Gr 5 city !Gangrel

All of them are supposed to be gr5, and form a complete group with the SoC vampires.

I have tried to keep focused on in-clan discipline, because I feel that one of the problem of city gangrel are the fact that they lack consistency. Here all vampire have the city gangrel discipline and very few have out of clan, or even regular gangrel, disciplines.

Note that two of them have +1 strength. It help a small bit with combat (against prevent 1 card), but the main reason is to help the use of celerity combat : Blur and acrobatics tend to be bad card alone, but with +1 strength they are by themselves a lot better, so you are less likely to need weapons or whatever in addition to your celerity combat card.

Pack Wolf

Capacity 4
Sabbat. Packs wolfs are not unique and cannot use equipment. If you control more untapped ready Pack Wolf than untapped ready unique !gangrel, Pack Wolf must hunt.

When we talk about !Gangrel, breeding and mass of small vampires tend to be common themes, so this is a try to give a non-unique vampire to city !gangrel.

Their special should show the animalistic and pack behavior of thoses vampires, that revert to individualism if undiriged. I believe it's a strong disadvantage, but I may overestimate it.

Robert the badger

Capacity 5
Sabbat. While Robert is acting, he get +1 strength. He can't play action modifier.

In addition to lack consistency, I found that !gangrel kind of lack attracting small caps, especially for killing people. with +1 strength seem good enough ; it obviously need real drawbacks on a 5 cap. I may have been a bit overkill.

Plaute.

Capacity 6
Sabbat. Once per bleed action, Plaute can discard a combat card requiring or to gain +1 bleed until the end of the action.

A small-cap with good discipline spread and a special that help discard useless cards.

Harrying Harald.

Capacity 7.
Sabbat. After the resolution of the action of another of your !gangrel, you can tap Harrying Harald to enter combat with a minion that played a reaction. +1 strength. Sterile.

A variation on the "can enter combat with a minion" ability, coupled with +1 strength to be a real threat.

Affut

Capacity 7
Sabbat. After a methuselah complete a successful action, Affut can take an action to bleed this methuselah, even during other's methuselah turn ; the minion that had just completed his action can't block or play reaction this action.

This vampire try to give ousting power to !gangrel in a special way ; you can either use him with untap (like Homunculus), or simply to bleed during your prey turn and then during your turn, to overwhelm its vampire.

Jean the human

Sabbat bishop.
Capacity 8.
!Gangrel in your uncontrolled area have -1 capacity.

His special is here to help you put another !gangrel in the ready region. One less pool by vampire may be way too much, but without bleed discipline nor clan-specific way to have more vampire in the uncontrolled region, I doubt this will be too much.

Alpha

Capacity 9
archbishop of Bordeau*.
After Alpha bleed your prey, if it was successful, all your !gangrel with obfuscate gain +1 stealth for action against your prey until the end of the turn.

The idea is "he lead the pack to the war". No bleed discipline, but with the smalls gangrels put here, the +1 stealth and should help creating a real pressure.

* I'm not too sure of the way to choose title, and more importantly I'm not too sure of a city with a lot of city !gangrel, but Bordeau is sure big enough to have a pack of vampire.

My biggest problem with critiquing City !Gangrel vampires is that Obf/Cel/Pro lacks a reasonable amount of win. Looking over the last year of !Gangrel TWDA decks, none of them are really in the City area - some mostly Pro decks, some Enkidu decks, some Una decks, one Country deck etc.

Obf/Cel/Pro isn't great at dealing pool damage. It lacks useful bounce. Bay and Howl is sort of good for bloat, but aggravated damage isn't great for refilling vampires (using Taste), though it does have fairly decent prevent (Leathery Hide). And so on.


What I'd like to do is find a way for City !Gangrel to win, and then design around that. If (for example) those cards tend to trigger more off obf+pro rather than celerity, the vampire designs would need to be radically overhauled. That should probably involve library cards, because those can also help existing City !Gangrel. Good vampire specials are fine too, of course, but it's hard to go back and rewrite existing vampires to include them!

jamesatzephyr wrote:

What I'd like to do is find a way for City !Gangrel to win, and then design around that.

Well, the idea here is to be somehow fearsome in combat (after all, psyche! or blur can work as good support for claw of the dead), or on the other hand being a straight stealth and bleed (with protean and obfuscate, you're very likely to be able to get throught anything wally).

In both part, the absence of bleed discipline make number important, but if the vampires are small enough I belive it can work.

Ohlmann wrote:

Well, the idea here is to be somehow fearsome in combat...

Combat sucks.

Jeff wrote:

Ohlmann wrote:

Well, the idea here is to be somehow fearsome in combat...

Combat sucks.

I don't believe it's a lost cause. In any case, a +1 strength weenie that can blur is often enough problematic, simply because it need less card to do something.

Ohlmann wrote:

Well, the idea here is to be somehow fearsome in combat (after all, psyche! or blur can work as good support for claw of the dead), or on the other hand being a straight stealth and bleed (with protean and obfuscate, you're very likely to be able to get throught anything wally).

Well, the problem here to my mind is that the combat is mildly "trumpy" (as in, it can beat other combat decks) while not being that efficient.

For example, Quick Meld + Claw (for example) can be two blood, but not burn any blood from the opponent (just send them to torpor). Blur + Claw is definitely 2 blood, and only 1 blood lost on your opponent. Both do poorly against the Imbued, and Taste of Vitae is generally hard to profit from. Now, sure, you probably are sending the IG deck to torpor, and you stand a good chance of catching the gun deck and sending it to torpor (hence, "trump" combat). But against your meat and potatoes deck, your resources are reasonably expensive. You can potentially get some blood back from diablerie, but the resources to survive the Blood Hunt don't come for free either.

By contrast, the Animalism wielding Gangrel/!Gangrel deck can play Carrion Crows, go to long with Aid from Bats and be doing three damage for no blood expenditure. that's very efficient short-chain combat that can give you a decent return. Go to a second round (built-in press on Aid from Bats) and you can have a very efficent combat. It's good enough to hurt most people enough.


Now, let's take the following two points together:

Ohlmann wrote:

In both part, the absence of bleed discipline make number important, but if the vampires are small enough I belive it can work.

Ohlmann wrote:

In any case, a +1 strength weenie that can blur is often enough problematic, simply because it need less card to do something.

By focusing so heavily on the vampires, you leave earlier !Gangrel stranded, and require that later !Gangrel also have very strong specials - or are also very small, leading to duplication.

Also, a +1 strength blurring weenie can be quite problematic, yes. Problematic for my opponent, because their vampire goes to torpor a little more easily. But also problematic for me, because that isn't making me oust someone, and I just paid 5 pool for someone who can't play a stealth action modifier to sneak by their blocker when I want to rush a particular vampire, or diablerize a particular vampire, or bleed for 1.


By contrast, a Brujah deck - a clan who are also feared in combat - has tools for ousting people and surviving being ousted. Presence gives them reasonably strong bleed, they have titles for defence (Second Tradition, Parity Shift for bloat), they have offensive vote (Presence for Bewitching Oration). Iron Glare (pot/pre) is pretty nice and versatile. And they have vampires with interesting specials, or a clutch of vampires with off-clan Dominate (bounce, bloat). So they can, and do, put together decks with fearsome combat packages - but they also have a good ousting component. e.g. Guilherme Machado's EuroBrujah TWD from June 2011 - 41 combat cards (+1 Bow), but also 8 bleed, 8 bounce, 10 intercept/wake.

The Nosferatu can do similar - big hits, Carrion Crows, Aid from Bats, whatever you like - but also have options like Nosferatu Royalty to oust, the versatility of Deep Song (rush combat that turns into bleed when you need it, and vice versa), and various similar options. Less straightforwardly defensive than the EuroBrujah, but Animalism has some reasonable walling options.