some thoughts on stratagy

In Jyhad your main concern has to be ousting prey. Except for "fun decks" which I concider an all combat deck to be. The reason I say this is they are to combo intensive to be reliable in any environment. Because in order to oust just one meth you have to get a 3 to 5 card combo off at least 4 times if your lucky, and either burn them, or never allow them out of topor. Which can sometimes be amazingly difficult. so at this point you have 20 cards tied up in one prey with at least 4 or 5 cards to back them up (i.e. skill cards, KRCG to block hunts after a rescue from top.ect.)so you've used 25 cards on just one prey not counting deck maintanance, pool gainers, and the like so just for argument we'll say 10. So the grand total is now up to 35 cards in the deck just to survive long enough to oust one prey. Almost half your deck on one prey thats a "fun deck". So if your lucky and you get the cards you need in the order you need them your best hope is 2 VP not enough( in my circle at least )to win a 5 or 6 player game, and we haven't even concidered that you may have to fight your predator a few times. My belife is that a deck needs a little of everything some form of intercept, wakes, some form of votes ( I like Praxis Seizures), suddens, and the ever hated equipment ( 44s a necesity IMO ),and bonus bleeds. After you have your framework then you begin to apply your stratagy of choice. You won't be able to handle everything , but you won't be helpless against anything. In a game where you are doing well you can have many different prey. Each of which is in all likelyhood is going to be playing something different. You "HAVE" to be able to deal with it, or your race to victory simply ends. thanx for allowing me to rant Eric

lk...@uswest.net wrote: > In Jyhad your main concern has to be ousting prey. Except for "fun > decks" which I concider an all combat deck to be. I think most people have a different definition of what a "fun deck" is. (See effective 4cl deck) To me every deck made from Vampire/Jyhad cards is a fun deck. (As opposed to those made with M:t$, etc.) Thanks, Rob Grau

Eric wrote: "My belife is that a deck needs a little of everything some form of intercept, wakes, some form of votes ( I like Praxis Seizures), suddens, and the ever hated equipment ( 44s a necesity IMO ),and bonus bleeds. After you have your framework then you begin to apply your stratagy of choice. You won't be able to handle everything , but you won't be helpless against anything. In a game where you are doing well you can have many different prey. Each of which is in all likelyhood is going to be playing something different. You "HAVE" to be able to deal with it, or your race to victory simply ends." Again, I would say that this entire strategy issue comes from playing with card limits. With card limits, barring a few obvious deck designs, you cannot build decks that are successful enough at one thing to win doing it, so they need to diversify. With no limits, as you can make literally any deck you want, you can build decks that are perfectly capable of winning and being completely single minded. If you want to make a diverse deck, you are perfectly able to, but if you want to make a very focused deck that wins solely on the virtue of its one angle, you can do that as well. Using the pure Rush combat deck as an example (again, because the concept of Rush decks under NL and under 4CL are so vastly different), you can make a perfectly effective pure, unadulterated rush deck under NL that is completely free of Wakes/Untaps of any kind, completely free of intercept of any type, completely free of bleed bonuses of any kind, and complely free of vote defense of any kind. Such a deck has one purpose--to directly attack and destroy the vampires of its predator and prey, in doing so controlling the table enough to oust its prey while keeping down its predator. In such a deck, Wakes are generally useless, as they clog up the hand, and without intercept you can't block stuff anyway, so what it the point in trying? In such a deck votes are useless, as they tend to clog up the hand, and without titled vampires (or lots and lots of other votes), you can't pass them anyway, so what is the point in trying? In such a deck, bleed bonuses do not help you kill your opponent's vampires, consequently making it harder to kill them, so what is the point? When your prey has no more vampires, you can bleed with impunity... Under no limits, you do not have to make completely single minded decks. Versitile decks are completley viable and competetive as well. I have plenty of successful decks that are very robust and flexible--a Nosferatu Intercept/Stealth Bleed/Long Range Combat deck; a Brujah tap/bleed/thrown objects/blood gain deck; a Protean S:CE/Bleed/Untap/Intercept/Garou deck. These are all very flexible and have the ability to deal with many things. I also, however, like to build pure focused Rush decks that do not untap, intercept, vote, or bleed to any extent. Because of no limits on the cards in my decks, I can build decks to be both successful as flexible, diverse decks as well as decks that will be sucessful by virtue of their sheer single mindedness and focus. Under Card Limits, you do not have this option (as you have discussed at length in the above post). Your decks _must_ be diverse (you said so yourself). Thus, every CL deck will end up looking pretty much the same: It'll have Wakes, Bleed Bonuses, Weapons, some Intercept, and then some other cards. You specifically pointed this out--that decks under CL generally need to all be the same. You find this less boring than the literally infinite deck possibilites of no limits? Peter D Bakija PD...@aol.com "We dress like Students. We dress like Housewives. Or in a shirt and a tie." -Talking Heads

First point: I believe NL is the best way to play jyhad. Second point: Let's not follow the poor guy around the NG and hammer him with CL vs NL....unless of course he brings it up first - then he's fair game. Gang tactics is, after all, just a card in the game:) Third point: Obviously, in his play group, forces came together to make 4CL the game of choice (having a player in the group that buys all of the Sabbat cards around probably didn't help). Hell, I'm just glad he 1) plays the game, and 2) knows that officially it is a NL game. He will come around eventually. Hopefully, one day, I'll find myself in his domain, he'll invoke the Second Tradition, and we can argue NL vs. CL until the dawn.....while we play at the Jyhad of course:) Jaysen [ quoted text not captured ]

lk...@uswest.net wrote: : In Jyhad your main concern has to be ousting prey. Except for "fun : decks" which I concider an all combat deck to be. The reason I say this : is they are to combo intensive to be reliable in any environment. : Because in order to oust just one meth you have to get a 3 to 5 card : combo off at least 4 times if your lucky, and either burn them, or never : allow them out of topor. Which can sometimes be amazingly difficult. so : at this point you have 20 cards tied up in one prey with at least 4 or 5 : cards to back them up (i.e. skill cards, KRCG to block hunts after a : rescue from top.ect.)so you've used 25 cards on just one prey not : counting deck maintanance, pool gainers, and the like so just for : argument we'll say 10. So the grand total is now up to 35 cards in the : deck just to survive long enough to oust one prey. Almost half your deck : on one prey thats a "fun deck". So if your lucky and you get the cards : you need in the order you need them your best hope is 2 VP not enough( : in my circle at least )to win a 5 or 6 player game, and we haven't even : concidered that you may have to fight your predator a few times. This is an interesting perspective. My thoughts on the matter are (naturally ;-) a little different. I've played a lot of 'all combat' decks in my time, and in my experience they can certainly win games, and even sweep tables. Since it sounds like you haven't seen combat decks be very effective in winning games, I'll describe how it works for me. My example deck (probably my favorite one, and probably the most effective all-combat deck I've played in terms of VPs) is a NL Brujah Bum's Rush cel/pot combat deck; generally 90 cards since in my playgroup we use 40 min/90 max deck size regardless of actual number of players, to keep things simple. (Usually we have 5 players so it's legit, but we like not having to take cards out if we accidentally have 4, so we let everyone use 90.) Anyway, the deck uses something like 15 rush cards, typically 9 Immortal Grapple, around 9 Torn Signposts, 9 Undead Strength, 7 Taste of Vitae, 3 Blur, a bunch of Flash, some Sideslip, Side Strike, Pursuit; some Blood Dolls, some Pot and Cel skill cards, and a crypt of average cap no more than 4 (aided by 2 Jimmy Dunn, the most broken vampire I know of). In play, a deck like this survives and wins by essentially controlling the entire table. That means it's a fairly delicate balancing act to win games playing something like this. What you usually have to do is torporize or burn some of your predator's vampires early on as well as your prey's, in order to make sure you don't lose too much pool to a bleed deck or offensive vote deck. Doing that makes it your responsibility to keep your predator weak enough that they won't oust you, but hopefully not so weak that they'll be easily ousted by your grandpredator. At the same time, you need to beat up some of your prey's vampires to keep your prey less than fully effective; ideally you don't want your prey to ever oust your grandprey, but you do want them to weaken your grandprey enough that when you oust your initial prey, your grandprey will be relatively easy pickings. The pool loss you cause your prey with a deck like this will be largely based on torporizing his vampires so that he has to keep spending more pool on bringing out more vampires in order to get anything done. You can also bleed him for 1 with each of your vampires, of course, but this is a relatively slow method, and it's usually not a good idea unless your predator has been almost completely neutralized. It may be worthwhile when your prey is down to his last few pool, and you can oust him this turn, but otherwise it's often better to use your vampires for combat rather than bleeding. If you can pull off the strategy required, it's not at all out of reach to get three VPs in a five player game (ousting two people and being the last player), and I have swept tables from time to time. It's not as easy to do as it can be playing big-bleed or offensive vote decks, which remove pool much more directly. But it can certainly be done. It is also more card-intensive, for sure. There have been some games where I've run out of cards. But even if it takes 35 cards to oust each player (I think this is on the high side in my games), that allows two ousts in 70 cards, and if you're the last player you have 20 cards left at the end. It's probably more difficult to get 3 VPs without being the last player if you're playing a combat deck, but certainly not impossible. Keep in mind that you can cause very large effective pool losses in some circumstances - for example, if your prey brings out an Inner Circle member, and on your next turn you Bum's Rush her, Torn Signpost, Immortal Grapple, Undead Strength, Blur or Flash (for another press), Pulled Fangs, you can neutralize her before she takes a single action. (This is a 6-card combo, yes, but it's not at all unlikely in playing a well-designed combat deck - leave off the final Pulled Fangs and it happens all the time.) Combat can be a difficult strategy to get VPs out of because it doesn't directly reduce anyone's pool total. But the challenge of trying to manage the action of an entire game in order to win can make it worthwhile. Plus, it's fun to mangle vampires horribly. ;-) : My belife is that a deck needs a little of everything some form of : intercept, wakes, some form of votes ( I like Praxis Seizures), suddens, : and the ever hated equipment ( 44s a necesity IMO ),and bonus bleeds. : After you have your framework then you begin to apply your stratagy of : choice. You won't be able to handle everything , but you won't be : helpless against anything. In a game where you are doing well you can : have many different prey. Each of which is in all likelyhood is going to : be playing something different. You "HAVE" to be able to deal with it, : or your race to victory simply ends. That's the interesting thing about rush combat. It can deal with any kind of deck, if properly designed. (It probably has the most trouble with other combat decks, and having lots of those around can lead to some vicious metagame developments. But never mind that...) : thanx for allowing me to rant Hey, everyone's welcome to rant as far as I'm concerned. Josh rant rave rant rave

> PD86 wrote: > > Using the pure Rush combat deck as an example (again, because the concept of > Rush decks under NL and under 4CL are so vastly different), you can make a > perfectly effective pure, unadulterated rush deck under NL that is completely > free of Wakes/Untaps of any kind, completely free of intercept of any type, not a good Idea though (possibly because I put more value on a combat card slot) because if you allow them to be rescued and then hunt back up you've wasted your cards and done nothing more than iritate your prey.where as if you have a KRCG even Smudge can send them back to topor. Keeping the advantage you've gained. And no SB player wants to waste stealth on hunts. so even if they do get the hunt off mabey you just saved your grand prey from being ousted and giving your prey the pool they need to replace the vamps you've already done away with > completely free of bleed bonuses of any kind, and complely free of vote defense > of any kind. Such a deck has one purpose--to directly attack and destroy the > vampires of its predator and prey, in doing so controlling the table enough to > oust its prey while keeping down its predator. In such a deck, Wakes are > generally useless, as they clog up the hand, and without intercept you can't > block stuff anyway, so what it the point in trying? In such a deck votes are > useless, as they tend to clog up the hand, So your statagy is send them to topor with a 5 card combo don't diablerize because you have no votes allow them to be rescued, not stop them from hunting. so 5 cards to annoy someone for one turn. Just dosent seem worth it to me. > > > Under Card Limits, you do not have this option (as you have discussed at length > in the above post). Your decks _must_ be diverse (you said so yourself). > Thus, every CL deck will end up looking pretty much the same: It'll have > Wakes, Bleed Bonuses, Weapons, some Intercept, and then some other cards. You > specifically pointed this out--that decks under CL generally need to all be the > same. You find this less boring than the literally infinite deck possibilites > of no limits? the above mentioned "Pure Rush" deck has all the facets of a piece of paper. If half of these infinite decks are the same thing whats the point. While yes I've some times wished for one more copy in a game. These simple unimaginative decks are what forced us to limits.The games were who gets the best draw, And after swiching the games became more skillful cardslots become much more valuable and you don't make a move simply because its all the deck can do. You make a move to improve your situation at the time and certin cards always come in handy. You mean to tell me that while playing "Pure Rush" and losing to a vote deck you didn't wish for some intercept to stop that one vote? you've never wanted a laptop to cut your preys lifespan in half? This "Pure Rush" wouldn't last five minutes around here. And I don't see how it would last against some of your decks. :-)-~ It's focused to the point of tunnel vision. Not to say that "Fun Decks" don't have their place. Mabey you could have a friend build a Succubus club deck out of "Handy" cards and sell them to you in excange for your taking out their biggest threats too. The two of you could clear a table. Ranting again Eric > > > >

Joshua Duffin wrote: > <snip some thoughts on Stratagy> > > This is an interesting perspective. My thoughts on the matter are > (naturally ;-) a little different. I've played a lot of 'all combat' > decks in my time, and in my experience they can certainly win games, > and even sweep tables. > > Since it sounds like you haven't seen combat decks be very effective > in winning games, I'll describe how it works for me. My example deck > (probably my favorite one, and probably the most effective all-combat deck > I've played in terms of VPs) is a NL Brujah Bum's Rush cel/pot combat deck; > generally 90 cards since in my playgroup we use 40 min/90 max deck size > regardless of actual number of players, to keep things simple. (Usually > we have 5 players so it's legit, but we like not having to take cards > out if we accidentally have 4, so we let everyone use 90.) my decks usually run 80 for some predictability, But let's not even go there. ;-)-~ > > > Anyway, the deck uses something like 15 rush cards, typically 9 > Immortal Grapple, around 9 Torn Signposts, 9 Undead Strength, 7 Taste > of Vitae, 3 Blur, a bunch of Flash, some Sideslip, Side Strike, Pursuit; > some Blood Dolls, some Pot and Cel skill cards, and a crypt of average > cap no more than 4 (aided by 2 Jimmy Dunn, the most broken vampire I > know of). I have 30 combat cards in my Brujha deck with only 2 BR and 2 havensbut I add 2 Bang nah, 2 magnums, 4 Sport Bike, 2 IR goggles, 4 Alacrity, 4 legal manipulations, 2 blood tears (to ease the cost of alacrity) 4 asst. Praxis seizures, 3 Cboons, 3 KR contes., 4 wake, 2 sudden the crypt is probably similar Bianka Rake Hector ect. But I also use Donnal O'Connor and Rake in multiple to get at least one up > > > In play, a deck like this survives and wins by essentially controlling > the entire table. That means it's a fairly delicate balancing act to > win games playing something like this. What you usually have to do > is torporize or burn some of your predator's vampires early on as well > as your prey's, in order to make sure you don't lose too much pool to > a bleed deck or offensive vote deck. I do the same only If my predator is a vote deck He usually needs me to get anything across or I can intercept the votes and kill it allowing his vote card to be my bums rush. > Doing that makes it your > responsibility to keep your predator weak enough that they won't oust > you, but hopefully not so weak that they'll be easily ousted by your > grandpredator. At the same time, you need to beat up some of your > prey's vampires to keep your prey less than fully effective; ideally > you don't want your prey to ever oust your grandprey, but you do > want them to weaken your grandprey enough that when you oust your > initial prey, your grandprey will be relatively easy pickings. we seem to play Brujha with the same goals. We just do it differently In respect to me using my versatility to accomplish the same things. > > > The pool loss you cause your prey with a deck like this will be largely > based on torporizing his vampires so that he has to keep spending more > pool on bringing out more vampires in order to get anything done. You > can also bleed him for 1 with each of your vampires, of course, but this > is a relatively slow method, and it's usually not a good idea unless > your predator has been almost completely neutralized. It may be > worthwhile when your prey is down to his last few pool, and you can > oust him this turn, but otherwise it's often better to use your vampires > for combat rather than bleeding. But judicious use of the legals can get you the 6 pool up to 2 full turns earlier which can come in real handy sometimes. I pretty much agree with the strategy you play I just think Its overkill threat can be used to accomplish many of the ideas you put forth allowing you to pull out a few more surprises ;-)-~ > > > If you can pull off the strategy required, it's not at all out of > reach to get three VPs in a five player game (ousting two people and > being the last player), and I have swept tables from time to time. > It's not as easy to do as it can be playing big-bleed or offensive > vote decks, which remove pool much more directly. But it can certainly > be done. It is also more card-intensive, for sure. There have been > some games where I've run out of cards. But even if it takes 35 cards > to oust each player (I think this is on the high side in my games), > that allows two ousts in 70 cards, and if you're the last player you > have 20 cards left at the end. It's probably more difficult to get > 3 VPs without being the last player if you're playing a combat deck, > but certainly not impossible. Keep in mind that you can cause very > large effective pool losses in some circumstances - for example, if > your prey brings out an Inner Circle member, and on your next turn > you Bum's Rush her, Torn Signpost, Immortal Grapple, Undead Strength, > Blur or Flash (for another press), Pulled Fangs, you can neutralize > her before she takes a single action. (This is a 6-card combo, yes, > but it's not at all unlikely in playing a well-designed combat deck - > leave off the final Pulled Fangs and it happens all the time.) true but one burning wrath followed up with an Extra stealth (if you need it ) diablerie backed up with the votes to stop the blood hunt ( if you need it) will net you a full vamp with a new skill, and cause the same pool loss ;-)-~ > > > Combat can be a difficult strategy to get VPs out of because it > doesn't directly reduce anyone's pool total. But the challenge > of trying to manage the action of an entire game in order to win > can make it worthwhile. Plus, it's fun to mangle vampires horribly. > ;-) yea it is :-)-~ > > > still rantin Eric

lk...@uswest.net writes: > > > PD86 wrote: > > >>Using the pure Rush combat deck as an example (again, because the concept of >>Rush decks under NL and under 4CL are so vastly different), you can make a >>perfectly effective pure, unadulterated rush deck under NL that is completely >>free of Wakes/Untaps of any kind, completely free of intercept of any type, > >not a good Idea though (possibly because I put more value on a combat card slot) >because if you allow them to be rescued and then hunt back up you've wasted your >cards and done nothing more than iritate your prey.where as if you have a KRCG even > Smudge can send them back to topor. Keeping the advantage you've gained. And no SB > player wants to waste stealth on hunts. so even if they do get the hunt off mabey > you just saved your grand prey from being ousted and giving your prey the pool they > need to replace the vamps you've already done away with > [Caution: I'm assuming we're discussing a non-aggro Rush deck here, so that when you're sending an opponent's Vampire to torpor, he's supposed to have no blood left] The notion of a "wasted card" is vastly different in NL and CL environments. If a Rush deck is correctly designed, you don't waste your cards going to combat - that's all you can do to use them. If they rescue the vampire, then hunt, they've used 2 minion actions and 1 blood, and that leaves a very weak (1 blood) vampire that you'll easily send to torpor again. If I use one action to send your big vamp to torpor with no blood left, and next turn you rescue him and have him hunt, then I've effectively tied up two of your vampires with one of mine, plus they're significantly weaker. Not taking our respective prey/predator into account, you're not exactly on the winning slope. Things may be different with a deck that's just supposed to deal one or two points of aggravated damage, because the blood cost of doing this usually means it won't be an effective way of doing things. On the "wasting stealth" issue you've mentioned earlier... you're either trying to intercept all annoying things, or don't bother trying at all. If you have a dedicated S&B predator, don't try to intercept them, take a few big bleeds (it hurts a lot), and rush them. If they can't unload their Stealth cards because you're not trying to block, they won't be able to do _anything_. Trying to block will more than likely fail, and you'll allow them to cycle ther cards. If you're a "pure rush" deck, your best possible bleed defense is to rush - and it has the advantage that it's effective against almost any kind of threat. >>completely free of bleed bonuses of any kind, and complely free of vote defense >>of any kind. Such a deck has one purpose--to directly attack and destroy the >>vampires of its predator and prey, in doing so controlling the table enough to >>oust its prey while keeping down its predator. In such a deck, Wakes are >>generally useless, as they clog up the hand, and without intercept you can't >>block stuff anyway, so what it the point in trying? In such a deck votes are >>useless, as they tend to clog up the hand, > > > So your statagy is send them to topor with a 5 card combo don't > diablerize because you have no votes allow them to be rescued, not > stop them from hunting. so 5 cards to annoy someone for one turn. Just > dosent seem worth it to me. Once your vampires are almost empty, it won't take 5 cards to send them back to torpor. And unless you've got an effective way of refilling your vampires, rescue+hunt results in a 1 blood loss for 2 actions - the Rush deck expects to do much better than that. Pretty soon, you've got empty or nearly empty vampires, most of them in torpor, so you're effectively dead. -- Philippe Duchon (duc...@labri.u-bordeaux.fr)

Philippe DUCHON wrote: > lk...@uswest.net writes: > > > > > PD86 wrote: > > > > >>Using the pure Rush combat deck as an example (again, because the concept of > >>Rush decks under NL and under 4CL are so vastly different), you can make a > >>perfectly effective pure, unadulterated rush deck under NL that is completely > >>free of Wakes/Untaps of any kind, completely free of intercept of any type, > > > >not a good Idea though (possibly because I put more value on a combat card slot) > >because if you allow them to be rescued and then hunt back up you've wasted your > >cards and done nothing more than iritate your prey.where as if you have a KRCG even > > Smudge can send them back to topor. Keeping the advantage you've gained. And no SB > > player wants to waste stealth on hunts. so even if they do get the hunt off mabey > > you just saved your grand prey from being ousted and giving your prey the pool they > > need to replace the vamps you've already done away with > > > > [Caution: I'm assuming we're discussing a non-aggro Rush deck here, so > that when you're sending an opponent's Vampire to torpor, he's > supposed to have no blood left] > > The notion of a "wasted card" is vastly different in NL and CL > environments. If a Rush deck is correctly designed, you don't waste > your cards going to combat - that's all you can do to use them. If > they rescue the vampire, then hunt, they've used 2 minion actions and > 1 blood, and that leaves a very weak (1 blood) vampire that you'll > easily send to torpor again. Correct I'm just saying that you can use permanant intercept to the same ends 3 sport bike in place of 3 rush say and once there in play you no longer need to play rush on that minion again if you don't choose(block his hunts) to or even block his rescue and get 2 for 1 without a bum rush. > > > If I use one action to send your big vamp to torpor with no blood > left, and next turn you rescue him and have him hunt, then I've > effectively tied up two of your vampires with one of mine, plus > they're significantly weaker. Not taking our respective prey/predator > into account, you're not exactly on the winning slope. > > Things may be different with a deck that's just supposed to deal one > or two points of aggravated damage, because the blood cost of doing > this usually means it won't be an effective way of doing things. > > On the "wasting stealth" issue you've mentioned earlier... you're > either trying to intercept all annoying things, or don't bother trying > at all. I disagree timing your moves and deciding what to block are important I'm not saying make an intercept deck a little can go a long way if used right, and can free up card slots as the deck evolves thru tuning.you just don't need as many rushes. > If you have a dedicated S&B predator, don't try to intercept > them, take a few big bleeds (it hurts a lot), and rush them. If they > can't unload their Stealth cards because you're not trying to block, > they won't be able to do _anything_. Trying to block will more than > likely fail, and you'll allow them to cycle ther cards. but if you have an SB prey you can block his hunts and any basic 1 stealth action (Equip ect.)force him to burn stealth on routine actions trying to slow his pool gaining throu ousting. especially after a few rushes and he needs more pool for more vamps > > > If you're a "pure rush" deck, your best possible bleed defense is to > rush - and it has the advantage that it's effective against almost any > kind of threat. you can have the same stratagy and effectiveness with a little more dimension as well Pure Rush just has too many weaknesses for my taste there are times when you simply need other cards Jhad is to complex a world to simply abandon 2/3 of the possibilitys > rantin and rantin and more damn rantin Eric

lk...@uswest.net wrote in message <355060C9...@uswest.net>... <snip a bunch of arguin' about a little intercept in a rush deck> >Correct I'm just saying that you can use permanant intercept to the same ends 3 sport >bike in place of 3 rush say and once there in play you no longer need to play rush on >that minion again if you don't choose(block his hunts) to or even block his rescue and >get 2 for 1 without a bum rush. Okay...I actually understand and somewhat agree with your point here. However, you also have to consider the limitations of including that intercept. As an example, you suggested KRCG. -Will you reliably have KRCG when you need it? -Will the one copy in your deck be buried at the bottom? -If you include more than one copy, you are now wasting the same slots that you argue could be saved by including intercept -KRCG is vulnerable to a number of things that may burn it, wasting the card or your pool. Arson, Rampage, Sudden Reversal (note: I would consider SR on KRCG a very useful move, especially when you know it's the player's only intercept). On the other hand, who is going to bother to Direct Intervention a Bum's Rush, when you know the opponent has *at least* a couple more in the deck? -Sport Bikes and other small perm. intercept that can effectively be added to a Rush deck are vulnerable to a couple of relatively common hosers as well: intercepting the equip action, strikes that destroy equipment, etc. In other words, I agree that including stuff like this in an "other-focused" deck can be useful (there are few decks I don't bother to put a copy of KRCG in...), it is difficult to advocate this for everyone, as for the most part, it seems to waste slots, and is easily countered. <snip more> The only comment I have to offer on the effectiveness of not intercepting hunting or rescues from torpor is that *eventually*, the target of your affection is no longer going to block anything else you do. There comes a point where he is unwilling to risk his vampires that are all at 1 or 2 blood unless it is dire & game-threatening. Also, unless he has a butt-load of hunting grounds, at this level, you can only rescue one vamp from torpor a turn, and then spend more time hunting before you can rescue another... Just my thoughts, Xian

lk...@uswest.net writes: > > Philippe DUCHON wrote: > > > > > [Caution: I'm assuming we're discussing a non-aggro Rush deck here, so > > that when you're sending an opponent's Vampire to torpor, he's > > supposed to have no blood left] > > > > The notion of a "wasted card" is vastly different in NL and CL > > environments. If a Rush deck is correctly designed, you don't waste > > your cards going to combat - that's all you can do to use them. If > > they rescue the vampire, then hunt, they've used 2 minion actions and > > 1 blood, and that leaves a very weak (1 blood) vampire that you'll > > easily send to torpor again. > > Correct I'm just saying that you can use permanant intercept to the same ends 3 sport > bike in place of 3 rush say and once there in play you no longer need to play rush on > that minion again if you don't choose(block his hunts) to or even block his rescue and > get 2 for 1 without a bum rush. Please try to keep your line length around 70 characters... your posts don't look too good on my screen, and probably worse on some, and quoting you results in a mess. If the player you're trying to intercept has a reasonable amount of stealth, then you won't catch him, and you'll have wasted a lot of potential minion actions and pool (1 pool and 1 action to equip the Sport Bike, then 1 action each time you keep the vampire untapped). This will often have no positive result other than somewhat letting your opponent unload some of his extra stealth cards. > > On the "wasting stealth" issue you've mentioned earlier... you're > > either trying to intercept all annoying things, or don't bother trying > > at all. > > I disagree timing your moves and deciding what to block are important I'm not saying make > an intercept deck a little can go a long way if used right, and can free up card slots as > the deck evolves thru tuning.you just don't need as many rushes. Except that Bum's Rush is a much more reliable way of getting into combat than tryin to intercept. The proposed Rush philosophy is to _never_ block. You. Do. Not. Attempt. To. Block. That, of course, means you need to be able to crush a threatening vampire almost at will. > > > If you have a dedicated S&B predator, don't try to intercept > > them, take a few big bleeds (it hurts a lot), and rush them. If they > > can't unload their Stealth cards because you're not trying to block, > > they won't be able to do _anything_. Trying to block will more than > > likely fail, and you'll allow them to cycle ther cards. > > but if you have an SB prey you can block his hunts and any basic 1 stealth action (Equip > ect.)force him to burn stealth on routine actions trying to slow his pool gaining throu > ousting. especially after a few rushes and he needs more pool for more vamps > Trying to block the stealthy actions of a S&B _prey_ will get you nowhere, unless you have a very significant amount of Intercept, and then it isn't a Rush deck anymore. You can try an Intercept Combat deck if you like, but it won't work like a Rush deck: the advantages (strike second, catch threats) and disadvantages (reactive) won't be the same. What I (and a few others, I think) want you to understand is that in NL, there is no good reason for you to mix the two strategies: if you want to concentrate on just one, you _can_. > > you can have the same stratagy and effectiveness with a little more dimension as well > Pure Rush just has too many weaknesses for my taste there are times when you simply need > other cards Jhad is to complex a world to simply abandon 2/3 of the possibilitys The most important thing is to play according to your taste. I routinely ignore a large part of the mechanisms in Jyhad (most of my decks have next to no voting capability, for instance) in my decks, and don't feel too weak for that - I just know I'm susceptible to X or Y, and try to find a way out _within my overall strategy_, because I'm more likely to succeed within it than by adding a few "random" cards that may well end up jamming my hand. Then a little bit of diplomacy, cajoling and threatening may save my hide... As my play group has somewhat lost members lately, and most of us tend to not have all the time we need to change our decks as much as we should, we tend to see a number of "well-known" decks. One player is fond of using extra-large vampires (kill him before he gets the pool machine rolling); another has a rather deadly Pot-For deck; my one and only Vote deck tends to get ganged on; etc... Well, we all get our shares of brilliant victories and utter defeats, but we rarely can blame losses to "bad draws" or "bad shuffles" or whatever: our decks basically do what they're supposed to do... -- Philippe Duchon (duc...@labri.u-bordeaux.fr)

Eric wrote: "not a good Idea though (possibly because I put more value on a combat card slot) because if you allow them to be rescued and then hunt back up you've wasted your cards and done nothing more than iritate your prey." You seem to be really missing the point of such a combat deck. With the ability to reliably draw Rush cards (cause you can use more than 4), every action every vampire you control takes will result (at least in theory) in a torporized vampire. If my prey has no ready vampires, and all of his torporized vampires have no blood, how does he get them out of torpor? If I kill every vampire my prey brings out, he has to get out more (costing him his pool...), and if he gets one out, I kill it before it takes an action. For instance, if I am a pure Rush deck and my prey is playing a archtype Malkavian S+B deck, I will attack every vampire he puts into his active reigon, probably before it takes an action, and barring the occasional Thoughts Betrayed or Elisium, every action I take will result in a torporized, bloodless vampire. Soon, my prey will have no active vampires, so he will have to influence out more, which I again will kill before they take a single action. As such a Rush deck's only defense is killing its predators vampires, I will occasionally have to axe my predators vamps, but if he is spending every action he has pulling his vampires out of torpor and hunting, he isn't hurting me, now is he? This is a perfectly viable concept. "You mean to tell me that while playing "Pure Rush" and losing to a vote deck you didn't wish for some intercept to stop that one vote?" Occasionally, sure. That is why I have other decks. "This "Pure Rush" wouldn't last five minutes around here. And I don't see how it would last against some of your decks. :-)-~ It's focused to the point of tunnel vision." That is why it works. To state that it would not last a minute "where you are from" is a fairly preposterous thing to say as A) I have not posted such a deck, so you don't have any specifics to judge, B) You clearly don't fully fathom the concept of such a deck, and C) you don't have experience with them, as you play with card limits. Such "My Dad could beat up your Dad" statements really are neither neccessary or in any way helpful to a discussion of strategy concepts. "Not to say that "Fun Decks" don't have their place. Mabey you could have a friend build a Succubus club deck out of "Handy" cards and sell them to you in excange for your taking out their biggest threats too. The two of you could clear a table." And again, with no card limits, pure Rush decks are completely competetive, even when faced with such tried and true designs as Stealth and Bleed and weenie vote push. It is perfectly understandable that such a focused and single minded deck may not be your cup of tea, but to say that such a deck is incapable of being competetive only indicates that you don't fully understand the concept of the deck strategy. Peter D Bakija PD...@aol.com "don't know about you but I am un chien andalusia" -Pixies

Jaysen wrote: "Second point: Let's not follow the poor guy around the NG and hammer him with CL vs NL....unless of course he brings it up first - then he's fair game. Gang tactics is, after all, just a card in the game:)" He's not a "poor guy", he is a contributing member of our newsgroup (and a thankfully prolific one, at that). If people don't respond to his posts, what is the point of him posting them? As this is the internet, we are all chock full of opinions, our opinions are always right, and we always want to make sure the wrong people know they are wrong. That is what the internet is for :-) "Hell, I'm just glad he 1) plays the game, and 2) knows that officially it is a NL game. He will come around eventually." Yup. When I joined this newsgroup, I played 4CL and made all the same arguments in its favor that he does. I was very persistent and very defensive of how "Balancing and Diverse" 4CL made the game and how "4CL made deck designing far more challenging". Then enough people argued with everything I said and convinced me otherwise. Look at me now... [ quoted text not captured ]

lk...@uswest.net wrote: [I wrote] : > Anyway, the deck uses something like 15 rush cards, typically 9 : > Immortal Grapple, around 9 Torn Signposts, 9 Undead Strength, 7 Taste : > of Vitae, 3 Blur, a bunch of Flash, some Sideslip, Side Strike, Pursuit; : > some Blood Dolls, some Pot and Cel skill cards, and a crypt of average : > cap no more than 4 (aided by 2 Jimmy Dunn, the most broken vampire I : > know of). : I have 30 combat cards in my Brujha deck with only 2 BR and 2 havensbut I add : 2 Bang nah, 2 magnums, 4 Sport Bike, 2 IR goggles, 4 Alacrity, 4 legal : manipulations, 2 blood tears (to ease the cost of alacrity) 4 asst. Praxis : seizures, 3 Cboons, 3 KR contes., 4 wake, 2 sudden the crypt is probably : similar Bianka Rake Hector ect. But I also use Donnal O'Connor and Rake in : multiple to get at least one up That's actually a lot different from my archetype Brujah rush deck. In a 90-card version it'll probably have 60 combat cards. In a NL rush deck, your goal is to have good combos go off every combat; in an effective rush deck, you'll have very substantial cardflow every combat, and to keep the combat cards coming they have to be a large part of the deck. Hand-jamming on masters or random support cards is a very bad thing. (This is much less the case in more permanents-based decks, eg those that use lots of weapons, intercept-producing equipment, etc. In a deck like that, you don't necessarily need to play many combat cards to be as effective as you'll ever be in combat, so you can have a lower combat-card percentage and still get acceptable cardflow. But decks like that seem to be more easily destroyed by their particular anti-deck, for example something that consistently has +1 intercept to block equip actions, or something with lots of Immortal Grapples and maneuvers to make your guns useless. At least, those are the problems I've had.) Here's a more specific crypt of the sort I have in mind: 1 Lupo, 1 Koko, 2 Dre, 1 Jacob Bragg, 2 Jimmy Dunn, 1 Black Cat, 1 Volker, 1 Bianca, 2 Anvil. In a different incarnation, I played this kind of deck with some Praxis Seizures, 2 Volker, and some Anathema, because the poolgain and burning vamps that Anathema gave can be extremely handy. But my playgroup has a house rule making Anathema less useful (and the votes did dilute the combat some), so I don't do that anymore. : > Doing that makes it your : > responsibility to keep your predator weak enough that they won't oust : > you, but hopefully not so weak that they'll be easily ousted by your : > grandpredator. At the same time, you need to beat up some of your : > prey's vampires to keep your prey less than fully effective; ideally : > you don't want your prey to ever oust your grandprey, but you do : > want them to weaken your grandprey enough that when you oust your : > initial prey, your grandprey will be relatively easy pickings. : we seem to play Brujha with the same goals. We just do it differently In : respect to me using my versatility to accomplish the same things. The flexibility of an NL combat deck, in my opinion, comes from the fact that beating up people's vampires works against any strategy, because they can't do anything without vampires to do it with. And the usefulness of an NL combat deck comes from being able to beat up people's vampires whenever you need to. To accomplish that, you have to focus pretty specifically on combat. : > oust him this turn, but otherwise it's often better to use your vampires : > for combat rather than bleeding. : But judicious use of the legals can get you the 6 pool up to 2 full turns : earlier which can come in real handy sometimes. I pretty much agree with the : strategy you play I just think Its overkill threat can be used to accomplish : many of the ideas you put forth allowing you to pull out a few more surprises : ;-)-~ It's true that giving it a bruise-bleed angle can make it oust people faster. But Legal Manips don't allow you to beat up your predator's vampires, and *that* flexibility (of Bum's Rush) is pretty key in my experience. And playing significant amounts of bleed bonus cards tends to weaken the combat ability of the deck, since bleed can clog your hand in combat, and takes the place of Rush actions. : true but one burning wrath followed up with an Extra stealth (if you need it ) : diablerie backed up with the votes to stop the blood hunt ( if you need it) : will net you a full vamp with a new skill, and cause the same pool loss ;-)-~ Yes, which is all good, but that takes two vampires and the ability to win bloodhunts (which I can't count on in my low-cap vamps deck). And the 3 blood to play Burning Wrath. (You also need the Immortal Grapple, most of the time, so it's only a three-card combo, but that's not enough of an improvement when you can be foiled by one or two points of damage prevention, and be out the cost of the Burning Wrath for no use at all. In my opinion.) Josh glad to be involved in an interesting discussion for a change

It seems like the 4cl only allows for a couple of good deck designs, and this has warped the 4cl players sense of the balance that exists in the game. I have played and seen many a 'rush deck' that was a nightmare for the S&B predator. In our games, it's kind of a bum deal for both in that the s&b'er ends up with all his vamps in torpor and the rusher has almost no pool when it's done. I have found that the metagame aspects of certain decks make them far less viable than they would have been otherwise. The S&B gets rushed from across the table by his grandprey and others. The politico gets all it's affairs meddeled in by the interceptor. The main balance comes when the dominant player becomes 'The Overdog', and everyone pitches in to screw him (or her) over. Our play group is so competetive that much of the outcome of the game can be determined by the matchups between the different archetypes (seating order). I guess this could be construed by some as a bad point, but I can't imagine it any other way. When someone trys to play some "Kitchen Sink" deck everyone kinda chuckles under their breath... In this game (unlike magic) you cannot just put in rare, overpowered cards that will turn the tide of a game you are sorely loosing. Focus is the most important aspect of deck design. Such a focused deck will kill you while you are trying to fumble through all that situational/obligatory crap. Our funky Archetypes: Gangrel runaway/politico Stealth Breed Weenie ZG+DBR a Famous Gangrel who loves torpor Big Vamp "make you my #$tch" politico and more in the lab... (all of the above decks KICK buttocks) -PC Handyman -I dont beleive in sigs....

Joshua Duffin wrote: > > > In a NL rush > deck, your goal is to have good combos go off every combat; in an > effective rush deck, you'll have very substantial cardflow every combat, I argue this is it's weakness it has to keep the cards flowing if the deck stutters (i.e. hitting a pocket of bums rush when you have enough)then you have nothing permanent to use in the combats your rushing in to. Late game after you've had some success toporizing it won't be "as" much of a problem, but early on it could cost you the game. > and to keep the combat cards coming they have to be a large part of > the deck. Hand-jamming on masters or random support cards is a very > bad thing. then don't let them jam you. :-)-~ I've heard it said that in such a deck you never ever block therfore all your cards are played during your turn. In which case if you draw a sport bike lay it that turn. Look at it this way you can have more reliable access to fewer support cards. not watering the deck down, but improving it using less card slots than another stratagy would need to be reliable in the same area. > > > (This is much less the case in more permanents-based decks, eg those > that use lots of weapons, intercept-producing equipment, etc. In > a deck like that, you don't necessarily need to play many combat > cards to be as effective as you'll ever be in combat, so you can > have a lower combat-card percentage and still get acceptable cardflow. > But decks like that seem to be more easily destroyed by their particular > anti-deck, for example something that consistently has +1 intercept to > block equip actions, My point is you can very easily have a touch of this aspect as well. Intercept the Sub machine gun rather than hoping you'll have the grapple when you need it. You don't have to abandon the rush stratagy, I say it can easily be improved to last longer in a large game where running out of cards is IMO a big threat to a " combo" approach chock full of radical ideas :-)-~ Eric > >

This is just to lighten up the discussion: Our playgroup is situated in Braunschweig, Germany. Currently we're about 7 - 8 players and all of us agree on 2CL with 1CL for any Unique card. (Exceptions are made for Corruption, SkillMasters, and some others) The reason we do this is: It's most boring to be hit the 4th time with the same strike within 3 turns. Quite often 2 similar actions/results apear in one round. Even this can be very annoing/nerving. To counter boring S&B decks we back up 2CL with a 50% chance of switching decks randomely. So you build an unreal Malk-Deck? Think twice! It could become YOUR predator... WE DO HAVE FUN with 2CL Jyhad. Make sure that you have fun too. Just my two Pfennig ... Alef... oops Alfred (Gook takes a look!)

PDB6 wrote: > Eric wrote: > "not a good Idea though (possibly because I put more value on a combat card > slot) because if you allow them to be rescued and then hunt back up you've > wasted your cards and done nothing more than iritate your prey." > > You seem to be really missing the point of such a combat deck. With the > ability to reliably draw Rush cards (cause you can use more than 4), This thread started with my thoughts on a NL deck archtype and my opinion of its weaknesses > every > action every vampire you control takes will result (at least in theory) in a > torporized vampire. If my prey has no ready vampires, and all of his > torporized vampires have no blood, how does he get them out of torpor? If I > kill every vampire my prey brings out, he has to get out more (costing him his > pool...), and if he gets one out, I kill it before it takes an action. For > instance, if I am a pure Rush deck and my prey is playing a archtype Malkavian > S+B deck, I will attack every vampire he puts into his active reigon, probably > before it takes an action, and barring the occasional Thoughts Betrayed or > Elisium, every action I take will result in a torporized, bloodless vampire. > Soon, my prey will have no active vampires, so he will have to influence out > more, which I again will kill before they take a single action. As such a Rush > deck's only defense is killing its predators vampires, I will occasionally have > to axe my predators vamps, but if he is spending every action he has pulling > his vampires out of torpor and hunting, he isn't hurting me, now is he? This > is a perfectly viable concept. I suppose it is but still suffers from the weaknesses I put forth > > > "You mean to tell me that while playing "Pure Rush" and losing to a vote deck > you didn't wish for some intercept to stop that one vote?" > > Occasionally, sure. That is why I have other decks. > > "This "Pure Rush" wouldn't last five minutes around here. And I don't see how > it would last against some of your decks. :-)-~ It's focused to the point of > tunnel vision." > > That is why it works. To state that it would not last a minute "where you are > from" is a fairly preposterous thing to say as A) I have not posted such a > deck, so you don't have any specifics to judge, we're not disscussing a specific deck we're discussing the"Brujha Rush" archtype > B) You clearly don't fully > fathom the concept of such a deck, I ceartinly do we played them out years ago > and C) you don't have experience with them, > as you play with card limits. One last time in case you were not paying atention I tried it your way and found it boring and repetative.Your the one who brought limits into this discussion > Such "My Dad could beat up your Dad" statements It was a joke note the smilely > really are neither neccessary or in any way helpful to a discussion of strategy > concepts. Your not really discussing stratagy your to busy worrying about card limits Eric > >

Xian wrote: > > > -Will you reliably have KRCG when you need it? > -Will the one copy in your deck be buried at the bottom? > -If you include more than one copy, you are now wasting the same > slots that you argue could be saved by including intercept > -KRCG is vulnerable to a number of things that may burn it, wasting > the card or your pool. Arson, Rampage, Sudden Reversal (note: I would > consider SR on KRCG a very useful move, especially when you know it's the > player's only intercept). On the other hand, who is going to bother to > Direct Intervention a Bum's Rush, when you know the opponent has *at least*a > couple more in the deck? true but with all the card cycling a pure combat deck has you will be more able to draw your few support cards. I don't view this as a weakness or an invitation to hand jam city. Though the more I think about it Sport Bike seems the better choice for this type of deck. > > > > -Sport Bikes and other small perm. intercept that can effectively be > added to a Rush deck are vulnerable to a couple of relatively common hosers > as well: intercepting the equip action, strikes that destroy equipment, > etc. If they intercept then its as good as the bums rush you replaced. I don't see a player using a lot of destroy equip. against a combat deck seems to me they need to take your vamp to topor as well just to keep things even and this will keep them from playing a strike to take out a sport bike. > > > In other words, I agree that including stuff like this in an "other-focused" > deck can be useful (there are few decks I don't bother to put a copy of KRCG > in...), it is difficult to advocate this for everyone, as for the most part, > it seems to waste slots, and is easily countered. > > <snip more> > > The only comment I have to offer on the effectiveness of not intercepting > hunting or rescues from torpor is that *eventually*, the target of your > affection is no longer going to block anything else you do. There comes a > point where he is unwilling to risk his vampires that are all at 1 or 2 > blood unless it is dire & game-threatening. Also, unless he has a butt-load > of hunting grounds, at this level, you can only rescue one vamp from torpor > a turn, and then spend more time hunting before you can rescue another... but if your short the rush that turn you can pretty reliably take them out they have to rescue and hunt just to survive if you have them in a situation where there crippled why let them try to gain back any ground. This would allow you to use the big combo on a vamp you havent delt with yet rather than use recources on a vamp that you've already have 5 or 6 cards invested in > some more thoughts Eric

In article <3551AE1D...@uswest.net>, lk...@uswest.net writes >but if your short the rush that turn you can pretty reliably take them out >they >have to rescue and hunt just to survive Without wishing to get picky, *THIS* is the major difference between 4CL and NCL. In a well constructed NCL deck with good card cycling and a good draw (a good draw is, of course, a factor which weighs heavily on 4CL as well), you should have the rushes as and when you need them. Because 4CL limits the number that you have in a deck, you are less likely to be able to guarantee a usable rush. I mean, if you're saying that you can use the bike instead of the rush, why not have just replaced the bikes with rushes and drawn them instead? And the action to equip the bike is one less rush in itself because you had to use an action to equip it instead of rushing a vampire. -- James Coupe (Prince of Mercia) Change nospam to obeah to reply Vampire: Elder Kindred Network madnessnetwork.hexagon.net

In article <35519770...@uswest.net>, lk...@uswest.net writes <snip - "focussing on one thing in a deck creates weaknesses" countered by an argument which says "but it gets its job done"> >I suppose it is but still suffers from the weaknesses I put forth True, it does. But if the vote deck it's facing has all its vampires in torpor, its voting superiority is no threat. If the stealth bleeder has no vampires to bleed with, his bleed superiority counts for nothing. It's your choice here - in 4CL you don't always have that choice. And it's similar with 4CL just different weaknesses. If I want to create a good combat deck, I may run out of cards to put into it and have to diversify which means I won't necessarily be drawing the cards I want. What happens when I draw a Sport Bike but really, really needed a Burning Wrath (or any other card which would be in a combat deck)? [ quoted text not captured ]

In article <6irquj$5...@ecuador.earthlink.net>, PC Handyman <pchan...@earthlink.net> writes >Focus is the most important aspect of deck >design. Such a focused deck will kill you while you are trying to fumble >through all that situational/obligatory crap. <Applause> Very well put. Succinct and to the point and basically sums up most of the NCL poster's feelings, I think. [ quoted text not captured ]

> > Our playgroup is situated in Braunschweig, Germany. > Currently we're about 7 - 8 players and all of us > agree on 2CL with 1CL for any Unique card. > (Exceptions are made for Corruption, SkillMasters, and some others) > > The reason we do this is: > It's most boring to be hit the 4th time with the same strike within > 3 turns. Quite often 2 similar actions/results apear in one round. > Even this can be very annoing/nerving. > Apparently we have hugely different ideas of boring games. I find a game boring when it is exactly like all other games. In my experience, 4CL games are like this. The only really focused deck you can make in 4CL is an S&B deck. Barring those, all decks have to have sort of a "kitchen sink" aspect to them. Therefore, one 4CL deck looks pretty much like another. Sure, you'll have different disciplines sometimes, and usually different clans. But about 20-30% of the cards are "staple" cards that everyone needs. In NL, you can build a focused deck. Further, you can build many different focused decks. There are all of the usual strategies as well as many others. A few strange examples that are impossible under 4CL: Brujah Sneak & Bleed, Lasombra Political Seizure/Thanks for the Donation (along with all the commonly used cards), any good combat deck, Derange/Protect Thine Own/Malkavian Derangement: Paranoia, Decking (using Raptors and other cards that make you discard to run your opponent out of cards, leaving them open for the easy kill), Settite Corruption, Tzimice combat monsters (Horrid Form, Body Arsenal - add in Potence masters for Immortal Grapple and maybe Blood of Acid), the list goes on and on. In NL, I see strange decks all the time. In 4CL, I basically see the same 20 cards, plus some in-clan and in-discipline stuff for whatever clan you fancy your deck to represent. So, an NL deck may play the same combo 10 times in a game, but each game that combo is different. A 4 CL deck may play 10 different combos in a game, but each game they play the same combos. If you were to only play 10 games in your lifetime, the two would be even. Since most of us play more than that, NL decks are far more varied. > To counter boring S&B decks we back up 2CL with a 50% chance of switching > decks randomely. So you build an unreal Malk-Deck? > Think twice! It could become YOUR predator... > Umm? Swtiching decks randomly? That doesn't sound like fun to me. Every once in a while I play my friend's Lasombra deck (which I designed), just to show him how easily it wins and that he must be playing it wrong. Or I'd play his NosAT deck because I was sick of my two decks (most of my cards are in Chicago, so I can't build new decks). But switching randomly doesn't let you show off your deck as well. The whole point of building a killer deck is so that *you* have the pleasure of beating someone to a pulp with it. 8) Anyway, you can counter boring S&B decks by playing no limits. In most NL environments, straight S&B doesn't stand a chance without other cards. -Chris -----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==----- http://www.dejanews.com/ Now offering spam-free web-based newsreading

Eric wrote: "I suppose it is but still suffers from the weaknesses I put forth" Which weaknesess would these be? The inability to intercept stuff? The inability to stop vamps from hunting? I would say that the inability to intercept is negligible, as the aim of such a deck is to preemptively kill every possible threat so that there is no need to intercept. If my prey has no active vampires, and all of his torporized vampires, I don't need to intercept his hunts, as his vampires never come out of torpor. Sure, without intercept occasionally you will get hit by a KRC for 3 pool or bleed for 4 points, but if the deck is well designed (and you are not sitting next to a deck with 30 Skin of Steels...), this is a minimal concern as you will be killing enough vampires to not have to worry about your predator much and your prey will be wasting pool on new vamps so he can vainly attempt to act. "we're not disscussing a specific deck we're discussing the"Brujha Rush" archtype" The Brujah Rush deck is probably the most sucessful of the Rush decks (except in a very combat heavy meta enviornment, where the Pot/For deck tends to slay them left and right) and a well designed Brujah Rush deck is easily as competetive as a Malkavian S+B deck, a Ventrue Vote deck, or any number of other proven archtypes. The Nosferatu are viable as Rush competetors, but only in a particularly clever deck. "It was a joke note the smilely" I knew it was a joke. I was just being unnecessarily snipy. My apologies. "Your not really discussing stratagy your to busy worrying about card limits" I am only discussing card limits in that I believe them to be heavily influencing your view of the pure Rush strategy. Without limits, the pure Rush deck is a perfectly viable and balanced strategy as it is consistent, able to compete against any possible strategy, and fairly reliable. Under some sort of card limit, the Rush deck is far less reliable, consistent, and competetive, thus the need for intercept, untaps, and bleed modifiers. [ quoted text not captured ]

lk...@uswest.net wrote: : Joshua Duffin wrote: : > In a NL rush : > deck, your goal is to have good combos go off every combat; in an : > effective rush deck, you'll have very substantial cardflow every combat, : I argue this is it's weakness it has to keep the cards flowing if the deck stutters : (i.e. hitting a pocket of bums rush when you have enough)then you have nothing : permanent to use in the combats your rushing in to. Late game after you've had some : success toporizing it won't be "as" much of a problem, but early on it could cost : you the game. In my experience, this is much more a strength than a weakness. I just about never hit Bum's Rush pockets that slow me down. It's true that in theory you can get a bad draw at some point that screws you up some, but designing the deck to minimize that possibility isn't all that tough. In particular, hitting a big pocket early in the game that's bad enough to cost you the game is pretty implausible as far as I've seen. At worst, you can use the Rushes for each of your vamps and discard one at the end of your turn, and it'll only get that bad if you have 7 Rush in hand. : > and to keep the combat cards coming they have to be a large part of : > the deck. Hand-jamming on masters or random support cards is a very : > bad thing. : then don't let them jam you. :-)-~ I've heard it said that in such a deck you never : ever block therfore all your cards are played during your turn. In which case if you : draw a sport bike lay it that turn. Look at it this way you can have more reliable : access to fewer support cards. not watering the deck down, but improving it using : less card slots than another stratagy would need to be reliable in the same area. But playing Sport Bikes is completely counter to the whole strategy of such a deck. First, you have to take a Sport Bike equip action instead of doing a Bum's Rush. Second, you then have to leave the Biker untapped if you want to use the bike, instead of Rushing somebody. Both of these contradict the basic principle of using all your vampires to their fullest extent possible. (What I mean by hand-jamming, by the way, is drawing Sport Bikes or excess masters in combat when what you need is some more combat cards to beat up the vamp you're working on. Playing the Bike after your combat fails in its mission isn't much consolation.) [re: putting some intercept into a rush deck] : My point is you can very easily have a touch of this aspect as well. Intercept the : Sub machine gun rather than hoping you'll have the grapple when you need it. You : don't have to abandon the rush stratagy, I say it can easily be improved to last : longer in a large game where running out of cards is IMO a big threat to a " combo" : approach This can be done, but if it's part of the deck design, it's not really a rush deck. A true rush deck wants to take Bum's Rush actions, not leave vamps untapped in hopes of blocking other people's actions. That's more of a rush/intercept combat deck, in my opinion. And where Rush combat decks have a challenge in winning games, intercept combat has a yet more difficult task in getting more than two victory points (one for ousting one person, one for being last at the table). (ps, your lines still look too long on my screen; any chance you could cut them down to around 70-80 characters per line?) Josh are you looking for the motherlode?

For some reason, after thinking about it a bit, 2CL would be better than 4CL (though not as good as NL). Pretty hard to build a killer S&B under 2CL, whereas 4CL seems perfect to design S&B around. Not too big on the random deck switching.....although, maybe after a good 4-8 hour play session, it would spice things up a bit. Jaysen Biolab wrote: > This is just to lighten up the discussion: > > Our playgroup is situated in Braunschweig, Germany. > Currently we're about 7 - 8 players and all of us > agree on 2CL with 1CL for any Unique card. > (Exceptions are made for Corruption, SkillMasters, and some others) > > The reason we do this is: > It's most boring to be hit the 4th time with the same strike within > 3 turns. Quite often 2 similar actions/results apear in one round. > Even this can be very annoing/nerving. > > To counter boring S&B decks we back up 2CL with a 50% chance of switching > decks randomely. So you build an unreal Malk-Deck? > Think twice! It could become YOUR predator... > [ quoted text not captured ]

PDB6 wrote: > Eric wrote: > "I suppose it is but still suffers from the weaknesses I put forth" > > Which weaknesess would these be? The inability to intercept stuff? The > inability to stop vamps from hunting? no no weak in the fact that it has a very high card to VP ratio you needa lot of things to go your way to net more than 2 VP with such a deck. and mearly suggested a small amount of intercept in order to keep an advantage once you've gained it i.e you have 5 cards involved in sending it to topor why waste more resorces on it when you can easily never let it gain a foothold again with out playing a card. > > > . My apologies. accepted, Eric > > > >

James Coupe wrote: > . > Because 4CL limits the number that you have in a deck, you are less > likely to be able to guarantee a usable rush. I mean, if you're saying > that you can use the bike instead of the rush, why not have just > replaced the bikes with rushes and drawn them instead? because the bikes are not disposable. once in play they stay in playand can keep a threat down while you concentrate your rush on the next poor fellow in line.neting you more weakened vampires per rush card. My personal method was to bring up smudge and give him the bike and slow down whoever I concidered The biggest return threat. 2 pool (one for smudge one for the bike) to get more effective use out of my rushes.not at all a bad deal IMO. It worked for me Eric

My thoughts on Card Limits are as follows: I think much of the fun in Jyhad comes from the exploration of the possibilities involved. I would not wish to play any sort of card limits consistently, because of all the possibilities that would be left permanently unexplored. However, I think that occasional play with card-limits can be interesting, exciting, and refreshing. If you are going to do this, though, why not go all the way? 4CL does not go nearly far enough. 2CL seems more like it, but why not 1CL? I once designed a deck with only one each of any given card and still occasionally play with it in a NL environment. It rarely wins, but it always has the advantage of surprise and is never boring to play. People don't look at the first few cards I play and say "Oh, it's that deck again!" So I like the idea the occasional playing of 1CL games for the unpredictable atmosphere of fun that results. As a final thought, I would say that a rule that states "no more than x cards in a deck" is essentially unenforcable. The rule should be "no more than x cards may be played", with discards counting as plays. -- Lupus Australis ____ ____ \ \----/ / |()__()| __\ __ /__ / __\()/__ \ |/ \==/ \| | || |

lk...@uswest.net wrote: > In Jyhad your main concern has to be ousting prey. Except for "fun > decks" which I concider an all combat deck to be. One of the compelling reasons I started to make NL decks was to play in the local tournaments, where standard DCI rules prevailed. The reason I mention this is that I have never, ever, ever seen rush combat deck win at those tournaments. Thus, to me, rush combat is an ineffective strategy, or to put it another way, as you do here, it is a "fun" deck. It is not one that will win in a tournament situation. > The reason I say this > is they are to combo intensive to be reliable in any environment. I would have to agree, at least in a tournament environment. One reason for this is that most rush decks are susceptable to quick weenie decks, in particular weenie Zip/DBR decks (hello Shamus!) and weenie bleed decks, both of which are legion at LA tourneys. It's great when you have consistently in your hand an immortal grapple, a torn signpost, undead strength, decapitate or disarm. But you can handjam easily when you only need to do 1 or 2 points of damage. In addition, often the rush deck won't have enough minions or rush to deal with all of the (secret) hordes coming at you. And if you are dealing with your predator's (secret) hordes, you aren't doing anything to your prey. In more casual play, where the metagame changes rapidly, I think that an NL rush deck can do quite well, _for a while_ (see Chris Berger's excellent post elsewhere on this NG). [SNIP discussions of variety - another post perhaps] > thanx for allowing me to rant Rant on (politely, as you have been!), it's what drives any good discussion. PS - I hate that WotC misspelled "hoard" on the card Secret Horde - that's what you get for relying on spellcheckers instead of a solid grasp of the English language. But that's my own rant for another day. Chris -- Chris Shorb & Tammy Martin ino...@ix.netcom.com "It was Tuesday. That meant steak-and- suspicious-organs pie at the Thieves' Guild... On the whole, he reflected, it could have been a lot worse." Pratchett

lk...@uswest.net wrote: > My belife is that a deck needs a little of everything some form of > intercept, wakes, some form of votes ( I like Praxis Seizures), suddens, > and the ever hated equipment ( 44s a necesity IMO ),and bonus bleeds. > After you have your framework then you begin to apply your stratagy of > choice. When I played 4CL, which I did for at least a year and a half, I held the same belief. Before I even addressed the specific strategy of the deck, I automatically put in 4 Blood Dolls, 2-4 Minion Taps, 4 Wakes, and 2-4 Suddens. Most of those decks also automatically had at least 2 Sport Bikes and 1 KRCG. Not much variety here. So I welcomed my switch to NL, where I can have 6 wakes if necessary, or none if it does not fit in with my deck concept. Right now I have one deck with none, 2 with 1, 1 with 2, and 1 with 4 wakes. The decks range from a demented weenie intercept deck, an anarch annoyance deck, to a Giovanni deck. I feel that they are more divers than what I could have had playing 4CL. That said, I also feel that in tournament play, it is almost imperative to be playing with a fistful of deflections or telepathic misdirections, and that requires you to have vamps with dom, DOM, or AUS. Uh-oh, seems my variety has gone out the window again. Note the three decks I mention above - all three have either deflections aplenty or misdirections. What a bummer. I have no answer to this, it is just something that I have noticed recently. I can only hope that the current focus on bleed in tournaments will go away, but I surely doubt it. [ quoted text not captured ]

I think that here is where you have touched on a fundamental way that the expansions have changed the entire game , whether for good or bad, I don't know. See, before AH and Sabbat the only real true S&B weenie deck that could be built was the dom/obf (though Computer/obf was a weaker option). However, dom/obf was balanced in game and tournament play due to the existence of two facts of the game: 1. NCL made combat decks or other decks (like blood gain) much more viable. 2. The weenie dom/obf deck was terrible in combat - forcing the player to either ignore combat altogether or to include some defensive measure (fortitude, ZG/DBR, etc.) - watering down the S&B aspect. However, with AH and Sabbat the new killer S&B deck is pre/obf. Is it just me or does one of the more popular decks out there contain these general parts: Nepata, Hadrian, Lena Rowe Legal Manipulations, Aire of Elation KRC, Cons. Ag., Bewitching Oration Lots of Stealth, Opium Den Majesty, Catatonic Fear I know that in many playgroups the meta-game can handle this deck, generally through the disdain many have for cheesy S&B, but in JOL or tournaments the meta-game is irrelevant for most purposes. I don't really know what I am trying to say, except that I have a general uneasiness with how well this combination of disciplines work, was there any real playtesting on this? Presence is by far the deadliest overall discipline in the game - based mainly on its overall capabilities - it has it all: combat, bleed, vote, blood gain, etc. (ok, it doesn't have bleed bounce). Before the expansions, the pre/obf deck was limited by the simple fact that vampires that had it were fairly large, forcing one to use discipline masters, which then made the deck a dicier proposition to use. Pre as a discipline was held back by the fact that the vampires that had Pre only generally had a +1 stealth on their actions. Anyways, that is why what Chris said below has struck such a chord with me as a player. Does anyone else out there understand what I am saying? I am not saying that other deck types won't do well at tournaments - weenie vote is still quite big - but I also don't want to be forced to pack some bleed deflection in most of the decks I build. Just ranting, Jaysen [ quoted text not captured ]

Chris wrote: "One of the compelling reasons I started to make NL decks was to play in the local tournaments, where standard DCI rules prevailed. The reason I mention this is that I have never, ever, ever seen rush combat deck win at those tournaments. Thus, to me, rush combat is an ineffective strategy, or to put it another way, as you do here, it is a "fun" deck. It is not one that will win in a tournament situation." I assure you that your impression is incorrect. Rush decks don't win tournaments often because they are difficult to build and play, so not many people really understand how to make them work effectively, so they think they can't win, so they don't play them. If as many people played good Rush decks at tournamnts as they do Bleed and Vote decks, Rush decks could easily win their share. We held a tournament last night, and with a field of good S+B decks, good weenie vote decks, and a good Anarch deck, the deck that won the tourney was a Rush deck. I'll post a complete tournament report later, but the final round consisted of 3 Rush decks (the only three at the tournament) and an Anarch Revolt weeneie Pre bleed deck (that had amassed 8 VPs and swept at least one table to this point). The game was very well balanced and precarious, but in the end, an Anti-Brujah Rush deck won the final round. Last year, in a non local tournament, Josh and I went and won (he got first, I got second) a tourney with Rush decks, playing against weenie Presence Bleed and Tomb/RTI/Soul Gem decks. At Origins 2 years ago, I did very well with a Pot/Ani/Dom Rush deck, gaining 6 VPs in 3 games and ousting 3 of 4 other players in one of the rounds. Rush decks are a perfeclty viable and competetive deck strategy. They have a bad rap because they are far more difficult to design and play than most other basic strategies, and not that many people understand how to play them to win (as illustrated by this thread). [ quoted text not captured ]

Jaysen Knight wrote: (snipped the discussion of PRE-OBF / DOM-OBF bleeders) > Anyways, that is why what Chris said below has struck such a chord > with me as a player. Does anyone else out there understand what I > am saying? I am not saying that other deck types won't do well > at tournaments - weenie vote is still quite big - but I also don't > want > to be forced to pack some bleed deflection in most of the decks I > build. > > Just ranting, > > Jaysen > The problem is to construct a RELIABLE combat deck which is fast enough to handle ultimate focussed weeny decks, be it vote, bleed or else. My weeny fortitude deck (being a weeny itself to improve speed) is quite good, but too vulnerable against S:CE. I playtested it against the pre-obf weeny bleeder and found that I am able to stop him only after serious pool loss at my side (because of his S:CE ability). And a probability to win in a contest with such decks of less than 50% is too few in tournament conditions (if you want to win, though). A Potence short range combat weeny could be fast enough, but uses too much cards eliminating minions compared to weeny bleed or weeny vote. (Bum's Rush + Immortal Grapple + Undead Strength + Pulled Fangs + Taste of Vitae is a 5 card combination, deadly in an environment without maneuvers or prevention, and this is much more than comparable bleeders or voters need to be deadly). If it is fast enough to kill minions quickly but runs out of cards too soon, it is ineffective in overall performance. And if this deck is able to stop a power-predator from ousting you in no-time, you still have to handle your prey. So combat decks are very seldom seen in tournaments. The main concern in tournaments is speed: how quick you can achive your goal to oust your prey or control the table sufficiently to ensure your victory. In my experience, winning decks in tournaments can oust their prey at the end of turn 4 or 5, exceptional fast decks at the end of turn 3. Considering that most to all decks in a tournament environment are fast, combat decks are often at a disadvantage, because when they ensured their own safety eliminating the fast bleed minions of their predator, they sooner face a new fast vote predator. Since pure combat decks don't punch at their prey, but ("only") at his or her minions first, they cannot be as fast in ousting as bleeders or voters can. Be slower in tournament is: loose. We have several different tournament decks around here, and they are almost equally fast. In duels the player which may begin wins with about 90% probability. Just my two cents. Michael Beer

PDB6 wrote: > The reason I mention > this is that I have never, ever, ever seen rush combat deck win at those > tournaments. Thus, to me, rush combat is an ineffective strategy, or to put it > another way, as you do here, it is a "fun" deck. It is not one that will win > in a tournament situation." > > I assure you that your impression is incorrect. I agree that perhaps they can win in tournament situations. But I have never _seen or heard_ one win, and I have been playing in many of the tournaments here in LA since Jyhad first came out. Robert Goudie has been to more, and in a discussion I had with him about a year ago, we agreed that combat decks never seemed to win here in LA. My impression is based on my own empirical (albeit limited) experience. > Rush decks don't win > tournaments often because they are difficult to build and play, so not many > people really understand how to make them work effectively, so they think they > can't win, so they don't play them. I have to agree with this. From what I have gathered of your playgroup, combat is incredibly nasty. This is not so much the case in the groups I have played with out here. Through sheer evolution the combat decks coming out of your group might honestly be some of the best in the nation. > If as many people played good Rush decks > at tournamnts as they do Bleed and Vote decks, Rush decks could easily win > their share. We held a tournament last night, and with a field of good S+B > decks, good weenie vote decks, and a good Anarch deck, the deck that won the > tourney was a Rush deck. Intriguing. I might have to start trying to work that angle. It certainly might change the metagame if it has any degree of success. Many of the decks out here use fortitude - how do you get around that? > I'll post a complete tournament report later, but the > final round consisted of 3 Rush decks (the only three at the tournament) and an > Anarch Revolt weeneie Pre bleed deck (that had amassed 8 VPs and swept at least > one table to this point). The game was very well balanced and precarious, but > in the end, an Anti-Brujah Rush deck won the final round. > Last year, in a non local tournament, Josh and I went and won (he got first, I > got second) a tourney with Rush decks, playing against weenie Presence Bleed > and Tomb/RTI/Soul Gem decks. > At Origins 2 years ago, I did very well with a Pot/Ani/Dom Rush deck, gaining 6 > VPs in 3 games and ousting 3 of 4 other players in one of the rounds. > I look forward the the tourney report. Care to post any of these winning decks? Chris -- Chris Shorb & Tammy Martin [ quoted text not captured ]

Chris wrote: "Intriguing. I might have to start trying to work that angle. It certainly might change the metagame if it has any degree of success. Many of the decks out here use fortitude - how do you get around that?" Fortitude is tricky, but thankfully very suceptible to the local meta game. In enviornments where Rush decks are not in vogue, Fortitude tends to be either completely absent or fairly low intensity. With not much combat, decks with a lot of Fortitude will end up getting hand jammed, so they will tend to not have much. However, if you are playing a good Rush deck and traumatizing your local play group, pretty soon plenty of Fortitude will show up and shut you down. Against a deck with tons of Skin of Steel, and you are a Rush deck, there is not much you can do (but be persistent and hopeful), but this is similar to a S+B deck trying to bleed an untap/bounce deck, or a Ventrue vote deck sitting next to an Intercept deck. Sometimes there just isn't much you can do. However, in most competetive situations where I have used Rush decks, Fortitude really tended to be pretty low key. People who aren't used to Rush combat will tend to use S:CE rather than Fortitude to protect the Ventrue, and the Gangrel will generally use Skin of Rock in preference to Skin of Steel, and Skin of Rock just isn't enough prevention to stop large or multiple Pot hits (these are generalizations, but pretty accurate from what I have seen...) If you have alot of Fortitude around your parts, I gotta wonder why? If people aren't playing heavy Rush combat, I would think that it would cause hand jam a lot. The trick is to wait until the Fortitude cycles out of the Environment, and then bring a Rush deck in. I bring Rush decks to tournaments relying on the fact that most people don't fear or understand them, and consequently play decks without heavy Fortitude. At the Origins game a couple of years ago when my combat deck did pretty well, in three games, I didn't encounter enough Fortitude to matter, but I did run across plenty of people who tried to play Majesty after I had Immortally Grappled them. At the tourney where Josh came in first with a Brujah Rush deck and I came in second with some version of my Marty Lechtansi deck, the only deck with heavy Fortitude was a Gangrel deck, and it packed mostly Skin of Rock, which just wasn't enough. All in all, Rush decks suffer very heavily from local meta game cycles, but I can safely say that in any blind competetive tournament setting, it seems fairly unlikely that there will be enough anti-combat prepared foes to make a difference to a good, quick Rush deck on a strategic level. "I look forward the the tourney report. Care to post any of these winning decks?" I'll post the deck that just won with the tournament report. Of my decks that I have done well with, the deck that came in second to Josh's Brujah deck was some version of my Deck That Only Works When I Get Out Marty Lechtansi, and the deck that did well at Origins was some Pot/Dom/Ani monstrosity that was based on Judah and Anvil. I'll post my current combat deck design after I win at Origins :-) Peter D Bakija PD...@aol.com "Are there heart stings connected to the poison coming out of your mouth?" -Belly

John Whelan wrote: > As a final thought, I would say that a rule that states "no more than x > cards in a deck" is essentially unenforcable. The rule should be "no more > than x cards may be played", with discards counting as plays. A Card-play-limit cannot count discards as plays, for logistical reasons. That is: due to the few random discards (Dr. Jest, e.g.) and the corner cases of having to discard (by reduction in hand size, e.g.) when you have a hand full of cards that you've played at their limit already this leads to illegal situations which cannot be resolved. -- L. Scott Johnson (vte...@wizards.com) Official VtES Net.Rep for Wizards of the Coast. (*) - Subject to review by Rules Team

In article <3556F0...@wizards.com>, LSJ wrote: >John Whelan wrote: >> As a final thought, I would say that a rule that states "no more than x >> cards in a deck" is essentially unenforcable. The rule should be "no more >> than x cards may be played", with discards counting as plays. > >A Card-play-limit cannot count discards as plays, for logistical reasons. > >That is: due to the few random discards (Dr. Jest, e.g.) and the >corner cases of having to discard (by reduction in hand size, e.g.) >when you have a hand full of cards that you've played at their limit >already this leads to illegal situations which cannot be resolved. OK, but... such situations would be rare. One might allow for the limit being superceded where it is obvious one does not have a choice. Alternatively, one could rule that such situations lead to instant ousting. But perhaps that makes things too complex. I guess it does not matter much. I was merely advocating that such rules be worded in such a manner that, in theory, a person's deck would not need to be searched in order to enforce compliance. Just a question: Discards do normally count as "plays", yes? [ quoted text not captured ]

John Whelan wrote: > Just a question: Discards do normally count as "plays", yes? No. If you discard a Giant's Blood, you can still use another later in the game for full effect. [ quoted text not captured ]

Chris Shorb & Tammy Martin (ino...@ix.netcom.com) wrote: : I agree that perhaps they can win in tournament situations. But I have : never : _seen or heard_ one win, and I have been playing in many of the : tournaments here in : LA since Jyhad first came out. Robert Goudie has been to more, and in : a discussion : I had with him about a year ago, we agreed that combat decks never seemed : to win : here in LA. My impression is based on my own empirical (albeit limited) : experience. (btw - your lines seem a little long on my screen) I can't argue with your experience, of course, and from what little I've heard of the LA Jyhad scene, there are a lot of people playing there, so it would seem that they ought to be decent players. All I can do is say that combat decks can be tough to win with, and it is tough to build a good one. [re: combat decks are hard to make work, but we like them] : I have to agree with this. From what I have gathered of your playgroup, : combat is : incredibly nasty. This is not so much the case in the groups I have : played with : out here. Through sheer evolution the combat decks coming out of your : group might : honestly be some of the best in the nation. Flattery will get you everywhere. ;-) I suspect that the points Peter was making are good ones - if Rush combat becomes popular in a local group, you start seeing the kinds of combat defense that can hose it. But if it's not popular (ie at most tournaments), it seems unlikely that people would be playing that sort of thing. (The most effective combat defenses around here are Fortitude damage prevention and Obedience. FOR works because only Tremere and Assamites get around it, and they're hosed by Immortal Grapple. Obedience works because it preempts combats and most decks that would want to use it have vamps of larger average cap than the Rush decks they want to use it on. But both FOR and Obedience are pretty inferior to Strike: Combat Ends if you don't expect to see lots of good combat decks.) : Intriguing. I might have to start trying to work that angle. It : certainly might : change the metagame if it has any degree of success. Many of the decks : out here : use fortitude - how do you get around that? If they're *already* using fortitude, you could have problems. I'll echo Peter's question: if rush decks are ineffective for you, why are they using fortitude damage prevention? Josh 'they played it every other hour of every other day...'

Here's a riddle: Q: I am a Sabbat Rare Master, costing 2 pool, drawn by John Matson. Who am I? A: PDB6's answer to Eric about "My Dad could beat up your Dad" (Little offense -if any- intended) L~R

> When I joined this newsgroup, I played 4CL and made all the same > arguments in its favor that he does. I was very persistent and very defensive > of how "Balancing and Diverse" 4CL made the game and how "4CL made deck > designing far more challenging". Then enough people argued with everything I > said and convinced me otherwise. Look at me now... I find it difficult to understand these conversions (from NCL to 4CL or otherwise). Let's just say that if theory proves I'm wrong ('Remember, you fool! Jyhad was designed for NCL!') and experiment suggests otherwisen (to me), then it's very unlikely I'l convert... L~R

[ quoted text not captured ] "Jyhad was designed for NL" is the one absolute in this thread. The rest ("the game is much better my way") are theories (or sometimes merely anecdotal evidence). [ quoted text not captured ]