Defense Vs Fatty Vampire Bloat?

Lönkka wrote:

Villein is all good IMO.
Perhaps it could be errated to "You must move 2 or more blood" so you couldn't play it if the target has 0-1 blood. But even that ain't critical.


If legion of fatties is causing you problems you should adjust your playstyle/deck building a bit to be able to counter that problem.

One great anti-fattie card I failed to mention is Fear of Mekhet.
Which obviously don't work against everyone...

Before lilliths got banned, I'd listed a deck out where I could get out Hardestadt, Saulot, Fakir, and Eleimelech, tool up, block stuff, and occasionally eat people once playing Fueled by heart's blood.
The deck reliad on increasing capacity to 12 with lilliths to govern/scout down to increase speed, so is done for, but the fact that it's gone makes simply stupid things like that no longer a playable crazy thing.
What I see now is less pool if your vamps aren't drained, which is way more balanced.
Remember when everyone played weenie animalism for like 3 months? Eventually the meta shifts to compensate and rebalances.

Fear of mehket is a good card, if often forgotten.

brandonsantacruz wrote:

You are correct, Rev, I was asking about play style (e.g. deckbuilding, including rush, etc). Erratas and bans are an unrelated subject.

It sounds like the consensus is that combat and master cards are the best anti-fatty strategies. The Banishment strategy was an interesting touch, but would require having an 11+ cap to be very reliable and then contend with other votes. Sensory Deprivation is a solid choice, although it wouldn't have worked vs Mark's turbo deck because he did not have to be untapped to bleed, plus his brother's Unnamed deck was infernal. Mark also played a Lucian, The Perfect deck that nearly killed me in the final of the tournament I won due to it's massive bleeds. Archon Investigation would have been a good answer to that and would have at least slowed down his TWD. Regarding Voter Cap, either DI or DT seem like a good answer, unless you happen to be playing the cornercase Final Loosening.

Thanks for the input guys!

So I play IRL weekly and on Lackey as well and I definitely think that decks with higher cap can vamps and Villeins are more prevalent, but, as someone said here already, I think that is by design, and is a good thing. I personally think Villein opened the game up to many other deck types with big cap vampires who are a lot more versatile and so allow for deck building of a much wider breadth of interesting strategies to be successful. I play star vampire decks usually, just because that is my style, and I love having guys that can do a bunch of cool things. I think the banning of Lilith's Blessing and Anthelios made Villein more balanced and far from being an overpowered. It is an excellent card, but definitely not overpowered, and responsible for making this game more rich and interesting. Big caps are definitely still more risky, since losing your star still usually means you lose the game. Both the Semi-Turbo Capuchin deck and the Lucian, the Perfect deck I played at the tournaments were very vulnerable to Pentex (which I had on Lucian in the finals and which kept me from winning that tournament) and Rush combat (especially ally rush combat, since I had 0 combat cards and my only defense was Obedience), but I was lucky enough that the tournament lacked those types of decks. If I had a War Ghoul, Hordes, or Renegade Garou deck on my back, or if the 1- cap weenie vote deck played was ever my predator, I would have been toast.

So to answer the questions from your original post (and to recap what others have sugggested):
1) yes, I think that large vampire decks are more prominent now than they were a few years ago, and thankfully so.
2) and 3) There are several good ways to compete against these decks, including: Brainwash (boy do I hate that card), Pentex, Sudden, Archon Investigation, DI, Fear of Mekhet, Rush combat (especially with allies or agg damage), swarm of weenies, Sense Dep, Spirit Marionette, and guys/cards that inflict damage or remove blood. Justicar Retribution is another one not mentioned yet. So I think there are plenty of ways to beat these kinds of decks.

I think it would be interesting to hear people's ideas on what strategies beat weenie (1-4 cap) swarm decks, since I am much less familiar on what works against those (other than Scourge, which doesn't work against 3 and 4 caps). Guys?

mjvtes521 wrote:

I think it would be interesting to hear people's ideas on what strategies beat weenie (1-4 cap) swarm decks, since I am much less familiar on what works against those (other than Scourge, which doesn't work against 3 and 4 caps). Guys?

Generate lots of table hate and ridicule the person playing weenies so they stop. Barring that, Aranthebes, Gran Madre Dio, Scourge, and Neonate Breach.

As an aside: It seems to me the only reason weenie decks don't get played all the time by everyone is because (1) they're easy to operate (bleed, bleed, bleed) and people get bored with such a straightforward strategy, and (2) other players will call it "cheese".

mjvtes521 wrote:

I think it would be interesting to hear people's ideas on what strategies beat weenie (1-4 cap) swarm decks, since I am much less familiar on what works against those (other than Scourge, which doesn't work against 3 and 4 caps). Guys?

Aranthebes, the immortal became a staple for a bit.
Snipe Hunt is loads of giggles.
I used Atonement with AUS malks and neighbor John before, it's alot of blood against many decks, but if you get the intercept and have a 44/sniper rifle it's quite brutal how dangerous you make a weenie decks forward actions.
Against weenie AUS the cards that tax blocking are fun (especially the aching beauty, Crocs tongue change if target combo).
Trainer is strong to oppose weenie animalism.
Of course No Secrets is good against many weenie strategies as well.

I'd say the most solid way to Trump weenies is Tension, as I've done more pool damage with that than Fame against some weenie decks. Along with tension is of course fame (you torp and rescue and retorp for the classic "fame yo-yo") and dragonbound is sweet late game as well.
Also the "burn a pool for every minion you control" vote.

I feel weenies were such a threat for so long that ways to not die to them also have popped up often.

TwoRazorReign wrote:

mjvtes521 wrote:

I think it would be interesting to hear people's ideas on what strategies beat weenie (1-4 cap) swarm decks, since I am much less familiar on what works against those (other than Scourge, which doesn't work against 3 and 4 caps). Guys?

Generate lots of table hate and ridicule the person playing weenies so they stop. Barring that, Aranthebes, Gran Madre Dio, Scourge, and Neonate Breach.

As an aside: It seems to me the only reason weenie decks don't get played all the time by everyone is because (1) they're easy to operate (bleed, bleed, bleed) and people get bored with such a straightforward strategy, and (2) other players will call it "cheese".

Do I recall correctly that you actually played two-player VtES instead of multiplayer?

If yes, then I won't use the "I don't know what your meta is like" clause, but around here everyone and their moms started including one copy of Anarchist Uprising and Ancilla Empowerment in their decks. I really can't understand why people haven't used those since the beginning of time. Maybe because Villein sped decks up so much that those votes actually target correct players presently?

I even started including one of those in decks that don't play votes as much. Everyone wants that weenie animalism or any breed deck out of the picture. Everyone not playing one that is.

Those two are such strong cards, and I use them more than a Kine personally in vote decks.

That said, weenie strategies have really fallen out of favor in our meta. Not unplayable. But people cope.

Same can be done if you're not feeling that fat cap jazz. Of course you'll have to be able to find some friends on the table to put an equal amount of pressure on those fatties, and if your table plays only their game without understanding the deck power balances, then that's a problem.

But yeah. Very good options stated already. Of course some of those hate strategies take out from the forward-momentum and oust power of decks, and that makes stuff tricky.

Back in the days I knew the tables were dominated by bleed and vote decks, with almost no combat at all (animalism was out of style at that time), and I brought a Al'Muntaquim multirush deck to Ropecon, a very major tournament. Did a mistake on 2nd table and didn't back-oust, and didn't get a full suite of 3 GWs. Finished the tournament 6th or 7th, can't remember, and dodged the finals. It was really effective back in the days though. It literally ate up big cap fatties.

@Kraus,
One of my greatest "bteam" accomplishments ever was with my Anson deck against an Al deck; drew Jimmy Dunn, parmaneides, Sara Brando, and Volker. Parm managed to torp Al of my prey when he only had half his hat on, so to speak, and I actually got the vp from a combat deck that could've steamrolled me. Good times...