Hektor-Armin !Brujah+FOR

My solutions are not so costly in blood.
-prevent cards actually make you gain blood.
-perfect paragon is for stealth or 2 more blood with voter cap
-decapitate costs 2 blood I agree. In the other hand the minion burned will not make you loose any blood or pool anymore.
the cost of freak drive always worth it.
Preternatural only cost 1 blood. If you fear that you can't afford heroic might, change it by a second preternatural strenght.

In my opinion, with the 4 dogs of war + 1 templar and abbot+eternal vigilance stuff, you will loose a lot of blood in combat. So, you should add permanent cards of prevention like guardian angel and kevlar vest.


This deck does not need armin brenner to work well. Carolin bishop is a very good idea. I don't lke pug jackson when I play private audience;) .
fortitude master are critical because of superior forced march and superior freak drive.

Thanks for the advice. Ditching Armin and making Hektor sole star of the deck would save some early pool which is usually the weak spot, so I would not have to rely on Minion Tap/Villein for getting out of early slump. If I can afford keeping him near-full until I am comfy, then blood cost ain't that bad. Cheers!

This is how the deck should look like after the tweaks:

Deck Name: Hektor leads !Bru to war!
Author:
Description:


Crypt (Capacity min=3 max=10 avg=6.67; 12 cards)
===================================================
1x Armin Brenner 10 ani obf CEL FOR POT PRE !Brujah:4
2x Caroline Bishops 3 cel for pot Pander:4
1x DeSalle 7 CEL POT PRE !Brujah:4
4x Hektor 9 for CEL POT PRE QUI !Brujah:4
2x Miguel Santo Domingo 7 cel for POT PRE !Brujah:3
1x Patrick 4 pre POT !Brujah:4
1x Smash 3 pot pre !Brujah:4

Library (90 cards)
=====================
Master (22 cards)
1x Creepshow Casino
1x Fame
2x Fortitude
1x Gang Territory
1x Giant's Blood
2x Guardian Angel
4x Legendary Vampire
1x Monastery of Shadows
1x Perfectionist
6x Villein
1x Wider View
1x Yawp Court

Action (6 cards)
2x Abbot
2x Eternal Vigilance
1x Heroic Might
1x Preternatural Strength

Political Action (12 cards)
2x Banishment
4x Dogs of War
5x Kine Resources Contested
1x Templar

Equipment (2 cards)
2x Kevlar Vest

Action Modifier (27 cards)
1x Enkil Cog
6x Forced March
3x Freak Drive
5x Iron Glare
2x Perfect Paragon
4x Private Audience
6x Voter Captivation

Combat (19 cards)
3x Decapitate
3x Disarm
5x Immortal Grapple
2x Rolling with the Punches
2x Skin of Steel
2x Soak
2x Unflinching Persistence

Combo (2 cards)
2x Resist Earth's Grasp

Created with Secret Library v0.9.4a. (Jan 20, 2013 11:50:46)

That is a quite good version of the deck.
Now you have to test it.

For a second version, I really think this kind of deck works better if reduced at 75-80 cards.
How about :

-1 wider view
-1 giant blood
-1 fame
-1 yawp court


-1 kevlar
-1 dogs of war

-1 freak drive or forced march
-1 iron glare
-1 voter cap

-1 decapitate
-1 grapple

+1 dreams of the sphinx

total 80 cards.

Testing this version is the hard part .

I don't have Monastery of Shadows, Heroic Might, Pretenatural Strength, Villein and Enkil Cog, some of the others I can afford to buy, but these are rather costly. I could borrow some from my playmates if they would be so kind as I saw all of them in play except Monastery, but I would not take it for given. I have already aranged to borrow Villeins, for others I would need to find some temporary replacements until I can borrow them/VTES becomes print-on-demand. Replacing Heroic Might and Pretenatural strength might be toughest. Probably Bundi will have to do for now...

Bundi

[Equipment] Equipment
[2 Pool]
Melee weapon.
Strike: hand strike at +1 damage. (This strike is both a hand strike and a melee weapon strike). Bearer may prevent 1 damage from each melee weapon strike made against him or her.

And I still would like to keep Yawp Court because Legendary Vampire and Dogs of War can be easily removed via regular Political Action and 5-vote Hektor is nowhere enough for vote-lock. Grand prey does not like Legendary Hektor. If Hektor goes irresponsibly bleeding for 5, quite often all he can offer instead of bleed is 1 agg damage, which more often than not means torpor for unprepared grandprey. I am not that much worried with Dogs of War votes, since I usually offer not to attack my prey/predator with it if he/she decides if it will go through.

kombainas wrote:

Probably Bundi will have to do for now...

At this point, just put nothing. Bundi are way too expensive for what they do, plus they can be disabled, stolen, or destroyed.

I thought I'd give some feedback, since I bought majority cards I needed to make the mechanics work like intended. This is the current version with minor adjustments:

Deck Name: Hektor leads !Bru to war! v2
Author:
Description:


Crypt (Capacity min=3 max=10 avg=7.08; 12 cards)
===================================================
1x Armin Brenner 10 ani obf CEL FOR POT PRE !Brujah:4
2x Caroline Bishops 3 cel for pot Pander:4
1x DeSalle 7 CEL POT PRE !Brujah:4
5x Hektor 9 for CEL POT PRE QUI !Brujah:4
2x Miguel Santo Domingo 7 cel for POT PRE !Brujah:3
1x Smash 3 pot pre !Brujah:4

Library (90 cards)
=====================
Master (25 cards)
1x Amusement Park Hunting Ground
1x Black Forest Base
1x Creepshow Casino
1x Fame
2x Fortitude
1x Gang Territory
1x Giant's Blood
2x Guardian Angel
1x KRCG News Radio
4x Legendary Vampire
2x Perfectionist
6x Vessel
1x Waste Management Operation
1x Yawp Court

Action (7 cards)
2x Abbot
1x Aranthebes, The Immortal
2x Eternal Vigilance
1x Heroic Might
1x Preternatural Strength

Political Action (9 cards)
1x Ancient Influence
2x Banishment
4x Dogs of War
1x Reins of Power
1x Templar

Equipment (2 cards)
2x Flak Jacket

Ally (1 cards)
1x Mylan Horseed (Goblin)

Action Modifier (19 cards)
6x Forced March
3x Freak Drive
4x Iron Glare
2x Private Audience
4x Voter Captivation

Combat (22 cards)
2x Amaranth
2x Decapitate
2x Disarm
4x Immortal Grapple
2x Rolling with the Punches
2x Skin of Steel
4x Slam
2x Soak
2x Unflinching Persistence

Combo (5 cards)
4x Resist Earth's Grasp
1x Scalpel Tongue

Created with Secret Library v0.9.4a. (Feb 21, 2013 20:26:31)

I playtested it three times:
a) 1v1 vs !Malk light stealth bleed;
b) 5 player table with speedy heavy S&B Kyasid deck
c) 7 player table with same Kyasid deck as my prey and Auspex anarch weenie as my predator

In case a) it took almost all deck to pull through. I decided to add Waste Management Operation+Aranthebes to save Iron Glares and hope for my predator to shuffle them back into the deck. Even if my pred would not do that, additional intercept would be just as good.

In cases b) and c) I almost did not cycle my hand to get a feel what would work and what would not, so I was playing sub-optimally.

In case b) I influenced Hektor and suicided, since I was left with 3 pool by that time. Oh well, most can't handle bleed for 6 early on.

In case c) I felt pathetic. I had only 4 Hektors and neither Hektor or Armin (there were two of them) were in my starting crypt. Since My predator's predators were imbued sitting tight, my pred did not have any bleeds to bounce on me, so I decided to look for Armin/Hektor. Hektor was my 6th vampire and I influenced him and Caroline. My pred had Sniper rifle, which negated any attempt of mine to pool gain (I had Black Forest Base out) and I could do nothing about it. I made a deal with my pred to allow me to banish one of my preys vamps and put on Dogs of War under condition I would not rush him with it (fair deal, always works). The sad part was Hektor could not do shit, since he had to stay untapped to discourage bleeds on me and even whenever I managed to get a bleed through it was always for 1, since I never saw an Iron Glare and my Legendary Vampire did not pop into my hand when the timing was right.

Bottom line of c) case that I felt pathetic bleeding for 1 and hitting for 1. I could not even finish my prey off when he was on 3 pool and could not take down Sniper rifle even though I had 2xResist Earth's Grasp to press and have a maneuver in the second round as well. As a result I lost potential 8 pool from Black Forrest Base because I could not get PAs through, never beld more than one. Burned one of my preys vamps and banished another with 1 blood. Sent to torpor 3 weenies of my predator. 0 VPs, second to be ousted despite my prey being targeted by me, it's prey and grandprey.

As a conclusion I found that:
- Aranthebes+Waste Management Operation should be kept and 4xLearjet brought back to sculpt the hand I need.
- I need 6-8 Slam's for early carnage and additional maneuvers
- Add 5th Hektor, replace Smash with Urraca (1 vote and eligible for Legendary Vampire, useful conditional +1 bleed, no for though) and Crusade: Rome. Votercaps are useless without more votes (even if my allies would help to get PA through, they would not allow poolgain)
- remove Flack Jackets (should have been Kevlar Vests), just not worth the action with for/FOR around.
- tool up works just fine, what is lacking is early edge both to attack and defend, should be fine with Slams back in. Perhaps replacing all vote-modifiers with Iron Glare would be good as well.
- Black Forest Base is awesome ^^
- Multiple Dogs of War which are easy to get through table dealing is wothwhile when Hektor Amaranths someone.
- there will not be Enkil Cog+Monestery of Shadows here, I can't afford them ;(