Dealing with bleed

I'm not sure where the best point to interject was and the subject seemed to be fragmenting anyway. I have never found big (power, whatever) bleed easy to deal with. In theory you can do this or do that, but seeing a prey ousted by Govern, Conditioning, and/or Foreshadowing is banal. As an example, I like Followers of Set. I've played a couple different decks in tournaments. In both cases, I spent a great deal of time trying to figure out how to survive dominate bleed, which - amazingly enough - is ubiquitous in tournaments, if not in all types of games. Neither deck had an answer. Sure, I tried some things like Major Boons. Just not viable defense. Bleed bounce: Of course it works, it's supposed to. As has been mentioned repeatedly, it is also limited to two disciplines. And, it is possible to work around it to a degree by playing smart and using tap effects. Pool gain: Often slow or complicated. Being bled for a lot is neither slow nor complicated, even by nonweenies. Rush: Myriad of problems taken together which leads to seeing a lack of it in tournament play. Even if you can completely shut down someone who can bleed you for 6 with one minion, you've spent the entire game going backwards. Intercept: Has problems with heavy stealth, tap, and takes a while to set up. Also, you have to do something when you intercept, otherwise your just delaying the problem. Also, has similarities often to rush decks in going backwards to the exclusion of moving forwards. Before commenting specifically on AI, which seems to be only part of the discussion on dealing with bleed, I want to point out that, while the game survives big bleed, it does it largely by limiting what decks are viable - decks that are just as fast, or faster, to oust their prey or bounce. This is completely unrelated to whether AI is worthwhile or not, except to show that AI is not a reliable defense. AI is an idiotic card. Happy? However, since it is no more idiotic than about 20 other cards, I simply can't get excited about it one way or the other. Given how many times I haven't been able to deal with a simple bleed deck because I've been trying to play with interesting cards, I'd love to own more than one and love to burn vampires left and right with them. (I own only one because while I have over 10,000 Jyhad cards I have about 100 V:TES base set cards.) Somehow, I don't think the various metagames I've played in, which feature being bombed continuously with 4+ bleeds, are that uncommon. Anecdote: In all the years I've gone to Gen Con (US), I've only played one V:TES tournament. It wasn't that interesting, though it was quite a while ago. I got a VP playing a Malk combat deck only because my prey got hit with AI.

In article <20001212151727...@ng-cn1.aol.com>, cur...@aol.com (Ian Lee) wrote: > I'm not sure where the best point to interject was and the subject seemed to be > fragmenting anyway. > > I have never found big (power, whatever) bleed easy to deal with. In theory > you can do this or do that, but seeing a prey ousted by Govern, Conditioning, > and/or Foreshadowing is banal. Nobody said it's easy. Massive stealth bleed is a straightforward, somewhat boring but effective strategy. > > As an example, I like Followers of Set. I've played a couple different decks > in tournaments. In both cases, I spent a great deal of time trying to figure > out how to survive dominate bleed, which - amazingly enough - is ubiquitous in > tournaments, if not in all types of games. Neither deck had an answer. Sure, > I tried some things like Major Boons. Just not viable defense. > Playing Followers Of Set might not be the greatest option if your metagame predicts massive bleeders all over the place. As with every clan it's possible for them to deal with bleed in general, but you will have a hard time against that Malkavian coming for 5 pool on round 2. > Bleed bounce: Of course it works, it's supposed to. As has been mentioned > repeatedly, it is also limited to two disciplines. And, it is possible to work > around it to a degree by playing smart and using tap effects. > > Pool gain: Often slow or complicated. Being bled for a lot is neither slow > nor complicated, even by nonweenies. > Don't forget that these strategies mix rather well. If you go for pool gain, of course it takes a while to get those big vamps out. Your first minion should be ready to deflect like crazy if your prey is a massive bleeder, but don't forget that he should rethink his strategy if you just deflect his bleeds to prey, so basically he's doing your job. > Rush: Myriad of problems taken together which leads to seeing a lack of it in > tournament play. Even if you can completely shut down someone who can bleed > you for 6 with one minion, you've spent the entire game going backwards. > Not necessary. Of course Ozmo comes with a "kill me" tag on his forehead, but if you make it clear to your predator that he's dead first if you have to kill all his vampires, than you can concentrate on your prey after crippling his offensive enough so that he has to concentrate on staying in the game. As so often table manipulation is really important. > Intercept: Has problems with heavy stealth, tap, and takes a while to set up. > Also, you have to do something when you intercept, otherwise your just delaying > the problem. Also, has similarities often to rush decks in going backwards to > the exclusion of moving forwards. What do you mean by heavy stealth? A good intercept deck should be able to deal with +3 stealth and still do something in combat. I have an Euro Brujah deck that uses second traditions and a few intercept locations, and it destroys almost every vampire it encounters. If your prey is able to get more stealth than that consistently, stop blocking and let him choke on his stealth cards. <snip stuff about AI, a card I find OK-ish, because it punishes the real cheese, although it works in a way not really consistent with the game spirit> Regards Skaffen Chantry Elder Of Munich "Our hearts discern wild images of Death, Shadows and shoals that edge eternity." Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/

In article <20001212151727...@ng-cn1.aol.com>, cur...@aol.com (Ian Lee) wrote: > I'm not sure where the best point to interject was and the subject seemed to be > fragmenting anyway. > > I have never found big (power, whatever) bleed easy to deal with. In theory > you can do this or do that, but seeing a prey ousted by Govern, Conditioning, > and/or Foreshadowing is banal. > > As an example, I like Followers of Set. I've played a couple different decks > in tournaments. In both cases, I spent a great deal of time trying to figure > out how to survive dominate bleed, which - amazingly enough - is ubiquitous in > tournaments, if not in all types of games. Neither deck had an answer. Sure, > I tried some things like Major Boons. Just not viable defense. > As Skaffen points out, Setites are rather challenged in terms of decent defense against massive stealth-bleed. But if you really want to persist with them in this environment my suggestions would be as follows. Protected resources and telepathic counters would work just fine in a Setite vote/corrupt deck. Use Greta Kircher as a little Setite Friend - i think Amisa has auspex and you could put Lena Rowe in there, too. Dramatic Upheavals to take you out of stealth-bleedy person's reach or to nip back in again when they are about to oust their prey. Life Boon just in case they do it quicker than you anticipated. Enchant Kindred used for pool-gain. [ quoted text not captured ]

On Wed, 13 Dec 2000 13:39:28 GMT, skaffen_...@my-deja.com wrote: >> Rush: Myriad of problems taken together which leads to seeing a lack of it in >> tournament play. Even if you can completely shut down someone who can bleed >> you for 6 with one minion, you've spent the entire game going backwards. > >Not necessary. Of course Ozmo comes with a "kill me" tag on his forehead, but >if you make it clear to your predator that he's dead first if you have to >kill all his vampires, than you can concentrate on your prey after crippling >his offensive enough so that he has to concentrate on staying in the game. As >so often table manipulation is really important. Hm. This doesn't work against an experienced predator. You turn to him, and what do you offer? "I won't vaporize all your vampires if you don't try to oust me." So his response is: "Better kill them then, because I'm coming in." He doesn't have any other options unless he himself has a way to rearrange the table, and making any "ok, i'll stay alive..." deals is not in his best interest. Don't get me wrong. Looking harmless IS in his best interest; bleeding for 1 or 2 a few times with a Malkavian is probably not the worst thing he could do, if only to fool his prey into thinking his deck does something other than what it does... and then waiting until he gets out overwhelming force, and just running over his Rush prey. But actually making a deal to do that would be bad; the element of surprise matters a lot. -- Derek Jack-Booted Thug of Atlanta "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge." - C. Darwin, 1871

In article <t92f3t8rliu1lmuul...@4ax.com>, [ quoted text not captured ] You are absolutely right, but I wasn't really mentioning a deal. Actually the way you describe it is the way it works: You intimidate him so that he learns what his "best interest" is. He should know what you are able to do, and forcing you to kill him because he comes full blast every turn is not a good idea - only if he knows that he can win this war of attrition. Still I think that you could try to make some sort of deal with him - I could see a weenie combat monster negotiating a truce with the bleeder: You don't bleed me for x rounds, I will kill this nasty guy from your prey. This leaves you some time to work on your predator, and your prey might have the chance to bring out the one extra vampire that enables him to oust you in one sweep. Someone will break the deal at some point, of course... When he/she sees a chance. But the killing scenario where both loose is the worst option for both players IMHO. By gaining some time the combat monster might get his prey softened up for ousting, and the bleeder might build resources to surprise the combat deck. [ quoted text not captured ]

Ian wrote: >>As an example, I like Followers of Set. I've played a couple different decks in tournaments. In both cases, I spent a great deal of time trying to figure out how to survive dominate bleed, which - amazingly enough - is ubiquitous in tournaments, if not in all types of games. Neither deck had an answer. Sure, I tried some things like Major Boons. Just not viable defense.>> Again, the Followers of Set are really pretty screwed in terms of big bleed defense, but the answer is to give the Followers of Set cards that help them combat bleeds, not AI, but that is another thread. Probably the best plan for the Setites in terms of anti-bleed is to play stealth politics, and rearrange the table as soon as possible (i.e. play with plenty Kindred Restructure and Bewitching Oration). >>Rush: Myriad of problems taken together which leads to seeing a lack of it in tournament play. Even if you can completely shut down someone who can bleed you for 6 with one minion, you've spent the entire game going backwards.>> I don't know what to tell you. I play a Rush deck in pretty much every tournament I go to. Sometimes I win. Usually I get into the finals. The decks that bleed for 6 per action? Never the decks that cause me trouble. Ever. >>AI is an idiotic card. Happy?>> Happier. >>However, since it is no more idiotic than about 20 other cards, I simply can't get excited about it one way or the other.>> I tend to think that it is more idiotic than most, as it is so obviously overpowered and smacks completely of "Magic Bullet" that is such a weak fix in this sort of game. But that is just me. >>Somehow, I don't think the various metagames I've played in, which feature being bombed continuously with 4+ bleeds, are that uncommon.>> Nope. I play in one all the time. We hardly ever see an AI, people still bleed for more than 3, and bleed decks do not dominate play. Sure, occasionally someone gets rolled by sitting in the wrong place with the wrong deck, but that is always a possibility, bleed deck or no. Playing big bleed is a questionable strategy in general, simply because Bleed Bounce exists--it is fairly common to run across bounce, thus it is not unlikely that in any particular game, your prey will have bounce. If your prey does have bounce, your bleeds for 7 are just going to be doing your prey's work for him. Does this mean that every deck has to include Bounce to survive Big Bleed? No. It means that the guy who is playing the 7+ bleed is foolish, and it will bite him in the ass more often than you would think. Is this consolation for the guy who is his prey and has no bleed defense and gets rolled? Of course not, but in general, I don't think you are going to run into huge bleeds all that often, and when you are playing huge bleeds, you will often spend time smacking yourself on the head because *again* you have ousted your grand prey for someone else. Peter D Bakija PD...@aol.com http://www.geocities.com/bakija6 "Why so many swords?" "I must kill many." -Kikuchiyo

In article <20001212151727...@ng-cn1.aol.com>, cur...@aol.com (Ian Lee) wrote: > I'm not sure where the best point to interject was and the subject seemed to be > fragmenting anyway. > > I have never found big (power, whatever) bleed easy to deal with. In theory > you can do this or do that, but seeing a prey ousted by Govern, Conditioning, > and/or Foreshadowing is banal. I actually agree with this to some extent. It is relatively boring to get bled for three an action and get ousted within ten actions. Thing is, it's also boring to get Kine Resources Contested for three an action and get ousted within ten actions. It's even boring to get Rushed, Immortal Grappled, and torporized every time you get a vampire out, leaving you unable to do much of anything. I think the problem is that all the most effective tactics become boring after a while. I'm not really sure what's a good solution to that. You can agree to play only non-effective decks among your playgroup, but that doesn't help anything in tournaments. You can decide that the cards that remove pool the most quickly are overpowered and either up their costs (Govern and Conditioning for 2 blood each, anyone?) or reduce their effects or ban them. But I don't know how acceptable those options are. Or if they'd be a good idea in the first place. Heh. It might be interesting (if you think playing with weak cards is interesting) to take, for example, all the cards in the decks on The Lasombra's tourney-winning-decks page, and play in a format where all those cards are banned. It would leave, probably, a lot of cards, but not very many good ones. There might still be gaping blind spots for good archetypes that simply haven't shown up there, though. (Corruption, for example, wouldn't be on the list, although Temptation and Form of Corruption would.) Josh doesn't have all the answers [ quoted text not captured ]

>Playing Followers Of Set might not be the greatest option if your metagame >predicts massive bleeders all over the place. As with every clan it's >possible for them to deal with bleed in general, but you will have a hard >time against that Malkavian coming for 5 pool on round 2. I think the reason I mentioned this has quickly gotten lost. FoS are not an option at all if I care enough to try and win in a tournament. That is the point. I was trying to follow up on all the comments about how many of the clans in the game just aren't viable because they can't bleed bounce, which is the one exceptional defense against big bleed. Anyway, the game functions. I believe it could function far better, but that's true of every CCG (except Ultimate Combat!, the only great CCG). Rewriting the game won't work. But, getting back to AI, it is not a problem. The majority of views for whether it is a good or bad card never say it is a problem. More anti-bleed measures aren't likely to be a problem, since I doubt anyone sane would make something as severe as AI again. What I'm hoping for, which I see a bit of with SW, is moving the game towards combat, especially different styles of combat, because combat is interactive. As a side benefit, if every deck has a reasonable combat component, Grapple becomes less annoying. As a side note, I'm lost as to why 3? new S:CE cards were made when S:CE defeats 90% of combat. Need to make some more hosers for it so that Grapple doesn't become more necessary for combat.

<snip> >Use Greta Kircher as a little Setite Friend Came ot think of, can you use her ability to reduce her bleed by more than one? It doesn't say on her text so I'd assume you can? I.e. burn 4 blood to reduce a bleed of 4 to 0. [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <20001213154322...@ng-fa1.aol.com>, Ian Lee <cur...@aol.com> writes >As a side note, I'm lost as to why 3? new S:CE cards >were made when S:CE defeats 90% of combat. I was saddened by that, too, but Telepathic Tracking makes things very, very different indeed. -- James Coupe | PGP Key 0x5D623D5D "It's hard to carry on when you feel all alone. Now I've swung back down again, it's worse than it was before. If I hadn't seen such riches I could live with being poor." - James, "Sit Down"

In article <20001213103017...@ng-bg1.aol.com>, Peter D Bakija <pd...@aol.comANTISPAM> writes >Probably the best plan for >the Setites in terms of anti-bleed is to play stealth politics, and rearrange >the table as soon as possible (i.e. play with plenty Kindred Restructure and >Bewitching Oration). Kindred Restructure is awkward, requiring a Prince, which is why I suggested Dramatic Upheaval. [ quoted text not captured ]

> <snip> > >> Use Greta Kircher as a little Setite Friend > > Came ot think of, can you use her ability to reduce her bleed by more > than one? It doesn't say on her text so I'd assume you can? I.e. burn 4 > blood to reduce a bleed of 4 to 0. Um, no? Sabbat: If Greta is ready and you are being bled by an ally or a younger vampire, Greta may burn a blood to reduce the bleed amount by one. Note that Greta may not burn "X" blood to reduce a bleed by "X." But, you're right, it doesn't clearly say "Once each time you are being bled...yada yada" I think the answer is "No," but it might should be clarified. (There is no such Clarification on the WW page) -- Pat Ricochet Soul Jar'rn Fool of Atlanta

[ quoted text not captured ] Once per bleed. And you're right - this is more than a clarification. -- LSJ (vte...@white-wolf.com) V:TES Net.Rep for White Wolf, Inc. Links to revised rulebook, rulings, errata, and tournament rules: http://www.white-wolf.com/vtes/

In article <B65DB4EF.15C8%sp...@socrates.gatech.edu>, Pat Ricochet <sp...@socrates.gatech.edu> writes > But, you're right, it doesn't clearly say "Once each time you are being >bled...yada yada" I think the answer is "No," but it might should be >clarified. The text is "a" blood, and hence suggests one and only one. [ quoted text not captured ]