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 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.

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.

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).

Bleeding, at stealth

Stealth bleed.  (There are numerous other terms for it, but I like this one.)  V:TES’s most iconic deck archetype.

Playing five games spread between two different play groups last Saturday got me thinking about something I have often expressed.  Contrary to the many snide comments I see, there is such a thing as playing stealth bleed well.

It’s fairly common for people to claim that stealth bleed decks are easy to play, that they are “dumb” decks.  I’m not going to dispute that they are the easiest decks to play, but what seems lost is that one’s results are still highly dependent upon how you play them.

Sure, if you play a reasonable stealth bleed decks against bad decks, you may not have to use much skill to win.  But.  But, it pains me to watch players play stealth bleed badly when it matters.

How?  How about people leading with a bleed of three only to see it get bounced and then continuing with a smaller bleed that gets through?  While that might be necessary when lunging, it’s frequently just wasting resources.  And, of course, one always wonders at the mentality of doing a bunch of damage to someone besides one’s prey without any thought as to how it helps the bleeder win.

Stealth vs. Intercept

The challenge of getting past intercept doesn’t excite me anywhere near as much as the challenge of working around bleed bounce, but I’m often amazed when someone gets a big bleed blocked and either bleeds small otherwise or stops bleeding all together.  It’s almost as bad to watch someone bleed small, get blocked tapping out the defending player, and then stop.

The primary lesson that should be learned by playing against decks that can successfully block is to not go half way.  Commit to a line of action.  Only adjust when there’s a reason to.  For example, nothing boggles my mind more than someone who leads in with a significant bleed against someone who is tapped out, has it fail, and then stops attacking.  Sure, there is such a thing as probing someone’s defenses.  That’s what bleeds of one are for.  That’s what tapping someone out who isn’t already tapped out by allowing yourself to be blocked is for.

If your prey is tapped out and wakes and blocks and untaps with Majesty, Earth Meld, Cat’s Guidance or whatever, then, sure, it may be necessary to reassess what you do this turn.  But, a lack of commitment on offense breaks a basic strategic rule – concentrate on attack.  What a lot of players seem to have trouble with is the idea that a stealth bleed deck’s goal is not to stealth by a blocker and pump a bleed.  It’s to exhaust the prey’s defenses with minimal resources/actions and follow up with annihilation.

Lunging

Lunging works.  Not lunging is often a tremendous waste of resources.  For those who don’t know, lunging is the term for trying to oust someone in one turn rather than (my term) grinding someone’s pool down turn after turn.  The problem with not lunging is that players adapt to their situations.  Having one’s pool consistently depleted often causes players to allocate more resources to defense and/or spend less pool bringing out minions or playing cards.  That means having to use up more resources eliminating the player which means less for the next player …

… so often seems like people forget that the goal is not to get a VP but to win the game, which means multiple ousts (or one oust and playing in Northern California).

It’s especially bad to hit someone hard early.  There are exceptions, like when your prey’s deck can trump yours once it gets set up or when you are playing a weenie deck that’s trying to end the game as quickly as possible (a lot of stealth bleed decks aren’t weenie decks, but some are).  But, the main result of that early bleed for 6 or 5 or 4 or even 3 is usually to cause one’s prey to transfer less, spend less, and defend more.  The most efficient way to reduce one’s prey of pool in the game is when one’s prey transfers out more minions or plays more pool costing cards.  Nevermind that a defensive prey is a prey who isn’t helping me oust my next prey.

Also, it’s easy to defend against unfocused attacks.  Bleed once each turn for 3 and I just need to play one Deflection each turn.  Bleed for 1 each turn and then bleed three times for 3 each and I need three Deflections in hand at a given time to avoid being bloodied.

Which brings me to another concept.  One that is relevant to being on the receiving end of bleed decks.  Being bled is not a problem.  Losing pool is how the game is supposed to work.  I find it hilarious how someone expends effort to stop a bleed of 1 only to suck down a bleed of 5 later because wakes, bounce, or whatever were wasted on an action that just didn’t matter.  I don’t know if it’s accurate, but I consider losing 2 pool a turn normal pressure.  A predator doing less than that is a good predator.  A predator hitting me for 3 or more a turn needs to be … dealt with.

Bounce

Lots of folks claim stealth bleed isn’t fun to play or play against.  I actually enjoy it more than any other archetype.  But, it all depends upon one’s prey having bleed bounce.  Without the challenge of working around bounce, it is rather unexciting.  Fortunately, most serious decks have bounce.

The single greatest mistake that players of stealth bleed make is, sadly, being stupid.  No, really.  Anyone who has played the game half a dozen or more times should know that bounce exists.  Yet, time after time, I have to suffer through someone mindlessly helping the player’s prey win by bleeding irresponsibly.

Responsible bleed.  It’s a term that has been used for quite a while now.  It just tends to annoy me.  I don’t have a problem with people putting good cards in their decks like Spying Mission, but there’s really no need for people to go out of their way to prevent themselves from having big bleeds land on players besides their preys.  Bleeding responsibly is just a matter of not bleeding stupidly.

The single greatest mistake that players should make is using stealth.  A stealth bleed deck’s job is not to stealth past any and all defenders.  That just feeds into bounce.  The goal is to oust multiple players.  Stealth is just a tool to enable that.  It’s a tool that is overused.  The ideal situation when playing stealth bleed is to actually start hammering away after tapping out one’s prey.  Then, instead of needing a bounce card, the player needs a wake and a bounce.

So, how to tap out one’s prey?  There are cards that can do it, of course.  Faceless Night, Misdirection, Anarch Troublemaker, whatever.  Nothing wrong with those.  But, it’s not what I’m getting at.  How about getting blocked?  Yes, simply not throwing out stealth just because you can.

How many decks truly punish you in combat?  Yeah, letting Meshenka block you may be bad.  But, Arika?  Jost?  Morel?

And, then, there’s the bleed portion of stealth bleed.  It’s really not necessary to pump every bleed.  The stealth bleed deck’s stealthed bleeds should be for 1, maybe 2 if one’s grandprey is in good shape.  The bleeds for 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, or more should be at 0 stealth as often as possible.  Of course, people get ousts by stealthing bleeds of 6 by untapped or awakened blockers.  But, that’s tactics, not strategy.  The strategy is not to grind someone’s pool but to grind away someone’s defenses by doing as little as possible until the pool is an easy lunge away from being evaporated.

It’s late.  This isn’t a terribly focused post.  I’m sure I forgot something I really wanted to state.  Probably should come back to this topic again as it is one near and dear to my heart.

Tournament Report – RotES

And, lo, we had a tournament.  A tournament that was not a storyline tournament.  A tournament that was not a release tournament.  A tournament that was not a qualifier tournament.  Just a tournament.

With some coaxing, we ended up with 12 rather than 11 upon that day.  That day being yesterday – the day before today.  Many were the cards I dispensed to my opponents.  Three Telepathic Tracking and a Target Vitals here, three Ashur Tablets and six Villein and Monastery of Shadows and Scourge of the Enochians there, Torn Signpost and Pushing the Limit and Disarm and Powerbase: Tshwane and The Bitter and Sweet Story somewhere.

Round 1, in which all is fair as long as we get our 2 VPs:

Ian (Summon the Abyss) -> Dave (FoS SB) -> Henri (!Ventrue toolbox) -> Jeff (Multitaskmites)

Dave removes most of Henri’s pool.  Jeff Reckless Agitations Dave for 5 when he’s at 11.  I oust two people and don’t have enough going on to stop a 2/2 split.  I think Jeff could have played for the 2/1/1, but it was iffy with Dave having possibly too much pool to oust before he’d rain bleed death upon us all.

Round 2, in which bleeding at stealth is nowhere near as good as bleeding without:

Alex (something with Alastor, Celerity, and guys with THA) -> Ian -> Eric (Dom/Obf SB) -> Dave

I Vessel my own guy and I Vessel my predator’s Anastaszdi because he has two stealth bleed decks behind him and should blow up in no time.  Dave gets a horrible crypt draw and bring out two junk bleeders.  Eric brings out Goulet first and then Ormonde and Badr.  Anastaszdi gets an Assault Rifle via Alastor and starts backwards, quickly followed by going crosstable as Dave looks to be toast.  The second crosstable rush takes out Eric’s untapped dude and I bleed him out and Dave in the same turn.  For some reason, Alex can’t find a wake as I just keep bleeding him until he dies.  His Anastaszdi was down to 1 blood, Oriundus 2, Franckel 1 when Summon the Abyss plus Shadow Twin would have been awesome.  Had to settle for the sweep without getting off a useful Summon the Abyss.

Finals, in which the usual happened as the multiverse was saved from Summon the Abyss decks getting into the TWDA:

Ira had 2 GWs even though I had more VPs, so I was screwed no matter where I decided to seat myself.  The desired place was in front of Andy since his deck was least dangerous, but if I went between Andy and Jeff, Ira would be my predator and having a deck with much better cards behind me would be bad.  I could have put myself in front of Ky, but I figured being in front of the aggressive vote deck when I had no vote defense was questionable, and it wouldn’t have changed that Ira wasn’t likely to have any pressure on him all game.  Bit of a shrug.  With no good spot, it likely didn’t matter.

Ian -> Ky (Toreador vote) -> Andy (Guruhi w/ stealth) -> Ira (Nos P/J w/ Dominate) -> Jeff

Ky KRCs Andy and me twice early which since I’m psychic meant the game was over and Ira won unless I intentionally threw the game to Jeff.  We continued to play for some reason.  Well, not Andy.  But, Jeff did some pool damage to me which I soaked better than I expected because of Montreal and Jeff sort of realizing that Ira was going to win, leading to him going after The Rack.  Actually, it might have been a case where Jeff should have just gone all out on me rather than try to keep Ira in some sort of check as I wasn’t playing one of my normal decks, i.e. a deck that stubbornly refuses to die.  I had places to be and a quick game would have been useful, but the idea of quick games in our area is laughable.  Sure, I ended both of my prelims in less than an hour each time, but that meant nothing going into the finals.

I hung out.  Ky stopped calling votes which meant he didn’t have anything useful to do.  Ira slowplayed to get everyone else to do his work for him – SOP.  Jeff actually got up to 20 pool with Ira trying to Parity Shift him from 18 pool, which led to discussion, followed by bleed of … 2, followed by taking Parity Shift back in hand.  With not much to do, I ousted Ky to improve my pool buffer and tried to figure out how to keep Jeff and myself alive for the timeout win.  Jeff brought out a fourth vampire, which may have seemed good but was questionable when your predator has four blood happy dudes, a bunch of Dominate, vote lock, and hasn’t played anything aggressive yet.  Jeff gets Parity Shifted twice with Andy getting a bunch of pool to make sure I don’t get 2 VPs and is ousted by Dominate bleed.  Certainly an incomprehensible way to go. 

Again, we continue playing for some reason.  Temptation of Greater Power is revealed off the top of Ira’s deck.  Again, we continue playing for some reason.  With about 2.5 minutes left, I mention the possibility of Andy playing kingmaker by self ousting.  With about 1.5 minutes left, he does.  With 18 seconds left, Ira bleeds me out, having done about 13 pool damage of bleed in the final turn.

A well deserved victory for Ira.  Who, as usual, played better than the rest of us.  But, I don’t understand the reason for belaboring a game that’s over.  As soon as Jeff was ousted, we could have just played cards and ended the game earlier.

The concept of playing a deck that would be quick either way, a concept shared by both decks I was considering playing if we had 10+ players, had some merit, but I think there is a flaw.  The deck has to be bad, really bad, not get into the finals of a local tournament bad.  Otherwise, ending games quickly is meaningless as we go into the usual tedious final where the game gets talked to death rather than played.

The concept of playing decks so bad that I can’t possibly screw them up and get VPs is looking to have more merit.  My will to compete is just shot.  I play this game for the humor, for card interactions, and for trying to play a better technical game.  It’s really a game, at the competitive level, meant for table managers.  Been there, done that, have more fun playing Bonecraft and Fleshcraft out of my three card limit, “the bad Vicissitude cards” deck.

Cancer I – Zodiac I

Cancer
the adolescent
“I feel”
positive: imagination, tenacity, tenderness, sensitivity, care, caution
negative: stinginess, irritability, melancholy, clinging, cowardice, possessiveness, moodiness
- from Linda Goodman’s “Love Signs”

I must admit that I don’t have a solid grasp on how to relate Cancer to gaming at the moment.  When reading through the traits listed above, the main thought that came to me was that those traits sound a lot like what the deckbuilding process is like for me.

It’s possible to build decks for CCGs without imagination.  I don’t mean copying a decklist from somewhere.  I can throw together a decklist for a CCG in 5 minutes if I don’t think too much about it.  I’ve explained to people that even V:TES isn’t difficult for me to come up with a decklist for as I apply cookie cutter deck construction theory.  Five Blood Dolls?  Check.  Six wakes?  Check.  Six bounce?  Check.  Info Highway, The Barrens, Dreams, DI?  Check.  Ten to fifteen bleed pump?  Check.  Twelve to eighteen stealth?  Check.  One .44 Magnum?  …

But, the whole point of deckbuilding is to be creative.  And, the whole point to thinking about deckbuilding is to imagine what the most absurd deck that you can possibly build to a given format is … right?

Tenacity is an obviously important trait to actually having new decks.  I have in the old ELDB 125 new decks built in 2004.  The actual number played was more like 122 as I sometimes write out decks I never pull the cards for or never end up playing/giving to others to play.  Too often I find V:TES players not actually building decks they think of.  It’s tenacity that will see them realized.

Caution is interesting.  I’m risk averse.  That typically translates into my deckbuilding as I’d rather play more and win less than win more and play less.  On the other hand, one of the main attractions to gaming is being able to be reckless without meaningful consequences.

Nothing says irritability like going to pull the cards for a deck out of one of my CCG collections and then not being able to find them.  I’m still peeved that I can’t find any of the Carver’s Meat Packing and Storages that I should own.

Melancholy, cowardice, possessiveness, moodiness – heh.  When you do something a lot, all kinds of feelings enter in.  Alas.  I have built so many decks that all that comes hence is trite.  Alas.  There are so many decks on my to do list that I will never play them all.  Alas.  No one appreciates the genius behind my Jackal decks.

Moving on.  I could try to think up some in theme deck for this sign.  Ravnos come to mind.  Chimerstry (in the RPG) is all about what imaginative uses you put to it.  In the CCG, it’s stronger defensively than about anything else in the game with Illusions of the Kindred being one of the strongest defensive combat trumps, nevermind the stealth that’s a dodge, the stealth that’s a combat ends, or the rest of combat damage prevent.  That covers caution.  But, eh, drank from that well.

There’s rebuilding Malk/! with Chimerstry to run Nightmare Curse and Illusions defense.  That would qualify as imaginative, if I hadn’t done it before.  There are new cards – Touch of Clarity, Wrong and Crosswise, maybe Will-o’-the-Wisp – that could make it in for extra sensitivity and care.

I can’t see doing another Imbued deck in this series even though I see tenderness and caution there.  Salubri would be the other way to go to try to capture those traits.

This line of thinking is getting me nowhere fast.  Cancer is the moon’s sign and what says “moon” more than werewolves?  And, what says random werewolves more than Mata Hari, Jacob Fermor, a bunch of stealth and Freak Drives?

Demo Decks For V:TES

I’ve built my share of demo decks for CCGs.  The difficulty with doing such varied quite a bit.  With Ultimate Combat!, it was easy.  With Babylon 5, more complexity than I liked tended to creep into decks because so many of the commonly played conflict cards had way too much text. 

My concern these days runs towards Vampire: The Eternal Struggle for the obvious reason that it’s the only CCG I regularly play anymore.  This Saturday, I’m going to support a demo in Santa Cruz.  I’ve been writing out some decklists, but I’m not thrilled.

I understand the demo decks (the “pawn” expansion) that White Wolf put out, though I thought they were too simplistic, not showing off cards you would see in every game you ever played such as Blood Doll and Deflection.  For a game with such a high learning curve, starting off with very basic stuff is reasonable.

Which brings up the question of whether it’s better to teach people with decks that fight or just kind of ignore combat since it brings up a ton of additional considerations.  The classic stealth bleed deck that relies on dodge for defense is the best real deck for players to understand, but there are only so many decks that ignore combat that are worth doing before having to introduce combat decks to show the full game.  Also, it’s kind of hard to get the right stealth-intercept balance without combat as many decks that block want to fight.

Besides Dom/Obf (or Aus/Dom/Obf) and Dem/Obf  (or Aus/Dem/Obf), decks that can minimize combat would include weenie Obfuscate, weenie Auspex, weenie vote, weenie Presence, Dom/Obt, Obf/Pre, Aus/Pre, Ventrue Law Firm, Toreador vote, Dom/Nec (which I don’t like for teaching as much as other Dom variations), weenie Hack.  That’s kind of a messed up metagame to spring on newbs, especially when the decks eschew more complex cards.

So, add combat decks into the environment and what?  Aus/Dom/Tha intercept Theft is not too crazy as long as it’s almost entirely maneuver + Theft for combat.  Tzimisce intercept combat tends to get esoteric, though I think my new “I want to play with bad Vicissitude cards” deck could be pruned a bit and made not too complex.  Guns aren’t inherently difficult to play with, so I like Aus + guns.  The problem with Celerity guns, Potence, et al is how swingy games can be with other decks that just try to dodge or combat ends to prevent annihilation.

Certainly, it’s hard to demo the game with normal constructed decks and my typical decks are completely awful for teaching purposes (because being jaded means trying to do weird or ironic stuff all of the time).

The below is an exerpt from a post I made to the UK forum about how I would train someone on being a knowledgeable player of V:TES.  Besides the obvious comment that this progression will never happen in the real world, I can’t see this having a lot to do with demoing to random people who show up.  This would be for the unusual player who wanted to go from knowing nothing to being able to compete at the major level in the minimal amount of time.

 

For a player new to the game, I would do a progression something like:

a. Dom/Obf Brinksmansh- … obvious. Not only does this give the player an understanding of how straightforward stealth bleed w/ bounce works, but it also shows off many of the most commonly played cards in the game.

b. 1 cap Hack. Highlights speed and how much can be done without disciplines.

c. Weenie Presence bleed. Introducing … combat ends.

d. Ventrue or Toreador vote. An uncomplicated version that focuses on abusing Majesty and making use of clanness.

e. Weenie Presence vote. Mix c. and d. and see how annoying the game gets.

f. Kindred Spirits. The long separation between this and a. is mainly due to the similarities. Now, it’s time to understand the differences.

g. !Tor guns. Yes, !Tor. It should be less complicated than Tor with no worrying about whether to play traditions and with less complicated specials.

h. EuroBrujah, low/no rush version.

i. Nephandus horde. Brings in the idea of ally hordes. Shambling Hordes is the more common deck (and much easier for people to find the cards for) but has more things going on much of the time – blood control, self-mill, etc.

… Various weenie decks, starting with bleed variations, moving on to the likes of Ani, Aus, Pot, Cel; Tzimisce intercept combat; non-Pre vote; P/J; babymakers; and, so on and so forth in no particular order. Of course, interlaced with suffering … I mean … learning would be building one’s own, more quirky decks.

Probability that the above will ever occur – not significantly different from 0%. Stealth bleed, weenie, pure vote, bleed/vote, intercept combat, bruise and bleed, traditions, allies, etc. – something like that order of importance – seems quite daunting. On top of all of the other items which make it difficult to understand the game – difficult rules, lots of deck factors (disciplines, clans), lots of cards, length of games, political elements – there’s the variety of deck archetypes that veteran players just take for granted.

Forgotten Sets – Anarchs

I was helping a friend build decks a couple of days ago when she mentioned a card I never think about.  The anarch mechanic has gotten massive help from Twilight Rebellion.  So, there are some old cards from Anarchs that people suddenly became much more interested in, such as Fee Stakes.

But, what about the Anarchs set’s other cards?  I feel like there’s gold to be mined in terms of decks I’ve never built by going back and looking at the forgotten cards from that set.  Well, maybe a copper mine.  Here are a few cards that I’d consider doing something with:

Bear-Baiting

Cards that require a lot of setup almost always suck.  They also tend to not be fun since you either never get off your trick or when you do you realize nobody cares about all of the effort you put in.  I remember arguing about the merits of Bear-Baiting on the newsgroup. 

The concept is still the same:  make some tiny doofus while playing humongousaurs in your crypt.  What’s different today is how many doofi exist.  Web of Knives Recruit, Waters of Duat, Tumnimos, The Becoming, whatever.  It’s still a horrible card, but it’s an amusing surprise to throw at one of my groups … assuming I can ever get it into play.

Carnivale

Always sounded reasonable.  Why not?  Especially when you consider Anson and the magic of wanting to have lots of masters in a deck.  The problem was that it’s very minor in its effect, one.  Two, there’s a principle that often applies in CCGs that people seem to subconsciously get with a lot of cards but don’t realize when actively analyzing certain cards.  Some things aren’t good because the alternatives are better.  Yes, this is just opportunity cost, again, but it’s amazing how little CCGers think of opportunity cost.

There’s two types of alternatives.  The first is playing other cards.  Conditioning is better than Threats in ~95% of the decks out there.  The second alternative is strategy.  There are the obvious differences in strategies, like playing bleed rather than combat.  There are also subtle differences in strategies. 

Suppose the basic concept of a deck involves an inability to generate more than one stealth on actions.  That’s not so great when people play with intercept.  So, what’s the answer?  One answer may be to add combat.  Another might be to overwhelm someone with actions by using Freak Drives and Majestys to untap.  Another might be to graft a stealth discipline.  Another might be to find some unblockability or other alternative evasion to stealth.  And, there’s always just ignoring the deck flaw and hoping for the best or to use elite talking skills.

Except for the last two, what we are talking about is having some sort of consistent approach to addressing a potentially consistent problem.  Adding a little bit of stealth isn’t likely to provide that sort of consistency that makes it compare with the alternative strategies available.

But, there are more ways to get a little bit of stealth these days.  Resist Earth’s Grasp supplements a Carnivale strategy.  Perfect Paragon is like stealth.  Anarch Toreador have Gear Up, Undue Influence, Power of One.  Carnivale is still minor and inflexible (would be better if it was put into play and burned to give any Toreador stealth or put on a Toreador but burned to give anyone stealth) and still eats up master slots, but it may be worth revisiting as a throw in.

Mob Rule

I don’t see this card changing in any way.  It’s only use is still to get people to burn blood off of their vampires for no real benefit.  I don’t believe blood denial has gotten any better, but that just means it comes as more of a surprise.  Well, no, not really.  I’m more interested in casual blood loss than in building a blood denial deck, though I probably should build such decks just to do something different.

Petra Resonance

I’ve always wanted to play the deck, but it’s just so stupid.  I play in a metagame where cards like Crocodile’s Tongue are virtually unplayable because people like to block with their 10 caps.  Still, some day, I should get around to doing a Petra Resonance deck just because I own some.

Sword of Nuln

I have done something with it, I just don’t remember what.  Natural combo with Biothaumaturgical Experiment, assuming you think that a combo exists with the Sword since it does hardly anything.  Troius means a second Tremere in the game with + Strength … wow, that’s fairly amazing.  I should look through clans to see how many others are so “weak”***.

Unlicensed Taxicab

I’m not mentioning a number of cards that haven’t been forgotten.  This hasn’t been forgotten by others, but damn if I can remember to include it.  I don’t need to build around it, but I should remember it exists.

The rest are either still not worth thinking about (Holds, et al), not forgotten (Repo Man, et al), or have been tried before and aren’t looking any better (Nosferatu Bestial, et al).

 

***  Wow!  It is really crazy how few vampires for certain clans get + Strength.  I tend to think of it as one of those random specials that shows up in more places than you think.  But, it’s just extremely uneven and really quite nonsensical. 

One would assume that clans with Potence would get more +Str, which is born out with a number of clans, but then, the Lasombra only have one and it’s not even real +Str!  !Ventrue have 5!!!  Gangrel get a lot, which makes some sense and helps with burning vampires with aggravated hands, but !Gangrel only have 2!!  The Laibon clans have virtually no +Str.  It was far more common in Jyhad than in more recent groups for Camarilla vampires.