My 1st Deck (Having Never Played VTES)

@ BloodArtist:

I've got the rules down, if not the actual deck construction. My plan was to always play Spying Mission at superior. I bleed for 1: either they let it through and I play Spying Mission to bleed for 3 in the future; or, they block and we go to a very punishing combat for them. I don't know if it's *fast*, probably not, but I purposefully didn't include any actions besides Army of Rats because I don't have the stealth to make the actions succeed, and if you play a card, and it gets blocked, whether you win the combat or not, the card has no effect once your minion is blocked, correct?

I'm tempted to try Animalism combat, but that's a common deck archetype and I'm trying to be creative. ;P

LivesByProxy wrote:

I want the !Nos to work, but I also want it to be a combat deck, because combat decks are 'bad'. I'm not sure which direction I should go though:

Combat decks aren't 'bad' but they are more difficult to make work because of the issue you touched: how to oust.

Is there a reason combat decks don't have better means to oust? I wouldn't want every discipline or clan get get a "conditioning" card, but there's Fame, Dragonbound, and Tension In The Ranks or Camera Phones / Laptop Computers. The !Nos also have Inside Dirt, which is really cool, but it seems like it requires a different kind of deck (not a combat deck). I'm also torn as to whether or not I should be an intercept wall combat deck, or a rush combat deck (with cards like Deep Song.)

Do you mean cards that are not dominate, presence or political actions have poor ousting power? Yeah, welcome to VTES where everyone is fine with dominate being OP.

Options for combat deck oust:
codex of edemic groundskeepers - If prey does not have ready minions, they don't have ready untapped minions. Unique, and thus can be contested.

Fame - one of the best options for rush combat deck oust in my opinion. You can rush, torporize, rescue famous vampire from torpor against their will (nossies and gangrel could do this with stealth) and rush+torporize again for a second hit of 3 pool. Issues: its unique, and can be contested. I'd nearly always run two fames in my rush combat deck.

Anarch revolts with some anarch converts in your crypt - If you rush preys minions away, they don't have anarchs and thus take full damage from anarch revolts. This is a pretty good option out of the "hurts everyone" cards, as players other than your prey can (and usually do) choose to go anarch instead of voting it away. Exception are pure vote decks who have only titled vampires. Its non-unique and spammable. Anarch converts also make your crypt "smaller". Problem: you have to dedicate several masterslots of your deck to it.

Antediluvian awakening - hurts everyone but usually sticks. As in, its difficult to remove. Its unique but never contested. Problems: you need pool gain to counteract it. This is more of a supplementary oust mechanic rather than a main one.

Tension in the ranks - Bad. Unique and non-spammable. Can shoot you in the leg if enemy is better at combat than you are. Does very little actual pool damage which is also heavily conditional. I consider this an extremely poor choice. Oh, and it can ALSO be removed relatively easily..

Dragonbound - When it works, its really strong, when it doesn't... it screws up your game. The absolutely worst part of this card is -handsize. Combat decks want to have as large handsize as possible because you often require multiple different cards in your hand to ensure victory in combat. The drawback is HUGE. However, its very strong when it actually works. If you run this, run minimum of 2 so you can discard dragonbound in the early game and only play it in late game where opponents minions are already in torpor and there is less need for combat. Yet another card that can shoot you in the leg if you lose combat. I refuse to put this in my decks because of the -handsize.

Deep song - If you play nosferatu or gangrel with animalism, you can simply use same cards for both rushing and bleed. I consider this to be a really good card. Drawback: this card cannot rush allies.

Theres not much room to get creative anymore. Mostly its about using a specific star vampire in a unique way, or a synergy between cards, or build a deck entirely around a specific rarely used card (like Whisker built a deck around 419 operation for last summer's ropecon tournament). Combat is pretty much done and dusted at this point I feel..

Why is everyone fine with Dominate being the best bleeding and best bleed defense discipline?

I remember I touched on this in my ReVamping VTES thread, but I don't remember your position.

Also, to anyone who may be reading: What do you imagine 'bleeding' to be? It's said to be conceptually, "the efforts of your minion to undermine the power and influence of the target Methuselah. You might picture bleeding as paying bribes, changing bank records, spreading rumors, etc." We can also write in "spying, computer hacking, legal manipulations", etc. But there are a lot of cards that offer bleed bonuses that don't make much sense to me, thematically. What exactly is "Deep Song" and why does it harm the assets, reputation, property, etc. of another Methuselah?

I'm also intrigued by the ability to burn locations as a form of pool damage, and quite a few vampires and actions have that as part of their ability, but it doesn't seem to be a viable ousting method, or even a supporting strategy. :/

Bloodartist wrote:

LivesByProxy wrote:

I want the !Nos to work, but I also want it to be a combat deck, because combat decks are 'bad'. I'm not sure which direction I should go though:

Deep song - If you play nosferatu or gangrel with animalism, you can simply use same cards for both rushing and bleed. I consider this to be a really good card. Drawback: this card cannot rush allies.

With animalism, you can also use Army of Rats (my favorite card in the game). You'd have to defend it though...

TwoRazorReign wrote:

With animalism, you can also use Army of Rats (my favorite card in the game). You'd have to defend it though...

Not as often as you would think. It's "just" one pool, right? Folks forego dealing with it thinking that forward progress is more important.

LivesByProxy wrote:

Why is everyone fine with Dominate being the best bleeding and best bleed defense discipline?

Excellent strawman argument, as no one said that, ever.
Try to not use logical fallacies to support your arguments, please.