The Cryptic Treaty

brandonsantacruz wrote:

The corruption angle is totally superfluous to this deck. Temptation + cryptic mission is a combo, but with only 7 corruption cards in the deck they will most likely not make a significant impact.

You should read the whole description provided of how the deck works.
Hint:

Revelation of Desire
You cannot play another action modifier to increase this bleed amount.
[ser] +1 bleed.
[SER]Burn one of your corruption counters from a minion controlled by the target Methuselah to get +3 bleed against that Methuselah.

Basically you run a medium setup-phase where you get out 2 or 3 vampires, any allies you draw and deploy 1 or 2 corruption counters on your prey. Then you basically make light bleeds, just to draw reduces and flicks or test their defences in general. Then you wait for them to be tapped out, or near tapped out, at which point you take some non-bleed actions (aiming to tap your prey) and bleed them as hard as you can.

I've gotten up to a total bleed of 15 through on a single turn with a tapped out prey (Remember Gregory Winter can bleed). I borrowed his own Gratiano, which luckily for him, he blocked or it would have been an oust. Got him later anyway.

Juggernaut1981 wrote:

Edited the original deckpost... because of brain explosion or a possible old version.

Awesome. Now, remove 20 or more cards from the "4x" and "6x" and "8x" entries and you'll have a deck worthy of the inclusion of 6x Ashur Tablets, and they'll logically fit, too.


Kevin M., Prince of Las Vegas
"Know your enemy and know yourself; in one-thousand battles
you shall never be in peril." -- Sun Tzu, *The Art of War*
"Contentment...Complacency...Catastrophe!" -- Joseph Chevalier
Please visit VTESville daily! vtesville.myminicity.com/
Facebook: www.facebook.com/groups/129744447064017

Kushiel wrote:

brandonsantacruz wrote:

The corruption angle is totally superfluous to this deck. Temptation + cryptic mission is a combo, but with only 7 corruption cards in the deck they will most likely not make a significant impact.

You should read the whole description provided of how the deck works.
Hint:

Revelation of Desire
You cannot play another action modifier to increase this bleed amount.
[ser] +1 bleed.
[SER]Burn one of your corruption counters from a minion controlled by the target Methuselah to get +3 bleed against that Methuselah.

Ok, so maybe it's not *completely* superfluous, merely plain superfluous. Sundervere can bleed for three without playing a card and the other doods have dominate and presence. I'd focus on keeping him (and the methuselah controlling him) alive more than building conditional +bleed in a deck that should have no trouble bleeding to begin with. The six copies of Treaty could be obfuscate or presence skill cards and function better. He also forgot Heidelberg, which would work well with Lilith's Blessing. The copies of Tribute to the Master should be blood doll. I really shouldn't have even started picking this deck apart. Now look what you made me do!

Revelation of Desire
You cannot play another action modifier to increase this bleed amount.
[ser] +1 bleed.
[SER]Burn one of your corruption counters from a minion controlled by the target Methuselah to get +3 bleed against that Methuselah.

There is this card that requires an in-clan discipline of the Tremere you're using that does the same except that it doesn't need setup.

I certainly like Cryptic Mission with Serpentis trickery, but I don't think this deck is actually going to do it. Cryptic Mission + Temptation / Form of Corruption certainly is a combo, but for cryptic mission to be sufficiently threatening you need to play a lot more of them and use a lot smaller vampires.

@Brandon:
+3 bleed guaranteed to only work on the target I choose. So if my prey flicks, it drops by 3 bleed... safe bleeding. I'm no longer going to spuriously oust people cross table by mistake because I'm using or bleed cards/modifiers. Sure, it's not Spying Mission... but it does well enough. Don't want to use Lilith's Blessing, everyone else is running up that river; it's boring. Heidelberg might be worth including, but honestly I've decided it probably isn't. Remember, this deck isn't about the more usual method of constant bleeds for 2+ or 3+ but instead waiting for the right moment and trying to slam in around 10+ of bleeds to try get the oust.

@KJM: This deck tends to cycle fast enough that its size almost neccessitates keeping that many copies. But I don't mind the idea of trialling it in a lower-copy format.

@Izaak: That card works on EVERY Methuselah. Revelation of Desire works only on the Methuselah who previously had the corruption counter. So I don't have to worry about big bleeds being flicked around the table... because it's only a big bleed on ONE methuselah, not every Methuselah.
And I'm not trying to reduce vampires to 0 blood over and over again like a classic Cryptic Mission Deck... I'm using Cryptic Mission as a +1 stealth D-Action.