Harbinger Tap and Bleed help?

Deck Name: HoS Tap n Bleed Author: Jakob Haley Description: Im trying to make this work. I know other clans () do it better! I'm trying to make it work with Group 2 vampires. 90% of my cards are from AH back, so my newer stuff is limited to singles I order off ebay, so keep that in mind when looking at the construction. Any input would be appreciated. Crypt (14 cards; Capacity min=6 max=9 avg=7.4) ================== 4x Egothha 7 obf AUS FOR NEC Harbinger of Skulls:2 4x Gisela Harden, The Winnower 7 aus dem FOR NEC Harbinger of Skulls:2 1x Anisa Marianna Lopez 8 aus FOR NEC QUI Harbinger of Skulls:2 1x Unre, Keeper of Golgotha 9 dom ser thn AUS FOR NEC Harbinger of Skulls:2 4x Agaitas, The Scholar of Antiquities6 for AUS NEC Harbinger of Skulls:2 Master (19 cards) ================== 1x Elder Library 1x Fragment of the Book of Nod 1x Giant's Blood 1x Information Highway 1x KRCG News Radio 2x Legendary Vampire 1x Maabara 3x Minion Tap 1x Misdirection 1x Rack, The 4x Blood Doll 2x Dominate Action (25 cards) ================== 2x Force of Will 4x Govern the Unaligned 10x Jar the Soul 4x Rapid Healing 3x Restoration 2x Whispers from the Dead Action Modifier (20 cards) ================== 2x Freak Drive 10x Seduction 6x Conditioning 2x Day Operation Action Modifier/Reaction (10 cards) ================== 10x Spectral Divination Combat (11 cards) ================== 2x Hidden Strength 1x Rolling with the Punches 3x Skin of Rock 4x Skin of Steel 1x Spiritual Intervention Equipment (4 cards) ================== 4x Laptop Computer Reaction (8 cards) ================== 5x Obedience 2x Wake with Evening's Freshness 1x Deflection Prince of Lodi, Ca Everyone must ride with Charon, by and by. We merely wish to know what to ask him before we step onto his boat.

Well, I can't say I have much experience with some of these cards, but few things I notice: - You have several obedience, but crypt is mostly medium-sized (cap 6-7). I think this might cause problems. Maybe I'm biased because my local playgroup tends to always have large vampires of some sort but.. I don't know what you should have instead.. maybe some kind of equipment like ivory bow? Obedience also only works when reacting, and your plan is to be proactive with tapping and bleeding actions? Is your local playgroup combat-heavy? Then I would understand the obediences. - On the qui vive is in the abstract strictly better than wake with evenings freshness, but maybe its a card availability thing. - I think the deck should have more wakes and more deflections, since I assume your vampires should most likely be tapped often if the deck is "working as it should". - The deck is quite large (97 by my count), maybe it could be thinned down to have the good cards more reliably. (4 govern in 97 cards is not a lot) - There should probably be more govern the unaligneds, or conditioning. Smoking craters tell no tales. —Tex talks Battletech

> xXLazarusXx wrote: > Deck Name: HoS Tap n Bleed > Author: Jakob Haley > Description: > Im trying to make this work. I know other clans () do it better! I'm trying to make it work with Group 2 vampires. > 90% of my cards are from AH back, so my newer stuff is limited to singles I order off ebay, so keep that in mind when looking at the construction. > I'm a bit puzzled on the strategy involved. Tap and bleed is fine, but why choose a dominate angle considering you play 1 vampire out of 14 that has Dominate (inferior) and 2 Dominate skills? Anyway, let's see what we can do > xXLazarusXx wrote: > Crypt (14 cards; Capacity min=6 max=9 avg=7.4) > ================== > 4x Egothha 7 obf AUS FOR NEC Harbinger of Skulls:2 > 4x Gisela Harden, The Winnower 7 aus dem FOR NEC Harbinger of Skulls:2 > 1x Anisa Marianna Lopez 8 aus FOR NEC QUI Harbinger of Skulls:2 > 1x Unre, Keeper of Golgotha 9 dom ser thn AUS FOR NEC Harbinger of Skulls:2 > 4x Agaitas, The Scholar of Antiquities6 for AUS NEC Harbinger of Skulls:2 > As I said, the crypt is AUS/NEC oriented. Unre seems too costly considering you're not planning to burn vampires so her special is rather useless. Anisa costs 8, but doesn't have superior auspex. I would drop her the same way. You can either play 4 copies of Egothha, Gisela and Agaitas (12 total) or think about adding support vampires such as Le Dinh Tho. > xXLazarusXx wrote: > Master (19 cards) > ================== > 1x Elder Library > 1x Fragment of the Book of Nod > 1x Giant's Blood > 1x Information Highway > 1x KRCG News Radio > 2x Legendary Vampire > 1x Maabara > 3x Minion Tap > 1x Misdirection > 1x Rack, The > 4x Blood Doll > 2x Dominate > I would drop the Dominate angle completely, starting with the skills. You could replace them with 2 Wider Views that will help you cycle your crypt, and gain some pool. > xXLazarusXx wrote: > Action (25 cards) > ================== > 2x Force of Will > 4x Govern the Unaligned > 10x Jar the Soul > 4x Rapid Healing > 3x Restoration > 2x Whispers from the Dead > I'm not a big fan of the tap / Force of Will / Rapid Healing combo because you don't have much stealth (risk of diablerie when you get out) and you don't have enough Freak Drive to play a Rapid Healing the same turn you play Force of Will. The Govern the Unaligned should be removed if you don't play Dominate. Don't worry - we'll use something else. So let's say -2x Force of Will -4x Govern the Unaligned -4x Rapid Healing > xXLazarusXx wrote: > Action Modifier (20 cards) > ================== > 2x Freak Drive > 10x Seduction > 6x Conditioning > 2x Day Operation > I'd remove the Conditioning and replace them with Trochomancy which is a golden card for Harbingers: Trochomancy Type: Action Modifier Requires: Auspex & Necromancy [nec] Remove 13 cards in the target Methuselah's ash heap from the game to get +1 bleed. Not usable if there aren't enough cards in that ash heap. You cannot play another action modifier to increase this bleed. [aus][nec] As [nec] above, but remove only 7 cards. [AUS][NEC] As [aus][nec] above, but for +2 bleed. Since we removed the Govern too, you could add 8 of these. There should be more Freak Drive (at least 5) so that you can tap a vampire with Jar the Soul, then bleed with the same vampire. 10 Seduction seems a lot, but why not? > xXLazarusXx wrote: > Action Modifier/Reaction (10 cards) > ================== > 10x Spectral Divination > 10 seems too much because you can't play 2 during the same action. Putting some Call of the Hungry Dead instead wouldn't hurt. > xXLazarusXx wrote: > Combat (11 cards) > ================== > 2x Hidden Strength > 1x Rolling with the Punches > 3x Skin of Rock > 4x Skin of Steel > 1x Spiritual Intervention > I'd probably play more Rolling with the Punches, especially if the Dominate angle is dropped (you need to replace those Obediences). I'd probably play Weighted Walking Stick to punish opposing minions. > xXLazarusXx wrote: > Equipment (4 cards) > ================== > 4x Laptop Computer > Consider playing Codex of the Edenic Groundskeepers Type: Equipment Cost: 1 pool Unique equipment. This minion gets -2 stealth when bleeding. This minion may bleed as a action that costs 1 blood; this action gets +3 bleed if the target Methuselah doesn't control a ready untapped minion. It's a promo card and goes well in tap'n'bleed strategies. > xXLazarusXx wrote: > Reaction (8 cards) > ================== > 5x Obedience > 2x Wake with Evening's Freshness > 1x Deflection > I'd remove the Obedience and the Deflection. You're clearly lacking Wake cards (Eyes of Argus is the best you can get here, but they are hard to find). You should put some (4-5) Telepathic Misdirection as a bleed defense. So here's what I suggest: Deck Name : Harbingers of Skull - tap'n'bleed Author : Ankha Description : Crypt [12 vampires] Capacity min: 5 max: 7 average: 6.41667 4x Egothha (7) Harbinger of Skulls(group 2) 3x Gisela Harden, The Winnower (7) priscusHarbinger of Skulls(group 2) 3x Agaitas, The Scholar of Antiquities (6) Harbinger of Skulls(group 2) 2x Le Dinh Tho (5) Nagaraja(group 2) Library [90 cards] Action [12] 9x Jar the Soul 2x Restoration 1x Whispers from the Dead Action Modifier [26] 3x Call of the Hungry Dead 2x Day Operation 5x Freak Drive 7x Seduction 9x Trochomancy Action Modifier/Reaction [7] 7x Spectral Divination Combat [13] 2x Hidden Strength 4x Rolling with the Punches 2x Skin of Rock 2x Skin of Steel 3x Spiritual Intervention Equipment [4] 3x Camera Phone => far better than Laptop since you don't play bleed actions anymore 1x Codex of the Edenic Groundskeepers Master [20] 1x Anarch Troublemaker => can't live without it in a tap'n'bleed 1x Barrens, The => more useful than Elder Library if you need to get rid of a late Legendary Vampire, or a card stolen from your prey with Agaitas 6x Blood Doll => rather than 4 BD + 3 Minion Tap 1x Fragment of the Book of Nod 1x Giant's Blood 2x KRCG News Radio => WMRH is better if you have one 2x Legendary Vampire 1x Maabara 1x Misdirection 1x Powerbase: Montreal => slightly better than Information Highway considering the new crypt size 1x Rack, The 2x Wider View Reaction [8] 4x Telepathic Misdirection 4x Wake with Evening's Freshness Prince of Paris, France Ratings Coordinator, Rules Director

Thank you for your help fellas. As I said, I'm working with *mostly* Ancient hearts back, but I've got a good smattering of stuff. So, my crypt and ANYTHING post Ancient hearts I have had to getake from ebay. That being said I have the majority of your suggestions, and I'll look into them. I've been trying to find a usable ONLY harbingers deck, Looks like I'll be haunting ebay this evening. Prince of Lodi, Ca Everyone must ride with Charon, by and by. We merely wish to know what to ask him before we step onto his boat.

Before you go hog wild paying rickstock way try much money for cards I world suggest you make some simple changes to your deck along the lines of what ankha recommends. If you need to use just harbingers that is fine. Dominate needs to go. Here are your staple cards: Master to tap (anarch troublemaker, misdirection) Tap or bleed action cards (jar the soul, computer hacking, pulse, laptop, j.s, Tasha) Action mods to stealth (NEC cards, daring the dawn, crocodile tongue) + Bleed (trochomancy, leverage) Wake and bounce Combat ends If you don't have those your friends may have extras. None of them should cost much. Be careful when you fight the monsters, lest you become one. -Friedrich Nietzsche brandonsantacruz.blogspot.com/

Thanks man, Master to tap (into have a ton of misdirection, only 2 troublemakers.) Tap or bleed (I have at least 2 or 4 of most of what you mentioned) Action mods to stealth ( thanks for the tip with the tongue) + bleed (unfortunately ebay is my only option for any more of either of these) I have tons more wake. What do you mean by bounce? And combat ends, I'll look into this. So, here's the dynamic with my playgroup. I met these fellas whom were gamers but not vtes. I convinced them to chip in and we bought around 10,000 cards in lots from ebay for a stock pool all the players could draw from. More like a LCG, kinda. So trading with others in our group is kinda irrelevant. EBay is one one of my(our) only resources. I'm going to go ahead and add what I can from our pool, but I do realize that I'm missing a good 10 or so years worth of sets to choose from. The others in our group expressed intrest in getting more "blocks of cards" but nothing has come of it yet. So, when anyone wants to add anything "exotic" it is on our dime. Prince of Lodi, Ca Everyone must ride with Charon, by and by. We merely wish to know what to ask him before we step onto his boat.

Le Dinh Tho is a rare, you can fall back on 4 HoS of each if you want to play HoS only. Anarch Troublemaker is a rare too, but really easy to come by (it's been reedited in 4 editions + fixed in Anarchs starters) Camera Phone and Trochomancy are commons, they should be really easy to get for cheap. Blood Dolls, well, you know. Wider View is a common too. Happy building, and don't forget you can playtest the deck first with proxies before buying any cards Prince of Paris, France Ratings Coordinator, Rules Director

I see that you are in Lodi, not terribly far away from the bay area. There are people who simi-regularly meet on Wednesdays in Berkeley at a game store called Eudemonia. You may be able to convince them to part with some common cards, or to buy some from them. There are occasional tournaments and if there was much interest I imagine people might meet on a weekend to play. Here is their Facebook group: Powerbase Berkeley: a Vtes playgroup The best bang for your buck is always to buy a collection from a retiring player, probably not on Ebay (shipping, not being able to see what is in the collection, little accountability if they cherry picked all the rares). Be careful when you fight the monsters, lest you become one. -Friedrich Nietzsche brandonsantacruz.blogspot.com/

Deck Name: HoS Tap and bleed v2 Author: Jakob Haley Description: Let's try this again. Here's the bare bones of what I think the deck NEEDS to run. I've modified the crypt to be easy player frinedly, and have completly taken the dominate angle out. Camera phones and Trochomancy along with more spiritual divinations have also been added. Is Antideluvian Awakening worth it to put a "clock" on the game? I have no NEC Strike combat ends. Any work arounds other than Elysium? Thanks for the input fellas. Note: I play against a Malk bleed, a Gangrel combat and a toreador guns/aching beauty deck, so you know what my meta is like. Crypt (12 cards; Capacity min=6 max=7 avg=6.666667) ================== 4x Egothha 7 obf AUS FOR NEC Harbinger of Skulls:2 4x Gisela Harden, The Winnower 7 aus dem FOR NEC Harbinger of Skulls:2 4x Agaitas, The Scholar of Antiquities6 for AUS NEC Harbinger of Skulls:2 Master (26 cards) ================== 2x Elysium: The Arboretum 1x Fragment of the Book of Nod 2x Anarch Troublemaker 1x Giant's Blood 2x KRCG News Radio 2x Legendary Vampire 1x Maabara 1x Archon Investigation 5x Misdirection 1x Necromancy 1x Rack, The 1x Barrens, The 6x Blood Doll Action (15 cards) ================== 2x Force of Will 1x Pulse of the Canaille 4x Rapid Healing 2x Restoration 2x Whispers from the Dead 4x Computer Hacking Action Modifier (18 cards) ================== 3x Freak Drive 10x Trochomancy 3x Call of the Hungry Dead 2x Day Operation Action Modifier/Reaction (7 cards) ================== 7x Spectral Divination Combat (7 cards) ================== 2x Hidden Strength 5x Rolling with the Punches Equipment (6 cards) ================== 4x Camera Phone 2x Codex of the Edenic Groundskeepers Reaction (8 cards) ================== 4x Telepathic Misdirection 4x Wake with Evening's Freshness Prince of Lodi, Ca Everyone must ride with Charon, by and by. We merely wish to know what to ask him before we step onto his boat.

Yeah, I'm in Lodi. I don't make it to the bay much because of work, so I'm trying to get my little grassroots group going. I'd love to go to some tournaments though. Prince of Lodi, Ca Everyone must ride with Charon, by and by. We merely wish to know what to ask him before we step onto his boat.

> xXLazarusXx wrote: > Master (26 cards) > ================== > 2x Elysium: The Arboretum > 1x Fragment of the Book of Nod > 2x Anarch Troublemaker > 1x Giant's Blood > 2x KRCG News Radio > 2x Legendary Vampire > 1x Maabara > 1x Archon Investigation > 5x Misdirection > 1x Necromancy > 1x Rack, The > 1x Barrens, The > 6x Blood Doll > 26 is a horrifying number of master cards to have in a 90 card deck that doesn't have any trifles or Parthenons etc. Less than 20 would be preferable. Regarding: > 2x Elysium: The Arboretum > And > > I have no NEC Strike combat ends. Any work arounds other than Elysium? > Elysium: The Arboretum is not a workaround for you. Its text changed many, many years ago so that the combat ending element of it says: Only usable when a Camarilla vampire you control is in combat with another Camarilla vampire. You may tap this card before range is determined to end combat. (Plus the burn action.) You're not playing Camarilla vampires, and even if you were it's very difficult to justify including it because you don't know that the combat deck(s) you're facing will be using Camarilla vampires - or even vampires, with things like War Ghoul or Shambling Hordes. Which also makes me wonder about: > 5x Misdirection > Are you aware that Misdirection costs 1 pool and taps 1 minion? (Not X and X.) > 1x Necromancy > Why is this in the deck? Your crypt is: > > 4x Egothha 7 obf AUS FOR NEC Harbinger of Skulls:2 > 4x Gisela Harden, The Winnower 7 aus dem FOR NEC Harbinger of Skulls:2 > 4x Agaitas, The Scholar of Antiquities6 for AUS NEC Harbinger of Skulls:2 > So they all have NEC. > 1x Fragment of the Book of Nod > 1x Maabara > 1x Rack, The > All three have significant burn/steal actions, and you're not playing very block-y Harbingers. (You could be, but you're not.) So be live to the possibility that you may be playing them, just for a weenie combat deck or a deck with a bunch of Obfuscate to foil you. You probably don't want to be spending actions stealing The Rack back, given you can have (at most) three minions out. > xXLazarusXx wrote: > 2x Force of Will > 1x Pulse of the Canaille > ... > 4x Computer Hacking > ... > 4x Camera Phone > 2x Codex of the Edenic Groundskeepers > Taking these together, this is a potentially somewhat awkward package. Pulse of the Canaille is extremely expensive. Computer Hacking, Camera Phone and Codex conflict somewhat with each other - each generates its own action, they don't stack. I would consider swapping out at least two permanent cards for two bleed retainers - JS Simmons and Tasha Morgan - because those can stack, and are free, and don't have huge drawbacks (like Codex does). Pulse would probably be my first target. That might change if you see a lot of gun combat in your environment, or other ranged combat, and people are likely to take potshots at the retainers from range. I would also think hard about Force of Will. Given you can only have at most three vampires out, you may find yourself in a risky situation where you send one of your vampires to torpor and then try to rescue it - providing a very tempting target for an opponent to try and block, and you may not have a backup vampire. There is a time and a place for Force of Will, but with such a limited crypt, I would caution against it. > xXLazarusXx wrote: > 10x Trochomancy > 10 is quite a lot of Trochomancies. Particularly early in the game, you may find that you have a slow prey, or a prey playing a lot of permanents (e.g. an Imbued prey). Finding 7 or 14 cards (i.e. two Trochomancies) in your prey's ash heap may be quite tricky. This isn't necessarily "don't play them", but do think carefully about card flow - yours, and your prey's.

Thanks for your input. I'll start at the top. I intend to cut down my number of masters, I'm just posting drafts as I build/change the cards Elysium has to go then, but you didn't really suggest anything to give me the combat ends mechanic with Sabbat vampires. Anything you can suggest to fill that would be great. Also, I didn't mean to include the "necromancy " discipline card. There's a limitation on this deck that Im using the group 2 harbingers. It's one of the first things addressed in the rest of the post. Which block oriented harbingers were you referencing? No matter the group I'll take a look at them. I have the other 2 (unre and Maria) group 2 vampires, but they are costly. I'll probably end up with one copy of both in the crypt. Was going to cut the computer hacking for J.S. and Tasha, your right about the stacking. I know misdirection is not x for x. So, what other options are we going to get the tap part of tap and bleed? I've got 2 trouble makers and jar the soul, anything else? I've cut it down to one of the codex and no pulse, but Trochomancy is the bread and butter of this deck, though I think 6 might do it.. How would you suggest I "mill" more to make this more effective? (Other than slaughterhouses) Do you think this deck needs more intercept generation? I know harbingers make a good wall deck. Prince of Lodi, Ca Everyone must ride with Charon, by and by. We merely wish to know what to ask him before we step onto his boat.

I have 5 HoB decks (my favorite clan) and plenty more failed ones over the years. Like BrandonCruz and Ankha said.. drop the dominate. Total failure if two sudden reversals drop on your dominate skill card. You have Egothha and Agaitas for dropping their cards. You can also use Slaughter Houses to drop prey's cards as well and use trochomancy to bleed. Deck is way too big and too many masters (need only 15-16 for a 90 card deck). You need more spiritual intervention like 6 copies. Relying on fortitude for combat is bad idea as people will wear you down eventually. Try weighted walking sticks and pulled fangs for damage to scare people off. Jar the Soul is stupid card and takes up your action for 1 blood damge considering you're not small cap vampires. Much better use Breath of Thanatos, Dead Hand, Mercy for Seth (OP against stupid imbued decks). You want about 24 combat cards in a 90 card deck with only 10 at most fortitude cards. I personally love pulled fangs with a fortitude based clan. Don't forget to throw in 2-3 Unflinching Persistence for maneuvers to close range. You have seduction.. get rid of that, use call the hungry dead, kiss of ra, spectral divination. You have conditioning.. get rid of that, use 5-6 trochomancy laptop computer is fine, but go for camera phone.. reaction cards should be only wake with evening freshness, eyes of argus (expensive), telepathic misdirection (bounce), and other auspex interrupt cards if you desire/have space for. There are other suggestions but I don't wanna give you a headache. Get busy living or get busy dying ----Andy Dufresne

Every single thing you addressed was already suggested on the second page of the thread and implemented to the deck Do you have any deck lists for other Harbinger deck architypes? I'd like to take a look at what others have got. Prince of Lodi, Ca Everyone must ride with Charon, by and by. We merely wish to know what to ask him before we step onto his boat.

> Ankha wrote: > Deck Name : Harbingers of Skull - tap'n'bleed > Author : Ankha > > Action Modifier [26] > 7x Seduction > I forgot to remove the Seduction (since I removed the Dominate angle in the deck). There are few options to replace them: - Kiss of Ra, always funny, but costly, and there are a lot a vampire with Fortitude. Anyway, when facing some Tzimisce wall deck, or a CEL gun, it's really cool. - Crocodile Tongue : not as effective as Seduction in the early game, works well if you persist in the Jar the Soul way. The cool effect of the card is that if the blocking Methuselah doesn't cancel the card (not enough blood for instance), none of his or her other minion can block. - more Call of the Hungry Dead Prince of Paris, France Ratings Coordinator, Rules Director

Sure. They are on my secretlibrary decklist.. dunno how I can list them to you Get busy living or get busy dying ----Andy Dufresne

> xXLazarusXx wrote: > Elysium has to go then, but you didn't really suggest anything to give me the combat ends mechanic with Sabbat vampires. Anything you can suggest to fill that would be great. > Purchase Pact exists, but is slightly harder to play (requiring a non-bishop Sabbat title) to play. However, it has the same problem as Elysium: the Arboretum - you don't control the sect of your opponents, so if you find yourself with a Tzimisce bruise-bleed prey and an Ahrimane predator, things are okay - but if you find yourself with a Toreador gun wall prey and an Imbued predator, you're not doing so well with it. If you want combat defence as a master card, you might want to consider Secure Haven , as it stops you being rushed - but won't help you if you get blocked. Mostly, combat defence is best from minion cards (with one or two exceptions). > xXLazarusXx wrote: > There's a limitation on this deck that Im using the group 2 harbingers. It's one of the first things addressed in the rest of the post. > Which block oriented harbingers were you referencing? No matter the group I'll take a look at them. > It's not the vampires, so much as the deck construction. You could - were you so minded - have a clutch of intercept in the deck using your Auspex, maybe get hold of a Bowl of Convergence, toss in Mr Winthrop and maybe a couple of Eagle Sight. Perhaps go for a Weighted Walking Stick style grinder deck, maybe mix in some Aus/For !Ventrue to help out, use Crematorium to capitalize on vampire death. (Briefly, the 'grinder' style of deck tends to use Auspex to defend itself, Fortitude and Walking Sticks to kill its opponents with a relatively small outlay while doing reasonably well toe-to-toe with a 'proper' combat deck because of the Fortitude, and outlasts its opponents.) Your main strands of intercept in the current build are two copies of an intercept location, Spectral Divination and 4 Telepathic Misdirections - which you will mostly want to use for bleed bounce, most likely. Spectral Divination costs you a blood, and without a Radio you may be finding yourself maxing out at +1 intercept. And you may also be thinking that if you use this Divination for the intercept, you can't use it next turn to help you equip your Camera Phone or whatever you want to do with the stealth. Compared with other intercept options - like Auspex, like Second Tradition, like Spiritus, and to some extent like some parts of Animalism - Necromancy isn't so hot. It's great as a way of helping yourself mix things up with other decks - that deck over there has to think about whether it can call that political action, or you can take someone by surprise etc. - but it's not super reliable. So you have a reasonably limited ability to defend cards that another deck might want to take from you - and Fragment and The Rack. Now, it's certainly true that some decks won't bother to steal those cards because it's an inefficient use of resources for them - if your opponent has a couple of big bruising vampires, they might just prefer to Bum's Rush you and eat your face, rather than steal the Rack. But, take the aforementioned grinder style of deck, it can use a mix of weenie and midbie vampires, is probably trying to outlast you (rather than win through rapid aggression) and would probably quite like to take your Rack - and with reasonable Auspex options in its deck, you're probably not getting it back. > xXLazarusXx wrote: > I've cut it down to one of the codex and no pulse, but Trochomancy is the bread and butter of this deck, though I think 6 might do it.. How would you suggest I "mill" more to make this more effective? (Other than slaughterhouses) > That's more or less the problem - unless you're actively playing a Slaughterhouse-based strategy, you don't control what cards the bleed target has played, or whether they're permanents or transients. If your prey is an Una deck, it might have 47 copies of Freak Drive in its ash heap by your fourth turn (though you probably have other issues to watch out for then). If your prey tools up with a lot of permanent cards, from Vessels, VIlleins, Blood Dolls, equipment, allies or whatever, it might have very few cards in its ash heap. Which is why it's hard to make Trochomancy the real centre-piece of a deck (as a Dominate deck might with Threats or Conditioning or whatever), because while it's more or less inevitable that your prey will end up with some cards in their ash heap over the game, you don't know when or how many. (And you largely don't want to be playing Slaughterhouse - it's not good, other master cards give you more bang for buck, and assuming you oust your prey, you need time to discard some more from your grand-prey.) > xXLazarusXx wrote: > Do you think this deck needs more intercept generation? I know harbingers make a good wall deck. > Not necessarily, but putting out well-regarded cards like The Rack and Fragment makes them a tempting target. > xXLazarusXx wrote: > So, what other options are we going to get the tap part of tap and bleed? I've got 2 trouble makers and jar the soul, anything else? > There aren't many really solid ones. Tap and Bleed got a significant downgrade with the changes to Misdirection, partly in order to make weenie swarm bleed less desirable and packing 8-10 Wakes less necessary. (There's nothing inherently wrong with packing 8-10 Wakes in a deck - just that should probably be a strategic choice, rather than a necessity to survive.) Jar the Soul is potentially useful, but you face the issue that if your prey has a mild minion advantage, you're slightly screwed - that weenie Dominate deck that can frequently flip out a new vampire ready to bounce you might be annoying, if you're trying to tap everything before swooping in. And even once you've tapped them out, it can wake to bounce that Codex + Trochomancy bleed. Weenie Auspex (and some of the weenier grinders) will potentially upset you. And quite a few significant defensive strategies work when a vampire is tapped anyway. Second Tradition is both popular and excellent, because Princes are (in general) excellent. Eternal Vigilance and No Secrets from the Magaji can both be very strong indeed. On the Qui Vive is very popular, because it is - in small quantities - slightly less annoying than Wake with Evening's Freshness's Do Not Replace clause, and certainly a deck could pack a few of each. And some very aggressive strategies just won't care. They're already tapped out, from having - say - called four copies of Kine Resources Contested with their bunch of pre/PRE weenies, done 12 pool damage to their prey, got a little pool back via Voter Captivation (or possibly Consanguineous Boon, in breed-boon variants), and are planning on frantically outpacing you, so the fact that they're tapped with some cards in their ash heap is neither here nor there to them.

I really appreciate everyone's input. I've taken everything into consideration and I wonder if a Bleed/Wall is more the direction I should go? Does anyone have any suggestions for some key cards for this? Prince of Lodi, Ca Everyone must ride with Charon, by and by. We merely wish to know what to ask him before we step onto his boat.

Again, I have next to no experience on necromancy or harbingers so take whatever I say with a grain of salt., but considering the available disciplines, I might personally go for either a dedicated wall deck with smiling jacks or something for ousting (because you have auspex and fortitude to protect yourself from the worst) or some kind of multi-action deck utilizing the fact you can play freak drives. The latter might employ allies as secondary action to perform besides bleeding? Just my 10 cents.. Ultimately it comes down to your choice. Smoking craters tell no tales. —Tex talks Battletech

The only decks I've found so far that are even close would be HoS Creation Rites decks. Perfectionist. Forget more action slots with Restoration, Perfectionist is good without Freak Drive, that much better with. For more cards, making a run out to Lodi sometime to drop off some cards is not all that difficult, one of the Bay Area players is trying to unload his collection and I have extras of various things. Anyway, the reason for Creation Rites is that even if you had three dudes in play, tapping and Trochomancying, it's still not all that frightening. Tap and bleed with six dudes is scarier. Oh, and Heidelberg plus J.S. plus Tasha plus Laptops plus some Computer Hackings is okay. What's amusing is that your group 2 build can run Pentex(TM) Love You! as well and not be crazy. Of course, the downside to Dennies is that you have to actually get them in play, they make you more vulnerable to vote murder, they want skill cards eating up potential slots, and you need actual vampires who can put them into play, so now adding Cardinal Benedictions or whatever. The Embrace can largely serve the same function and can not bother with skill cards. Or, play some dorks with your HoS, unless you really need to be 100% HoS. AUS at 3, at 4 with For, Nec for dork Jarring. I'd also look at 1x The Kiss of Ra because people wake up and it will inconvenience a bunch of decks that are good at blocking. I'd also run a minimum of six bounce, for the simple reason that bounce is tap bleed in and of itself, and you probably can't race any serious bleed deck. Some vote defense would make sense for tournament play, which the Creation Rites/Cardinal Benediction angle can maybe do better at. Traveller Card Game

Harbingers tap and bleed is one of my favorite decks to play. I have had moderate success, including a tournament win, with Steve Coombs Memorial (HI BRANDON): www.secretlibrary.info/index.php?deck=view&id=15993 You've been getting great advice in the thread so far. The biggest disagreement I have is about Unre. In my experience, the +1 bleed on Unre and/or The Baron are excellent for this style of deck. Their 2 votes can be good defense or negotiating tools at the table as well. Best wishes!