FOLLOWERS OF SET NEWSLETTER
Volume 3, Issue 5
May 2003
Author: Andrew 'Wes' Weston
==========================================================
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
Fiction
Setite Tactics - Do Setites make good Anarchs?
Deck Construction - Card ratios
Card Analysis - Mob Rule
Sign Off
==========================================================
INTRODUCTION
It's springtime in the World of Darkness and the Anarchs are upon us. It's hard to say what effect
this set will have on the game as a whole at this point. People do seem to be having fun with
the pre-releases.
I myself enjoyed the pre-release I attended in Ann Arbor, even though Noal and I had to go through
a potentially frightening border experience. The things I go through for this game *sigh*. My
eternal thanks to Noal for being so kind as to "smuggle" me into his country yet again. Thanks also
to David Oros for organizing the pre-release.
==========================================================
FICTION
The old trainyard was empty except for a few old rusty railcars and an unlikely meeting of the undead.
The elders of the Temple would not be pleased, Hadrian mused to himself. His attempt to infiltrate
the so-called 'Anarchs' of Windsor had ended in his capture. He was more ashamed of his failure than he
was nervous about what they were going to do to him. Although he had failed in his mission, the Dark
God knew that he was not lacking in faith. Hadrian expected to die a final death, but he also expected
to live in eternal darkness at his Master's side... eventually.
The two anarch toughs stood nearby discussing with each other what they would do to their captive. It
was clear to Hadrian that they were not accustomed to this kind of thing. They douldn't seem to decide
what to do with Hadrian. Eventually, one shrugged and walked over to Hadrian, whose hands were nailed
above his head to a telephone pole.
"Tell us who you work for scum.", the larger of the two Anarchs asked without expression.
This might be his way out, Hadrian thought.
"Who do you think I work for, you idiot?", Hadrian flashed a bloody toothy grin at the large vampire.
The Anarch nodded, "Yeah, I thought so. So Little Prince Hiram Walker is afraid of our little movement
is he? Needs to send scumfucks like yourself to try to infiltrate us?" He spat blood at Hadrian's feet
to emphasize the respect he obviously felt for the Nosferatu prince.
"If you kill me, Walker will destroy you all. You know this. Just let me go and we'll come to some
arrangement. What do you say?", Hadrian said, thanking the favour of the Dark Lord that at least his
captors were not that intelligent. Brujah no doubt.
"If we kill you, he'd never know any better. Besides, this way is more fun.", the other Anarch said,
and proceeded to kick Hadrian in the kneecap, shattering it. Hadrian grimaced but said nothing. If he
survived this, that wound would heal. They always did. That was one of the blessings of being undead.
"We don't need any information from this spy, Eddie. Let's just stake the motherfucker and let the sun
take care of him", growled the smaller Anarch.
The other agreed, "Yeah. I ain't no killer. We Anarchs got principles, unlike those bastard Camarilla.
Let the sun do it." Another spit, this time in Hadrian's face.
"No!!! Don't leave me here. I'll tell you anyth--", Hadrian's scream was cut off as the stake entered
his ribcage painfully. Hadrian was paralyzed, staring at his captors with his mouth open mid-scream.
"Damn, it's creepy how that works, ennit? Let's get the fuck outta here Bothwell". The two Anarchs got
in their beat up old sedan and drove away.
When they were gone, Hadrian smiled, happy that they had fallen for his ruse. Hadrian's heart, long since
removed from his body, sat in a clay jar in the basement of the Temple. It was impossible to stake him
successfully without finding that jar first.
Hadrian burned some of his blood to increase his strength and then painfully ripped his hands from the
stigmata pose he had been forced into. He slowly crawled to an abandoned freight car and crawled inside.
Covering himself up in old dirty boxes, he prepared to sleep for the upcoming day. The next night
he would report back to his superiors. They needn't know everything of course.
==========================================================
SETITE TACTICS -- Do Setites make good anarchs?
While it may be a little too early to tell, from what I have seen, the Setites will not have much use
for becoming Anarchs.
The Anarch concept seems to be geared towards low-to-mid-capacity vampires. If the starter boxes are
any indication, they are heavily weighted towards combat and voting.
Setites tend to avoid combat, and we are already competent voters without needing to "go Anarch".
One strategy that might become useful however is making Setites into Barons. Permanent votes have
always been a bit of a problem for us, due to the inherent problems of being Independent. In the
past, a vampire would have to become Camarilla or Sabbat somehow and then declare themselves Prince
etc. By the time you accomplished this of course, someone had probably already ousted you.
But now it would be relatively easy for a Setite above capacity 4 to quickly become a Baron, and with
very little chance that anyone can do anything about it. Witness:
MASTER --> Galaric's Legacy on Sarrasine.
MINION --> 1) Sarrasine plays Fee Stake: Boston
2) Qufur plays "Go Anarch" and untaps
3) Qufur plays Fee Stake: Corte
Voila! You now have 4 points' worth of titles.
Now, defending those titles may be tricky but you could always play around with Treachery and Dread Gaze
just to discourage anyone from thinking about calling a referendum to burn the titles.
How feasible is this? I have no idea. It seems a bit too card intensive for what you get. But it's
difficult at this point to gauge how effective the Anarchs cards are without some experimentation.
==========================================================
DECK CONSTRUCTION - Card Ratios
How many copies of each card should you include in a deck?
While a card like Disarm is obviously very much a "power-card", it would make little sense making an
"All-90-cards-are-Disarm" deck. Likewise, if one card is the key to your deck, you will want to have more
than one copy of it.
Therefore, a good deck designer needs to find the proper ratio of cards such that each card fills its
niche without weighing down the rest of the deck in redundancy.
One of the key considerations I believe is the average capacity of the vampires in your crypt. If your
deck consists only of 1-capacity Caitiff and Panders then it's likely that you will be taking a lot of
actions. If your minions are all Inner Circle members, then you will be taking fewer actions comparatively.
A weenie deck might use 20 Cryptic Missions. No modifiers are needed because you are unlikely to be caught.
A few combat cards might work, but not too many. Your vampires are likely to be tapped as well as being
relatively fragile, so you may not want many reaction cards.
An Arika vote deck however needs a vote card, maybe an Awe, a Voter Captivation for pool/blood gain and
maybe some stealth to ensure you don't get caught before the vote goes off. As a general rule, the older
a vampire is, the more effective her actions will be. Higher level disciplines mean you have more access
to modifier cards, etc that a smaller vampire would not.
Another consideration is the number of individual cards that you will need to get a combo off (even a
combo of one!). If your combo requires seven different cards, all played in order and with the hopes
that nobody else interferes... stop right now, it will never work.
If your combo consists of only one card (votes with titled vampires are an example) then you don't really
need to worry very much.
But let's say you are a Setite vote deck and need both the vote card and some Bewitching Orations to pass
the votes. In this case, how many Bewitching Orations will you need to make sure the votes pass? Obviously
this will depend on the number of votes that other Methuselah's vampires have, but for the purposes of
deck construction a decision needs to be made beforehand.
Therefore, when building a deck, you should try to consider how to take advantage of the frequency of
your combos.
To use one of the examples above, if you wanted to use Disarm in a deck, what would your requirements be?
First of all, you know that you need to be doing more damage in a round to your opponent's vampire than she
does to yours. You would also need to have vampires with Potence. How often will you be getting into
combat? How will you be ensuring that your combat goes off successfully? Let's say your deck consists of:
--4 Bum's Rush
--4 Undead Strength
--4 Immortal Grapple
...and that's about it. It is unlikely that you will get the cards you need at the appropriate times. One
Disarm might work, but you'll probably draw it at the wrong time. Best to leave your Disarm at home. Or
even better, mail it to me for safekeeping.
Let's consider a deck based around vampires that all have an inherent +1 strength and at least inferior
Potence. You know that at least some of the time you will be getting into combat, and that for the
majority of those combats you will be hitting for more than your opponent. Therefore, 4-6 Disarms would
work very well.
There are of course no magic numbers. The beauty of this game is that it is never the same game twice and
as a result of this fact there is no way to plan for any one game.
But a well-constructed deck should be able to survive almost any environment and any number of random
elements without suffering too much. No deck should bring a knife to a gunfight. Sensible card ratios
will ensure that your deck will at least survive, if not thrive.
==========================================================
CARD ANALYSIS -- Mob Rule
I would have liked to have introduced our new sister Kahina the Sorceress in this newsletter, but alas
I have yet to actually see her card text. So unfortunately she will have to wait until a later
installation of this newsletter.
Mob Rule
(Common)
Modifier OR Reaction
This card can be played as an action modifier card or a reaction card. Only usable during a referendum.
Each vampire with a capacity above 4 can burn blood t ogain votes. A vampire gains 1 vote for each
blood he or she burns. A vampire with a capacity above 7 gains an additional vote for each blood
he or she burns.
This card is huge!
It is conceivable that this card will work against you as often as it works for you. But the nature of
most votes are that you need to work with other Methuselahs to make sure they pass. This gives you another
reason to work with the person who likely has the most votes anyway.
And lest I produce a newsletter that does not mention the bestest card ever, this card synergizes with
Free States Rant quite nicely. Consider this: the whole point of a Free States Rant deck is to remove
blood from enemy vampires. If they want to spend their blood to make a FSR fail, what did you
lose really? In fact, my suggestion would be to play in the following order:
1) Free States Rant
2) Declare terms
3) Play Mob Rule
4) Wait for your opponents to spend their blood trying to fail this vote. In fact, encourage them to do so!
5) Play Awe or Bewitching Oration to trump opposing votes
I imagine this will result in a lot of anemic-looking vampires. Better still, since *you* are the
acting minion in this case, earn back all of your blood with a Voter Captivation.
Note how both Free States Rant and this Mob Rule's power scales with the age of the referendum-calling
vampire. Hell, even the names of the two cards synergize well together thematically! A match made
in... err... Georgia somewhere.
As a defensive card, Mob Rule also has great potential. Although Setites are superb offensive voters,
we aren't all that great at defensive voting. We tend not to have a lot of permanent votes on the
table. Mob Rule can provide us with a way to survive a hostile vote, albeit at a potentially great
cost. Still, if you have a choice between being ousted by a KRC or losing 6 blood from your vampires,
survival must always come first.
==========================================================
SIGN OFF
My original intention for this newsletter was to discuss the basic principles of anarchism and how they
apply to this game. After considerable thought, I decided that there are few if any ways in which they
collide and that it would have been a rather silly (albeit amusing) newsletter.
Suffice to say that the so-called Anarchs of the World of Darkness have very little to do with
anti-authoritarianism or socialism. But that doesn't make them any less cool. Go Anarchs!
I hope you have enjoyed this most recent installment of the Followers of Set newsletter. As always,
questions and comments are appreciated.
Cheers,
WES
NAVIGATION
Newsletter Archive -> Followers of Set Newsletter - Volume 3 Issue 5