Brujah Antitribu Newsletter - Volume 2 Issue 4

BRUJAH ANTITRIBU NEWSLETTER
Volume 2, Issue 4
Mid-February 2001

Author: Andrew 'Wes' Weston

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction
General Tactics
!Brujah Tactics
Vampire Analysis
Tournaments
Sign Off

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INTRODUCTION

In this issue I will focus on ways to maintain and gain pool. This is not
always easy for Brujah Antitribu as we have little in the way of intercept
to prevent pool loss from bleed decks. We do however have access to some
cards that when played will allow us to slowly gain pool.

I have finally participated in my first tournament in Toronto this past
weekend, so I would also like to take this opportunity to offer some
observations and advice for those who intend to enter one.

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GENERAL TACTICS

Winning a game of V:tES involves reducing your prey's pool to zero. While
there are many ways to achieve this, players must always keep in mind that
their predator is trying to do the same to them. The ability to gain a small
amount of pool each turn can often make the difference in a long game. I
will list the common 'income' cards used to gain pool, how effective they
are and when they should be used.

Powerbase 
There are many powerbases in the game, and each has a slightly different
variation on the pool gain theme. The problem with these cards is that they
all require vigilance in defending them. All of them offer the ability for
any other Methuselah to steal whatever blood is on them as a direct action
and therefore they often become tempting targets. They really are only
practical when you have enough ability to intercept or incentive for
Methuselah's to NOT try to steal. When playing in a larger game, you may
have 4 Methuselahs all trying to steal the 6 pool on your PB Washington DC,
so some means of making sure only YOU are able to get that blood is a must.
There are situations where allowing a friendly Methuselah to grab blood from
your powerbase may be handy however.

Minion Tap
http://whitestar.ddg.com/vtes/monger/showcard.html?ID=494
Minion Tap is considered one of the best cards in the game. It's utility
comes from the fact that if you spend 10 pool bringing out a huge vampire,
you can gain back most of your investment by playing this card. The problem
is that you now have an almost empty vampire. There are ways of getting
blood BACK on your vampire, however this is not always easy. Camarilla
princes have 5th Tradition which can fill a vampire back to capacity. All
Methuselahs have access to Giant's Blood, however that card can only be
played once per game. Of course, all vampires have the inherent ability to
hunt, but this is a slow process. Most vampires regardless of size can still
be effective with 2 or 3 blood on them, depending on the cards they are
likely to play so losing 7 blood from a 10 capacity vampire may not always
be inconvenient. Timing can play a factor with Minion Taps as you will often
find that you draw them when none of your vampires can afford to lose blood.
Of course, if in a pinch, you can still play it to get it out of your hand,
declaring that you will take ZERO blood from the vampire.

Blood Doll
http://whitestar.ddg.com/vtes/monger/showcard.html?ID=109
A personal favourite, it is rare to see a deck that does NOT contain at
least one Blood Doll. It's strength comes from its versatility; you can take
blood from the vampire to your pool or from your pool to your vampire (more
useful than it appears). A low capacity vampire with a Blood Doll can be
turned into a cheap pool-making machine by having her constantly hunt each
turn to replace the blood lost. If placed on a large capacity vampire, blood
can be gradually drained off similar to Minion Tap but at a much slower
rate. There is no downside to this card really... even playing it costs
nothing. Other Methuselahs are generally more likely to use Sudden Reversals
on Minion Taps than on Blood Dolls. Also, Blood Doll is a common card, so
most players are likely to have a few lying around.

Tribute to the Master
http://whitestar.ddg.com/vtes/monger/showcard.html?ID=821
Another variation on the same theme, TttM is less versatile but potentially
more profitable to play. If playing with a crypt with primarily small
vampires a timely Tribute can net you a lot of pool. A common problem with
this card however is timing. What if you draw it at the beginning of the
game? What if you can't afford to lose blood from one or two of your
vampires? Personally, I'll usually stick with Blood Dolls rather than
Tributes most of the time. Tribute just isn't flexible enough.

Eco-Terrorists/Gang Territory/Arcane Library/Nosferatu Kingdom
These cards are only useful for certain clans obviously, but are worth
mentioning nonetheless. Although their purpose at first seems to be to
enable you to quickly influence out vampires from your uncontrolled region,
don't forget that blood can be influenced OFF your uncontrolled vampires as
well (at a cost of 2 transfers per 1 blood). Therefore, if you have the
pre-requisite clan to play one of these cards and the pre-requisite vampire
in your uncontrolled region, you are basically paying 2 pool for a pool gain
of 1 per turn, a very good investment if you can get it. It's downside is
that it is expensive at 2 pool and sometimes hard to set up. It is a card
that is much better to get in the beginning of the game, at least after you
have the right vampire out.

Govern the Unaligned/Scouting Mission/4th Tradition/Enchant Kindred
At superior level, all of these cards offer the ability to add blood to a
younger vampire in your uncontrolled region. Once that blood is there, you
can use influence transfers to move it to your pool (or reduce costs to play
those vampires). The difficult thing with these cards is that you will often
be influencing out younger vampires first in order to keep up with other
Methuselahs and you can't use those younger ones to add blood to the older
ones. Often, if you use these cards it is better to play at a slower pace in
the beginning, influencing out the 8 cap with DOM (for GtU/SM) and then
using that one vampire to help bring out the youngsters. Later on when your
controlled region looks a bit more stable, you can then use these cards to
either gain pool or alternatively bleed (4th Tradition being the exception).

Short-Term Investment/Secret Horde/Ascendance
If you are comfortable exchanging Master Phases for a slight pool gain,
these cards can be useful. Generally, master phases should be used in better
ways than just to gain 1 pool however. I can almost always find better
master cards to play than these. There are times when you may not have a
master card in hand, and a STI in play would be an ideal way to do
'something', but more often than not you will find yourself playing this
card at the most inopportune time and never being able to use it. Ascendance
offers an immediate return with no strings attached, but for a measly one
pool it rarely seems worth the bother...

Ousting your prey
Not a card of course, but a viable means of gaining pool. Gaining 6 pool is
a considerable incentive for ousting your prey. It is also the means of
winning a game, so it should definitely not be ignored. There are many times
when a good offense is the best form of defense. By gaining that 6 pool you
are not only pushing towards becoming the winner of the game, but you are
making yourself harder to oust by your predator. This is easier said than
done, but if you are not trying to oust your prey, ask yourself what exactly
it is you ARE trying to do?

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!BRUJAH TACTICS

The Brujah Antitribu have access to more ways to gain pool than most clans.
We have Gang Territory (discussed above) a type of card that only three
other clans have access to. We also have access to Enchant Kindred, a
Presence card that allows us to add blood to a vampire in our uncontrolled
region.

A card that !Brujah will find very effective for pool gain (when combined
with other cards) is Taste of Vitae. Since we will often be whacking other
vampires for hideous amounts of damage, we may as well use this card to fill
ourselves back up to capacity. Then, on our next Master Phase we can use
Blood Dolls to remove some blood and repeat the cycle. Since many of the
most effective combat cards for us do not cost a lot of blood (Disarm, Torn
Signpost, Immortal Grapple) we are less likely to need a lot of blood on our
vampires than most, so keeping them at 2 or 3 blood each is not as dangerous
as one might think. If you find a vampire is empty for whatever reason at
the beginning of your turn, rather than hunt, you can add a blood from your
pool with the Blood Doll and then rush with that minion to gain back some of
its blood. I find that Blood Dolls are particularly effective in a !Brujah
deck because of the Taste of Vitae card.

Gang Territory is a nice card to have out, but one thing to consider when
playing it is the composition of your crypt. Since most !Brujah decks will
typically contain a lot of non-!Brujah (mostly Camarilla Brujah, Jimmy Dunn
and Beast) it is likely that you may find yourself with an uncontrolled
region that does not have a !Brujah in it, making this card useless.
Generally, in this case it is not worth paying pool in the hopes of getting
a !Brujah, unless you are reasonably sure you will get one. You can see how
the timing of this card is so important. Still, I find it is worth it to
throw one into a deck because if the gods of timing do favour you, this card
can be a super investment.

Powerbases are generally never worth playing in a !Brujah deck as we have no
means of intercepting the minions who try to take the blood from it.
Powerbase Montreal may be an exception to this rule. Although it would be
fairly easy to steal this powerbase from us, it would also be very easy to
steal it back (and usable in the turn in which it is stolen!). Most
Methuselahs, given the choice between losing Powerbase Montreal or getting
in a fight with a !Brujah are going to LET you have it.

Enchant Kindred is useful in that it can be used in several ways. Bleeding
for an extra pool at no cost to the bleeder is always nice, but adding 2
blood to an uncontrolled vampire may help us too. Most !Brujah decks however
will rely on Potence and Celerity more than Presence, and will generally
focus on smaller vampires many of whom will not have superior Presence.
Since Sela is a common vampire to use in a !Brujah deck (she has PRE) this
card may find some use. (NOTE: This card has been errata'ed. The superior
ability of the card is now at +1 stealth. I believe this was always meant to
be the case but was an error when the cards were originally printed)

Minion Taps will generally be less useful to us than Blood Dolls as our
average capacity will typically be too low to benefit. A deck that uses high
capacity !Brujah may find this card useful, but such decks are fairly rare
and of questionable viability (A later newsletter will discuss why).

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VAMPIRE ANALYSIS

Name: Evangeline
http://whitestar.ddg.com/vtes/monger/showvamp.html?ID=357
Clan: Brujah Antitribu
Capacity: 4
cel pot pre

Evangeline seems quite plain at first. The beauty of this vampire is that
she has access to all three clan disciplines, albeit at inferior level. This
means she is likely to be able to use all of the discipline cards we have in
our deck. At 4 capacity, she is able to be influenced out on a regular turn
which is always nice. Do not overlook the utility of Potence or Celerity at
the inferior levels. With inferior Potence by itself, we can play Torn
Signpost, Immortal Grapple, Undead Strength and Disarm doing 3 damage,
sending most vampires to torpor and costing us nothing. Add in a Blur and
you can hit them for 6. Sure, she would be nicer if she had CEL POT PRE, but
the closest available !Brujah with that combination is Amelia at 7. In most
!Brujah decks, 7 is a bit too much to pay for this, especially as we
generally don't NEED all three at superior (though it would be nice).

Also notable is Christopher Shy's artwork. I like that Evangeline looks like
she is about 12. Somehow a 12 year old girl vampire losing control to the
Beast and frenzying seems kind of cool to me. Personally, I really like
Shy's artwork. He was responsible for much of the imagery in Montreal By
Night (a fantastic sourcebook for the RPG). His portraits all seem hazy and
indistinct but in a way that makes the vampires appear deliberately inhuman
and detached. Unfortunately, some of this quality manages to be lost on the
card artwork he has done, perhaps due to the colour. Black and white seems a
more appropriate venue for his style.

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TOURNAMENTS

This past weekend I was fortunate enough to participate in my first
sanctioned V:tES tournament in Toronto. I was not sure what to expect in
terms of players, deck styles and intensity of play.

From what I have heard of other tournaments, this one was quite atypical.
Most tournaments (from what I have been told) tend to feature a lot of
derivative sneak and bleed and political decks. The Toronto tourney did see
a few of these but the majority of decks were a lot more 'toolboxy' than I
had expected.

I myself prepared a Lasombra sneak and bleed deck which won me 3 VP's in the
first preliminary game but 0 VP's in the second and third. I did however
make it to the final, which was a pleasant surprise. I think this was due to
the way the VPs were spread out. There were four players who had something
like an average of 6 or 7 VPs each, and then a lot of people with 0 or 1, so
I was able to sneak into the final with my measly 3.

The winner was Packer, the prince of Montreal (other players came from as
far as Quebec City and myself from Windsor) with a Malkavian Sneak and Bleed
deck. His deck was probably the most focused deck of the tourney and few
people were prepared to deal with the heavy bleeds he was able to give.
Ironically, I was probably the best equipped to handle his deck with quite a
few Deflections, but the gods saw fit to not give me ANY when he was my
predator in the final.

Another notable deck which impressed me was a Gangrel/Setite combo which was
truly unique. It made it to the finals, even though it seems like such a
fragile concept. The deck uses Temptation to temporarily steal other
Methuselahs' vampires, play Protean cards on those vampires and then to rush
other vampires (often a Meth would find himself fighting his own minions).
He would then use Wolf Claws, Amaranth and then call a Blood Hunt on the
vampire he just diablerized with. Alternatively, he had some Protean stealth
which he would use to diablerize vampires for the same effect. Often a
Methuselah would lose two vampires in a turn. The deck did not seem to have
enough of an offense to it, but somehow it seemed to pull together in the
most interesting ways. The main vampires in this deck were Amisa and
Mirembe. I'm hoping that I can get ahold of the deck composition to show it
to whoever is interested. I'm still scratching my head thinking about this
one.

I would say that more than half of the decks that I saw were based around
combat, though not exclusively so. I did not get a chance to play every
other Methuselah unfortunately, but of the 10 or so players I played
against, at least 8 seemed to have combat-oriented decks.

Sabbat War cards were not as heavily featured as I had expected either... I
think because none of the players were new to the game. I expected at least
a few new players who had cards limited only to the Sabbat War set but most
of them seemed to be old-timers using more of the original Jyhad set than
anything else.

The other thing I noticed about this tournament was that nobody took it
particularly seriously, to their credit. It was a very friendly affair with
nobody being overly concerned about cheating or mistakes. The 'multi-judge'
format was used, but generally judgements were decided by players in a
friendly fashion. Judges were called more for confirmation than for dispute
resolution. I was very impressed by this. Ironically, everyone thought I
left in a tiff after being ousted from the final, but nobody heard me when I
said I was going to go call my friend... so everyone thought I had stormed
off or something until I got back. I thought that was really funny.

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SIGN OFF

A small retraction/clarification on the last newsletter. My predecessor
James Hamblin questioned my using Sport Bikes and Leather Jackets in EVERY
deck I use. I really meant only to emphasize how much I like those
particular cards. He made the good point that Sport Bikes are really only
useful if you are prepared to leave that one minion available for blocks;
quite true. The truth is that I don't ALWAYS use these cards, though I often
do. Blood Dolls ALWAYS get added to my decks, Sport Bikes and Leather
Jackets only usually.

You will note that in four newsletters I have not posted one deck of my own
construction. There is a reason for this. I would much rather use the space
to focus on HOW to build decks and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of
certain cards/combos than post decks that are built with cards that new
players probably don't even have. I don't know if anyone really builds decks
based on decks they see in newsletters; I certainly don't. Half the fun of
this game is creating your own decks and even a badly constructed one is at
least YOURS and not someone else's. If decks are a feature that people would
like to see I will happily post and dissect one (not necessarily mine) but
as things stand I am more comfortable with the format I have been using.
Comments are welcome.

You can contact me at ghost@mnsi.net

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