The Black Fist

Well I was thinking over different kind of variations for cryptic mission after a conversation with someone about the topic, and eventually came up with this which looks somewhat workable, though this is fairly rough draft so probably could use some tuning up! Well anyway, feel free to let me know what you think and any possible suggestions you might have. Idea is to to bring out guys cheap with reunion kamuts, then get all kinds of attrition allies and throw horseshoes to wear people down, also doing some pool damage to prey in the process with tension, fame, and dragonbound. Then bleed with rubrics and codex for lots when the time is right.

Crypt:
2x Beatrice "Oracle171" Tremblay
2x Roger Farnsworth
3x Nails
3x Teresita, the Godmother
2x Tarbaby Jack

Library: 90

Master: 20
2x Archon Investigation
1x Charisma
3x Dominion
1x Dummy Corporation
2x Fame
1x Nosferatu Kingdom
2x Remover
1x Retribution
1x Tension in the Ranks
1x The Admonitions
1x The Barrens
2x Watchtower: Four Ride Forth
2x Wider View

Action: 24
2x Black Hand Ritual
10x Horseshoes
10x Reunion Kamut
2x Tattoo Signal

Action Modifier: 18
8x Cloak the Gathering
5x Faceless Night
5x Veil the Legions

Ally: 8
1x Carlton Van Wyk
1x Gregory Winter
1x Impundulu
4x Marijava Thuggee
1x Young Bloods

Combat: 6
6x Thrown Gate

Conviction: 1
1x Strike with Conviction

Equipment: 2
1x Codex of the Edenic Groundskeepers
1x Guarded Rubrics

Event: 2
1x Dragonbound
1x Narrow Minds

Reaction: 9
3x Touch of Pain
6x Truth in Ink

I can see the idea.

I can also see it won't work in its current incarnation.

Your gameplan:

- bring out Minions with Kamut
- torp stuff with Horseshoes, do some collateral pool damage with Fame etc.
- bleed with Codex and Rubrics

You can't do (2) before finishing with (1) and you can't start doing (3) before finishing with (2). Without any significant source of untap (1 Seraph, 2 Tattoo signals in 90 cards, no Seraph's Second) this is going to take forever. The game doesn't last forever.

Furthermore there is 32 ation cards in your deck. Thirty-two. Do you, realistically think you will ever get 32 actions in a game? I'm sure you will not. A 2-hour game goes 12, maybe 13 turns at most. You can't do anything in turn 1 and turn 2. At three actions per turn (and that's already stretching it) it ends at 30.

Not that you will even make turn 12, because you have no pool defense. Whatsoever. Not even a wake, so I'm not sure what the reaction cards are good for. You're going to stay untapped, cutting even more into your already limited amount of actions?

Suggestions:

I play Black Hand tech a lot. Frome experience, you need loads of untap sources for Kamut + something else to work. Teresita comes with fortitude and thus with Freak Drive. Use it. Play Seraph's Second. Add Jalan Ayev. He comes with POT FOR, is also Seraph, allows a second tattoo signal in play so the two Seraphs can untap eachother. With that and 5-6 Freak Drives, you just about doubled the amount of actions you have available. Ditch the Black Hand rituals and make your entire crypt Black Hand. Replace with two extra tattoo signals. Oh and also fork in 5-6 copies of the best Black Hand card in the gane: Art of Memory.

Figure out some defense. Media Locations and Carlton go a long way.

Overhaul your master selection. You will probably want some perfectionists to get the most out of your actions and some permanent poolgain. Trash Charisma, Dominion, Remover amd all the cute flavor masters and replace with Blood Dolls and/or Vessels. Add an Info Highway to be able to transfer back 3 after a double Kamut.

Downsize the deck to 75-80 cards. Start with removing most allies. Especially the Thuggees. They won't do anything good for you. then get rid of either the steatlth or the potence combat. Given the theme, I'd say stick with the potence, although you will probbably need some stealth, so keep some cloaks and veils.

Izaak wrote:

Start with removing most allies. Especially the Thuggees. They won't do anything good for you.

You lost me here.

The thuggee is a way to accelerate the part 2 and 3 of the plan, work pretty well with the intercept location you want to add. In fact, they are one of the main concept of the deck, and one of the reason to use black hand in the deck at all. Clearly, a part of your reasoning escape me.

The thuggee is a way to accelerate the part 2 and 3 of the plan, work pretty well with the intercept location you want to add. In fact, they are one of the main concept of the deck, and one of the reason to use black hand in the deck at all. Clearly, a part of your reasoning escape me.

The Thuggee costs 2 pool to recruit. Pool you cannot really afford to spend. He does not work well with Media Locations because he should never be untapped. You trade 2 pool and an action for the ability to inflice 1 damage on a minion. At 0 stealth.

And then he needs to take his card text action *3* times to be a better used action than just another Horseshoes. If you include the turn you recruit it, that's 4 turns to make it better than just playing a Horseshoes. That's almost half the game! And that's before taking opportunity cost and card slots into consideration.

Sure, given infinite and a harmless predator, Thuggee's are excellent. In a deck that struggles with staying alive and having enough forward momentum to get VPs before someone else already won, it's not such a great idea.

Concerning this:

and one of the reason to use black hand in the deck at all

At 4 slots in 90 cards, it seems a stretch to say they are the main reaosn to use Black Hand at all. Judging from the decklist, the Black Hand angle seems to be Reunion Kamut (good reason!) and Truth in Ink (not so good reason). The strengths of Black-handness are, IME, Art of Memory and Reunion Kamut. It seems logical to capitalize on those.

Izaak wrote:

At 4 slots in 90 cards, it seems a stretch to say they are the main reaosn to use Black Hand at all.

I don't believe the importance of a discipline / sect is represented by the number of their card. To take another black hand example, you can use only 4 tatoo signal and still have the card extremely important. (the fact that for you they are not important is dully noted )

Izaak wrote:

Judging from the decklist, the Black Hand angle seems to be Reunion Kamut (good reason!) and Truth in Ink (not so good reason). The strengths of Black-handness are, IME, Art of Memory and Reunion Kamut. It seems logical to capitalize on those.

Well, the original decklist could hope to just replace the reunion kamut by govern. Lasombra and giovanni have both dominate and potence, and replacing the obfuscate stealth by some other solution seem definitively doable. Using FoS and Brujah seem possible too (enchant instead of reunion)

So, in short, it's black hand for :
* Reunion Kamut, a good card who have a lot of other equivalent
* the thruth in ink / Touch of pain / Archon angle, who have the major downside of being near useless if your predator kill you with something else than bleed (Touch of Pain is far from being enough against vote, you would need more of them, poison pill and/or a lot of pool gain)
* the thugee, cheap minion that kill thing
So, the thugee is arguably one of the argument of being black hand at all for me.

(but, yes, you are right in that you need smallish BH vampire that multi act to use efficiently the thugee)

I think that the deck lack direction, in that reunion kamut, thugee / horseshoe, and touch of pain shenanigan all are action-intensive, even if they do work well with one another.

I think you are confusing black hand ritual to blooding or something? Black Hand Ritual doesn't make anyone black hand, it blows up annoying events like anthelios or unmasking. Everyone in the crypt (except Beatrice of course) are black hand already.

There is 32 actions yes, but most of those 32 actions actually give me more actions, either by becoming new minions (the allies), granting extra actions (signal), or helping me get more vampires out cheaper and faster (kamuts). Don't forget Thuggees can also bleed so they are basically like 2 cost vampires with obf and built-in horseshoes at basic.

Also you say there is no pool defense... what do you call the truth in inks, dummy corp, AIs, Carlton and all the attrition allies? Those can be used backwards too you know. All of the reactions just require me to leave one guy untapped, either with tattoo signal or watchtower.

Jalan-Aajav is a 9 cap without obfuscate, would seem like rather bad choice for this deck, I could put in Wah for 4 pool less if I wanted a POT guy without obfuscate. Dominion and Remover are kind of a key to the whole deck, Dominion combos perfectly with the whole blood denial aspect, remover makes it harder for people to block all those 0 stealth thuggees mentioned above, as well as enables the +bleed from codex more easily.

I do agree with you though that some more pool gain in the deck would be good, could probably take out the AIs which are bit situational and charisma which isn't really better than some actual pool gain in this deck, maybe black hand rituals also. But the question is then, what pool gain would be good? Blood Dolls would need some blood gain added also to be really useful, info highway or couple might be good with all the kamuts and kingdom already in there, maybe second kingdom also. Couple tributes could perhaps go in to give 3-4 pool with mpa.

EDIT: Ohlmann, there is one very important difference between Reunion Kamut and govern/enchant/etc. Which is that Kamut does not have a capacity restriction, like Piotr Andreikov could do kamut on Marthe Dizier in your inactive. Which allows you to always bring out whoever fits your transfer number at start most, instead of the biggest one, and then just start kamuting.