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Official VEKN Newsletter for Anarchs |
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Contents:
I – Fiction (Last Plane Out)
II – Vampire of the Month (Bindusara)
III – Card of the Month (Mob Rule)
IV – Deck Ideas (Big Anarchs)
V – Conclusion
Note – Some of you may be wondering where the April newsletter went – sorry, the premise was completely an April Fool's joke. Hrothulf does indeed make a fine Anarch (see the deck section of this month's newsletter), but Improvised Tactics remains "The Suck". I actually built a CEL/pot deck that used it (as an April Fool to the Chicago playgroup), and it really doesn't work. A .44 is vastly better than trying to play Imp Tac every combat at the pot (with the possible exception of when you're facing ani/pot/agg), and the aus and pro versions are exceedingly lame when you can only play ONE per combat. Without that restriction, or if the restriction didn't apply to the pro power, it might be usable. As it is – blech. Anyway, hope you enjoy this month's newsletter!
I – Fiction – "Last Plane Out"
Dozens of candles crowded the solitary table in the center of the small, heavily book-shelved room, all of them meticulously placed so as to give the greatest light with the smallest chance of dripping onto the fragile documents in the center of the table. Hunched over the parchments was a tall man with long, dark hair. He traced each line very lightly with his fingertip, mouthing some words of the cryptic script but being careful never to give them voice.
A bat flew in and hung from the empty candle-bearing chandelier. The man at the table gave no sign that he had noticed. After several more minutes of reading, he came to the end of a page and placed the parchments carefully in a folder. He looked up.
"All right," he said, "I'm finished for the moment. What's so important that you must interrupt my work?"
The bat flew down near the floor and transformed into a grinning man in a faded fedora.
"I have something that may interest you, Bindusara."
The man at the table nodded. "Yes, Beckett, I expect you might. You more than most have been quite active in exploring the signs that are so prominent in our minds."
Beckett grinned a little more broadly, showing just the hint of fang. He sometimes seemed to Bindusara to enjoy accentuating his feral side.
"It has a price," Beckett told him.
Bindusara nodded. "Of course it does. So, you tell me what you have and then you tell me the price, and I will tell you if it's fair."
Beckett reached into his jacket and carefully pulled out a parchment, similar to many of the ones that had recently been on the table. Bindusara stared at it, struggling to maintain his usual cool exterior.
"I'm sure you've never seen it before," said Beckett, "and don't bother asking where I got it. But I can definitely say that its original home was Mount Erciyes." Beckett sat down casually in the only other chair in the room, against the far bookshelf. "And now you want to know the price."
"Name it," Bindusara heard himself say, his attention was completely focused on the parchment.
"Join us."
Bindusara finally snapped his gaze around to meet Beckett's. "You're not serious," he said.
"Oh, but I am," Beckett answered. "You'd be surprised how many are coming over to the Movement. Face it, Bindusara, the Camarilla is in chaos. All anyone can talk about are the Prophets and the End Times. Gehenna is coming, and the Traditions can't protect you and your books" - he gestured to indicate the room - "any longer. Hell, you've already got a decent rep because of your accurate and unbiased accounting of the Treaty of Thorn."
Bindusara looked again at the parchment. It clearly was the Erciyes Fragment – so powerful, so important, and a sure sign that Gehenna was indeed nigh.
Beckett, seeing the turmoil in the normally stoic Ventrue's face, continued his pitch. "Look at it this way, Bindusara, Casablanca is falling. The Anarchs – we're the last plane out. Are you getting on?"
II – Vampire of the Month (Bindusara, Historian of the Kindred)
This month we're looking at big Anarchs. Really big. In the past I've focused on the idea that Anarch decks tend to want a lot of minions to truly exploit their flexibility, but that's only part of the picture. There is an ever-growing pile of large (8-10 cap) vampires with good specials and very diverse discipline spreads. One of the big issues with using these vampires in many conventional decks is the problem of actually getting the most out of those disciplines. 3-ways seem to be a pretty good answer to this problem, but as many people have pointed out – if you're building a cel/for deck, you could probably do better than Diversion in your card choices. Therefore the answer is to build the large-vamp synergy in much the same way I have advocated approaching small-vamp synergy. In other words – the key is not to worry about EXACT discipline matches, but to use 3-ways to fill in the gaps in the discipline matching. My first deck this month is an example of this.
So, in tackling larger vamps, we need to start considering who makes a good Anarch. One of the things I enjoy about Anarchs is the ability to get good use out of long-ignored minions, so the May vampire of the month is Bindusara. First, the stats:
Bindusara, Historian of the Kindred
Ventrue
Group: 2
Capacity: 9
AUS DOM FOR PRE tha
Bindusara can take an action to allow you to search your library for an Elder Library, Arcane Library, or Fragment of the Book of Nod; put that card in play. (Pay cost as normal.) Shuffle your library afterwards. +1 bleed.
All in all, Bindusara is a pretty solid-looking vampire, but he generally gets ignored for one critical flaw – 9 pool is too much to pay for a Ventrue with no title. For our purposes, though, he's perfect. He's part of the very small group of untitled vampires (9, to be precise) that have MY favorite Diversion combo – for/tha. His DOM makes him a particularly good match with Marlene, Vincent Day, Iliana, and Muaziz, and in a deck built around that concept, he can Govern all the rest of them out. However, he also has PRE, which makes him a potential match with an Anarch Daughters deck (combined with Ventrue for the VHQ), where the AUS allows him to play the outferior of Tourette's Voice.
His special is generally a good match for any Anarch deck – I recommend the Fragment – but of course my FAVORITE use for him is the one I've found for the first of this month's decks – Free States Rant/Mob Rule/Smiling Jack.
III. Card of the Month (Mob Rule)
Okay, okay, so it's not actually an Anarch card per se, but it meets many of my criteria for being the focus of this newsletter: it came out in the Anarch set, it rarely gets played, and it helps the Anarchs out a fair bit (if you know how). Here's the text:
Mob Rule
Action Modifier/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 to gain 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.
Let's talk about the strengths of this card:
It helps large vamps in favor of weenies (and even mid-caps), it can be played as an action mod OR a reaction, it's disciplineless, it spreads votes among vampires in a way that BO and Awe do not (making them less susceptible to Demonstration, Quentin, etc.), it doesn't have the drawback of Rant, it doesn't limit how much blood can be burnt, nor how many times during the referendum you can burn blood (does not have "during X do Y" wording), and most of all – it brings almost EVERYBODY into the voting discussion. Vote lock is forgotten when you play with this card.
But many people will certainly be wondering – what good does this card do me? Am I really going to be able to get votes passed with it? The simple answer is – no, not all the time. But so what? You're getting a massive secondary effect here – you automatically empower your cross-table allies to help you in your damaging or mutually beneficial votes, and even if the vote fails it's because other vampires on the table have burned blood. In addition, because it can be played as a reaction, it's easier to cycle, and you can really hurt other vote decks with it. ("Yeah, sure you can pass this vote, but it'll COST you.") All of this does mean that Mob Rule is a finesse card, however. You really should only be using it if you're fairly good at table talk. Bribes and/or Madrigal can help, but you still need to be a pretty good talker.
The key to Mob Rule, of course, is that you really need to be focused on bigger vampires. You should probably also be considering building the deck around getting blood off of other vamps. So, without further ado, let's move onto the decks.
IV – Deck Ideas (Big Anarchs)
The first deck this month is one that I designed specifically to tap into the power of Mob Rule. It's not for the impatient, and it does have its weaknesses, but the concept is quite fun when it gets going.
Deck Name: Jack's Rant
Created by: Eric Simon
Description: Smiling Jack/FSR/Mob Rule
Crypt: (12 Cards, Min: 33, Max: 40, Avg: 9.25) ---------------------------------------------- Bindusara AUS DOM FOR PRE tha – Ven 9 2x Christopher Houghton AUS CEL DOM pot PRE PRO – Tor 10 2x Helena AUS CEL DOM obf pre tha – Tor 10 Hrothulf CEL dom FOR pot PRE pro – Ven 8 Kemintiri aus dom OBF PRE SER THA – FoS 10 Khay'tall aus DOM PRE OBF SER – FoS 9 Makarios, the Seducer AUS dom PRE SER – Tor 8 Melisande AUS CEL DOM PRE tha - !Tor 9 Menele aus CEL dom POT PRE THA – Bru 10 Owain Evans AUS cel DOM FOR pre - !Ven 8 Library: (90 cards) ------------------- Master (19) Anarch Free Press Anarch Railroad 5x Galaric's Legacy Hospital Food Information Highway 5x Minion Tap Seattle Committee 3x Smiling Jack, the Anarch Strained Vitae Supply Action (2) 2x Charming Lobby Political Action (13) 7x Free States Rant 2x Firebrand 4x Honor the Elders Action Modifier (10) 4x Bewitching Oration 6x Voter Captivation Reaction (23) 7x Enhanced Senses 3x The Mole 5x Obedience 7x Wake with Evening's Freshness Combat (17) 7x Diversion 10x Majesty Combo (7) 7x Mob Rule
Comments:
Primary ousting mechanism is Smiling Jack, though nearly half the library has +bleed to assist. FSR/Mob Rule help get blood off of vampires so that Jack is doing pool damage to your prey (which helps keep Jack from accidentally cross-table ousting). The tha power of Diversion is also a nasty surprise that helps get blood off of other vamps. One of the really great abilities of Mob Rule is that my vampires can support each other in their Voter Caps – Helena can burn blood when Bindusara calls a vote to make his Cap more effective. Possible adjustments might include adding in a couple of Temptations or Form of Corruptions, since I do have three vamps that can use them. Temptation combined with Mob Rule could be quite effective. The one problem with this idea is lack of stealth.
Deck number two is a deck by Ankur Gupta, Prince of Lafayette, IN. He uses big vamps primarily for the bloat and the Diversion functionality. The main blood-gain mechanism is kind of amusing.
Deck Name: Touring Trannies Make a Great Diversion
Created By: Ankur Gupta
Description: Going Anarch with huge vampires for diversion? And with
Assamites? Sheer genius.
Crypt: (13 cards, Min: 25, Max: 37, Avg: 7.92) ---------------------------------------------- 4 Qadir ul-Ghani CEL nec OBF QUI tha 9, Assamite 1 Helena AUS CEL DOM obf pre tha 10, Toreador 2 Tariq AUS cel FOR OBF QUI 7, Assamite 2 Bajazet al-Nasir cel for OBF pre QUI 8, Assamite 1 Yazid Tamari ani dom obf CEL QUI 8, Assamite 1 Dylan aus cel dom for pro 6, !Ventrue 1 Vincent Day aus dom for pot tha 5, !Ventrue 1 Ian Forestal AUS DOM THA 8, !Tremere Library: (90 cards) ------------------- Master (25 cards) 1 Anarch Free Press, The 1 Anarch Railroad 1 Blood Doll 2 Fortitude 4 Galaric's Legacy 1 KRCG News Radio 8 Minion Tap 1 Path of Death and the Soul 1 Rumor Mill, Tabloid Newspaper, The 2 Seattle Committee 1 Secure Haven 2 Thaumaturgy Action (13 cards) 8 Concert Tour 1 Fee Stake: Boston 1 Fee Stake: Corte 1 Fee Stake: Los Angeles 1 Fee Stake: New York 1 Fee Stake: Perth Action Modifier (10 cards) 2 Cloak the Gathering 2 Elder Impersonation 1 Faceless Night 4 Forgotten Labyrinth 1 Lost in Crowds Political Action (11 cards) 2 Dramatic Upheaval 3 Firebrand 6 Kine Resources Contested Reaction (5 cards) 2 Mole, The 3 Telepathic Misdirection Combat (22 cards) 15 Diversion 4 Gemini's Mirror 3 Taste of Death Combo (4 cards) 4 Swallowed by the Night
Comments:
So, obviously Qadir becomes a Daughter (which, conveniently enough, doesn't get rid of his Anarchness) and does Concert Tour/Minion Tap. Everybody else bleeds a little and votes a little, then does the VP sniping thing if necessary. Again, this deck should be played patiently. Get your bloat on before you start going too heavily forward. And I just love the Diversion(tha)/Diversion(cel)/Taste of Death progression when you can pull it off.
V – Conclusion
Hopefully the strategies presented this month offer some thoughts as to what big Anarchs can do. I will caution the reader that I don't think these ideas are good for those just starting to explore the Anarch concept. Some of the basic player skills of Anarchy need to be well-ingrained before you attempt these tricks. But, hopefully you have seen that they can be amusing and possibly even successful.
Next month – Our first examination of Gehenna. Can't tell you what'll be in the newsletter, because I would have to know what's in the expansion, and I am intentionally posting this the day before the pre-release.
Eric Simon
Prince of Chicago
Anarch Newsletter Writer