Vote Splashing

the system of votes and political actions in VTES is such a brilliantly designed and balanced aspect of the game. one thing I like to do is splash a few vote cards in a non-vote deck. I think the game was designed to make this playable, though I don't see it too often. I'm curious if others do the same sometimes, and with what cards.

not all decks use combat cards, since you have to focus on a decent number of them to get consistent results. most every vampire can already bleed without a card, even if it's just for 1. but vote cards were built with several uses. if you don't have vote lock, sometimes you can tabletalk to get a pass. if one player has vote lock and refuses to vote for you, it's likely he'll be playing votes of his own, and you can burn yours during another referendum. if you're playing a combat deck, a random KRC or Perpetual Care could help oust your prey faster... or be the one vote you need to save a vampire from a Blood Hunt. even if the 1 vote isn't enough to make a difference, at least you get more opportunities to discard it than a useless combat card.

Ancient Influence is probably the most common card splashed in non-voting decks, since it has a good chance of passing when someone else controls an IC member. KRCs can be easily negotiated, they do a respectable amount of damage for 0 blood, and at stealth! It'd be interesting if there was a poolgain card similar to KRC that you could negotiate with others, like Finding the Path but better, but maybe the original design team found this concept too strong. Honor the Elders is also a nice card that bigcap Justicars tend to approve of.

Rumors of Gehenna and Year of Fortune are some favorites of mine. Sometimes I negotiate with whoever has votes, but usually I just say "everybody at the table! so it's fair!" Well... it's actually not fair, because my deck is built to take full advantage of the bonus and theirs isn't. but they still feel attached to the generous gift and rarely try to vote it away.

another approach is with the disciplineless card Bribes. oh, what a wonderful card it is! you'd be surprised what ridiculous terms players will agree with just to gain 1 precious pool. sometimes there's group-think, and everybody votes in favor because they assume nobody else will vote it down. and even if it fails, you still got 1 free pool just for playing the card.

some players may only use super-focused slim decks, but I think votes are too fun and useful to pass up. don't need too many, just a few for flavor. and to keep everyone guessing. "wait, is he playing a vote deck? wtf"

You'd be surprised what you can get people to vote for with a Bribes.

Packing votes like Ancient Influence and such if you have big vampires will also have a good chance to pass if there is a voter at the table.

I splash some votes occasionally, but more often than not cut them back out in favor of more deck reliability and efficiency.

I feel that you need some sort of way to get a vote to pass if you put vote cards in that damage your prey. Yes, a KRC can easily be negotiated to be 2-2 where 2 goes on your prey and 2 goes on the prey of whomever you need votes from, but in most cases that's not a lot more efficient than using the action for whatever your deck is supposed to do.

IME, good vote cards to splash in are stuff like (as you said) Ancient Influence or Reins of Power, but only if your deck gains advantage by passing them, at which point you are playing fatties and are likely already sporting votes.

Other votes that work more like silver bullets and are likely to pass when it´s good for you are Anarchist Uprising, Domain Challenge and Ancilla Empowerment. I mean, everyone wants the Nephandus Swarm to die, no? The downside of those is that they often work against you and set someone else up for a VP.

Matt Hirsch often throws 1-3 political actions into decks that don't really have much chance of passing them. He does a lot of toolboxing along those lines and it often seems to work for him (see NAC win). He'a slao been playing toolbox decks for at least the past seven years that I've known him, though, so he's totally used to that playstyle.

Lextalionis for the win! Talk about a way to cut down weenie bleed decks (other than Scourge of the Enochians, but they have to be 1-2 cap there). I've been known to use a splash of Ancient Influence or Rumors of Gehenna in decks with pool/master problems. Sometimes Ancient Influence will pass just to hurt the Imbued.

I've gathered that arguable the strongest decks are usually those with titled vampires doing non-voting stuff.

Titled vampires usually have various useful disciplines, so they have a tendency of performing equally well in many tasks compared to smaller caps. In addition come the titles, which are very very useful in many situations, the two most notable being vote-defence and diablerie. It's always a good idea to have a say in votes. I used to play the Prince of Cairo in my Al-Muntaquim deck, and while his title wasn't the most useful around, I can recall it turning a vote or two. Definitely worth it considering I didn't always have to bring him out, btu could cycle him away with Wider Wiew.

So yeah, I do believe in title splashing. I'm not so sure about bringing some weird votes into decks without titles, but I've considered that. One of the times I tried this was in my !Gangrel deck trying to push through Templars with some bribes and private audiences, but that didn't really work too well. Permanent rushes aren't really something that others would be willing to just grant you, even if you promised to rush the next two guys of his liking.

But a splash of KRC? Why not!