed I and Strength I.  I was becoming more enchanted with control cards like Shake Up and, of course, things like power generators.  I was getting enough offense out of my core strategy, whether it was combinations, Favorite Technique-ing out something monstrous, or whatever.

I’m still not clear whether Speed and Strength are necessary to every deck, but it is extremely hard not to play them.  Not because of their cheap and easy offense – what I like them for is their cheap and easy defense that cycles me into the cards to support my core strategy.  There aren’t many ways besides Speed and Strength to defend oneself besides what’s in play.  UC! is often mathematical to where attacking or card play comes down to having just enough to knockout someone.  Speed and Strength makes the math of the game probability calculations which significantly enhances the skill aspect of the game.  Nevermind that defenses in the game are often poor and/or costly where Speed I and Strength I are absurdly cheap and okay in magnitude of power.

Deck Size

In most CCGs, you want a minimum deck size.  Cards aren’t equal in power, so you want to get to your most powerful ones as quickly and as often as possible.  Card draws become more consistent the fewer cards that could be drawn.

I find that far too often UC! decks are unnecessarily above the 50 card minimum.  While decking is fairly easy, the fat in larger decks only makes the kill less likely, forcing card digs that ironically make decking easier.  The game does have room for undeckable decks that just try to survive until the opponent decks.  I saw one player play a deck that must have been 200+ cards in a tournament with this goal in mind.  That can work in white belt on white belt matchups where control cards are much rarer, but against higher rank decks, it’s not the 26 point attacks that even white belt decks might throw out that will get you but having your board annihilated by Shake Ups and having a 8/4 Favorite Technique beat you down over and over again that makes such a strategy sketchy.

Technique Amount

You have to have enough technique to get attacks in when you want to attack, assuming your deck relies upon technique based offense (as most do).  But, what that means for particular decks is so different.  Combination decks have to get out enough technique to do combinations (I know, shocking).  My Instant Replay deck, I think, only runs x4 Black Belt Shoulder Throw for technique.

Technique Cost

Always go with cheap.  Cheap is way more important than what movement direction(s) the technique has.  The only reason to play the expensive and costly gold belt technique is Favorite Technique where you pay FT’s 5 power cost rather than the 6+ that gold belts cost.  Black belt technique are typically ideal, but brown belt decks may have issues fitting them in and white certainly will.  Black Belt Shoulder Throw is worth it as a 6/5 for 4 and the basis of repeated attempts to abuse Instant Replay.  But, most of the time, going to be looking for the 3/1’s for 1.

Then, there are the two 2/2’s for 1 at brown belt which have to be the most commonly played technique in the game.  Superefficient, obviously so, so not that interesting to talk about.  What is of much more interest is what white belt technique are worth playing.  A lot of the 2 cost technique are 2/1’s, which I used to have little interest in.  But, I’ve changed.  Tempo is too important in the game to be throwing out a 3/3 for 3 when an opponent drops two 2/1’s for 4. 

Three cost technique is often an unfortunate necessity to a particular deck but not something to fall in love with.

Drunken Style technique is one exception.  While cheapest is usually going to be bestest, cheapest for Drunken is 4.  But, the only real reason to play Drunken is in a control deck that needs to shut down brutal advantage based attacks, so you pay what you got to play.  By the way, the rest of the expansion styles suck, having a bunch of overcosted technique with questionable special abilities.

Recovery

Are Oxygen Burst and Healing Mantra worth it?  The latter definitely is to some decks – control decks.  I have a real hard time justifying the former.  It’s fine cost to effect and cost in general, it’s the taking up a deck slot in the deck that usually causes me to leave it out.

Broken Cards

How important is it to play broken cards like Mental Domination, Instant Recall, and (arguably) Focus?  I tend to forget Instant Recall and Focus, which is bad.  I can see an argument for “casual” use of broken cards like Mental Domination.

By the way, the single most important card in the Ancient Fighting Arts of China expansion is Psychic Delay.  It’s so important just for annoying stuff like delaying a Mantra of Power that I can see an argument for x4 in every deck, though I typically don’t even play x4 in some decks.  How often PD shows up may have a metagaming effect on how desirable broken (psychic) action cards are.

Favorite Technique (and Weapons)

Favorite Technique is insanely badass.  It’s much more important in control decks, which I realized when I got off aggro decks and started making more control decks.  The restriction on number of copies by belt rank of the deck is actually quite important.

Weapons are not insanely badass.  I just find them to be too much effort for something I could do without them.  But, they make for interesting challenges.  In limited play (sealed deck anyway as I’ve never drafted the game), they are insanely badass, though.

Movement

I’m fairly neutral on Movement.  Gold belt Movement is almost never worth playing (thus, why I like building Mark of the Cheetah decks to have an excuse).  White belt is key to combination decks, but other decks can fairly often take them or leave them.  Great cycles, cheap offense, but like cards like Oxygen Burst, there’s only so many slots in a 50 card deck.

Tempo

A topic for another post since tempo has to do with play strategy and tactics and not deck construction, except in how cheap cards and mighty power generation should result in having tempo more often.

ConQuest 2009

Could call it PacifiCon these days, too, though I was quite fond of PacifiCon back in the ’90’s, where this con to me is just so “ConQuest”.  One of the three gaming conventions I go to locally.  It was the second year of its latest location.  That should have been a plus.

Maybe it was the economy, but it seemed awfully uneventful.  The RPG schedule was sad and CCGs even sadder, though CCGs are just dying at local cons as the major events all happen at stores or hotels or whatever now.

I really enjoyed last year and enjoyed the previous year, too.  Low expectations are a wonder.

Wargaming, boardgaming, and miniatures seemed to be doing okay, but, then, that’s what this con is known for – DunDraCon is RPGs and KublaCon used to be CCGs.  Having limited interest in any of these in general, I almost hoped we’d have a HoR mod during the weekend.

Friday, I blew off the con.  I had an opportunity to play in a HoR mod.  Originally, I figured it was about six of one, half a dozen of the other whether to do that or sign up for a convention RPG event in the evening, but further thought resulted in my realizing that any HoR mods I miss with the online group I’m fairly likely to never get to play as the campaign only has one more year and there aren’t enough people in the group seemingly to rerun mods.  When Gen Con rolls around next year, I’ll probably want to do whatever is new and maybe get in only a couple older mods, yet there are lots of mods I want to do out of the 30 that currently exist that I haven’t done, nevermind new ones that come out before the end of the campaign.

Ignoring the intro mod for the campaign, it was the first mod of the campaign, and it flew by.  We only spent 2 hours on it when I figured 6 was more likely.  It went so quickly that one of the players volunteered to run another mod for us, so we did another early mod and finished about 11PM.  Too late for me to go to the con.

My main character did finally rank up, “only” took 20 modules and 83 XP.  Now, I just need to get that Emerald Magistrate cert from the GM of an earlier mod, and my character will be … uh … different? than what he was just a couple of weeks ago.

Saturday, I headed over in the morning and checked the event schedule.  Nothing I wanted to do in those times when I wasn’t running anything.  Awesome.  Maybe I could get some stuff done at home, like work on the RPG adventure I was running Monday.  I played a bit of Type P Magic and went home.  Built one V:TES deck for my “tournament” that evening and took a nap.

As expected, the tournament never went off, but unlike the norm for the cons, we didn’t even get enough people for a pickup game.  I didn’t see a number of the usual suspects at the con, though hardly being at it didn’t help.

I played some more Type P, we went out for dinner, just missing hitting the local burger grill that has half-priced burgers on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and I was dropped off at home.

Sunday, I built a new Ultimate Combat! deck in the morning as there was a nebulous plan for me to play with the one-time top ranked player in the world (actually, he still would be if there was such a thing as rankings anymore).  I found him, he had some stuff he needed to do in the morning, I played some more Type P, got lunch, we played six games in the afternoon while he was monitoring an Acquire tournament’s finals.

My brown belt, Instant Replay/Shoulder Throw deck traded games with his brown belt Knowledge/Fighting Spirit deck.  In each game, I pulled off 22 pt. attacks, but he had enough defense in the second game to survive and I couldn’t deal with the counterattack.  I pointed out that one of the things that makes the game so great is how you have incredibly swingy plays, but they seem fair and correct play is rewarded.  I probably made a mistake ceding tempo to his deck by not putting out more technique.

I played my brand new black belt, Mark of the Cheetah deck, a rebuild of an archetype I had done long ago (everything with UC! is long ago).  The build was horrid.  That probably had something to do with not being as familiar with all of the cards as I was back when I played the game every once in a while.  He played a white belt, Adrenaline deck.  I sucked first game and decked myself second game trying to dig for a card that wasn’t left in my deck.

We, then, played our gold belt decks against each other.  Mine seemed much better tuned, a straightforward combination deck that tries to KO as quickly as possible.  I swept the two games as my power generation was more consistent.

We talked about playing about once a month.  Huzzah, guess I need to remember how to build decks for the game.

Played some more Type P.  Went home to get my V:TES stuff for my “draft tournament” (aka second excuse to play some pickup games).  Of course, there was no actual tournament, but I did demo to somebody.  Played some more P.  Played a pickup game of V:TES late in the evening, which I totally wasn’t in the mood for as I needed to do a lot of stuff for my game the next day.  Got ousted quickly, waited around for the game’s end as someone was borrowing a deck (Imbued) from me.  Went home about 12:30AM.

Monday, got up at 6:30AM to get stuff prepared for my Solomon Kane game.  Wandered over to the con.  Ran my game, which was okay.  As my Conan GM pointed out afterwards (his being a player for a change being one of the two drivers to my GMing), the intent was for the party to do some investigating (and, well, more generally, interacting with the world), yet there wasn’t a lot of motivation to do so.  One of the ways I figured the party could figure out what to do was used, so things didn’t bog down too much.  A combat ran long – I just have to remember that combats with lots of participants always will, so I stopped things at something like a cliffhanger.

I’m still not strong on the rules, but running twice in a month rather than twice in six months helped immensely with getting some sort of handle on them.  Might actually have a pretty good grasp by next month as it looks like we will do part two of the adventure in October rather than February.

It’s funny.  On the one hand, I want the game to have more of a Solomon Kane feel, where the characters are more down to Earth and the tone more horroresque, but on the other hand, I want the game to be more lively in the flow of events.  There are some things I need to think about, including tone and types of challenges.

And, that was it.  Barely like being at a con at all.  Actually, for comparison, DunDraCon has gotten so terrible that it isn’t like being at a con much anymore either.  I’ve started wondering whether it’s better to skip DDC in the future, though I think I have enough planned for next year’s to justify going to it again.

Leo II – Zodiac I

Almost September with the Leo time of the year having closed nearly a week ago, yet I can hardly short the sign of a second post.

It’s been my pattern to do two posts for each astrological sign.  One focuses on RPGs, which is where I think there’s the most benefit to thinking about astrology.  The other talks about V:TES.  It’s not surprising that I talk about the CCG I still play when talking about a CCG.  But, the question is:  why talk about CCGs at all when it comes to astrology?  How is astrology inspiring or aiding playing games like CCGs?

In past posts, I have tried to show how astrology can be an inspiration to look at the game, or at least the deckbuilding part of the game, differently.  In my mind, the Aries post was the best of these.  I have a certain style when it comes to V:TES, but I tire of doing the same thing all of the time.  The Aries inspired deck was completely against my usual style.  Now, I’ve built similar decks in the past to that deck, but they are rare, so it’s helpful to have some sort of inspiration to do the rare less rarely.

So, what of Leo and V:TES?  Where’s the intersection?

I don’t have a grand, brilliant essay on how Leo can inspire or otherwise aid me in building decks or playing the game.  I do have a couple of highly unrelated thoughts.

The first thought has to do with thinking about what clan is very Leoish.  The one that sticks in my mind is Ventrue.  Leo and “noble” are relatively synonymous.  But, do I really want to build a Ventrue deck or even really talk about how to build a Ventrue deck?  Nope.  Good Ventrue decks are ubiquitous.  It’s easy enough for someone to peruse the tournament winning deck archive by clan – http://thelasombra.com/decks/clan-twd.htm - to find a plethora of examples of quality decks.

So, if not Ventrue a deck, what about Ventrue?  Certainly, talking about the thematics of the clan is more of a RPG thing.

With so many successful Ventrue decks, including recent ones that are very old school in how they are built, I got to thinking about weaknesses.  As successful as the Ventrue have been, there are plenty of other clans and non-clan strategies that have been comparably successful.  So, the clan must have weaknesses.  What are they?

Within the clan’s disciplines, there are many, many powerful effects.  Dominate is the best bleed discipline and one of only two disciplines with bleed bounce and “won” my contest in http://iclee.wordpress.com/2009/06/19/gemini-i-zodiac-i/ for most versatile discipline out of the original 10.  Presence is “the” voting discipline and has Majesty.  Fortitude has Freak Drive and a bunch of other cards nowhere near as good as Freak Drive.  Obviously missing are stealth and intercept.

Intercept is routinely addressed with Second Tradition.  Stealth can be addressed by going with the fairly popular Ventrue w/ Obfuscate build(s).  But, is stealth even needed?  Ventrue Law Firm in its most iconic form doesn’t rely on stealth, maybe getting a bit from Bonding or whatever.  Between Majesty and Freak Drive, the Ventrue can just overwhelm block attempts with number of actions.  Non-stealth evasion (or punishment) comes in the form of Seduction, Perfect Paragon, The Kiss of Ra, etc.

So, it doesn’t sound like there are any massive weaknesses to exploit.  So, we look for smaller ones. 

Many Ventrue decks take advantage of multiaction ability, titled crypt options, Ventrue Headquarters, and synergy with cards that require Princes/Justicars by voting.  The magnitudes of effects from vote cards are much higher than most other plays, whether it’s Parity Shift, Anarchist Uprising, or whatever.  But, there are strong answers.  Delaying Tactics can junk up a turn immensely.  Scalpel Tongue, admittedly likely to only be played by another vote deck, is quite a vote killer.  Even casual intercept may block an important vote.  And, that’s something to keep in mind – while any vote coming out of the deck may be quite game changing, unlike playing against a weenie vote deck, there probably aren’t a lot of them.

I don’t want to get much into defending against bleed from a Ventrue deck as it can be much like defending against bleed from a Giovanni deck or just general bleed defense strategies.

What of the Ventrue’s defenses against its predator?  Presence, Fortitude, and Obedience can deal with nearly any offensive combat.  Dominate and Second Tradition do well to handle bleed.  Titles, Ventrue Headquarters, Second Tradition all do well to contain voting.  So many tools.  Any deck can be overwhelmed by sufficiently aggro decks.  Even a deck with 15 Deflections is not going to have one in hand all of the time to deal with a stealth bleed deck swinging for 3-6 with every bleed action.  Weenie decks are pretty good at ripping apart anything that isn’t itself a weenie deck.

Small weaknesses.  How about Obedience not being any sort of defense against allies?  There’s only so many combat ends and damage prevents to stop the Shambling Hordes, War Ghouls, or whatever.  Second Tradition is mighty but it’s not a guarantee, whether due to not being able to get above 2 intercept to block a stealthy deck or due to block fails or more esoteric plays.  Actions do often get through against Ventrue.  Bleeds aren’t the greatest threat as they run into bounce.  There are the “mess with you” actions of Sensory Deprivation, Derange, Charnas the Imp, Shadow Twin, et al that can disrupt the Ventrue deck’s flow.  There are the non-bleed, non-vote pool damage plays, as rare as they may often be, such as Choir (yes, it’s a joke of a strategy, but it qualifies) or Enticement.

In terms of where Ventrue decks can be exploited, there’s also the difficulties that naturally arise from trying to do various different things.  This is highly dependent upon the player of the Ventrue deck playing the deck optimally (and building it well in the first place).  Nevertheless, disrupting aspects of the deck can make the player’s life quite difficult.  Blocking votes may jam the player on vote push.  Delaying Tactics may jam the player on Voter Captivations.  The patient player can likely wait out short term troubles and explode with uberness when the coast is clear, but that’s no worse than having the deck be in uber mode all of the time.

Of course, not all Ventrue decks try to do many things.  “Vignes” (e.g. http://thelasombra.com/decks/twd.htm#2k9nycqualifier) is a straightforward Ventrue build.

What’s the second thought?  Remnant of the Endless Storm, of course.  While a werewolf in the CCG, I’m pretty sure it’s a wereLeo, er, werelion.  Is it a Timmy/Johnny card or just a Timmy card (see http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/mr11b for what these mean)?

If I ever get around to playing it in constructed (I drafted two in one event and never played either), I’ll probably play it for humor value.  But, what about trying to get real use out of it?  There are only so many Magaji in the game.  I don’t see it with Osebo, who already have combat covered and aren’t likely to get excited by the pool cost.  Ishtarri can bloat well enough to handle the pool cost.  Akunanse can use it to supplement an intercept combat strategy by having an enforcer to tactically pick off problems.  Guruhi have historically had a problem getting their cool stuff (Founders of the Ebony Kingdom, The Guruhi Are the Land) to pay off, and adding a 6 pool cost dude is not on focus except maybe as a supplement to an Ananasi Vampirephile deck (I really need to do a new version of one of these), but it does have that enforcer appeal to take out annoying blockers (other than the likes of Carlton) to help Guruhi get actions through.  Assamites would be interesting – stealth to get Remnant into play, mix of ally and vampire combat strategies to wreck minions.

I’m sure there are plenty of the same old boring combo things that can be done with fat allies, but for zaniness, I kind of like the idea of mixing Malks in with Magaji to do Malkavian Time Auction on Remnant (and having some way of stealing it back, such as Far Mastery).  That goes right into my thought of rebuilding an Assault Rifle (AK47, whatever) and Time Auction deck (hit people with Illegal Search and Seizure if they annoy you with your Auctioned off weapons).