The Great Beast Newsletter Vol 1 Pt 1

THE GREAT BEAST STRATEGY GUIDE VOLUME 1 PT 1 THE BASICS Editor: Jon Cooper Content: 1. What you need. 2. Who you need. 3. Deck from hell. The ramblings that follow are the first of an irregular bunch of newsletters dedicated to the big fat mess that is The Great Beast. Rarely seen at tournaments and sneered at by most rational players, the Great Beast has yet to make a real impact on the scene. In this opening edition we will look at basic strategy and contenders for the ritual and offer a few thoughts and ideas to hopefully give sacrificial food for thought to those brave enough to venture along the burning path to abject humiliation and failure. 1. SO, YOU WANT TO SUMMON THE GREAT BEAST DO YOU? Call the Great Beast Cost: 1 blood +1 stealth action. Put this card on the acting Baali and put X ritual counters on it, where X is the capacity of this Baali. This Baali may put a ritual counter on this card as a +1 stealth action. When this card has more than 10 ritual counters, burn this Baali and choose three Disciplines; this card becomes a unique clan less independent infernal vampire with 9 capacity, 4 strength and 3 bleed. The Great Beast has the chosen three Disciplines at superior. Move 9 blood to him from the blood bank. The Great Beast can enter combat with any ready minion controlled by another Methuselah as a (D) action and can prevent 1 damage each combat. Lets take a closer look here. To get this bad boy rolling requires the following steps: 1. A Baali vampire. 2. The Call the Great Beast Card in your hand. 3. Be able to perform the Call the Great Beast action without getting blocked. At this point you now have a tapped vampire with a Call the Great Beast card slotted on it. Sit back. Enjoy it. Soak in the feeling. 4. Now, without being ousted, rushed, banished or generally knocked about you have to get 11 or more ritual counters on this card. This will involve performing a +1 stealth action to place a ritual counter on it unless you have the good fortune/great skill to have called it with an 11-cap vampire in which case you have achieved step 5 and are on the road to enlightenment. 5. Choose 3 Superior skills that will allow your newly formed Creation to run amok around the table. This IS the tricky bit. Now that’s a lot of pain and potential misery to go through for the end product so you HAD better make sure it’s worth it. To really utilize the beast you have got to take advantage of both his bleed potential and more excitingly, his ability to rush and inflict grievous harm upon your opponents. What you have quivering on the table in front of you is not just a 9-cap vampire, but a goddamm FORCE of nature. It can rush any ready minion as a D-action. It has 4 Hand Damage and can prevent 1 damage per combat, plus it can bleed for 3 AND has 3 Superior Skills of YOUR choice. With this in mind lets look at possible contenders for the ritual….. 2. WE ARE EEEEEEEEEVIL........ The following contenders spring to mind when thinking of building a Great Beast deck. Now for this issue I will focus on the most economic ways to deliver him to your service and in later issues will look at variants and other possibilities for the dark ritual, but to be going on with we have: Huitzopotchli……..He is 10 big points of burning Baali, eager to make a pact with infernal forces and dial the 666 hotline. He is the right clan, a good size (one skill card makes him Beastable) and has a feast of skills, plus a pretty good ability. High Preist Angra Mainyu……8 points of sweaty Baali is still feasible but will require a bit more work and planning. A few skill cards will cut down the time till blast off, but otherwise your going to be spending a few actions to set him off. The Other Baali……..Questionable wether these guys really cut it. 7 points is too much work to be worth considering IMO and as for Sargon, forget it. Qadir Ul-Ghani………9 points worth of vampire AND the ability to change clans as an inbuilt action? Thatll be Qadir then. Nice brace of skills to boot. Well worth a look. Just a few to begin the dark descent into devilry. Of course the card "Clan Impersonate" lends itself to a wide plethora of other possibilities, but does start to tie up your actions and throws another chain in the link. Here are a few that could conceivable be worth the extra effort….. Spider Killer………..10 points and an auto +1 stealth is a nice combo plus he has some good combat orientated skills. Stupid name though. Lucretia, The Cess Queen…….10 points and similar abiltity/skill set to Spider Killer. Also no chance of contesting her as I cant think of any deck that I have ever seen that uses her! Inner Circle Members…….. Again, all these guys have the size to instantly transform into the beast upon calling so reduce the amount of actions taken plus they all have a wide array of skills and some good strong powers chucked in for good measure. Admirable. Choosing the RIGHT man for the job is of paramount importance as you will need someone who the deck can still function and defend around without the Beast being present. That said, here is the first featured Deck From Hell. THIS MONTHS DECK FROM HELL Deck Name: Call 666 D-E-V-I-L Created By: Jonco Description: The three skills used for the beast in this deck are: TEMPORIS OBEAH and VICISSITUDE. Yeah, i know what your thinking, but stick with me here. I built this deck solely on the grounds of the combat cards. The whole combo is Inner essence, vitae block, lapse (set range OR deny strike), chiropteran marauder (manouver OR agg hand damage) and anesthetic touch. Now this deck relies on you having a Call the Great Beast in your hand when, or not long after, Huitzilopochtli hits the table. The lost in crowds hopefully will stealth it through, plus the combo cards work quite nicely too. Domain of evernight offers a +1 stealth at outferior and anesthetic touch gives a dodge for auspex. The domain of evernights and clothos gift give the beast a good few actions each turn so bleeding untap rush is relatively easily achieved. It does need a bit more playing and tweaking but I would consider taking this to a tournament at some point in the future. Maybe. Crypt: (12 cards, Min: 25, Max: 40, Avg: 8.25) ---------------------------------------------- 5 Huitzilopochtli AUS DAI DOM OBF PRE POT 10, Baali 3 Ian Forestal AUS DOM THA 8, Tremere Antitribu 3 Matthias AUS FOR nec OBE 7, Salubri 1 Richard Tauber AUS tha 4, Tremere Antitribu Library: (78 cards) ------------------- Master (10 cards) 2 Dreams of the Sphinx 1 Fame 1 Golconda: Inner Peace 1 Infernal Pact 5 Minion Tap Action (13 cards) 5 Call the Great Beast 4 Clotho's Gift 4 Renewed Vigor Action Modifier (13 cards) 6 Domain of Evernight 6 Lost in Crowds 1 Repulsion Reaction (8 cards) 4 Telepathic Misdirection 4 Wake with Evening's Freshness Combat (34 cards) 6 Anesthetic Touch 2 Breath of the Dragon 6 Chiropteran Marauder 4 Inner Essence 6 Lapse 4 Taste of Vitae 6 Vitae Block Any ideas, suggestions, deck ideas or comments please feel free to email me at the above email....... Your thoughts are welcome. Remember the Great Beast is not real and the chances of you summoning him are very low so, please…..Don’t have nightmares. Goodnight.

First of all, I don't know what posting software you're using but it's putting out weird character codes. You need to check your options, I think, and make sure you're posting plain text only. Jon Cooper wrote: > > THE GREAT BEAST STRATEGY GUIDE VOLUME 1 PT 1 > > THE BASICS ... > > High Preist Angra Mainyu……8 points of sweaty Baali is > still feasible but will require a bit more work and planning. A few > skill cards will cut down the time till blast off, but otherwise your > going to be spending a few actions to set him off. This is pretty much insane. Take an 8-cap vampire you're paying 1 pool to keep untapped per turn and spend four actions to create this thing?!? I don't think so. Of course, there may be some tricky way so up his capacity or put him in a deck with so many skill cards that by the time you draw Beast it's not so bad. But until I see it done, I'm going to continue to think it just won't work. Basically, the Great Beast is summoned by Mr. Huitzilopochtli or no one. Fred

> First of all, I don't know what posting software you're using but > it's putting out weird character codes. You need to check your > options, I think, and make sure you're posting plain text only. My bad. For some reason was set on plain text. Dammit. > > Jon Cooper wrote: > > > > THE GREAT BEAST STRATEGY GUIDE VOLUME 1 PT 1 > > > > THE BASICS > ... > > > > High Preist Angra Mainyu……8 points of sweaty Baali is > > still feasible but will require a bit more work and planning. A few > > skill cards will cut down the time till blast off, but otherwise your > > going to be spending a few actions to set him off. > > This is pretty much insane. Take an 8-cap vampire you're paying 1 pool > to keep untapped per turn and spend four actions to create this thing?!? > I don't think so. Of course, there may be some tricky way so up his > capacity or put him in a deck with so many skill cards that by the time > you draw Beast it's not so bad. But until I see it done, I'm going to > continue to think it just won't work. Basically, the Great Beast is > summoned by Mr. Huitzilopochtli or no one. > > Fred I pretty much agree, but believe he MAY be still viable if the deck wasn't purely focused on getting the Great Beast and you were using some of his skills, plus skill cards, and it was a Tuesday, in March, and other elemental and geological phenomenon had occurred and you had found almost Dhali Lama like Inner Peace and were complacent of losing, you COULD, in theory, use him. I wouldn't though :^)

Howdy, > First of all, I don't know what posting software you're using but > it's putting out weird character codes. You need to check your > options, I think, and make sure you're posting plain text only. I've had this problem with my own newsletters, though I think I've caught all instances in the preview. If I'm right, the problem isn't his posting software - it's M$ Word. Word refuses to use plain text characters for things like apostrophes, dashes, ellipses, etc. They look fine in the Word doc, and when you cut and paste them into, e.g. Google, but if you preview the message you'll see that all the offending characters are replaced by strings that must be hex equivalents or some such. It's been a while since I tried to deal with the problem, but the last time I did, I'm pretty sure I finally decided that there was no way to make Word speak plain text, which is @#$^ing annoying. (Yet another example of embrace, extend, extinguish...) Of course, I can't seem to make Netscape speak proper plain text these days either. Sigh. The way I work around the problem in Word is to isolate a single 'naked' version of each special character (typed singly out of context usually works) and cut and paste it over all the Wordified ones. Hope that helps, Alex

jonmicha...@btopenworld.com (Jon Cooper) wrote in message news:<196b6b41.02111...@posting.google.com>... > THE GREAT BEAST STRATEGY GUIDE VOLUME 1 PT 1 > Cool, I messed around with a bunch of great beast decks and its nice to get another perspective on this card. <snip> > The ramblings that follow are the first of an irregular bunch of > newsletters dedicated to the big fat mess that is The Great Beast. He is not fat... just big boned :P > Rarely seen at tournaments and sneered at by most rational players, > the Great Beast has yet to make a real impact on the scene. Well no one recently accused me of being rational, but I did eek out a win in the local eye tourney last sunday with a "Huitz calls beasty/pander" deck :). More interestingly, managed to get him out nice and early in all three games too... <snip> > Huitzopotchli……..He is 10 big points of burning Baali, > eager to make a pact with infernal forces and dial the 666 hotline. He > is the right clan, a good size (one skill card makes him Beastable) > and has a feast of skills, plus a pretty good ability. Yah, getting the beast with a single action is probably key to him hitting the table early enough to make an impact in the game. Unfortunatly Huitzi does not have for, so he can't freak and get the beast in 2 actions. In most of combinations of beasty decks that I tried, I ended up giving Huitzi a basic fortitude card to get him(?) to 11 cap and dawn-oping the great beast action (he will burn anyways so what the hell...). Also Huitz.'s special is really key, since with a good draw (or good cycling) you should be able to both minion tap him down to 1 >and< play the for skill card on the same turn (and then diall 1800-get-a-beast). > > High Preist Angra Mainyu……8 points of sweaty Baali is > still feasible but will require a bit more work and planning. A few > skill cards will cut down the time till blast off, but otherwise your > going to be spending a few actions to set him off. > possible if you have time to set up. (I think this guy has for, so he can take a ritual action and also freak for something else usefull). Still Huitz. seems made specifically to make the call, so the high priest may be a back-up plan in a deck that has the beast as a "prayer card", I guess. Non-beast infernals seem a bit marginall to me, since their specials/skill do not seem to cover the cost of infernalism. > The Other Baali……..Questionable wether these guys really > cut it. 7 points is too much work to be worth considering IMO and as > for Sargon, forget it. > True, below 8-cap is too much of a strech even for a fun deck. > Qadir Ul-Ghani………9 points worth of vampire AND the > ability to change clans as an inbuilt action? Thatll be Qadir then. > Nice brace of skills to boot. Well worth a look. Great idea, haven't thought of this dude... hmm, does he have aus? > > Just a few to begin the dark descent into devilry. Of course the card > "Clan Impersonate" lends itself to a wide plethora of other > possibilities, but does start to tie up your actions and throws > another chain in the link. Here are a few that could conceivable be > worth the extra effort….. If you are trying to get the beast as soon as possiable, then all 11-caps with for/FOR (to impersonate/freak/call) are decent contenders. Arika is probably the best for her FOR/OBF (freak/stealth) and DOM (for turn 4 bounces), also the ability will probably cause your prey to burn all his/her locations if they do not suspect what you are up to. > > Spider Killer………..10 points and an auto +1 stealth > is a nice combo plus he has some good combat orientated skills. Stupid > name though. > > Lucretia, The Cess Queen…….10 points and similar > abiltity/skill set to Spider Killer. Also no chance of contesting her > as I cant think of any deck that I have ever seen that uses her! > Both seem to be a 2-turn investment, still there is something to be said for getting that +1 stealth to make that lost in the croud strech a bit. Also you can always "precognisant(sp?) mobility them back up and call that same turn. <snip> > Choosing the RIGHT man for the job is of paramount importance as you > will need someone who the deck can still function and defend around > without the Beast being present. That said, here is the first featured > Deck From Hell. > > THIS MONTHS DECK FROM HELL > > Deck Name: Call 666 D-E-V-I-L > Created By: Jonco > Description: The three skills used for the beast in this deck are: > TEMPORIS OBEAH and VICISSITUDE. I would agree that you almost are forced to choose either FOR or TEM (or perhaps THA) for one of the 3 skills, since you need the beast to take 2 actions a turn for the forseable future to make good on all the hoops that you had to jump through to get his infernall ass on the table. A lot of local player suggested also choosing necromancy to posess the vampire that made the call back. Even when I managed to do that, I seemed to get little use out of a 10 or 11 cap with 1 blood that could use very few of the discipline cards in my deck. Admitedly there are some possobilities of having the beast "renewed vigor" the caller back up so that he could be minion taped, but all of that did not tend to go through (I was repeatedly ousted within 1-2 turns of finally getting the beast out and summoning back the caller). Yeah, i know what your thinking, but > stick with me here. I built this deck solely on the grounds of the > combat cards. The whole combo is Inner essence, vitae block, lapse > (set range OR deny strike), chiropteran marauder (manouver OR agg hand > damage) and anesthetic touch. if you lapse em, the anesthetic touch seems redundant. I would swap out either VIS or OBE for AUS or DOM for bounce and/or intercept. > Now this deck relies on you having a Call the Great Beast in your hand > when, or not long after, Huitzilopochtli hits the table. The lost in > crowds hopefully will stealth it through, plus the combo cards work > quite nicely too. Domain of evernight offers a +1 stealth at outferior > and anesthetic touch gives a dodge for auspex. It's odd how OBE seems to be the most common great beast discipline(every great beast deck I have seen posted uses it, so did all of mine so far), I wonder if that was intentional on the part of the designers, LSJ? The domain of > evernights and clothos gift give the beast a good few actions each > turn so bleeding untap rush is relatively easily achieved. It does > need a bit more playing and tweaking but I would consider taking this > to a tournament at some point in the future. Maybe. > > Crypt: (12 cards, Min: 25, Max: 40, Avg: 8.25) > ---------------------------------------------- > 5 Huitzilopochtli AUS DAI DOM OBF PRE POT 10, Baali > 3 Ian Forestal AUS DOM THA 8, Tremere Antitribu > 3 Matthias AUS FOR nec OBE 7, Salubri > 1 Richard Tauber AUS tha 4, Tremere Antitribu > 5 seems like overkill, I have been using 3 calling vampires and about 4 effective managments and have very rarely not gotten the caller reasonably fast. Interesting move with using Ian as a beast-backup, I tend to go for Beast-or bust aproach; where the beast is the only one who can use all of the cards in the deck. (Also sadly lacking any forestals at all may have something to do with it...) > Library: (78 cards) > ------------------- > Master (10 cards) > 2 Dreams of the Sphinx > 1 Fame > 1 Golconda: Inner Peace > 1 Infernal Pact > 5 Minion Tap > If you are not planning to posess back the caller, definetly throw in one or two copies of "redeem the lost soul". > Action (13 cards) > 5 Call the Great Beast > 4 Clotho's Gift > 4 Renewed Vigor > 5 seems like a lot. So far I have been getting away with 3 calls (and cylcing like a fiend untill I had the skill card/minion tap/call in hand). 4 is probably a good number. > Action Modifier (13 cards) > 6 Domain of Evernight > 6 Lost in Crowds > 1 Repulsion > Could use a few more domains, great outferior > Reaction (8 cards) > 4 Telepathic Misdirection > 4 Wake with Evening's Freshness > perhaps some more untap? The more combat opprotunities the merrier. > Combat (34 cards) > 6 Anesthetic Touch > 2 Breath of the Dragon > 6 Chiropteran Marauder > 4 Inner Essence > 6 Lapse > 4 Taste of Vitae > 6 Vitae Block I would be interested to find out if the Vitae Blocks pay off. So far I have been using then in combination with weather controls to marginal-at best effect. <snip> Good luck with the deck, Naram

On 15 Nov 2002, Alex Broadhead wrote: <snip problems with cut and paste from Word to newsgroup posting> > The way I work around the problem in Word is to isolate a single > 'naked' version of each special character (typed singly out of context > usually works) and cut and paste it over all the Wordified ones. I've actually dealt with this problem in my professional life as a software developer. A perhaps simpler workaround is to write the document in Word (for spellcheck features, I guess). Then cut and paste it into a text-only program like Notepad. Save it there. Then cut and paste it into the web form (Google or what-have-you). This is usually pretty effective, although I think later versions of Windows (2000 and XP) will try to sneak the special characters into Notepad as well, so you have to very explicitly save it as plain text. Pain in the butt. Interesting newsletter. I myself am very intrigued by this card. Sadly, I own only one. Not much chance of putting together a deck based around it. Maybe with a lot of burnable cards and a Waste Management Operation to cycle the good ones back? Heh. Sounds like the kind of deck that would make my playgroup very happy ('cause they'd beat the crap out of me). -Matt

"Naram" <stor...@msn.com> wrote in message > Well no one recently accused me of being rational, but I did eek out a > win in the local eye tourney last sunday with a "Huitz calls > beasty/pander" deck :). More interestingly, managed to get him out > nice and early in all three games too... Could you send me a deck listing for this one to the above email or stump...@hotmail.com ? Obeah does seem like a good choice for the Big OneTM....Also I still think Lapse is useful in the deck because A. You can stop them maneuvering away from the anesthetic touch OR B. Stop them S:CE, so you can hit em with the 4 AGG. Vitae block seems to work pretty nicely....brings them down to within burning range sometimes...but it is a little under tested at moment. The 5 CTGB in there are about right I think ,because with the Dreams of the sphinx you can always bin the extra copies when they come out anyway. Thanks for your comments and ideas. JC

<snip cool NL> Sterling work, fellow limey. Have you given thought to the Worst Possible combination of disciplines for the Great Beast? Is it, perhaps, AUS THA DOM? ;-)

legb...@mailandnews.com (legbiter) wrote in message news:<22fea992.0211...@posting.google.com>... [ quoted text not captured ] Nah, it's actually THA QUI NEC, and it has been already been done in a beast deck by a Chicagoland player known to his many fans as Cecil. He almost got a VP with it too :). Naram

On 15 Nov 2002, Jon Cooper wrote: <snip amazingly good newsletter> > Crypt: (12 cards, Min: 25, Max: 40, Avg: 8.25) > ---------------------------------------------- > 5 Huitzilopochtli AUS DAI DOM OBF PRE POT 10, Baali > 3 Ian Forestal AUS DOM THA 8, Tremere Antitribu > 3 Matthias AUS FOR nec OBE 7, Salubri > 1 Richard Tauber AUS tha 4, Tremere Antitribu > > Library: (78 cards) > ------------------- > Master (10 cards) > 2 Dreams of the Sphinx > 1 Fame > 1 Golconda: Inner Peace > 1 Infernal Pact > 5 Minion Tap Very interesting deck. I would want to focus on making Huxxithead able to call the beast in one smooth action, so I'd drop the Pact and include three VIC skill cards. That's two cards up, and still only twelve masters. > Action (13 cards) > 5 Call the Great Beast > 4 Clotho's Gift > 4 Renewed Vigor You don't even want a Clotho's in your hand until you've gotten up Hocksanastyluggie, then called the beast, then had another turn. Two of these should put one in your hand by the time you need it. Down two, and done. Thanks again for the letter and keep them coming! David Cherryholmes Duke Radiology P.E.T. Facility (919) 684-7714 d...@petsparc.mc.duke.edu

"Matthew T. Morgan" wrote: > On 15 Nov 2002, Alex Broadhead wrote: > > The way I work around the problem in Word is to isolate a single > > 'naked' version of each special character (typed singly out of context > > usually works) and cut and paste it over all the Wordified ones. > > I've actually dealt with this problem in my professional life as a > software developer. A perhaps simpler workaround is to write the document > in Word (for spellcheck features, I guess). Then cut and paste it into a > text-only program like Notepad. Save it there. Then cut and paste it > into the web form (Google or what-have-you). Or you could just turn off "Smart-quotes" (and other non-ascii replacements) under the "autocorrect" options area to solve this. -- LSJ (vte...@white-wolf.com) V:TES Net.Rep for White Wolf, Inc. Links to V:TES news, rules, cards, utilities, and tournament calendar: http://www.white-wolf.com/vtes/

>I've had this problem with my own newsletters, though I think I've >caught all instances in the preview. If I'm right, the problem isn't >his posting software - it's M$ Word. Word refuses to use plain text >characters for things like apostrophes, dashes, ellipses, etc. They >look fine in the Word doc, and when you cut and paste them into, e.g. >Google, but if you preview the message you'll see that all the >offending characters are replaced by strings that must be hex >equivalents or some such. > >It's been a while since I tried to deal with the problem, but the last >time I did, I'm pretty sure I finally decided that there was no way to >make Word speak plain text, which is @#$^ing annoying. (Yet another >example of embrace, extend, extinguish...) Of course, I can't seem to >make Netscape speak proper plain text these days either. Sigh. > >The way I work around the problem in Word is to isolate a single >'naked' version of each special character (typed singly out of context >usually works) and cut and paste it over all the Wordified ones. I can't stand Word. I use if for two things: opening files sent to me; getting word counts. Want plain text, why not Notepad or WordPad?

Howdy Curevei, > I can't stand Word. I use if for two things: opening files sent to me; > getting word counts. > > Want plain text, why not Notepad or WordPad? I hate Word too, but often need more features than the Pads can dish out (but not more than Word 5.1 could handle...). The basic (sad) reason I don't use the Pads for the newsletters, though, is that back when I was using an M$ OS, files saved in .txt format automagically opened in Word (despite not being created in it), and it took a few extra steps to get them to open in Notepad or Wordpad. Like I said, sad. I'll have to reconsider my usage now that I'm working on a Mac. Alex

jonmicha...@btopenworld.com (Jon Cooper) wrote in message news:<196b6b41.02111...@posting.google.com>... > THE GREAT BEAST STRATEGY GUIDE VOLUME 1 PT 1 [snip groovy Cooper newsletter] > Inner Circle Members…….. Again, all these guys have the > size to instantly transform into the beast upon calling so reduce the > amount of actions taken plus they all have a wide array of skills and > some good strong powers chucked in for good measure. Admirable. Bout the bestest way to use the Beef IF you ask me.... only IF you do mind you. Got to use and abuse the dudes before the Beef comes out. I reckon Inner circle with a load of support using 4-5 Beefs and maybe 6-7 Clan Impersonates. With that number of Clan Impersonates you could start playing with the really good Clan Specific stuff as well. Maybe. Got to pack a bunch of Minion Taps as well for pre-Beef profit. Or this could all be really thin :o) Nice letter BTW Coop. Might I be so bold as to request a deck submission for the next or a future letter ? Rob