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DEFENDING WITHOUT BOUNCE (November 1st, 2005) Article for VTES by Ben Peal, US National Coordinator |
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Way back in 2001, I was fed up with bleed bounce, as I felt it was making a basic element of the game - bleeding - into a joke. In my efforts to find a way to defeat bounce, I ended up building Short Leash Bleed - a stealth-bleed deck that uses Change of Target and intercept locations to minimize the effects of bounce. The deck carried me to victory in four tournaments, including the 2001 North American Championship. Between Change of Target and Spying Mission, the problem of bleed bounce in terms of offense is largely mitigated.
Defensively, however, bleed bounce still poses a problem. It's easily the most card-efficient form of defense in the game. With one card, you stop a bleed action against you. What's more, you gain another action by having that minion bleed someone else. With Deflection at superior, you gain yet another action (in a manner of speaking) by remaining untapped to block or react again. Bleeding is also far and away the most common form of offense (actions taken that directly eliminate your prey's pool), mainly because bleeding is a cardless action and meaning that the opportunity cost is therefore extremely low. As a result, you can put together most of your defensive package simply by including eight copies of Deflection in your deck.
However, you can only use bleed bounce if you have access to those disciplines, so where does that leave clans without access to bounce? Conventional wisdom says that clans that don't have bounce available through in-clan disciplines typically don't have access to enough intercept to viably defend against archetypes that use stealth as a delivery system (that which gets your offensive payload to succeed). This is one of the main reasons why clans such as Gangrel, Gangrel-antitribu, Assamites, Brujah-antitribu, Nosferatu-antitribu, and Followers of Set aren't particularly feared in the tournament scene. Another reason is that they often lack other viable defensive alternatives, apart from bolting on Dominate. Some deck archetypes have alternate defensive options, such as upstream rush by weenie combat or bloat by the Consanguineous Boons of a Legacy of Pander deck or the Tributes to the Master of a Ravnos Clown Car deck. However, the question still remains: how does one defend themselves without bounce?
A couple of years ago I decided to explore this question, mainly to satisfy my own curiosity, but also in part because I felt I'd been using a bolt-on Deflection module as a crutch. This endeavor happened to coincide with the playtesting of Anarchs, and for that I had built a deck that attempted to exploit Nosferatu Bestial, which in playtest was non-unique. The deck I had built involved a bunch of Bestials and a ton of Raven Spies and Murders of Crows, and proved to be obnoxiously effective. When Anarchs was released, however, Nosferatu Bestial became unique. I was still intrigued by how effective it was to get lots of Raven Spies in play quickly, and set about modifying the deck. The defensive requirements for the deck were to be able to shut down stealth-bleed decks, weenie bleed decks, and weenie vote decks. Stopping stealth-vote decks would be a big plus.
The result was a group 2-3 Obf-Ani weenie deck with 18 Raven Spies, as well as intercept locations, Dummy Corporations, .44 Magnums, 6 Blood Dolls, and a lot of Obfuscate stealth...oh, and 9 Wake with Evening's Freshness and 9 Forced Awakening. A key defensive theory of the deck, largely based on my own experiences using stealth-bleed decks, was that getting 2 or 3 permanent intercept on one or more minions could greatly slow down the offensive rate of a stealth-bleed predator. Hopefully the offensive rate would be slowed such that a predator would have to wait to stockpile stealth in his or her hand before taking a bleed action, allowing time to recoup the pool lost in the early to middle parts of the game via Blood Doll farming (you can't expect to stop everything, especially early on). In the late game, the efforts from the Blood Doll farming are to shift from defense to offense, spending the pool gained on more vampires.
A few explanations about some design decisions are probably in order. I opted for the .44 Magnums instead of Murders of Crows because I wanted the maneuver to protect the vampire and because the vampires would already be spending a fair amount of blood on Raven Spies. I also included some IR Goggles and some Leather Jackets for protective reasons. The hope was that they could avoid a lot of close range damage, and if they ended up in torpor anyway, another weenie could rescue them. In addition, I felt I'd want the offensive benefits of .44's instead of the much more solid defensive ability of Sniper Rifles. As for the 9/9 split of Wake and Forced Awakening, I initially wasn't quite sure which I wanted more, but felt that it was a reasonable compromise between card cycling and blood loss avoidance. In practice, I've ended up liking the mix for this deck. As for the quantity of untap in the deck, I know that 18 untap cards seems like a lot - well, it _is_ a lot - but I figured that given that I'd be spending so much time turning my guys sideways for equipping and hunting, a jacked-up amount of untap would be needed.
For about a year and a half, I tried out the deck in casual games and tournaments wherever I went. In practice, the deck proved to be rather effective, though very slow offensively. It made the final rounds of tournaments at Origins and DragonCon, though it couldn't quite get the job done in the finals. However, I was heartened by the fact that the defensive strategy was working, and that the deck was showing a lot of promise in tournaments, and with the 2005 Qualifier season coming up, I figured I should give the deck a shot in a Qualifier. After getting wrecked in the finals by the maneuvers of a Cel-Pot close range fight deck of Eric Chiang, and seeing that the stealth was doing its job offensively, I decided that it was time to switch from .44 Magnums to Sniper Rifles. I also added the new Carlton Van Wyk and a few Instinctive Reactions. The result was winning the East Central Regional Qualifier in 2005. Its predator was an Obf-Dem stealth-bleed deck.
Here's the deck:
Deck Name: Nevermore
CRYPT (12 cards) [avg=3.92]
1 x Christianus Lionel (6): OBF ANI pot 1 x Nigel the Shunned (5): ANI POT obf 1 x Cicatriz (5): obf ani pot 1 x Josef (4): obf ani obt 1 x Shannon Price, the Whisperer (3): obf ani 1 x Calebros, The Martyr (5): ANI obf pot 1 x Gemini (5): OBF ani pot obt 1 x Laurent de Valois (4): obf ani dom 1 x Clarissa Steinburgen (3): obf ani 1 x Krid (2): obf 1 x Panagos Levidis (3): obf ani 1 x Hanna Redmonds (2): obf tha
LIBRARY (90 cards)
1 x Shanty Town Hunting Ground 1 x Information Network 1 x The Labyrinth 1 x Nosferatu Bestial
1 x The Barrens 1 x KRCG News Radio 1 x The Rumor Mill, Tabloid Newspaper 1 x Dummy Corporation 6 x Blood Doll 6 x Life in the City
1 x Carlton Van Wyk (Hunter) 1 x J.S. Simmons Esq. 1 x Tasha Morgan 3 x Sniper Rifle 2 x .44 Magnum 2 x Leather Jacket 2 x IR Goggles 9 x Wake with Evening's Freshness 9 x Forced Awakening
1 x Forgotten Labyrinth 1 x Elder Impersonation 3 x Spying Mission 4 x Swallowed by the Night 2 x Lost in Crowds 4 x Cloak the Gathering 3 x Faceless Night 3 x Domain of Evernight
15 x Raven Spy 4 x Instinctive Reaction
The Nevermore deck wasn't the only deck I was working on at the time. Another one was something I simply called The Ecstasy Deck, which was a Settite stealth-bleed deck that had 25 or so copies of Ecstasy for defense, built under the "I seem to own a whole lot of this card" design strategy. ;) While it obviously banks on having a bleeding predator, it's pretty savage to such decks, causing them to periodically pause to hunt, giving you some extra time to recoup lost pool. It can be frustrating for your prey, as well, since they can't take advantage of bleeds bounced to them that they could bounce as well. It hasn't shown itself to be super amazing; mainly because of the opportunity cost of its defense (though it did make the finals of the DC qualifier in 2004), but maybe with some tweaking it could make the leap.
Here's the deck:
Deck Name: The Ecstasy Deck
CRYPT (12 cards) [avg: 4.25]
2 x Hesha Ruhadze (6): SER obf pre ani 1 x Ezekiel, Lord of Montreal (6): SER PRE obf pot 2 x Dedefra (5): SER obf nec 1 x Count Ormonde (5): OBF ser pre dom 1 x Nepata (4): ser obf pre 1 x Khalil Anvari (3): ser pre 1 x Celine Chevalier (3): ser obf 1 x Lalitha (2): ser 1 x Mirembe Kabbada (5): SER PRO ani 1 x Julius (1): ser qui
LIBRARY (90 cards)
1 x Temple Hunting Ground 1 x Opium Den 2 x Priestess of Sekhmet
1 x The Barrens 1 x KRCG News Radio 2 x Dummy Corporation 4 x Blood Doll 1 x Sudden Reversal 1 x Direct Intervention 4 x Serpentis
1 x J.S. Simmons Esq. 1 x Tasha Morgan 6 x Leather Jacket 3 x Delaying Tactics
5 x Clotho's Gift 4 x Spying Mission 5 x Swallowed by the Night 5 x Lost in Crowds 5 x Cloak the Gathering 5 x Faceless Night
2 x Form of Corruption 25 x Ecstasy
5 x Legal Manipulations
Summon the Serpent might be a better option than Clotho's Gift, but the lack of inherent +1 stealth is a real pain. Another option is to replace Clotho's Gift with Waters of Duat, and find room for about 4 more Serpentis skill cards. The Priestesses of Sekhmet can go, though it was fun to try them out. Given that the Obfuscate is typically at the inferior level in this deck, I'd like to find room for 4 copies of Domain of Evernight. Crocodile Temple seems like it could be really nasty in combination with Ecstasy, since even if a bleed is reduced to 0, the action is still successful. A copy of Aranthebes wouldn't hurt, either.
Another deck I put together was a Gangrel-antitribu deck that attempted to take advantage of the local metagame in Boston. At the time, Ben Swainbank was terrorizing us with his latest assortment of toolboxy decks, but I noticed that he was taking advantage of the fact that we weren't seeing much stealth-bleed or Grapple combat. I guessed that Ben (and the rest of our group) was ripe for getting abused by Earth Meld and some stealth-bleed action in an upcoming local tournament, and I was keen to try out Neighborhood Watch Commanders, which were recently released with Gehenna. I went with a somewhat similar defensive package, using Sport Bikes, Mr. Winthrop, Aranthebes, intercept locations, and 12 Forced Awakening. Instead of the weapons, I chose to rely on Earth Meld and Form of Mist, with the Neighborhood Watch Commanders exacting their toll on incoming minions. Ironically, I never faced Ben Swainbank in a predator-prey situation, but I had guessed the metagame right, as other opponents fared poorly. In the finals, it came down to a climactic showdown between this deck and a Scott Gomes' Toreador-antitribu Embrace weenie deck; with my Gangrel-antitribu having just enough untap to shut down Scott for the win.
Here's the deck:
Deck Name: Your Friendly Neighborhood City Gangrel
CRYPT [avg=4.33]
1 x Zachary (7): PRO OBF CEL pre for 1 x Pieter (6): PRO OBF tha for 1 x Darrell Boyce, Consul (6): PRO OBF CEL 1 x Harry Reese (6): PRO FOR obf cel 1 x Skryta Zyleta (5): CEL pro obf pot 1 x Maria Stone (5): FOR pro obf cel 1 x Wren (4): pro obf cel 1 x Max Lowell (3): obf cel 1 x Sadie (2): pro 1 x Daliyah (4): PRO obf 1 x Chandler Hungerford (3): PRO 1 x Huang, Blood Cultist (1): pro
LIBRARY
1 x Campground Hunting Ground 1 x Twisted Forest 2 x Shadow Court Satyr (Changeling)
1 x The Barrens 1 x KRCG News Radio 1 x The Rumor Mill, Tabloid Newspaper 1 x Pentex (tm) Loves You! 5 x Blood Doll 1 x Direct Intervention 2 x Sudden Reversal 4 x Protean 1 x Creep Show 1 x Rebel 1 x Curmudgeon
4 x Neighborhood Watch Commander 1 x J.S. Simmons, Esq. 1 x Mr. Winthrop 3 x Sport Bike 1 x Laptop Computer 2 x Atonement 1 x Aranthebes, The Immortal 12 x Forced Awakening 2 x Poison Pill
12 x Earth Meld 10 x Form of Mist
3 x Lost in Crowds 3 x Cloak the Gathering 3 x Swallowed by the Night 2 x Spying Mission 2 x Faceless Night 1 x Forgotten Labyrinth
2 x Flash 2 x Rooftop Shadow
Yeah, I know, I know, it obviously needs The Unmasking. :) I'm also not fully confident in its ability to handle a dedicated stealth-bleed deck, as its intercept, while good, is fairly light. However, I'm very confident in its ability to handle weenie and breeder decks, between the 12 Forced Awakening, 12 Earth Meld, and Aranthebes. Also, the archetypes in there were a cute experiment to see how they'd work out, and they can easily be replaced with just about anything else - maybe Elder Intervention or Phased Motion Detector.
After winning the tournament in Boston and the qualifier in New Jersey with no-bounce decks, I felt that my mission was accomplished and it was time to move on to other decks - namely the Burn Option tech I wrote about earlier for this site. However, when Kindred Most Wanted was released, Phased Motion Detector intrigued me, as it was another intercept equipment option to go along with Sport Bike and Bowl of Convergence. I had also taken a shine to Magic of the Smith, and eventually the light bulb in my head went on and got me thinking about a weenie Thaumaturgy version of the Nevermore deck. I used the Nevermore deck as a template, with equipment and Magic of the Smith matching the equipment and Raven Spies, and Thaumaturgy combat cards matching the Obfuscate stealth cards. For equipment, I went with Sport Bikes, Bowl of Convergence, Phased Motion Detectors, IR Goggles, and Sniper Rifles, with 10 copies of Magic of the Smith to pick and choose what I needed and getting them in play at +3 stealth. Since I wasn't going to use Life in the City or Instinctive Reaction, I felt I had about 10 or so cards that I could use at my discretion, so I opted for some transient Auspex intercept. I opted not to split the untap cards, instead using 18 Forced Awakening, since I figured I'd recoup the blood through Theft of Vitae and since I figured the card cycling would be important for drawing into the transient Auspex. The crypt wasn't entirely to my liking, since I felt that superior Thaumaturgy was mandatory, which meant that the average crypt size was going to be about a point higher than that of Nevermore. I ended up going with group 2-3 Tremere and Tremere-antitribu, going as high as a few 6-capacity vampires.
Testing it out in our weekly Boston games, it proved to be awful. The defense worked out great, but the offense just wasn't there due to the size of the vampires. I just couldn't get out enough guys to have a credible offense. I ended up biting the bullet and replacing the 6-caps with smaller vampires with inferior Thamaturgy, including a copy of Fidus, The Shrunken Beast. I also threw in a copy of Tremere Convocation to help out. The results were immediate: a game win in its first test game. At the Week Of Nightmares this year, I used it in a multideck tournament. I won the tournament, and the only games I won (including the finals) were with this deck. I've since made a slight adjustment, adding in Pier 13, Port of Baltimore, as I've found it to be annoying to draw into key things like a Sniper Rifle, only to see it blocked because I only have 1 stealth on that action.
Here's the deck:
Deck Name: Machine Shop
CRYPT (12 cards) [avg=3.42] 1 x Aisling Sturbridge (5): AUS THA dom 1 x Cohn Rose (5): THA aus dom pre 1 x Blythe Candeleria (3): THA aus 1 x Masika St. John (3): THA 1 x Martin Frankel (3): AUS tha 1 x Hannigan (5): AUS THA dom 1 x Richard Tauber (4): AUS tha 1 x Brooke (3): tha dom 1 x Heinrich Schlempt (2): tha 1 x Jacob, The Glitch (2): THA 1 x Fidus, The Shrunken Beast (4): for tha vis 1 x Magdelena Schaefer (2): THA
LIBRARY (90 cards) 1 x University Hunting Ground 1 x Spirit Summoning Chamber 1 x Chantry 1 x Tremere Convocation 1 x The Barrens 1 x KRCG News Radio 1 x Channel 10 1 x Smiling Jack the Anarch 6 x Blood Doll
1 x Ivory Bow 2 x Sniper Rifle 1 x Pier 13, Port of Baltimore 1 x Bowl of Convergence 3 x Sport Bike 3 x Phased Motion Detector 2 x IR Goggles 18 x Forced Awakening
1 x My Enemy's Enemy 2 x Eagle's Sight 2 x Enhanced Senses 2 x Spirit's Touch 2 x Precognition 2 x Telepathic Misdirection
10 x Magic of the Smith 10 x Apportation 10 x Theft of Vitae 4 x Blood Fury
The combination of the successful templating of the deck style, drooling over Magic of the Smith, and the adjustment of adding Pier 13 got the gears turning again. I started looking for other ways to apply the template, and found that there are a bunch of options - but first the template:
LIBRARY (master) 1 x Hunting Ground 1 x The Barrens/Dreams of the Sphinx 1 x KRCG News Radio 1 x Channel 10/Rumor Mill 6 x Blood Doll 4 x <OPEN>
(minion) 23 x Equipment/Retainer/Fetch
18 x Untap
11 x <OPEN>
24 x Delivery System
The <OPEN> slots are for discretionary cards, based on what clan and/or disciplines you're using. The "Fetch" cards include cards like Magic of the Smith, Pier 13, The Summoning, Muricia's call, and maybe Pack Alpha and Jack of Both Sides. The "Delivery System" cards are for your delivery system package, be it stealth or combat. I recommend staying focussed with the delivery system package, as you'll have plenty of toolboxiness in your equipment package. This template is also not set in stone - modify it as much as you want or need to based on your local metagame or personal preference and/or experience. I didn't really use much in the way of scientific methodology in making it, but rather just based it on my own experiences and hunches. A great example of this is in the split between Wakes and Forced Awakenings that I often use. There might be a "right" answer, but the 9/9 split seems to be working well for me.
Now for application! One plan is to use Settites with Thaumaturgy, with the same equipment package as the Machine Shop deck (10 Magic of the Smith plus identical equipment). Instead of the Auspex intercept for the 10 discretionary cards, I include 10 copies of Canopic Jar, which get placed on the vampire with Pier 13 every turn.
Here's the deck:
Deck Name: Magic Jar
CRYPT (12 cards) [avg 4.33] 3 x Qufur am-Heru (7): OBF SER PRE tha cel 3 x Samat Ramal-Ra, Archon (6): OBF ser tha pre 1 x Nepata (4): obf ser pre 1 x Celine Chevalier (3): obf ser 1 x Lalitha (2): ser 1 x Hanna Redmonds (2): obf tha 1 x Krid (2): obf 1 x Basil (1): obf
LIBRARY (90 cards) 1 x Temple Hunting Ground 1 x Opium Den 2 x Waters of Duat
1 x The Barrens 1 x KRCG News Radio 1 x The Rumor Mill, Tabloid Newspaper 2 x Dummy Corporation 6 x Blood Doll 2 x Effective Management
1 x Carlton Van Wyk 3 x Sniper Rifle 1 x Pier 13, Port of Baltimore 3 x Sport Bike 2 x Phased Motion Detector 2 x IR Goggles 1 x Aranthebes, The Immortal 9 x Wake with Evening's Freshness 9 x Forced Awakening
3 x Spying Mission 4 x Swallowed by the Night 4 x Lost in Crowds 4 x Cloak the Gathering 4 x Faceless Night 3 x Domain of Evernight
10 x Canopic Jar
10 x Magic of the Smith
I've only played Magic Jar once in a casual game, but it got 2 VP despite not drawing into Magic of the Smith or Pier 13 until the 27th card. One adjustment I'd make is to find room for one or two copies of Form of Corruption, since that card does an excellent job of slowing down your prey. Canopic Jar has a pair of subtle benefits that I noticed. One is that it's effective for blocking against both stealth and combat, since you can burn it to end a rush action against you. The other subtle benefit is that you can use it to frustrate Majesty multi-action decks, since you can pre-empt the combat by burning a Jar.
Josh Feuerstein, who earlier this year clued me in to D'habi Revenant for the EconoGhoul deck, tipped me off to Waters of Duat plus Anima Gathering. Applying the template again, I came up with this:
Deck Name: InterSet
CRYPT (12 cards) [avg: 4.42]
2 x Samat Ramal-Ra, Archon (6): OBF pre ser 1 x Hesha Ruhadze (6): SER obf pre ani 2 x Count Ormonde (5): OBF pre ser dom 1 x Dedefra (5): SER obf nec 1 x Sir Marriot (5): PRE obf ser aus 1 x Hadrian Garrick (4): obf pre 1 x Nepata (4): obf pre ser 1 x Celine Chevalier (3): obf ser 1 x Lena Rowe (3): obf aus pre 1 x Feo Ramos (1): aus
LIBRARY (90 cards)
1 x Temple Hunting Ground 1 x Opium Den 10 x Waters of Duat
1 x The Barrens 1 x KRCG News Radio 1 x The Rumor Mill, Tabloid Newspaper 1 x Creepshow Casino 2 x Dreams of the Sphinx 6 x Blood Doll 4 x Auspex 4 x Obfuscate
1 x Carlton Van Wyk 1 x Mr. Winthrop 3 x Sniper Rifle 9 x Wake with Evening's Freshness 9 x Forced Awakening
2 x Spying Mission 4 x Swallowed by the Night 4 x Lost in Crowds 8 x Cloak the Gathering 4 x Faceless Night 2 x Domain of Evernight
10 x Anima Gathering
1 x Form of Corruption
The deck could probably use an Aranthebes. There are two copies of Dreams of the Sphinx in there to account for the relatively larger average crypt size, as well as expected card flow needs. The eight copies of Cloak the Gathering, as well as the Creepshow Casino, are to assist the Waters of Duat weenies in hunting and playing Anima Gathering, as you'll be wanting to give them Auspex when you create them. The four Obfuscate skill cards are in there to help the weenies play stealth, and to give other vampires superior Obfuscate.
As with the Magic Jar deck, I've only tested this deck out once so far, and it also got 2 VP. It's hard to determine the deck's performance from this one game, as Absimilliard's Army was making a mess of things. (As an aside, Absimilliard's Army appears to be a solid card for non-combat decks, as it makes disposable zombies to throw in the way of would-be rushers. It might buy you a turn or two.) However, the deck appeared to be working just fine, and Ben Swainbank seemed impressed by it. A key subtlety to remember is that Anima Gathering works while the weenie is in torpor, so feel free to throw them in the way of combat monsters or anything else you don't feel like risking your main vamps against. The offense of this deck appears to be more impressive than the other decks that use this template, as you're certainly capable of making a big pile of vampires.
It might also be possible to build a viable deck using The Third Tradition: Embrace instead of Waters of Duat, though I've yet to build such a deck and try it myself. After some quick doodling in my notebook, here's a possible decklist:
Deck Name: Nosferatu Permacept Princes
CRYPT (12 cards) [avg: 6.75]
3 x Calebros, the Martyr (5): ANI obf pot 3 x Nikolaus Vermeulen (7): POT obf ani for 3 x Selma the Repugnant (8): OBF POT ani for 3 x Murat (7): OBF POT ser
LIBRARY
1 x Slum Hunting Ground 1 x The Labyrinth 1 x Creepshow Casino 4 x Blood Doll 1 x KRCG News Radio 1 x Channel 10 2 x Dreams of the Sphinx 1 x The Barrens 4 x Auspex 2 x Obfuscate
1 x Carlton Van Wyk 2 x Sniper Rifle 2 x Assault Rifle 3 x Alastor 1 x Aranthebes the Immortal 10 x The Third Tradition: Embrace 9 x Wake with Evening's Freshness 9 x The Second Tradition: Domain
10 x Anima Gathering
4 x Spying Mission 5 x Swallowed by the Night 4 x Lost in Crowds 8 x Cloak the Gathering 4 x Faceless Night
It'll definitely be off to a slower start, and it's very possible that the Alastors will be too unreliable because of the lack of vote push. However, the Second Traditions are a big plus. I'll probably try to put it together, and you, the reader, are more than welcome to give it a go yourself. I provide no guarantees for its success. ;)
I also have an unfinished decklist for a possible Assamite permacept deck, going with the Magic of the Smith plan. Here's the partial list:
Deck Name: Fragment of an Assamite Permacept Deck
CRYPT (12 cards someday) [avg=I don't know]
3 x Kalinda (6): OBF CEL tha 3 x Zahir, Hand of the Silsila (6): OBF CEL tha qui 6 x other vampires
LIBRARY
1 x Underworld Hunting Ground 1 x Market Square 1 x KRCG News Radio 1 x The Rumor Mill, Tabloid Newspaper 6 x Blood Doll 1 x The Barrens
1 x Carlton Van Wyk 1 x Aranthebes the Immortal 3 x Sport Bike 2 x Phased Motion Detector 3 x Sniper Rifle 1 x Pier 13, Port of Baltimore 2 x IR Goggles 9 x Wake with Evening's Freshness 9 x Forced Awakening 22 x Obfuscate stealth 10 x Magic of the Smith
There are 16 cards left to include. Web of Knives Recruit seems to fit the plan. It'll probably want more intercept, so adding a Channel 10 might help, and maybe Pack Tactics/Elder Intervention and Rooftop Shadow would be good, along with a couple Delaying Tactics. It might also want a couple Effective Managements and one or two Dummy Corporations. Hopefully I'll finish building it after the European Championships.
One last deck I have is a Gangrel deck that tries to exploit Pack Alpha. It focuses on Animalism plus superior Protean, taking actions to get retainers, and if blocked, playing Pack Alpha to get a retainer, then Form of Mist to continue the action. It has a lot of untap, plus a handful of rush to both take down minions and to facilitate using Pack Alpha.
Here's the deck:
Deck Name: Dogs In My Pants!
CRYPT (12 cards) [avg=5.33]
1 x Danielle Diron (7): PRO ANI for chi 1 x Ryder (7): PRO FOR ani pot 1 x Horrock (6): PRO ANI vic 1 x Lord Ashton (5): ANI pro for 1 x Dr. Allan Woodstock (5): PRO ani for aus 1 x Bobby Lemon (4): ANI pro 1 x Jezebelle (4): pro ani for 1 x Bothwell (3): ani for 1 x Doyle Fincher (6): PRO ANI for obf aus 1 x Spider (6): PRO CEL ani for 1 x Janey Pickman (6): PRO ANI for 1 x Celest Lamontagne (5): PRO ANI for
LIBRARY (90 cards)
1 x Zoo Hunting Ground 1 x Eco Terrorists 1 x Gangrel Revel 1 x Gather
1 x The Barrens 1 x The Rack 1 x Smiling Jack, The Anarch 4 x Blood Doll
6 x Taste of Vitae 4 x Ambush 1 x Harass 14 x Forced Awakening
10 x Form of Mist 8 x Flesh of Marble
14 x Pack Alpha 7 x Murder of Crows 14 x Raven Spy
I've played it a few times, including a tournament in Boston where by tragic coincidence Matt Hirsch was playing an almost identical crypt in the finals. We were both flattened that game. At any rate, the deck works pretty well, but it does a bit unreliably right now as you're trying to cycle into combo after combo. Finding room for a couple Dreams of the Sphinx are in order. It also doesn't adhere fully to the template, and maybe bringing it more in line with the template would help things. I'm also curious as to whether I should be using Earth Meld instead of Form of Mist, not worrying about continuing the employ action, but saving the blood, untapping, and trying to employ again - and to help more on defense.
Overall, I'm pretty happy with how well these decks have turned out. I was surprised - and happy - to find that it's possible to get out enough permanent intercept and weapons to set up a solid defensive wall that's capable of handling stealth-bleed decks and weenie decks. The major difficulty is in offense, as there's a very long setup time for the deck, and even then, you're just relying on a few bleeds for one each turn. Ousting opponents in enough time to win a tournament round can be a challenge, but I think I've shown that it's very doable. I wouldn't say that these decks are top-tier tournament decks, but they're solid and have the capacity to win, and are often capable of shutting down a top-tier predator.
Lastly, a cool skateboard trick for you kids: try to use 5 vampires of one clan, and 5 vampires from another clan. That way if you win a tournament with it, you get credit for both clans in The Lasombra's Tournament Winning Deck Archive. Check out the Nevermore deck. ;)
Keep on bleeding, and have fun!
Ben Peal |
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