Presence

[TheLasombra]

Atom Weaver's Deck Bashing Challenge

http://www.thelasombra.com/dbc/dbc.htm

Here is a short article that appeared on the White Wolf forum explaining how to approach the subject of making the most effective deck possible from two starters. Read it there for optimal formatting.

http://forums.white-wolf.com/cs/forums/t/33873.aspx

This short article is intended to be a primer on how to review a pair of starter decks to see if you can, and how you should, combine them to make the best deck that you can from them. (See also: Atomweaver's Deck Mashup Challenge)

In this example, we will consider the Toreador and Brujah starters from Keepers of Tradition.

http://www.thelasombra.com/decks/toreador_precon_kot.htm
http://www.thelasombra.com/decks/brujah_precon_kot.htm

This is the complete list of cards that we can choose from, after which we'll review each section and type of cards.

The Two Decks Together:

Crypt [24 vampires] Capacity min: 2 max: 11 average: 6.58333
------------------------------------------------------------
2x Adana de Sforza 11 CEL OBF POT PRE PRO aus inner circle Brujah:4
2x Rafael de Corazon 11 AUS CEL DOM OBF PRE inner circle Toreador:4
2x Jann Berger 10 CEL POT PRE dem for prince Brujah:4
2x Epikasta Rigatos 8 AUS DOM PRE cel prince Toreador:4
2x Eugene 8 AUS CEL FOR PRE primogen Toreador:4
2x Kateline Nadasdy 7 AUS CEL PRE Toreador:4
2x Tomaine 6 CEL POT PRE primogen Brujah:4
2x Herbert Westin 5 OBF PRE pot Brujah:4
2x Reginald Moore 4 PRE primogen Brujah:4
2x Thomas De Lutrius 4 aus cel pre primogen Toreador:4
2x Garret 3 pot pre Brujah:4
2x Sean Andrews 2 cel Toreador:4

Library [154 cards]
------------------------------------------------------------
Action [21]
4x Enrage
1x Entrancement
2x Entrenching
5x Harass
9x Public Trust

Action Modifier [11]
4x Approximation of Loyalty
4x Crocodile's Tongue
3x Suppressing Fire

Action Modifier/Combat [5]
5x Resist Earth's Grasp

Combat [46]
6x Brute Force
2x Concealed Weapon
3x Immortal Grapple
6x Psyche!
6x Pursuit
3x Relentless Pursuit
4x Slam
4x Stutter-Step
6x Taste of Vitae
3x Torn Signpost
3x Weighted Walking Stick

Equipment [25]
4x Bang Nakh -- Tiger's Claws
5x Beretta 9mm
1x Bowl of Convergence
2x Bundi
3x Desert Eagle
1x Drum of Xipe Totec
2x IR Goggles
1x Ivory Bow
1x Mark V
1x Phased Motion Detector
1x Sengir Dagger
3x Sniper Rifle

Master [20]
1x Auspex
2x Celerity
2x Contingency Planning
2x Fame
1x KRCG News Radio
2x Major Boon
1x Nod
1x Potence
2x Presence
1x Rack, The
1x Tension in the Ranks
4x Vessel

Political Action [10]
2x Finding the Path
4x Kine Resources Contested
1x Praxis Seizure: Houston
1x Praxis Seizure: Washington, D.C.
2x Year of Fortune

Reaction [16]
3x Eagle's Sight
4x Minor Irritation
5x On the Qui Vive
4x Telepathic Misdirection



We will start with the crypt. If you are combining two crypts, you want to be able to ensure that you get the best vampires in your opening crypt in as many games as possible. With the Keepers of Tradition starters, this is eased by having all of the vampires duplicated. If we wanted to be able to do some voting, we would keep duplicate copies of Princes/Justicars and might even consider including an Inner Circle member, if the pool regaining abilities of the starters will support it. Unfortunately, these two starters cannot support 11 capacity vampires, so we will drop all of the vampires that are above 8 capacity. We'll duplicate the 3 vampires that can play bleed bounce (Telepathic Misdirection) to ensure that we have some effective defense against large bleeds sent towards us at stealth. This leaves us room for 6 more minions, and we'll choose the 6 that are best able to help us overload our prey after a bounced bleed (i.e. the cheapest ones with Presence).

These are the 12 vampires we'll use for this deck.

Crypt:

Crypt [12 vampires] Capacity min: 3 max: 8 average: 6.08333
------------------------------------------------------------
2x Epikasta Rigatos 8 AUS DOM PRE cel prince Toreador:4
2x Eugene 8 AUS CEL FOR PRE primogen Toreador:4
2x Kateline Nadasdy 7 AUS CEL PRE Toreador:4
2x Herbert Westin 5 OBF PRE pot Brujah:4
1x Tomaine 6 CEL POT PRE primogen Brujah:4
1x Reginald Moore 4 PRE primogen Brujah:4
1x Thomas De Lutrius 4 aus cel pre primogen Toreador:4
1x Garret 3 pot pre Brujah:4



Having decided our crypt, our next simplest choice is the master cards selection. In most 5 player games, there are ~8 turns before the first player is ousted and rarely more than 14 turns in the entire game. With that in mind, we will want to keep our master selection to 12-18 cards, as we aren't likely to see the entire deck but we would like to be able to play a master card on every turn. Ones that gain us pool or that recover pool spent on our vampires are our top priority. The second priority is to use our master phase to protect our pool or our minions, so anything that can help with that is next. Cards which are situational or require too much cooperation from the rest of the table will be bypassed. We are not likely to have more than three vampires in play, so the actions we choose later will be critical to ensure that we get the most bang for our buck.

Master Cards:

Master [13]
1x Auspex
2x Fame
1x KRCG News Radio
2x Major Boon
1x Nod
1x Rack, The
1x Tension in the Ranks
4x Vessel



Normally we would not expect to have enough untap in two starters to be able to defend The Rack, but our opponents don't have to know that this is what we are playing, so careful play can keep them from attempting the steal action to begin with. If our predator does take an action to steal The Rack, we aren't out any pool, and that was an action that could have been an attempt to bleed us or remove our pool with a vote. The Rack will be our Red Herring to distract our opponents from the non-wall nature of our deck whose offense will be strong bleeds. The Major Boons will allow us to pre-emptively take a bleed that will be for 1 so that we have defense against larger bleeds from our predator. Getting a Major Boon on your predator is a very strong defense, particularly as they get to be closer to being ousted themselves. The Auspex master will allow us to upgrade Thomas de Lutria into a bleed bounce defender, so we will keep it. If we had a wider selection of vampires, we'd choose a better minion that already had superior Auspex and play another pool gaining master instead.

Now that we know what our minions will look like and the options we have to regain pool, we will next consider how best to defend our pool. We will take as much untap as we can as well as all of the bleed bounce. As there are some pieces of equipment that will help us a lot when blocking, we can safely splurge here on reaction cards. We'll actually take all of them, from both decks.

Reaction Cards:

Reaction [16]
3x Eagle's Sight
4x Minor Irritation
5x On the Qui Vive
4x Telepathic Misdirection



The Minor Irritations are only useful to us when we start defending against the action while we are untapped and are only useful to us against younger vampires, so we know that we'll need to equip Epikasta or Eugene with a defensive weapon and plan for them to stay untapped when we have Minor Irritations in hand. If we don't have opponents minions that are less than 8 cap coming against us, we'll discard these as soon as we can.

Now that we know a bit of our plan for defense (large minion with superior Auspex untapped at the end of our turn with a weapon), we can consider how we will oust our prey. Suppressing Fire and Resist Earth's Grap are our only options for stealth (but they do mesh well with our plan to have a gun and with the amount of superior Celerity we plan to have in play), and our minions won't reliably be old enough to play the others, so we will keep all of the Suppressing Fire and Resist Earth's Grasp cards.

Action Modifiers:

Action Modifier [3]
3x Suppressing Fire

Action Modifier/Combat [5]
5x Resist Earth's Grasp



We have 25 pieces of equipment to choose from to optimize our defensive and offensive combat abilities. As we know we will need to be defensive, we'll keep the Sniper Rifles and Desert Eagles as they are our cheapest options. We'll throw in the Bowl of Convergence and Ivory Bow as they are simply too good to leave out.

Equipment:

Equipment [8]
1x Bowl of Convergence
3x Desert Eagle
1x Ivory Bow
3x Sniper Rifle



As we now know our defense and our ability to force our actions to succeed, the next thing to decide with what other actions we should include. The strongest actions that we can take are those that do 3 points of damage to our prey. We'll include the Kine Resources Contested and the Public Trusts. The Entrancement is also very strong, so we'll include it as well. Harass will be good for us once a copy of Fame is in play, so a few copies of it will go in.

Actions:

Action [14]
1x Entrancement
4x Harass
9x Public Trust

Political Action [4]
4x Kine Resources Contested



With the amount of stealth available to us, and the amount of blocking we know that we will have to do, the choices for combat are made last, but they are not the least important. Only 3 of our final minions have Potence, so all of those cards will be removed. We'll keep all of the Celerity and disciplineless cards to ensure that our combats are as effective as they can be.

Combat:

Combat [27]
2x Concealed Weapon
6x Psyche!
6x Pursuit
4x Stutter-Step
6x Taste of Vitae
3x Weighted Walking Stick



Now we have our finished deck, made only from the contents of two starters.

Final Deck Mashup:

Crypt [12 vampires] Capacity min: 3 max: 8 average: 6.08333
------------------------------------------------------------
2x Epikasta Rigatos 8 AUS DOM PRE cel prince Toreador:4
2x Eugene 8 AUS CEL FOR PRE primogen Toreador:4
2x Kateline Nadasdy 7 AUS CEL PRE Toreador:4
2x Herbert Westin 5 OBF PRE pot Brujah:4
1x Tomaine 6 CEL POT PRE primogen Brujah:4
1x Reginald Moore 4 PRE primogen Brujah:4
1x Thomas De Lutrius 4 aus cel pre primogen Toreador:4
1x Garret 3 pot pre Brujah:4

Library [90 cards]
------------------------------------------------------------
Action [14]
1x Entrancement
4x Harass
9x Public Trust

Action Modifier [3]
3x Suppressing Fire

Action Modifier/Combat [5]
5x Resist Earth's Grasp

Combat [27]
2x Concealed Weapon
6x Psyche!
6x Pursuit
4x Stutter-Step
6x Taste of Vitae
3x Weighted Walking Stick

Equipment [8]
1x Bowl of Convergence
3x Desert Eagle
1x Ivory Bow
3x Sniper Rifle

Master [13]
1x Auspex
2x Fame
1x KRCG News Radio
2x Major Boon
1x Nod
1x Rack, The
1x Tension in the Ranks
4x Vessel

Political Action [4]
4x Kine Resources Contested

Reaction [16]
3x Eagle's Sight
4x Minor Irritation
5x On the Qui Vive
4x Telepathic Misdirection



What thoughts and feedback do you have on this process?

[finbury]

I think there's some decision making going on here that isn't described. The way the process is explained, it seems like you are making decisions one card type at a time, but there's an overall decision to play a combat-intensive strategy that has clearly been made by the time you choose masters (eg Fame) but that you don't really talk about much.

I think that the process of deciding which strategy to attempt with a particular card pool is at least as interesting as the process of picking specific cards, and just as easy to get wrong.

Aside from that, the analysis looks good, though I'm confused why Westin was doubled before Reginald Moore - I assume that's just a typo/oversight.

[TheLasombra]

[marandamir]

Interesting article and thread
_________________
Combat cards are always useful. Veterens use them to crush their enemies, and newbies use them to dodge bleeds.

[prestonp]

Here's what I made from 2xBrujah.

Crypt
Adana dr Sforza(11) x4 CEL POT PRE PRO OBF aus +2 Bleed, IC
Tomaine(6) x4 CEL POT PRE Primogen
Garret(3)x2 pot pre
Reginald Moore(4)x2 PRE

Master Cards 8
Tension in the Ranks x2
Potence x2
Celerity x2
Major Boon x2

Reaction Cards 3
On the Qui Vive x3

Combo Cards 6
Resist Earth's Graspx6

Political Action Cards 5
Finding the Path x4
Year of Fortune

Actions 14
Public Trust x6
Harass x8

Combat 48
Immortal Grapple x4
Weighted Walking Stick x6
Psyche x6
Taste of Vitae x6
Stutter Step x4
Brute Force x10
Slam x4
Relentless Pursuit x2
Torn Signpost x6

Equipment 6
Sengir Dagger x2
Bundi x4
_________________
Come check out my blog at www.prestonpoulter.com

[prestonp]

Now that I'm looking more at the Tor/Bru deck I have to say it looks pretty bad. Some conceptual choices seem a bit odd; I'd have gone more for PRE CEL with the AUS just to bounce, but this deck strays too much into intercept wall terrirtory (a concept with which I am well versed) but lacks the tools.

The other choices made on how to implement the strategy given the card pool also seem wrong. Why not use the Phased Motion Detector? It might be pissing in the wind against a dedicated stealth deck, but it does have synergy with the decks other wall and intercept cards and can wear a stealth deck down quite a bit faster.

Sniper Rifle is just bad. It's a pretty ideal set of circumstances in which this deck is blocking at all, and with 9 Presence Bleeds and 4 Harasses it should use weapons that serve double duty like the Sengir Dagger and Tiger Claws. A Harass with Tiger Claws, and Pursuit will deal 9 damage after press whereas only 3 with a Sniper Rifle.

Clearly the designer wanted to avoid close combat, but he allowed the prejudice to cripple the deck. Sengir Dagger has far more utility than Sniper Rifle here.

I agree with Matt Morgan and Ben Peal that Vessel is just bad. It's included here to combo with rack, but the deck would work better if all of these cards were simply removed.
_________________
Come check out my blog at www.prestonpoulter.com

[prestonp]

I played some games with the Dallas crew. I played the Brujah deck above twice and a Torreador deck twice. Out of four games, I got 1 VP. It was a rough set of games. The Brujah deck was particularly screwed because in one instance I had a fast bleeding predator and in another I had Taylor as a prey- I was practically a goner before the game even started!

The Torreador deck got 1 VP and then had to concede to a Matata Akunanse wall deck it had little prayer of getting through, and in the other instance I was up against a horde of War Ghouls. It was pretty nasty for almost any deck both times. All in all, my decks faired pretty well. The Brujah deck has particularly fearsome combat and the IC member's bleed certainly allowed me to put some pressure down.

Here's the deck made of two Torreador decks.

Crypt
Sean Andrews(2) x3 cel
Thomas De Lutrius(4)x3 Primogen aus cel pre
Kateline Nadasdy(3) x3 AUS CEL PRE Can burn a blood to cancel a vote.
Rafael de Corazon(3)x3 PRE OBF DOM CEL AUS IC Member +2 Bleed

Library

Master Cards 9
Vessel x2
Fame
Presence x2
Celerity x2
Auspex x2

Political Actions 12
Praxis Seizure: Houston x2
Praxis Seizure: Washington, DC x2
Kine Resources Contested x8

Actions 2
Entrancement x2

Action Modifiers 2
Crocodile's Tongue x2

Combat 12
Concealed Weapon x4
Pursuit x3
Taste of Vitae x2
Psyche x3

Reaction 12
On the Qui Vive x4
Telepathic Misdirection x8

Equipment 13
Bowl of Convergence x2
Desert Eagle x4
Ivory Bow
Mark V x2
IR Goggles x4
_________________
Come check out my blog at www.prestonpoulter.com

[TheLasombra]

Preston,

Thanks for the deck designs and the real world experiences.
I've added them to the archive.

http://www.thelasombra.com/dbc/dbc.htm

I noticed that they hadn't made it to your blog.

http://www.prestonpoulter.com/category/gaming-ccgs-rpgs/vtes-ccg-card-games-blogs/

Although you think that the Brujah-Toreador deck is poorly made, it is explained, so that each step of the way a new player can get ideas on what to think about when building a deck. i.e. how big should the minions in the crypt be? How much should their disciplines match? How much offense and defense should be in the deck? etc.

I didn't find anything in either of your posts that would actually help a new player make any of those decisions or anything that would help explain why you made the decisions that you have.

Thanks again for the decks and the real world play examples!

[prestonp]

[prestonp]

Here ya go.

http://www.prestonpoulter.com/2010/09/atom-weavers-deck-bashing-challenge/
_________________
Come check out my blog at www.prestonpoulter.com

[TheLasombra]