In article <37931690...@freemail.nl>, Tim Eijpe
<time...@freemail.nl> writes
>Toreador COUNTER: just say no!!!
And therein lies the crux of any criticism to be laid at the deck's
feet.
In highly competitive play (tournament environments where you need to
score highly in victory points), time and time again we can see that
pure intercept decks just Don't Work (tm). There are reasons for this.
First and foremost, an intercept deck has a hard time ousting its prey.
Your grand-prey gets first dibs on blocking your prey and may well be
quite happy to do that, but won't deal the sort of damage you can. And
if your prey is mostly bleeding, you need plenty of Eagle's Sights to
hurl yourself in the way - not easy.
Then, what does intercept do? Essentially, it allows you to stop anyone
doing anything at you, but it doesn't really allow you to do anything at
other people. Not only do you need to be able to block your prey to
have a go at him, once he's gone you need to be able to oust him. All
you have is a pity couple of bleed a turn (you cannot *rely* on having a
built in bleed bonus out in this deck, though you may be lucky). You
have no "Aire of Elation" to quickly help oust someone, for instance.
How does intercept work out in the long run? Well, you'll quite
possibly end up at the end of the game being the last player in the game
(if you have a good intercept deck), so you'll get 2 victory points - 1
for the ousting of the final player and 1 for last man standing,
perhaps. It's difficult to amass *more* than that, and it's quite
possible to amass less - your deck will do *nothing* to some deck
styles.
So, gripes about playing mono-intercept aside. Assuming you want to
play intercept combat, is this a good version of it?
>Master: 4x Blood doll, 4x Minion tap,
In the long run, Minion Tap will probably be more beneficial than Blood
Doll, especially since you have quite large vampires. Since you play
under 6CL (a mistake, but not a debate I'll get into again for a while -
save the xCL debates for next year's flame war), I'd suggest swapping to
5 or 6 Minion Taps, and taking out the Blood Dolls.
As a general rule, players have tended to find that they only get to go
round the entire table about 8-10 times, in the main part of the game.
6 Minion Taps, getting back fairly large amounts of pool before you
execute a 5th Tradition, could get you back about 40-45 pool (looking at
the number of big capacities you have). 4 Blood Dolls could only drip-
feed you that over the entire game. Minion Tap allows you to throw
other people's plans right out. They can see a Blood Doll, and plan for
it. They can only guess at a Minion Tap, so you have the edge of
paranoia and uncertainty.
> 1x Art museum, 1x Giant's blood,
Both fairly reasonable cards.
> (17) 3x Sudden reversal, 3x Direct intervention,
A lot. Whilst you are playing "Just say no" it's still a lot of these
cards. Whilst many people will rant and rave about DI, my personal view
is that, thematic issues aside, it's not *that* great a card. It can
only work once a turn, costs you a pool and they can probably just go
again with another copy of the card (less true in xCL).
>1x Society hg.
>
Reasonable, again.
>Non-disc.: 6x second tradition, 4x Fifth trad., 4x Forced Awakening,
> (13)
Okay, 6x Second Tradition is reasonable. You have 7, I think, Princes
so you should have someone to play these. However, you also have 5 non-
Princes. They can't, and would be "stuck" with the Forced Awakenings.
You also have quite a few actions in the deck - Fifths and weapons.
These will necessitate the use of an untap just to allow you to
intercept once, rather than intercept *again* as they can often be used.
(True, you could block with an untapped vampire, assuming you had one,
but wouldn't you prefer to use the vampire who'd just tooled up with a
weapon?) The Fifth Traditions are a Good Thing (tm) but you don't have
any way of forcing them through. You can only rely on their in-built
stealth, which is pithy.
>Equip: 4x .44 magnum, 1x Ivory bow, 1x Sengir dagger.
> (6)
Okay, here we come to second major gripe. You're playing weapons.
Weapons, in the main, suck, for several reasons. 1) They're fragile -
they can easily go bye-bye, but this is less important because you don't
*tend* to run up against serial destructionists as a matter of course.
2) They're expensive. You're paying (*counts*) 11 pool if all these
come out. You could bring out Alexandra with that. 3) They're *slow*.
You are having to tap yourself, necessitating the use of a Forced/2nd to
allow you to block, and use these when a better action, if you were to
take one, might even be to bleed your prey.
Those are the major problems that come just from having weapons.
However, they interact badly with good combat decks. One of the most
fearsome rush deck styles around is lots of little vampires (twice as
many out as you in the short term) with potence, possibly celerity,
possibly obfuscate. Come into combat, maneuver (for free, no costly
weapons, and just as well as you) to close range, immortal grapple,
bang, you're dead. Ouch, ouch and double ouch. Weapons are fairly
insignificant next to that. You're dead on the first hit anyway, since
they'll be able to tear off your arms, your head and so forth, sending
you to torpor and burning you, quick sharp-ish....
>Presence: 6x Majesty.
> (6)
...and these of course won't protect you. IG cares not for Dodge or
S:CE. In what is supposed to be a combat deck, loading up with six
Majesties is a little counter-productive.
>Auspex: 4x Aura reading, 4x Telepathic misdir., 4x Spirit's touch,
> (17) 3x Eagle sight, 2x precognition.
Well, you're fighting against the weaknesses of xCL. You only have a
maximum of about 4 intercept from that, and that would be with a damn
lucky draw. If you could combine that with a 2nd, perhaps. However,
bear in mind the following. Telepathic Misdirection will keep looking
at you trying to decide if you want to chuck it for this bleed, or for
the intercept. Eagle Sight is wasted on just the intercept. Aura
Reading is, pretty much, not worth the slots. You could put more and
*better* intercept cards in. Why not use Enhanced Senses? Another +2
intercept is a Good Thing (tm).
>
>Celerity: 6x Flash, 6x Blur, 6x Pursuit, 6x side strike, 4x Sideslip,
> (31) 1x Fast hands, 2x Quickness.
And all somewhat dubious, it has to be said. Flash is good, Blur et al
are only good if you can make sure you survive to the additional
strikes, and can toss the blood for it. Where are your Taste of Vitaes?
Blood gain, rather than pool gain, in this deck is sparse - four Fifths,
which necessitate an action, which stop you intercepting, which mean you
don't do what the deck sets out to do. You also can't really defend
against other combat decks. That Taste of Vitae can help you get to the
additional strikes, instead of dying on your feet.
And then there's the other fact about what you're playing - Toreador
guns. The Toreador are a reasonably crap clan in combat. Guns aren't
worth it, most of the time. Faster, cleaner transient combat is a
better way to go.
If you really want to play the kings of intercept, shift to the
Tzimisce. Whilst they have the same problems against IG, they can
intercept incredibly well. Auspex provides the transient intercept you
have. Animalism can provide a few boosters in the way of Cat's Guidance
and so forth. You can also go for a few permanents if you're feeling
lucky - a Murder of Crows, or a Wolf Companion. Both of those can be
better than a gun, since they can't be prevented by Skin of Steel, due
to not coming from a strike.
Also, whilst Vicissitude, as I said, is still vulnerable to IG, you can
do much better things that guns. You can screw their stealth over
anyway, necessitating them to take actions to get it back and also
reduce their hand damage (thus providing defence for yourself), with
Fleshcraft and Bonecraft. Breath of the Dragon provides an incredibly
powerful strike, for very little. You can even get additional hand
damage, aggravated hand damage and damage prevention, if you're willing
to shell out a little blood - which you were doing before *anyway* - and
all of those will slip past an IG.
--
James Coupe (Prince of Mercia, England)
Vampire: Elder Kindred Network
http://madnessnetwork.hexagon.net http://www.obeah.demon.co.uk