Card ideas to help bruise

I don't understand the argument. It's more or less "since you play combat, you will be able to reduce every ennemy minion to bloody chunk". That's simply not the case : in general, you will be able to dunk one, maybe two important vampire. To avoid bleed, you must take care of every single minion with or . Which isn't doable everytime, and should not be doable on a regular basis.

The idea is to disable minions which main goal is to deflect, not every single minion. As bleed redirection is very good, it's very often seen that players are splashing small vampires with DOM/dom or AUS just to be able to put some deflection or telepathic misdirection into the deck. In such cases it's very easy just to kill those minions and then bleed.
Other very often seen situation is to leave one minion with dominate untapped for deflecting bleeds and tap all the other to do some actions. In this case it's as well good situation for combat deck. Prey can of course play some wake, etc. but this require more defensive cards and if you add narrow minds to the deck it becomes even harder to defend against your bleeds
Of course there are situation when you came across ventrue grinder sitting with all his DOM AUS minions untapped and waiting to bounce and it would be almost impossible to go past him without killing all his vampires, but that's fine.

And to compound the problem, when you destroy one or more minion, your main problem is that you stop the offensive of the targeted deck, but more rarely its defence.

As offensive and defensive capabilities of the deck come usually from minions, killing them decreases both offense and defense.
This is true for whole vtes and it's one of the hardest thing to master. It's same for non combat decks as well. Playing banishment, mind rape, etc. has similar effect like combat. Doing pool damage often means that your prey has to stay untapped to defend, so it's offensive capabilities are decreased in some sense and less pool means that your prey can't afford to bring more minions into play or play cards like Pentex which very directly decreases its offensive capabilities. You always have to think about it playing vtes, not only combat. With combat it's just harder to do it right, as your actions have greater impact on others and there is usually much more decisions to take than with ordinary s&b.

alek wrote:

As offensive and defensive capabilities of the deck come usually from minions, killing them decreases both offense and defense.
This is true for whole vtes and it's one of the hardest thing to master. It's same for non combat decks as well. Playing banishment, mind rape, etc. has similar effect like combat.

This is important point. But I don't agree that combat should be only about minion control by rushing. It can used bit similar as stealth also: to make your bleed actions succeed. That makes also games more interesting and lets everybody to play their decks.

I want to think what other roles combat could have than just pure rushing minion control. Idea of those bleed cards is use combat as threat for prey: take the bleed or face the combat.

Do not forget that vtes is about talking and making deals and one of the greatest strenghts of combat deck is ability to blackmail other players. If you don't want to kill the minion which is going to deflect you can always say that you'll kill him if he don't let your bleed in. It can work wonders in defense as well. I saw a lot of games when combat player blackmailed other players in such a way that all his predators were afraid to do any offensive actions against him and his prey didn't defend at all against his bleeds up to the point when he has to because those bleeds would kill him.
It's very strong position comparing to other decks which often have to give something to get something back. Combat deck can just "do nothing" to get something back thanks to threats it can do.

alek wrote:

Do not forget that vtes is about talking and making deals and one of the greatest strenghts of combat deck is ability to blackmail other players. If you don't want to kill the minion which is going to deflect you can always say that you'll kill him if he don't let your bleed in. It can work wonders in defense as well. I saw a lot of games when combat player blackmailed other players in such a way that all his predators were afraid to do any offensive actions against him and his prey didn't defend at all against his bleeds up to the point when he has to because those bleeds would kill him.
It's very strong position comparing to other decks which often have to give something to get something back. Combat deck can just "do nothing" to get something back thanks to threats it can do.

I see talking and making deals super important with every deck types and whole game. It is important part of game. But I don't see why good table talking skills should be requirements to play one deck type well when you don't need special skills to play other decks good. Also many other decks offers good table control like banishment, mind rapes, marionettes,etc. (some could even argue better than combat). So I don't see table talking so special part of just combat deck, should be important part of every deck.

I can understand you can make your prey accept to go to 10 or 12 pools, since she will not be that threatened yet. But, card knowledge problem notwithstanding*, how can you actually score a VP by convincing your prey not to deflect ? By bullying your grandprey into deflecting to your prey ? It seem highly situational at best

* I had already scored VP because peoples weren't knowing what Walk of caine do (I.E. letting a blood brother bleed pass while having 6 pool). I don't expect this to a regular occurence, and if it is, it's sad.

But I don't see why good table talking skills should be requirements to play one deck type well when you don't need special skills to play other decks good.

First I think talking and deal making is required if you want to be succesfull in vtes in a long term no mather what type of decks you are playing. You don't need it more for combat. In case of combat it can just give you more than with other decks.
One think I agree is that combat requires more skills (not only talking, but all the other) to play than other archetypes. I don't now if it's good or bad, it's just suited for more experienced players and I don't think we should try to change as the game is perfectly balanced at the moment.