Spoils of War - playable?

Ashur wrote:

Is Spoils of War playable at all? I mean in competitive play, not in your durdle heap. I think not.

What do you mean by "playable"?

It's reasonably common to be able to get a bleed through in a turn, and having a small number of Spoils of War in your deck gives you a bonus at that point. So having two or three in your deck, one in your hand right now, and your prey lets Sarah Brando bleed for 1, to save defence for Sela coming through for a bleed for a lot? Gain a pool. Seems reasonable. Fairly easy to play, probably only blocking one hand slot at a time, maybe you have to hold it until next turn... A larger number, say 6-8, in a low-stealth, bruise-bleedy !Bru deck seems less likely to have a positive impact. The one turn where you get stuffed in a block-fest and end up with 2 or more sitting in your hand, not so good. Though if you're playing a lot of Resist Earth's Grasp to reasonable effect, it makes a few of them "free".

If you want a deck with lots of them, you'd probably be doing something more elaborate. Breeding weenies and something like Psychic Veil/Veil the Legions is buildable, and breed-boon is usable for Unexpected Coalition, falling back into swarm bleed. If you want to give the weenies off-clan Obfuscate, you see similar things done with the Lasombra from time to time with Gratiano e.g. www.thelasombra.com/decks/twd.htm#2k6originsthu9 from Ben Peal. Actually pretty solid. The difficulty for the !Bru is that crypt selction is markedly more restricted, mostly forcing you to play Armin Brenner if you want a title and Obfuscate to play Creation Rites. But, assuming you can find a crypt you're happy with, a bunch of Obfuscate !Bru weenies passing a few votes with Unexpected Coalition, and bleeding with consistent stealth, and cycling a few Spoils of War every now and then? Well, it's not a super-super must win the NAC deck, but - if constructed along the lines of the linked deck above - not awful either. It's mostly just weenie stealth-breed, with the occasional vote for shits and giggles.

I use em with Dogs of War & range weenies.
As long as you can get a vote through, you can theoretically rush with all of your weenies. As long as nobody blocks and you don't die, it should work just fine.
Spoils of War isn't just for bleeds.
It works for Horseshoes and Precision and Distraction...combat rush.

I wouldn't use just a few in a casual deck. Most high-cap !Brujah have better things to do, but five 2-5 caps gaining 5 blood and pool each a turn is pretty badass. If you based a deck around weenies and successful D actions, it should be a decent bloater.

Besides "mean" actions, it also works with more innocuous actions, like getting back Montreal, Rack, Erciyes, Rampage, rescuing crosstable, burning Rats, burning Paths, burning Pentex, burning Jack, etc.

Not everything needs to be built around to see application.

IMO its one of the weakest DM cards. It can be playable with f.e. haven uncovered but is not worth a slot in my opinion. On the other hand, you could make a deck with really ridiculous amount of this card (like 20) and then it can work in similar fashion like cryptic mission decks works (it's to weak to be played in small numbers, but can be playable if played in multiple copies)

Yup. That's what I'm saying.
Something like Tribute/Border Skirmish/Spoils would be interesting. Kinda weak by itself, but pretty great in a swarm.

Technically Mata Hari can also play Spoils of War, but she is not exactly well-known for taking a lot of actions.