Gangrel trouble

Old school Gangrel G1-2 is still hoss though. A lot of Euro Gan have dom/DOM, and with all that crazy delivery they're sitting pretty. That and aren't they still up there in TWDA for clan w/ most tourney wins? At one point I thought they were first... Just had a recent looksie, seems a lot of new tourney wins for tier 1 clans in the past 3 years.

Losing out on the Camarilla and Euro-dominate stuff hurt them a lot, though.

For combat, the best I can recommend now, besides avoidance (they have some of the best delivery and avoidance in the game with PRO FOR), the keyword to remember is attrition. Saying that I think, outside of vampires with built-in rush, reactive instead of active combat attrition works better with them. ANI, FOR, PRO doesn't have as many or prominent pro-active combat trumps to support a rush offense (and oddly one of their better reactive helps here is peeking w/ Owl Companion). Press combat is going to be one of the bigger things to focus on.

With Glancing Blow and other prevent sprinkled more liberally about the game nowadays agg-poke has lost a lot of its fear. And the real threat of agg-poke was when you'd diablerie missile a weenie upon a downed victim. Playing the attrition war with agg-poke, instead of being a looming threat, ends up losing its table mystique. As a means to another end, solid to decent, as a means to its own end, like much of combat, not all that worthwhile.

my preferred method of Gangrel combat (other than combat ends) is to use straight up animalism combos to dish out the damage. bats, crows, beasts. then go back to close range and use claws to FINISH HIM mortal kombat style. more often than not, 2 crows + 1 agg will be enough to burn.

claws have gotten worse in the metagame because fortitude prevent has become more common, probably thanks to !ventrue combat decks, but also because it counters Target Vitals. the underrated card Gangrel Revel has become a bit more useful here, giving +1 strength all around to break through casual prevents.

I'd like to agree with that approach, but what do you gain from burning them?
- If you torpor dunk them, you can benefit from Fame, Dragonbound, Carver, Path of Death...a whole bunch of stuff.
- If you burn/eat them with near full blood, you can at least fill up that vamp or all your vamps (ritual o' bitter rose).

I just don't see the benefit of burning somebody with no blood on them.

yesferatu wrote:

I just don't see the benefit of burning somebody with no blood on them.

Being real sure he is gone for good. Destroying people with blood on them is very hard and/or expensive, and with Lillith Blessing, Giant blood, and some other blood pump a torped vampire with 0 blood can still cause you headaches. It's situationnal, but worth it.

(not that claw usually allow that. Without +strength, you can only burn vampire that are on their way to torpor, meaning they were already at 1 blood maximum before)

yesferatu wrote:

I'd like to agree with that approach, but what do you gain from burning them?
- If you torpor dunk them, you can benefit from Fame, Dragonbound, Carver, Path of Death...a whole bunch of stuff.
- If you burn/eat them with near full blood, you can at least fill up that vamp or all your vamps (ritual o' bitter rose).

I just don't see the benefit of burning somebody with no blood on them.

because I'm tired of cross-table meddling that always happens after a 1-agg dunk.
"Can you rescue my justicar, good buddy? I'll even pay both blood"
"Why sure, good buddy, but I want your votes so I can parity shift the evil evil Gangrel combat deck"
"Anything for you, good buddy"

or alternatively, they play Golconda on their torped vampire and act like the whole thing never happened. Info Highway, Zillah's Valley, the same bigcap is back again. this has become pretty common.

if you want to Diablerize, that's good too. but I don't think Claws alone is a good combat strategy to go with Fame.