Ishtarri Bamba Rush

How do you intend to oust?

Bleed bleed bleed.

How do you intend to keep from being ousted?

Rush. Familial bond works great to discourage those pesky heavy bleeders.

What do you want your ready region to look like (ie, how many guys are you planning on getting out)?

Ubende followed by Ganhuru and a splash of Bambas.

What do you want your average turn to look like?

Get Bamba out, rush if I can, otherwise - bleed like there's no tomorrow.

What's your metagame like? How do your opponents play?

Quite varied, though somewhat low on dedicated combat now and high on dirty tricks.

What problems have you observed with the deck in play?

I have no experience in building Embrace style decks, so I want to give this a try. I have tried a similar deck with same tag team and in general a need of low cap vampires was felt. cel-for guns work well, as well as Dawn Op.

I'd like to trim this to 60 cards, if possible just to feel the basis of the deck and where the balance should lie. Any suggestions?



Deck Name: Ishtarri Resilience
Author:
Description:
Watch out for the cardflow!

Crypt (Capacity min=3 max=7 avg=6; 12 cards)
===============================================
2x Abu Nuwasi 3 cel for Ishtarri:4
2x Elizabeth Conde 5 pre CEL FOR Ishtarri:4
4x Ganhuru 7 cel pro FOR PRE Ishtarri:4
4x Ubende 7 for obf qui CEL PRE Ishtarri:4

Library (75 cards)
=====================
Master (25 cards)
4x Celerity
1x Dreams of the Sphinx
4x Fortitude
1x Giant's Blood
2x Glutton
2x Ishtarri Warlord
1x Pentex(TM) Subversion
2x Perfectionist
1x Port Hunting Ground
1x Powerbase: Luanda
1x Powerbase: Tshwane
4x Vessel
1x Wider View

Action (7 cards)
4x Bamba
2x Despiral
1x Rapid Healing

Equipment (6 cards)
6x .44 Magnum

Ally (1 cards)
1x Informant

Action Modifier (3 cards)
2x Dawn Operation
1x Uncontrolled Impulse

Reaction (6 cards)
3x Familial Bond
3x Terra Incognita

Combat (27 cards)
6x Concealed Weapon
4x Flash
4x Projectile
4x Psyche!
4x Skin of Steel
5x Undead Persistence

Created with Secret Library v0.9.4a. (Sep 7, 2013 21:43:06)

kombainas wrote:

How do you intend to oust?

Bleed bleed bleed.

Your bleed potential is abysmal. As your prey, I'd ignore you.

How do you intend to keep from being ousted?

Rush. Familial bond works great to discourage those pesky heavy bleeders.

You have one master card with which to rush. Take that away (doesn't come up, gets cancelled, gets stolen), and you have zero rush that I can see.

What do you want your average turn to look like?

Get Bamba out, rush if I can, otherwise - bleed like there's no tomorrow.

You only have four Bambas, that's not remotely consistent. There's certainly going to be no tomorrow as the deck can't defend itself from any sort of vigorous strategy.

What problems have you observed with the deck in play?

I have no experience in building Embrace style decks, so I want to give this a try. I have tried a similar deck with same tag team and in general a need of low cap vampires was felt. cel-for guns work well, as well as Dawn Op.

This is not an Embrace style deck. This is a deck with a few babies, to where you can expect about one in play on average before being ousted. Then, you are taking up a bunch of slots to have two disciplines when either mono-Celerity guns or mono-Fortitude sticks would be much less awkward.

Dawn Op is terrible in this deck as I don't see any reason to block the deck's actions.

I'd like to trim this to 60 cards, if possible just to feel the basis of the deck and where the balance should lie. Any suggestions?

Babies can certainly give permanent help to 60 card decks. But, you need far more of a coherent plan as to how to oust and prevent being ousted.

This deck has no powerful plays on either offense (substantial bleed, bleed vote, Fame + whatever) nor defense (bounce, meaningful intercept, bloat). As for Familial Bond as defense, what if I'm a vote deck? What if I tap your guys out? What if I play enough combat ends that you never meaningfully hurt me, which could be something like eight combat ends cards given how sketchy the combat is in this deck? You also gain nothing from fighting except praying you can take someone out - no Fame, no Taste of Vitae.

To be any sort of combat threat, you need a .44, which means spending two pool to upgrade a fragile dork, who may just get Scourge of the Enochiansed away before it gets a second skill card.

Ishtarri rush, if that's the intent, is quite difficult without running 25 master cards where 8 are skill cards, without having essentially no rush, and without spending pool on a deck with no meaningful defense.

Ishtarri horde would be better with voting and Con Boon to provide some survivability.

Lean Ishtarri with a splash of babies should see more permanent power and more game influencing effects or see a bunch of Ashur Tablets to recycle transient plays.

1x Rapid Healing

Before putting in cards to mitigate failure, put in cards that help success.

4x Projectile
4x Skin of Steel
5x Undead Persistence

Projectile is awful. This deck archetype can't afford to be playing awful cards that aren't essential to the deck's personality. Undead Persistence is more preparing for failure rather than figuring out how to succeed - you can't actually afford to have some minion with a .44 getting torped in this deck.

As for Skin of Steel, what damage prevention cards to play are extremely metagame dependent. You said you had a varied metagame. Skin of Steel is highly inflexible. It's good against Potence, maybe Protean. It (rarely) saves someone against Blur. It's awful against Animalism, which is what I'd expect to see most often these days. The blood cost is not friendly, and (along with a bunch of other damage prevention cards) is a handjammer against dodge and combat ends (and Theft).

Yes, I'm being highly critical. But, I don't see a viable deck here. What I see is an attempt to mash together Ishtarri combat, which has a lot of challenges, with playing a specific crypt and playing a few babies. I would look to redefine what is essential about the deck. If it's supposed to be Bamba rush, I'd go with Haven Uncovereds, Frontal Assault, and some sort of mono-discipline strategy that doesn't involve spending pool, such as a .44 strategy does.

i think the best option would be to try it in a test game B-) ,but given its configuration ill give my honest opinion.
1)I don't think it doesn't have enough ousting power, its main focus is bleed but you don't have enough bleed cards or permanents. In a 75 card deck you only have 2 despirals and you cant really fuel it, if your looking for the extra actions afforded by glutton to fuel the card, you only have two and easily removed. And each time you increase the bleed of despiral, it becomes progressively higher cost in blood. You don't have a reliable blood gain mechanism to fuel this combo.
2) You have too many master cards, mainly too many master discipline cards. Stick to vamps which afford you superior on one and then pack master discipline cards for where you are deficient.
3) You don't have a reliable way to enter combat with your opponents. 1 Powerbase Luanda in a 75 card deck will never be enough. Add more rush cards or permarush like Haven although the latter i would like to avoid as you have too much masters as it is.
4) You dont have any stealth considering your main focus is bleed, pack uncontrolled impulses and cel stealth cards. Resist earth's grasp is very versatile offering stealth or maneuver with press. You will get blocked and this would probably be the only time you could play concealed and magnum but most decks can take a lot of the damage you can dish out as you dont enough blure/addtional strikes to really knock out vamps. Psyches are okay but not enough to fuel this kind of exchange.
5) It seems there is lot of pool/blood intensive actions or master costs, 1 Powerbade Tshwane would not be enough, i would suggest maybe a procurer or two aside from the hunting ground.

I hope i didn't give any offense in my suggestions, and i genuinely hope it helped.
I've done a red list ishtarri deck before so i know where your coming from,it was okay when you manage to set up and put down the trophies esp. domain and hunting ground, but sadly it loses out due the lack of the clan being able to intercept actions and because i ended up with a 90 card bulky deck with a flaky card draw system.
Id like to commend you for choosing a difficult clan to play, kudos in trying to make it work.
Id like to see you perfect this deck, as it brings variety in a deck populated with too many dominate stealth bleed decks.

Make your bleeds count -- Despiral is a start, but use some Social Charm or Legal Manipulations or Enchant Kindred and a few Entrancement. A couple of Aire of Elation, too, to create at least the threat of heavy bleeds. That'll get your prey to block you when they can.

4x Forced March 2x Freak Drive are probably worth fitting in.

A few Haven Uncovered and a few Fame are definitely worth fitting in.

Lose Projectile. Lose Undead Persistence (maybe keeping just 1 for a surprise). Replace them with stronger or more versatile cards. I'd also go with Rolling with the Punches or Hidden Strength over Skin of Steel.

Figure out what you want the Bambas for, then adjust proportions to try to make that happen.

"Before putting in cards to mitigate failure, put in cards that help success." This is exactly right.

Make your bleeds worth blocking, make your rushes actually meaningful, and rethink defense.

Bamba oit of a magagi is ok, but really you need big celerity to be a good combat threat, pre to bleed, or fortitude tokeep guys alive. So, im unconvinced of the current angle. Maybe making fortitude bambas, running persistant stick traps, and rushing with them, and using bleeds of one as a last resort would work, or maybe have some pre bambas to bleed and with big vamps with guns.

Either way, id reconsider how to oust and survive. Major boon, AI, dummy corp, are all good at defending. Maybe drop some skill cards for sanguin instruction if you pack some forced march freakdrive stuff.

Theres alot of theory that cant happen the way you want in this deck.

First, I think Shasa Abu Badr is a good addition for ability to bleed with presence. You need more presence bleed action so people will block. If they bounce, so what, you are not bleeding at stealth.

kombainas wrote:

Action (7 cards)
4x Bamba
2x Despiral
1x Rapid Healing

I think you need around 7-8 Bamba before you can consider it "an embrace-style deck." Aside from more PRE bleed actions, more rush actions would help.

kombainas wrote:

Action Modifier (3 cards)
2x Dawn Operation
1x Uncontrolled Impulse

I think you are trying to use Dawn Op with Bamba, why not use change of target to cut down defense against your heavy presence bleeds? Uncontrolled impulse goes well with forced march for good first action stealth (Like bringing in a Bamba!)

kombainas wrote:

Combat (27 cards)
6x Concealed Weapon
4x Flash
4x Projectile
4x Psyche!
4x Skin of Steel
5x Undead Persistence

I think you are hoping to use Undead Persistence to trade a Bamba for a big vampire by having them end up in torpor. I would go with change of target, presence bleed cards, forced march or other FOR cards instead. Projectile could be removed for 4 pursuit (or more flash). It really sucks to be a CEL deck that is outmaneuvered (it always makes me very sad).