Black Magic Woman - Tremere Black Hand Tap-Bleed

Juggernaut1981 wrote:

Yes, but you can't get bled for more than 1 or 2 in an action if your predator has to keep on playing their bleed actions and bleed mods. I'm still letting your predator choke on stealth but also burn all of their offensive cards into the ashheap.

How much bleed reduction are you including in your decks? It's hard for me to believe that it's enough to actually shut down a stealth/bleed predator the way that you're implying here. Most reasonably good s/b decks have at least a dozen bleed cards and probably as many bleeds mods, each of which will generally inflict as much or more pool loss as you're soaking with even the best bleed reduction. So unless you're including 24 bleed reduction cards, there's something here that I'm not seeing.

This totally reminds me of that Bartholomew deck I played which ran 10x Folderol and 10x Telepathic Counter. Hilarious.

Every time I bloat the deck with more defense, it screeches to a halt. Sometimes I get to block some actions, sometimes I defend against a bleed cannon, but then I rarely seem to have enough oomph to keep going forward.

The lack of untap in Jay's version of the deck makes me nervous. I expect to tap out every turn; how do I not get run over by another dominate deck, or dementation?

Dorrinal wrote:

The lack of untap in Jay's version of the deck makes me nervous. I expect to tap out every turn; how do I not get run over by another dominate deck, or dementation?

This is a pretty telling comment, and explains to me some of the confusion I had about the way you built this deck. Had you answered The Lasombra's question about how you expect an average turn to go, we could've gotten here much sooner.

Tap-and-bleed decks don't tap out every turn. They don't keep up a middling level of constant pressure on their prey. They keep up a light amount of pressure and then go heavy once their prey's defenses are down (tapped out, just bounced a bunch of bleeds, etc). I'd been wondering why you have so much stealth in this deck, and the revelation that you're playing it more as a stealth/bleed deck with some tapping tech explains that.

So to answer your question, you don't tap out every turn. You bleed lightly with one or two minions until the time is right for a lunge, meaning you don't want much untap in the deck, because that'll merely get in the way during a lunge turn. Vignes is the primest example of this; in Feldman's original design for the deck, there's no untap whatsoever, and it's an extremely strong deck if you play it correctly in spite of (well, technically, because of) that.

So, ah... I've been doing it wrong? I suppose I can save face by pointing out I haven't played much in the past 4 years. Jay's inclusion of Telepathic Counter makes a lot more sense now. And judging by my current JOL games, I have been tapping out a bit and once I even discarded a Mirror Walk.

Vignes looks so much stronger than this deck, it's a bit discouraging. I laugh every time I see 13x Deflection. Looking at similar decks in the TWDA has made it painfully clear that I don't have enough bleed in the deck.

Dorrinal wrote:

Vignes looks so much stronger than this deck, it's a bit discouraging. I laugh every time I see 13x Deflection. Looking at similar decks in the TWDA has made it painfully clear that I don't have enough bleed in the deck.

Well, yes, if you are searching for a new tier-1-deck Vignes will be better. I'm more on the way to build a good deck working with some Black Hand tech. And for that I think your suggestion to go with Rutor's Hand, Remover and big bleed is a good one. You can tap the would-be Bouncer and bleed a lot. I like this idea. I'm sure it is not as strong as some evil decks. So what? It's worth playing and should be fun.

You could tune down the combat a bit, so that your bleedcards are on a better ratio. If you feel, you have to much stealth ditch it. But please don't get discouraged just because some evil decks are winning a lot. Believe me, on many tables it is good to keep a low profile and don't scare everyone with a well known winnerdeck.

My own Orun Cannon deck is similar in play style to the Vignes deck, but it lacks the flick options and is much more expensive on minions.

Upsides: Bloats brilliantly (once you buy one minion, you rarely need to pay for another, just use Orun & Brutal Influence to basically bring out minions for free).

Downsides: Can be VERY vulnerable to S&B. Nangila Were can remedy that by Rushing, but it's not everything.

Most Turns: Declare a number of bleed for 1s, survive the block using Aid from Bats or Majesty.

Lunge Turns: Tap out minion that is packed to the eyeballs with Oruns, declare a Brutal Influence Bleed & drop an Iron Glare (the usual upper limit for these bleed actions is 13...) and if you're really lucky play Edge of the World to get a bonus 4 pool for the VP, refill the acting vamp and untap them.