First Strike vs. Strike: Combat Ends

Reyda wrote:

Well Ohlmann, I have a suggestion for people defending animalism combat : build a real deck with real vamps ? Tossing together all the ANI weenies under 5 cap under the sole pretext that carrion+ aid looks good with deep song sounds like another epitome of lazy deckbuilding.
Why not use Fortitude, Protean, Vicissitude, all kind of disciplines coming with means of preventing agg damage on decent vampires ? Animalism itself has also song of serenity... But Zomg, that means I have to build deck in accordance to a metagame ?!

Since I am not sure to have understood, I would like precisions.

If your post is supposed to remind me that animalism combat can play card from other discipline, my response would be that the deck lose (some of) its excellent card flow for combat and begin to add parts that do nothing by themselves, and may in some case need bigger vampire as well, since you need animalism and something else at the same time. In essence, it gain the advantage and drawback of heavy combat package : yes, you're more able to snap people in combat, but then you're more likely to choke on combat and/or not have enough non combat card.

If your post is supposed to remind me that they can benefit from first strike themselve, my response is that Carrion Crow will not strike with first strike, so it create another kind of deck. Also, first strike is not all that easy to get with animalism : celerity / animalism is not overly common, not is animalism / quietus.

If your post is here to say that animalism combat is "lazy", I would yet again disagree. If your deck only have very limited place for combats card, Animalism have no real concurrence, since on two card you have minimal hitback protection and decent damage, with two part that work well independantly. It's a bit like saying that Banishment in political deck is lazy : it's not that they are a lot of other options in the current card pool for the job. (which is "small combat package", not "combat")

If something else, then I just didn't follow your logic, sorry.

Reyda wrote:

Why not use Fortitude, Protean, Vicissitude, all kind of disciplines coming with means of preventing agg damage on decent vampires ? Animalism itself has also song of serenity... But Zomg, that means I have to build deck in accordance to a metagame ?!

Because it's better to take 1 aggravated and rescue once in 5 games than it is to have dead cards in 4 out of 5 games. A lot of the time, the best way to cover your weaknesses is to be more effective at what you're good at.

The theory is that having a better card flow means you get to rush more often, which means you're eating less bleeds, which means you can afford more minions, which means you can absord 1 aggra and a rescue action more often etc. For vote decks, card flow means (among other things) that you hit the early Zillah's and Villeins, which gives more actions and votes to push Voter Caps, which snowballs into the next cycle of Zillah's/Villein.

In the opposite end of the spectrum, a deck that has dead cards (as in cards that are difficult to play/discard when you want to) will eventually choke and stumble. In a competitive setting, missing one beat can mean falling permanently behind because you lose the vote lock, can't afford to block a superior Govern, can't stop someone from building up and so on. At that point you can either hope that your opponents fail as badly or let the game spiral out of control.

So, basically what Suoli is saying is that First Strike trumping S:CE will not be much of an issue. Which is what I have already stated, though it may add small bits of different ideas in deck design. All good for the game as far as I can tell.

I love all those v:tes lessons. Write more stuff fellows, I am always happy to learn new things about this game. I can't wait to write a summary of everything in my pokédex

"I choose you, Reyda. Smart-ass attack, NOW!"

" Reyda launches 1... 2... 3... smart ass attack !
...
It's not very effective "
Remember Rob, Swedish-type pokemon are resistant to sarcasm-type attacks ! Try using Logic instead !