Protean Possession

I dunno if you knew about Orian's Blog, but he told a few things about an Ariadne deck... ttcmaster.blogspot.fr/search?updated-max=2009-05-25T15:55:00%2B02:00&max-results=50

Hope this will help...

jeudi 14 mai 2009
Creation rites








I want to create an archetype!!!!!!














Most people do create decks but, to my opinion, too few are giving themselves enough credit when they do so, which results in bad/middle-ranged decks, sometimes very original, sometimes not at all. They create decks for casual decks but they then rely on classical decks for tournaments, or eventually they bring a new tournament but it is "just for fun"





























When I create a deck, it is for several different reasons: I need one, I want to, I have seen something interesting. But in any case, I am always willing to create a deck that

WILL WORK IN ANY TOURNAMENT

Of course, I am not always successful and some of my decks are not to be put out of casual games (Mugur Sabau multi-diableryyyyyyyy) but I tried to make them the best I could and my sole limit was the card/my ability.



This is by working like this that I forced myself into making a killer "Khazar's diary" deck. The card was strong and fun, I made the deck strong before than making it fun. I tried to find the concepts that would help it being irresistible, no matter how much it could lack of fun (for example, putting embraces).



Now, let's see what his my classical way of processing, and, cherry on my cake, I will offer you to follow me in a concrete example of deck creation, working today on what, in my opinion, could be a killer deck:





1/ Starting point





Your starting point is not vital. You do not need to stay focus to it if you do not feel it. For example, working on my new pupeeteer deck made me think about mixing them with Guillaume Giovanni and I changed the deck I was working on.



But having a starting point is a great source of motivation. It can be a tournament coming, a game at your house, how to get rid of your 15 lightning reflexes somehow, or a card you want to play more.



In my case today, there is a card I really love out of the now promos:
well in case your browser does not get pictures, the card is Abactor. This +1 stealth hunt action allows your vampire to get 5 blood instead of 1 and a blood hunt is then called. In terms of advantage, it is clearly one of the most powerful card of the game: it creates a 5-blood difference in only one card, which is very powerful for a non-vote card.

Of course, there is a huge drawback here but I know that there are several ways to dodge this.



2/ Determine the structure you want to build

The structure of your deck is its main guideline. It should be one sentence that explains which goal you were to reach with your deck. When building your deck later, my advice is: get back to your structure and consider if you are respecting it or not. If not, ask yourself the question: is my structure correct? If yes, how should I go back to it.



How to determine your structure?

Using your starting point, you will need to use your imagination. This is the most difficult part so do not get bothered if it does not work at first glance. You will sometimes need to pick up your ardb/feldb/monger software, your card collection, have a look at several forums and google groups, in order to find interesting information that are going to help you.



Try to identify what are the good combinations of cards that will be interesting with your starting point, try to determine which vampires could use those combinations, try to set up a generic idea for the deck



In our example, we have Abactor here. Basically two ideas come to mind:

- survive to the blood hunt: play votes or cards to survive blood hunts
- play vampires that are immune to blood hunt



The two ideas are correct. Of course I am not advocating that there is only one choice possible. There are generally several choices. I did choose the second option because I considered that it was either dangerous or long to use the first option and that second option was completely suitable. You could have chosen the first one. If you thought it was the best one before reading my last sentence, please do work on a deck with Urban Jungle, or with voters, or whatever. I will be glad to post and comment on it.

Well, back to business, the next step now that I have chosen a strategy is to look what opportunities are given to me. Here is a list of vampires and cards immune to blood hunt:

Samat Ramal-Ra, Archon, 6, pre ser tha OBF, Followers of Set, 2, [FN:U2]


Muaziz, Archon of Ulugh Beg, 7, aus dom for THA, Tremere, 2, [AH:V3, CE:PTr] - +1 stealth

Tariq, The Silent, 7, cel AUS FOR OBF QUI, Assamite, 2, [FN:U2] - Independent: Tariq's capacity is reduced by 4 while he is controlled. Tariq can enter combat with a vampire controlled by another Methuselah as a action. Blood hunts cannot be called on Tariq. The Blood Curse doesn't affect Tariq.

Theo Bell, 7, cel dom pre POT, Brujah, 2, [FN:U, CE:PB] - Camarilla: Theo may enter combat with any ready minion controlled by another Methuselah as a action. If you control a ready Prince or Justicar, blood hunts cannot be called on Theo.

Genina, The Red Poet, 8, aus cel for CHI OBF THN, Samedi, 3, [Promo-20050914] - Independent, Red List: If a blood hunt is succesfully called on Genina, she goes to torpor instead of being burned. Genina gets +1 stealth on diablerie actions and on undirected actions.

Ariadne, 8, chi ANI FOR PRO, Gangrel, 5, [KoT] - She gains an additiona blood when she successfully hunts.

The library card "Archon" Political Card -- Worth 1 Vote. Called by any prince or justicar at +1 stealth. Choose a Camarilla vampire. If this referendum is successful, put this card on the chosen vampire. This vampire may enter combat with a vampire controlled by another Methuselah as a +1 stealth action. Any vampire attempting to block this vampire burns 1 blood. Blood hunts cannot be called on this vampire. Any Camarilla vampire can call a referendum to burn this card as a +1 stealth political action.



I might have forgotten some but here the main candidates. I am sure it is possible to make great decks with about any of them but I had a very clear idea in my mind:

* fortitude because of freak drive after/before abactor would give flexibility to the deck

* a complete safety that no blood hunts would be called because since this would be my first time with Abactor, I wanted to go safe



That was leaving me with three vampires: Tariq, Muaziz and Ariadne. Tariq with 3-cap was a little bit small to be useful so I forgot him and was left with my two potential stars who in addition of being immune to blood hunts have great side effect powers:

- Muaziz hunts at 2 stealth

- Ariadne gets 1 more blood

Now, to be frank, I guess it is possible to make very good decks with both vampires but for this example, I chose Ariadne, because she is a new vampire and would give me access to cards I almost never play [as I consider Gangrel apart from gr1/2 titled vampires to be rather weak vampires]

so my star would be












At the moment, I have a correct stucture for a deck :make a star deck with Ariadne using Abactor to get 6 blood each turn, allowing me to get pool and play expensive cards. If you are inexperienced in deckbuilding I would advise you to push the limit of your structure a little further, by determining already which would be your means to stay alive/kill your prey/ win the table. It will be useful. I do consider myself experienced enough to go directly to the third step and balance the deck correctly later

3/ Build, build, build

Here is a list of what I do when making a deck at that time:

- look at all vampires entering the clan/grouping of my star vampire

- look at all vampires with the same disciplines/grouping

=> make a basic crypt that I can improve later with new orientation

- look at clan-based library card

- look at discipline-based library card

- add a defensive module

- polish the master cards module

- look if anything really kills my deck and enter something against

- look if being anarch or black hand brings me something important

=> I generally arrive at a 120 cards list lol

- cut, cut, and cut

- check if you new deck corresponds to your structure, compare it with decks with similar goal to see if you have forgotten something

=> library finished

=> tweak your crypt according to your library

=> post your deck on forums to get good advices except if you want to keep it secret

and here is what I get with my Ariadne Abactor deck


Deck Name: Ariadne abactor

Created By: TTC

Description: + 10 Abactor
Crypt: (13 cards, Min: 11, Max: 32, Avg: 5,23)

5 Ariadne chi ANI FOR PRO 8 Gangrel

1 Calvin Cleaver for pro 3 Gangrel

1 Fergus Alexander pot pro 3 Gangrel

1 Gunnar for PRO 4 Gangrel

2 Jacob Fermor ani tha PRO 5 Gangrel

1 Lillian ani pro 3 Gangrel

1 Robert Price pro 2 Gangrel

1 T.J. cel for 3 Gangrel

I did a very simple crypt here as I was focusing on the lowest gangrel possible to recruit renegades and defend Ariadne, and in the same time Jacob was so strong I had to put two of him... he is kind of the finisher here.


Library: (80 cards)

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Master (20 cards) [relatively big master modules, I hope to be able to reduce it after some games played]

1 Backways

2 Direct Intervention (mostly for garous being stolen)

2 Ecoterrorists

1 Fame

2 Minion Tap

1 Pentex Subversion

1 Perfectionist

7 Vessel

2 Villein

1 Zoo Hunting Ground


Action (12 cards)

10 Abactor

2 Sensory Deprivation [for garous stolen mainly]


Action Modifier (12 cards)

3 Earth Control

8 Freak Drive

1 Kiss of Ra, The

Combat (13 cards) [if you are expecting more combat or more garous stolen, target vitals is very strong, or rotschreck also]

4 Claws of the Dead

5 Earth Meld

4 Form of Mist


Ally (13 cards)

1 Carlton Van Wyk (Hunter) [to play it before the other player]

1 Ossian

8 Renegade Garou

2 Vagabond Mystic

1 Gypsies

Retainer (3 cards)

1 J. S. Simmons, Esq.

1 Robert Carter

1 Tasha Morgan

Equipment (4 cards)

1 Aaron`s Feeding Razor

3 Camera Phone

Event (1 cards) 1 Unmasking, The

Combo (2 cards) 2 Rapid Change

So all in all, I have built what I consider, before playing with it, a very solid deck since it has very good bloat, good offensive abilities with garous, a plan B if things go wrong (little gangrel/ vessel/ go hunt) and I lose Ariadne for a reason or another. It has weaknesses at the moment, for example against vote decks but it can fare reasonnably well against other decks so... interesting deck in my opinion with a very good potential.

How did I build this deck? Well, I followed the steps I gave you earlier. Simple, isn't it???

Now I need to find the cards, find some games to try the deck, tweak it [ALWAYS NOTE YOUR TWEAKS DURING GAME AND CHANGE THEM AT HOME THE SAME DAY] and play it again until it

1/ proves to be a killer

2/ proves itself disappointing

Now, what do you think of my deck? what changes did you make? Did you build another deck using Abactor or did you focus or another new card? I am waiting for your comments!!!!

Take care

Orian
Publié par TTC_master à l'adresse 16:37 6 commentaires

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lundi 25 mai 2009
Creation rites 2
Hey there

I am moving on with my Ariadne Abactor (remember Creation Rites first article).
I had decided to play the deck during French Qualifier at Nancy, which was looking a good spot for testing the deck with around 20 players and a final entrance at 1GW4 or 1GW5 I was assuming.

I slightly changed the decklist when building the deck. Some stuff were coming to my mind and I came finally with that:

4x Ariadne
1x Talbot
1x Shiloh Marie (I had misread her cardtext so she is to be removed)
2x Jacob Fermor
1x Gunnar
1x Lillian
1x Fergus Alexander
1x Robert Price

Library [80 cards]

22 masters
8 Vessel
3 Villein
3 Minion tap
2 Ecoterrorists
2 Backways
2 Dark influences
1 Powerbase: Montreal
1 Pentex subversion

Actions 25
10 Abactor
8 Renegade garou
1 Ossian
1 Vagabond Mystic
1 Carlton van wyk
2 Underbridge stray
1 Heart of Nizchetus
1 Robert Carter

Modifiers 8
4 Beast meld
4 Freak drive

Combat 17
8 Form of mist
8 Claws of the dead
1 Body flare

Events 3
2 Dragonbound
1 Unmasking

Reactions 5
2 On the qui vive
2 Delaying tactics
1 Hard case


How did the tournament go?
Fairly well, but the deck ran into huge problems. Being bled by a bleed/stealth is one. Time you get your vessels out, you are dead. And maybe you are also dead even after. You have to play to survive all game long.

Also garous stolen were a huge problem too. All in all, in the 3 games, I found myself not advancing. I was playing cards to bloat, pulling garous out but not moving forward except if everything was really fine behing. I could not outbloat my predator also. I suppose the agressive type of predator was too agressive for me, and a safe kind of predator would probably play combat. All in all, not good.

I managed to make 1GW4 and enter 5th seed in the final but could not make a miracle. I took 2 vps but finished second.

Concerning the sery "creation rites", what are our options when a deck did not work fine?
1/ Test it again and tweak it
2/ Change the structure of the deck
3/ Forget the deck

In the next article creation rites 3 we will see what we are going to do with Ariadne Abactor.
Publié par TTC_master à l'adresse 15:28 1 commentaires

I think that deck can be good, you only have to changes some things. You need a lot of defense, gangrel can't defelct bleeds and need intercept to defense politics, so you have to convert deck into wall deck, with agro and amaranth.

so, a basic idea:


1 Direct Intervention
1 Ecoterrorists
1 Fame
1 Pentex Subversion
7 Vessel
1 Zoo Hunting Ground
2 Anarch

Action
3 Deamonic Posesion
1 Army of Rats
1 aranthees

Combat
4 Claws of the Dead
5 Earth Meld
4 Claws
4 Amaranth
8 Pack Alpha

Ally
1 Carlton Van Wyk (Hunter)
1 Ivory Bow

Retainers
10 Raven Spy
4 Dog Pack

Reaction
5x Cats' Guidance
4x Forced Awakening
6x Sense of Savage Way
4x On the Qui Vive