Sabbat Gangrel

I recently tried putting together a Gangrel Sabbat deck and was suprised by the fact that their disciplines are completely out of whack! Does anyone know what the idea was behind this clan? The other Sabbat clans have at least some consistency in their disciplines. Seems like the Sabbat Gangrel are a Potence/Animalism/Fortitude/Celerity/Obfuscate clan or something. What's with the master cards? Gain an extra vote? Only two of the clan members have votes! Avoid a blood hunt? The vampires are so pathetic they couldn't put Basil is torpor, much less burn him. I suppose I could give them all flame-throwers, but I could do that with any clan. How do I build a 12-card crypt with only 11 Vampires? Anyway, any suggestions/ideas on how to make this clan work would be greatly appreciated. (LSJ: Any input from WoTC on their take on this clan would be greatly appreciated. My current theory is that the product manager for Vampire:TES plays Tremere exclusively, and has had Ulugh and Spiridonas put into torpor too many times by the Gangrel that he decided to give the Sabbat version of the clan the shaft. Prove me wrong.) Tks. ============================ Ed Bilodeau

Paul Osborne (osb...@WPI.EDU) wrote: : Calebos (cal...@generation.net) wrote: : : What's with the master cards? Gain an extra vote? Only two of the clan : : members have votes! Avoid a blood hunt? The vampires are so pathetic they : : couldn't put Basil is torpor, much less burn him. I suppose I could give : : them all flame-throwers, but I could do that with any clan. : Nobody has yet accused them of being useful. As part of the RPG, Gangrel : don't have much of a social structure and so don't have much concern with : politics. As for combat, they would be more useful if there were more of : them with standard Gangrel disciplines or with the city disciplines which : would go well with Assamites. Of course, there aren't enough Assamites : either, but that's another topic. The Anti-Gangrel vampires (in my opinion, of course) are actually fairly useful. They aren't necessarily useful in the same ways or in the same decks as their Camarilla counterparts, but, like many Sabbat vampires, there are a number of them that are relatively undercosted in terms of blood cap versus skills they have. As you say, those skills are not very well focused, which makes them not so useful as a mono-clan deck. But they get a fair amount of play here, on the one hand as components of a Gangrel/Anti Gangrel style combat deck, and on the other in more 'oddball' decks that happen to use the skills that some of them have. For example, one person here plays a deck mainly based on Dominate, Obfuscate, and Protean; a stealth bleed deck for the most part; the Protean is particularly useful in that it has very good anti-combat cards in Form of Mist and Earth Meld (and can also be used for a surprise Bone Spur or whatnot in a pinch). This deck uses a number of rather irregular vamps, largely from Gangrel, Anti-Gangrel, and Malkavians. : : How do I build a 12-card crypt with only 11 Vampires? : You can't. Again, there simply aren't enough of them. Well, while it's true that you can't make a 12-vamp crypt with no duplicates out of 11 vampires in the clan, you can certainly use duplicates of the more applicable ones (which you'd probably prefer to draw anyway). Decks made this way seem to be pretty popular among the people I've read here, and they've been growing in popularity in my Ithaca playgroup too. In particular, there's a Ravnos deck that uses two each of all three of their good 6-cap vampires, and then fills out to 12 with some of the not-quite-as-efficient ones. Personally I usually try to keep my duplicates to a minimum, as I like the variety you get with less duplication in the crypt, as well as the lessened chance of having, say, only two different vampires in your initial draw of four. But even so, in my cel/pot rush combat deck, I have two of Anvil (how could I not?) and two of Dre, (the chronic) Leader of the Cold Dawn. (I'd also have two Jimmy Dunn (so broken) if I owned them, but sadly I only have the one copy.) : : Anyway, any suggestions/ideas on how to make this clan work would be : : greatly appreciated. : Combine the country variants with the Camarilla Gangrel, make up new : vampires, or put the pretty pictures up on your wall. Yeah, pretty much good advice. As Mr. Osborne said, the Gangrel really never had very good inherent voting power (basiscally because of the RPG background material I guess) - just look at those two 9-cap princes they got in Dark Sovereigns... or Angus, the Unmanageable (inferior fortitude on the Justicar?). And while they're lots of fun in combat, their lack of anti-Strike:Combat Ends hurts them pretty substantially there (maybe it'd be better if Dog Pack weren't so very hard to come by). As for bleed, they don't have dominate as an in-clan skill (though a number of them do have dom incidentally, a large part of the inspiration for that stealth/bleed deck originally, I think), or presence either, so they don't get extra bonus usefulness there. Although Force of Will/Movement of the Slow Body/ Rapid Healing is really funny when you can make it work. (Not really too abusively effective with no repeat actions in effect, but definitely amusing to see a single cycle go off successfully.) I do think combat is probably the strongest aspect, even with the not-very- focused Anti-Gangrel. The Anti's partial lack of Fortitude is tough to work with though. Animalism has been getting some better cards as time went on - Song of Serenity would be handy around here, what with all the hand-damage immortal-grapple combat decks; Drawing out the Beast has always been good. Well, I hope that's at least a little bit helpful. Good luck with the Anti- Gangrel; you may need it. Oh yeah - probably the most useful Gangrel Anti card I know if is Gangrel Conspiracy. Unfortunately it's rare, but it's an out-of-turn master that you can play on your own turn; it cancels a Blood Hunt (aka wild hunt) vote called on a Gangrel anti. If you can manage to get your hands on a number of them, it could make it possible to diablerize with relative impunity, which is nothing but good for a combat deck, especially an agg-damage one that could make good use of Amaranth. Josh long-winded when I get around to posting, aren't I?

Josh wrote: "The Anti-Gangrel vampires (in my opinion, of course) are actually fairly useful. They aren't necessarily useful in the same ways or in the same decks as their Camarilla counterparts, but, like many Sabbat vampires, there are a number of them that are relatively undercosted in terms of blood cap versus skills they have." Yup. Sure, you can't really make a single Anti-Gangrel deck, but many of them are very useful as vampires to fill in weird crypts. The Cel/Obf vamps are good for gun decks (I always wanted to make the Cel/Obf/Pre gun/bleed deck...), Peter is a perfectly acceptable regular Gangrel, Shane can fit in any number of weird Nosferatu decks. They aren't really cohesive as a whole, and useless for a single clan deck, but they are a pretty varied and mostly useful group as they are. "Well, while it's true that you can't make a 12-vamp crypt with no duplicates out of 11 vampires in the clan, you can certainly use duplicates of the more applicable ones (which you'd probably prefer to draw anyway)." Using Duplicates of certain vampires is pretty much a necessity in most useful decks. All of the Sabbat clans have too many big vampires and not enough small vampires to be useful with 1 of each vampire in a crypt. You will draw plenty of 9s and 10s, which pretty much gets you nowhere. You are much better off picking 2 or 3 of the good vampires, doubling (or tripling) up on them, and then filling in the holes. Peter D Bakija PD...@aol.com "And you! You're going to live forever! You don't have time for a cup of coffee?" -Willow

On 26 Oct 1997 18:58:51 GMT, pd...@aol.com (PDB6) wrote: > They aren't really cohesive as a whole, > and useless for a single clan deck, but they are a pretty varied and mostly > useful group as they are. Too bad LSJ hasn't responded to this. I'd really like to know what the designers as WoTC were thinking. I think they should have just come out with the City Gangrel and left the Country Gangel for another expansion. There must have been zero playtesting for this clan, else they set out from the beginning, as you suggest" to create a clan that would be used with other Sabbat clans. I think who idea may have been to force players to mix-and-match clans in Sabbat. This is reinforced by the 11 vampires/clan and those wacky Gangrel, along with the Caitiff. Either that, or th designers simply dropped the ball. I really hope there is a new expansion out soon. (Re-releasing Sabbat (to move inventory?) doesn't count as an expansion). My friends playing Magic seem to have a new expansion every two months. Are there really so few people playing Vampire to justify timely expansions? (Sorry, this should probably be a separate thread.) Anyway, the original question is still open to LSJ. Ed ~~

On 26 Oct 1997 23:40:49 GMT, pd...@aol.com (PDB6) wrote: > >"I really hope there is a new expansion out soon. (Re-releasing Sabbat (to move > inventory?) doesn't count as an expansion)." > >Sadly, probably isn't ever going to happen. WOTC pretty much stopped > supporting Jyhad/VTES after Sabbat came out, and other than this bit of > Halloween resurgence (Sabbat re-release, lots of net supported tournaments), > they still pay Jyhad very little effort. There is, however, a good player > base and alot of online support. > Shit. What do you think it would take to get them to put out an expansion? Ideas? Interest? If they're not going to put out an expansion, I suggest they release the rights for the card game to someone who will (White Wolf?).

cal...@generation.net (Edward Bilodeau) wrote: > On 26 Oct 1997 18:58:51 GMT, pd...@aol.com (PDB6) wrote: > > They aren't really cohesive as a whole, > > and useless for a single clan deck, but they are a pretty varied and mostly > > useful group as they are. > > Too bad LSJ hasn't responded to this. I'd really like to know what the > designers as WoTC were thinking. I think they should have just come > out with the City Gangrel and left the Country Gangel for another > expansion. You start a thread on Saturday and then bemoan my lack of response on Sunday? I apologize for not carrying a laptop with a cellular modem and a beeper everywhere I go so that I can answer the odd rant in a more timely fashion. :-) [...] > Anyway, the original question is still open to LSJ. I do not have any insight into the playtesting of the Sabbat. I wasn't Net.Rep at the time, and even if I had been, I doubt if the position as it is would afford me any greater insight. At any rate, I have passed your query/complaint on to the RT. I'll pass their response on to the NG when (and if) I receive on. -- L. Scott Johnson (vte...@wizards.com) Official VtES Net.Rep for Wizards of the Coast. (*) - Subject to review by Rules Team -------------------==== Posted via Deja News ====----------------------- http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Post to Usenet

Calebos wrote: > I recently tried putting together a Gangrel Sabbat deck and was > suprised by > the fact that their disciplines are completely out of whack! Does > anyone > know what the idea was behind this clan? The other Sabbat clans have > at > least some consistency in their disciplines. Seems like the Sabbat > Gangrel > are a Potence/Animalism/Fortitude/Celerity/Obfuscate clan or > something. > > What's with the master cards? Gain an extra vote? Only two of the clan > > members have votes! Avoid a blood hunt? The vampires are so pathetic > they > couldn't put Basil is torpor, much less burn him. I suppose I could > give > them all flame-throwers, but I could do that with any clan. > They have protean. Protean plus amaranth plus avoiding a blood hunt = a lot of vampire toast. Obfuscate fits in well - I have a protean obfuscate deck which rushes vampires, earth melds with the rusher to untap them, hidden lurkers with wolf claws and amaranths with a nice ol' gangrel conspiricy. Nasty combination when it comes out, and it comes out often enough to be quite intimidating. Gan. Ant are mean. David Naseby, CPE

In article <34540fb...@nntp.generation.net>, Edward Bilodeau <cal...@generation.net> writes [ quoted text not captured ] That would likely be a bad thing - giving the rights to White Wolf. Though they could capture the themes and feelings of the setting correctly, they're not exactly known for the CCG prowess. Arcadia is one of the most terrible CCGs I've ever seen - if they seriously think you can get a game going with two players who both have a player and a storyteller, then they're very stupid. Rage is something I haven't had much contact with but, from other people, I've had mixed reactions. You either get the die-hard fans or, more-or-less, impartial people who think "Ho-hum." And they stopped supporting Arcadia (I think) and sold Rage off as well. -- James Coupe Dick: I lost your number.... Lucy: I work at the sheriff's office! You could have dialed 911!

Calebos wrote in message <01bce0dc$e6f87200$6a01...@ebilodea.richter.net>... >I recently tried putting together a Gangrel Sabbat deck and was suprised by >the fact that their disciplines are completely out of whack! Does anyone >know what the idea was behind this clan? The other Sabbat clans have at >least some consistency in their disciplines. Seems like the Sabbat Gangrel >are a Potence/Animalism/Fortitude/Celerity/Obfuscate clan or something. The deal is that for once, Jyhad/V:TES is staying true to the RPG. The Gangrel anti-tribu are divided into two lineages, one being the "Country Gangrel", who have the standard Animalism, Fortitude, Protean, and the "City Gangrel" who have Celerity, Obfuscate, Protean. I was fairly pleased to see the Sabbat divided almost evenly along these lines. Xian

LSJ wrote: (... ) > You start a thread on Saturday and then bemoan my lack of response on > Sunday? I apologize for not carrying a laptop with a cellular modem > and a beeper everywhere I go so that I can answer the odd rant in a > more timely fashion. :-) > Whadda you expect with only one dot in celerity. -- --------------------------------------------------------------------- pheersum is eric schultheis. no commercial e-mail will be tolerated. this computer is attatched to a printer with a fax program. any spam will be subject to federal prosecution of fax machine fraud. ---------------------------------------------------------------------

On Mon, 27 Oct 1997 08:16:12 +0000, James Coupe <ja...@obeah.demon.co.uk.SPAMSPAMSPAMSPAMEGGSCHIPSSPAM> wrote: >>If they're not going to put out an >>expansion, I suggest they release the rights for the card game to >>someone who will (White Wolf?). > >That would likely be a bad thing - giving the rights to White Wolf. > I just threw the White Wolf thing out there, only cause I know they are involved with the RPG. When I mentionned this to my freinds today, they agred with you: White Wolf would probably not do V:TES justice. (They also mentionned that the artwork would probably suffer.) I guess I'm just worried/saddened at the idea of no knew expansions. For me, part of the fun of card playing is geting new cards. I really enjoy playing V:TES, and am not really too crazy about starting a new game. Anyway, to my original post, I've decided to try to put together a City Gangrel/Assamite/Nos Cel/Obf weapons deck. Can't be any worse then the Sabbat Gangrel deck I just built. Ed ~~

On Mon, 27 Oct 1997 15:27:16 +1100, david naseby <d.na...@unsw.edu.au> wrote: > >They have protean. Protean plus amaranth plus avoiding a blood hunt = a >lot of vampire toast. Obfuscate fits in well - I have a protean >obfuscate deck which rushes vampires, earth melds with the rusher to >untap them, hidden lurkers with wolf claws and amaranths with a nice ol' >gangrel conspiricy. Nasty combination when it comes out, and it comes >out often enough to be quite intimidating. Gan. Ant are mean. > >David Naseby, CPE > I hadn't thought of going that way. I'm not sure I have any armanath cards, but I'm sure some of the people I play with do and could give me a few.

In article <3456ba1e...@nntp.generation.net>, Edward Bilodeau <cal...@generation.net> writes >armanath Amaranth!!!!!! Grr.... -- James Coupe (remove items of food to reply via e-mail) [ quoted text not captured ]