Den of Fiends starter deck revealed

As is lasombra is trash, too much stealth, Voting unreliable unless there are some crazy new vamps. Definitely will frustrate new players.

jblacey wrote:

A.). The wincons:
1 fame
1 smiling jack
1 dragonbound
1 living manse
4 deep song
4 changeling

I agree that Fame or Dragonbound aren't reliable. Smiling Jack on the other hand always hits your prey first and forces players to get into the Tzimisce attrition game. Fame requires a consistent mechanism to enter combat, which 4 Deep Song is not nearly enough.

Since Jack requires your prey to come back at you to remove it, you don't need to rush vampires. Though coming backward with the Famed vampire is unlikely. Every point of damage you do to your prey's vampires is the same as to their pool when Jack is in play. Perhaps the bigger issue is that you can't get Jack fast enough with this deck.

Mewcat wrote:

As is lasombra is trash, too much stealth, Voting unreliable unless there are some crazy new vamps. Definitely will frustrate new players.

Too much stealth? Not sure, depends if meta in your area run casual intercept. I will say, the Lasombra deck has higher action potency. They have Mylan, KRC +GtU + Conditioning, all of which is pretty reliable if you time it right. Play passive and then lunge. I would like to see more card cycling.

The problem is that Voting is one of the most complex play mechanics. It is a deck type that new players tend to struggle.

Anyway we are slightly off topic, so the Lasombra deck beats this Tzimisce deck every time 1v1.

kschaefer wrote:

Since Jack requires your prey to come back at you to remove it, you don't need to rush vampires. Though coming backward with the Famed vampire is unlikely. Every point of damage you do to your prey's vampires is the same as to their pool when Jack is in play. Perhaps the bigger issue is that you can't get Jack fast enough with this deck.

Sounds like we are saying the same thing. The only Tzimisce deck that I have that runs Fame is a War Ghoul deck. Most of the time Deep Song is only ever used as a reactive rush action. IMHO, If you want a bleed action as a Tzimisce, then Fiendish Tongue is better.

kschaefer wrote:

jblacey wrote:

I agree that Fame or Dragonbound aren't reliable. Smiling Jack on the other hand always hits your prey first and forces players to get into the Tzimisce attrition game. Fame requires a consistent mechanism to enter combat, which 4 Deep Song is not nearly enough.

Since Jack requires your prey to come back at you to remove it, you don't need to rush vampires.

I disagree with both of these. Since smiling jack hits EVERYone at the table, everyone at the table thus has incentive to remove it. Even the owner may get ousted by it if they happen to get bled a lot, thus they may have to remove it themselves. You may end up having to defend it against the whole table.

Smiling jack is not reliable in the slightest. Fame is by far the card that is easiest to make work as intended, as long as you have reliable rushes. This precon doesn't, which was my point. Nothing wrong with fame itself.

The deck should have had army of rats instead, which hits only prey and thus is more reliable, although has weaker effect.

Lasombra have potentially good actions that will be very inconsistent and more stealth than is needed for vote deck. It's just bad