Weak Clans and How We Can Help Them

!Gangrel : There needs to be a OBF PRO and/or PRO CEL card, something good to make them worth consideration with in-clan disciplines. Speaking of that, they need a consistent crypt that has a steady progression of perfectly normal CEL PRO OBF guys and not this BS where one has THA instead of something, one has ANI instead of something and so on... Better vampires and something to do with the city clan disciplines.

Nagaraja : Well uh. The scarce penalty just should be worded differently. How about when you transfer out a scarce vampire, you have to burn a card from the uncontrolled region? Or whatever. It's not a huge problem because there aren't many Nagaraja anyway.

!Brujah : I think the G4 was awful, and there's still no !Brujah with 5-cap CEL POT pre or 6-cap CEL POT PRE, and still no 8-cap unrestricted rush !Brujah. I think they should get more defensive options that work with the smaller guys, and simply cost-effective good vampires to make them different from the Brujah.

Assamites : Well they aren't bad but it's so odd that you never see combat decks made out of them. Many of the cards should have been just better - Contract shouldn't cost pool, most of the combat cards shouldn't cost anything or should be better anyway... I can't think of anything else but delete and redesign Quietus.

Cam Nossies are doing just fine. Warsaw Station and Deep Song are so good. and any clan that has access to Parity Shift needs no pity.

Nagaraja may be a weak CLAN but they're not a WEAK clan. Aus and Dom are highly respected disciplines all by themselves, even if you ignore the Nec.

you'd think Osebo would be more popular since they're the only Laibon with a bounce discipline. and on paper the Guruhi look like the worst since they have no stealth, and their disciplines don't mix well. but Guruhi seem to be the most popular. pretty strange. I think they're all pretty strong though.

!Bru !Nos and !Gan seem to be the weakest of the main Sabbat clans. I think what the Sabbat really needed was some sect card to assist combat strategies. Probably weenie combat, since that seems to be the Sabbat theme. but for some reason the Laibon got the permanent rush master card first.
(also Courier is a pretty bad card. it costs the same 2 blood as The Embrace but is more fragile and less useful)

Assamites have some really great clan cards, it's just their discipline set that sucks. you can still make an okay deck with them but it's hilarious how the most feared assassins in the vampire world are the worst in VTES combat. maybe if Quietus was designed with something like Catatonic Fear, except with Agg damage? then the only way to avoid it is to fight back with Grapples or something like that, instead of Majestying to safety.

Klaital wrote:

agzocgud wrote:

As far as vampires goes, the only clan the lacks strong vampires imo is the Osebo. Massassi, Homa and Cesewayo are ok, but the rest of them aren´t really that hot. The other Magaji, Kisha and Mamadou are horrible. The guy with +str has inferior celerity and many lack superior disciplines and instead has crappy specials.

With every other non-scarce clan you can build an ok crypt using their clan-disciplines.

The non-scarce bloodline clans could use one more vampire in later groups.

You can build a decent crypt from Osebo as long as you focus mainly on AUS POT and leave celerity as back up discpline. Uzoma, Abiku, Homa, Khalu, Tatu give you fairly nice set of vampires for that. Works best as wallish long range combat deck, increased strengths, lids and gates with extra manuevers from celerity as back up, telepathic trackings for anti s:ce if you feel the need to. Use lots of Ancestor's Insights that doubles as offense and defense, smiling jack and army of rats as the main oust module.

CEL AUS crypt is quite good too.

Massassi, Homa, Titi, that 4 cap with CEL aus, Casewayo, Kabede Maru and that 7 cap Magaji make pretty successfull Osebo deck. Yeah, Kabede Maru is assamite, but he is Magaji with AUS CEL pot and Osebo clan cards sucks anyway. With 6+ magaji in the crypt you can sport no secret from the magaji.

Camarilla Nosferatu are a very strong clan. They vote extremely well, and have a very good lineup of titled vampires. They also do light intercept and good combat.

I'd put the Nosferatu Antitribu as "average" among the Sabbat clans. They have excellent combat, but don't as much to do (unless you go with the strong variety). They can make some pretty interesting Black Hand decks. Information Network and Nosferatu Kingdom are both very strong. Using the Advantage should see more play than it does (I'm surprised no one's tried an Enkil Cog deck centered around stacking copies of Using the Advantage).

On paper, the Brujah Antitribu should be stronger than they are. The problem isn't with their disciplines (the Camarilla Brujah are doing just fine). Normal Brujah do get the benefit of a lot of and lots of good titles for Second Tradition. The Brujah Antitribu can bleed well and vote well and fight well. I'd guess it's either their lack of bleed defense (Vendetta doesn't cut it) or their lineup of vampires.

Many, many years ago the Assamites were terrible. But they're quite good nowadays. Unfortunately, a lot of older players still like to fixate on the "Assamites suck" party line. They can do reasonable stealth bleed with Loss. They have several voting options (Alamut, Black Throne, Teygrius, Amaravati, Anarch stuff including Death Star). They have okay fighting (and are the best at unpreventable damage). They have many good vampires, a lot of awesome clan cards (including weenie swarm Web of Knives), and they also get access to the best of the other sects (a Merged Justicar, 3 Seraphs and 4 other Black Hand vampires, 2 Magaji). I'd hardly say they're suffering.

In theory the Nagaraja should be doing pretty well with their clan disciplines. I think the main problem is that their actual vampires largely suck and don't work well with each other. Le Dinh Tho, Sennadurek, and Anu Diptinatpa are all awesome vampires. Kaniamana Belghazi and Prejudice are just average. Yavu's terrible, Raful, Jozz, and Asguresh lack synergy, and although Veejay is a good vampire he just doesn't work well with the other Nagaraja in his Grouping.

Samedi need help. They don't have much ousting power (other than Reanimated Corpse). With 4 disciplines, it's harder to coordinate with their vampires.

Country Gangrel are usually fine (they play just like normal Gangrel). City Gangrel definitely need help. All of the !Gangrel suffer from issues due to their crypt selection (although they get more crypt cards, the City/Country split still creates issues, especially when several vampires are lacking disciplines). Other than that, the issues are: lack of bleed defense, and not enough ousting power.

Harbingers are okay. They have some pretty good vampires. They're really hard to oust or torporize due to Auspex and Fortitude. They don't have anything too interesting to due (probably because Necromancy is actually kind of sucky other than the action modifiers). Their "best" ousting mechanism is Brinksmanship, which is a bad card (not very interactive with any of the other players).

I think Ravnos are fine. Group 2 is classic Ravnos. Group 4 is different, but not necessarily bad. They have more of an Auspex focus. Or you go the Laibon route which is quite strong. Paul Forrest is ridiculously good. You also have the option, which is interesting.

For the Osebo, Kisha is actually pretty good. Mamadou isn't great, but 7-cap Magaji is hardly terrible. I think their main issue is they don't have enough ousting power, and though they can do intercept/combat, a lot of other clans do it far better (Tzimisce/Ahrimanes).

A couple of people mentioned Nagaraja. Why would a scarce clan have to work well together? But I don't disagree - in addition to great helper vampires like Le Dinh Tho, they need a good clan card or two that you really build a deck around. Something with a burn option or an outferior (clanferior?).

Nagaraja is fine, they just need some decent vampires who share their clan disciplines and they will do well.

They have great G6 vampire (the one who increase bleed), good G5 (who need more crypt choices to perform well, he have one buddy with AUS CEL NEC) and Le Dinh Tho is very good vampire. Other than that, it's necromancy that is lacking, one or two good cards that is not shambling or powerbleed oriented and this clan would do fine.