Would like to play: Brujah Undue Influence

Now here is a deck "under construction" of mine: Certainly, to combine Brujah with Undue Influence is in many ways inferior to !Toreador (no bounce, no Art Scam, no +1 stealth or +1 bleed vampire). Therefore I am not really sure about getting this setup "work".
I was also thinking about a New Carthage/Fee Stake angle, but it appeared to complicated to me ... Maybe someone has (also) an idea to that theme.
Thanks in advance for any advice. B)


Deck Name: I would like to play Undue Brujah
Author: Hakuron
Description: Brujah Weenie/Midcap with Undue Influence & Vote

Crypt (13 cards; Capacity min=1 max=7 avg=3.69)
===============================================
1x Allison Maller 4 cel pot pre Brujah:3
4x Anarch Convert 1 -none- Caitiff:ANY
1x Garret 3 pot pre Brujah:4
1x Herbert Westin 5 pot OBF PRE Brujah:4
1x Hezekiah Rutledge 5 ani cel pot PRE Brujah:4
1x Jeremy MacNeil 7 cel chi AUS POT PRE Brujah:3
1x Marguerite Foccart 6 aus pot CEL PRE Brujah:4
1x Marlena 5 cel pre POT Brujah:3
1x Mazz 3 cel pre Brujah:3
1x Sir Ralph Hamilton 6 cel ser POT PRE Brujah:3

Library (72 cards)
==================
Master (16)
1x Anarch Railroad
1x Information Highway
1x Lilith's Blessing
1x Pentex(TM) Subversion
2x Perfectionist
1x Potence
1x Powerbase: Montreal
2x Twilight Camp
4x Vessel
2x Wash

Action (22)
2x Entrancement
1x Fee Stake: Corte
1x Fee Stake: Perth
3x Mind Numb
1x Smash and Grab
14x Undue Influence

Political Action (8)
4x Consanguineous Boon
4x Kine Resources Contested

Action Modifier (8)
4x Iron Glare
4x Power of One

Reaction (6)
2x Delaying Tactics
4x On the Qui Vive

Combat (8)
2x Burning Wrath
2x Immortal Grapple
2x Majesty
2x Target Vitals

Combo (4)
4x Scalpel Tongue

Created with Secret Library v0.9.3. (Jun 5, 2011 12:29:19)

Well I did have a sort of same idea just with Ishtarri
Forced March/Uncontrolled Impulse are a big asset in that kind of deck.

I suggest swapping a Twilight Camp for a Seattle Commitee. I'm not sure about the Immortal Grapples. They indeed could come handy with the Burning Wraths or the Target Vitals. But hmmm.

The rest looks fun. Is it strong? I don't think so because of lacking bleed defence and not many ways of pool generation, although Undue Influence is a kind of of course. I don't think you will win the referendi for the Boons.

You could add Tribute to the Master, but you need the Blood on your minions. Hm.

I would go with either bleed, or vote, and ditch which one you don't want to use. Probably ditch the vote and focus on the Undue bleed angle. Same for combat, decide whether you want to hurt people (grapples) or be defensive (Majesty) and stick with it. Having a Majesty and a T:V in your hand is not much good.

But yeah, !Tore is probably a better bet, although POT gives one interesting angle: you can use Power of One at pot and it doesn't invoke the "cannot use another bleed mod" clause, which means you can stack it with Iron Glare for a Big Honkin Bleed.

Dasein wrote:

I would go with either bleed, or vote, and ditch which one you don't want to use. Probably ditch the vote and focus on the Undue bleed angle. Same for combat, decide whether you want to hurt people (grapples) or be defensive (Majesty) and stick with it. Having a Majesty and a T:V in your hand is not much good.

I second the part about vote *OR* bleed. If you did Ishtarri, you could forced march and do both. Anarch Free Press is an excellent anarch card, a must for any anarch deck IMO. If you did more like mono presence, you could Catatonic Fear + Target Vitals with some Groundfighting if you face grapple very often. Groundfighting could even be used to make sure that combat is at close. Status Perfectus is good for moving a little blood around. If you are doing 12-13 crypt cards, 5-6 should be anarch converts. Nothing sucks worse than having a handful of anarch cards and no anarchs. Bleeding for 1 at one stealth is ok. Bleeding for 2 at 2 stealth via power of one is pretty great. If you can include some casual obt, power of one followed by Catatonic Fear + T:V could really clear the way for the rest of your bleeders. A bleed retainer or two wouldn't be a bad inclusion if you can avoid bounce.

Undue Influence is a great card, but that's mostly because it's a great deal for an inferior discipline. If all of your guys have PRE, I think something like Social Charm is a better card; I mean, contrast:
a) the UI action can't even be declared if you don't have a minion in your uncontrolled region
b) UI is always somewhat irresponsible if bounced.
c) SC doesn't need you to be an Anarch.

So UI naturally lends itself to situations where you have a lot of minions with inferior presence, ties in well with swarm strategies, etc. I don't think it ties in well with votes, as vote decks run on either vampires with built-in titles, who can't play UI, or on 5-caps or bigger with Fee Stakes, and even those have better things to do than play UI.

So I think your deck is setting itself up to fail from the start here. Because you're choosing to play all-Brujah, and because you want to have some 5+ guys in play for Fee Stakes, you are paying a lot more for your vampires than a mixed-clan UI deck would. You do get a couple of advantages out of that:
- POT PRE and access to Iron Glare
- votes, including Con Boon.

However, I don't think it's worth what you're giving up. If you sit down at a table where you can't pass votes, you'll basically end up with a UI deck with a lot of dead cards and where you paid too much for your minions. (Not to mention, UI requires you to draw and play a lot of actions, so jamming on dead vote cards can be really painful here.)

I don't think Iron Glare is great for you either - a prey running bounce will have a much easier time dealing with 1 bleed for 3 at +1 stealth than three bleeds for 1. If they bounce you and use that to oust, that's 6 more pool you have to bleed through.

Overall, I agree with Dasein that you should either be playing vote or playing UI. I don't see a lot of reason to play both. If you stick with the vote side of things, there's a lot of reason to like the Brujah; they have good weenie and, if you pick the right group, decent ways to splash obf. (Herbert Westin is great.) Plus there's some great synergy with New Carthage and Fee Stakes.

On the UI side, the Brujah thing is more of a tough sell. None of the Brujah clan toys synergize well with UI - unlike the !Tor, where Palla Grande pretty much makes the deck. It might be possible to work up something with Black Cat, Laptop Computers, and Heidelberg Castle - but it'd be a lot of work. And, outside of the unreliable Con Boon or maybe Grooming the Protege, I really can't think of a good reason for any UI variant to be mono-clan.