Card idea: Trust no One

Ankha wrote:

Mael wrote:

You cannot block Antonio's special.

He can fetch one useful ally with his ability. That ally has no intrinsic stealth or intercept.

+1 intercept from Unmasking

So now you're talking about a 3 card combo and 2 pool to create a chump blocker/bleeder. They're good and all, but they don't win games on their own.

Sorry to disturb, but I've seen many times a Nephandus deck win. They can lock down completely some decks (1 stealth vote, or decks without strong combat. TV doesn't work against them), and they bleed as swell as a vampire swarm.

2 pool for an ally with 2 life and no manuever or dodge, I wouldn't actually call that terribly strong. Anything that can fight even a bit is going to kill them without much trouble.

You're forgetting one of the major advantages of a Nephandus:
1R strike
All damaging strikes deal 1 less damage (so the ol' 1-hands + TV does nothing).

Admittedly in my deck, I'm trying to make up for the lack of maneuver by Biothaum Experiments (for the durability of the BioThaum). It's a great grinding deck that if it can get itself up and running with enough allies (also uses Impundulu, Succubus, Rafastio, Greg Winter & Talaq) it will keep at least one player constantly hunting and with a Restricted Vitae it can lockdown two players. Which is how it gets its 3VPs or 0VPs.

I would recommend using IR Goggles over Biothauma, gives you the same manuever and costs nothing.

IR Goggles
Can be stolen
Can be broken

Biothaum
Once it's on, it's on.

Klaital wrote:

Ankha wrote:

Mael wrote:

You cannot block Antonio's special.

He can fetch one useful ally with his ability. That ally has no intrinsic stealth or intercept.

+1 intercept from Unmasking

So now you're talking about a 3 card combo and 2 pool to create a chump blocker/bleeder. They're good and all, but they don't win games on their own.

Sorry to disturb, but I've seen many times a Nephandus deck win. They can lock down completely some decks (1 stealth vote, or decks without strong combat. TV doesn't work against them), and they bleed as swell as a vampire swarm.

2 pool for an ally with 2 life and no manuever or dodge, I wouldn't actually call that terribly strong. Anything that can fight even a bit is going to kill them without much trouble.

So now you're talking about a 3 card combo and 2 pool to create a chump blocker/bleeder. They're good and all, but they don't win games on their own.

Good grief... Did you people EVER run into Nephandi at all? You are apparently forgetting they have an improved version of the War Ghouls prevent 1 damage each round, strike at range and also have a press. To top it off they can actually bleed too AND can eat vampires in torpor. How is 2 pool not a good deal? It's a freaking *AMAZING* deal. As added bonus they come for a clan that has dominate in-clan and can field a 5-cap vampire that recruits without you being able to stop it *in any way*.

Also, we already established that "anything that fights back" kills allies. In fact, we have already established in dozens of threads that stuff that kills vampires stops most decks from doing anything. Allies die easier than vampires, so OF COURSE combat will stop Nephandi. Anyone that ever played a tournament knows that Nephandi kill anything that doesn't fight and get killed by anything that fights. Of course then we get to the topic where combat isn't a very consistant and viable way to win lots of games and is therefore usually a bad choice for tournaments, bringing me back to my original points that not having tech to counter allies is actually not really a choice in the deck itself, but more a result of what deck you are playing. Ergo, allies are obnoxious to deal with from a deck design point of view which was pretty much the first thing I posted in this thread.

The goal of V:TES is to get a gamewin. To do so you need to oust 2 people. Making people miserable and unable to play the game is NOT the goal of V:TES. The "cool" thing about Nephandi is that they make people miserable AND actually consistently win games. Unlike War Ghouls and Garous.

Good luck reliably pulling that off in turn 2. If you can build a deck to do this, I'll happily let you have your Garou.

Garou decks are *designed* to do just this. Chandler comes up in turn 1 and puts a Garou into play in turn 2. By the time you have your first minion, the guy playing Garous will have 3 of them on the table. If you don't play prevent or serious hitback, your game is over. You may want to blare over the TWDA and check out the (few) Garou decks that won tournaments. Cos, ya know, as I said Garous only tend to kill vampires instead of pool.

Yes I have ran into Nephandi, last time it was with my Samedi ally deck that smashed the nephandi with shambling hordes, and reanimated corpses with walking sticks, actually. Antonio's special is nice but its not that uber because if you are using it then that means you aren't bringing out any vampires so its a trade-off, also you can stop it by beating/banishing Antonio. Even if you have no way to kill or steal them, they still only bleed for 1, if your deck can't either kill them or outpace that then there is likely something wrong in your deck to begin with.

All good combat decks have a decent ousting module. For example, my !brujah rush deck has 8 legal manipulations in it in addition to 3 fames, 2 tensions, and a dragonbound. I have also won a tournament with a multirush deck with no other forward momentum than bleeds for 1 and fame/tension. So please don't go making generalizing statements like 'combat can't win'.

You are wrong about garous, they tend to kill pool very fast, your own pool that is. 5 pool for an ally that gets one shotted by target vitals is a serious egg basket. Yes if you happen to be in a table where nobody can fight, then you will be strong, but even just a splash of target vitals will kill garous, they are by far the most fragile of the combat allies, in addition to being the most expensive.