Nope this is about VTES

So I was doing some neat thinking on the nature of racism, then that lead to the nature of social constructions, non social constructions and people's ablilty to point fingers. Then I started thinking about helpful fictions and the importance of believing certain things in order to strive for something better, like religion without god, then I started thinking about the idea of a middle ground and the way that people seem to specifically avoid it. Then I started thinking about how would I rebuild the world if I were the one to tear it down and still had people listening to me.

I had a suprisingly thoughtful morning. But now I am going to write about Vampire the Eternal Struggle, because I like that game! Also there is a new expansion out and I am excited about it, and let down by it to but that is the nature of excitment. It is a very rare thing to be increadbly, spine tinglingly excited about something and have it live up exactly to your expectations. Wow. I totally need to write a letter to Sasha. Anyway, I got three of the four new starters and about 6 boosters or so. The jury is still out if I am going to pick up a box of it though. I think I might be better off picked up a box of Black Hand or 3rd Edition but whatever I'll figgure that out later.

Of the three starters one is useless, one is compleatly playable, and other other can turn into a beastly bruise bleed deck should I give it the proper tender loving care. I don't really feel like dealing with either of those things for the moment though. Right now I want to spend a few minuts talking about the Baali. At least I think that is how you spend it. See in competative multiplayer games my favorite thing to do in the world is to take a solid stance where I am well on my road to victory and I cheer relentlessly over how no one can do anything about it. Then I like watching an entire table squirm. Sometimes it works out awesomely. More often than not I get curbstomped but that's fun too at the end of the day.

Now this big boy at the top of the screen. Look at that list of disciplins. See unlike the poor Salmadi who have shit discaplins, Obfuscate, Celerity, Daimoinon, and Presence. Protean is just sort of thrown in there as an added bonus. Of course there is one notable downside, it costs a pool to untap him. Oh...oh, yeah right. Infernal. STILL. He can toss out ranged agravated damage like it is candy, and he gives you two pool every time he bleeds. So you use one of those bonus pools to untap him and life is good right? NO! It is better! There is a card called greater curse which will also give you a pool if you bleed, so that's three. It does a bunch of other crap too but the pool gaining only costs basic Daimoinon. In addition if I use Flurry of Action to bleed he untaps! For free! With no horrible paying one pool to do so. Also I think I Celerity has a couple of reaction cards that will let me block if the vampire is tapped, hell some of them might let me untap him.

It gets even better though. THere is some card called calling the legion or some such thing which I can toss down and slap on three blood from the blood bank on any infernal vampire I want. What I need to do is diverify my crypt a bit. I need to make sure I am able to get my superstar unnamable out of torpor should he end up in it. He more than likely will holy crap. The other downside? Well I am get to be big loud and scary! Its fun! More on this later.

VTES-The Next Generation

So the other night I got to play a game of VTES. It went really well and I had a lot of fun. Though not everyone was particularly into it. I'll have a talk with that person later though. All in all it was great fun.

I was using a Followers of Set deck. It has some stealth/bleed, prescense block avoidance stuff. I really liked the deck, and all in all I felt that it preformed excellently. I am thinking of taking Tempation out of the deck. I need to see it in action a little bit more though. The main benifit of temptation over corruption counters is that it is based on the blood left on the actual vampire not its cap. So it prevents players from draining them for varying purposes, and a little light combat will make them think twice about using it. All in all I am excited about the card I just got it at an inconvenient time, or rather I got all three of them at an inconvenient time.

My prey was using an Assemtite deck. I am actually kinda disappointed with how it preformed. My Assemtite deck is scary. SCARY!!!! I does fuck tons of aggravated damage, including Nizzam al-Latif. He is NEAT and he is only 9 cap and yeah good guy all in all. The assemite deck really needs some more 5 caps for support or something. I dunno he wasn't really into the game at all and so I wasn't able to judge my decks effectiveness. Boo my project is to make an Assemite/black hand contract sodomy deck. It could be amazing! I'll do it in a bit though. He kept tapping out to beat on his prey which left me open to relentlessly hammer on him. I ended up bleeding him for 7 in one turn thanks to dreamworld and him being tapped out. Oh well. I didn't oust him though more on that latter.

Next around the table was a Tzimisce wall deck. Or it was supposed to be a wall deck, it didn't do much walling though. To be fair the player using it is new to these sorts of games and VTES is like throwing him in head first so, that and his predator was on a relentless kamakazi run so he could play video games. So I dunno. Then when I was sitting next to him his defense was largly ineffective. Also he gimped himself, because he wouldn't throw away his hand full of master phase cards. So that needs to be played again.

Okay so off to the star of the game my Ventrue voting vote fuck off you voty bastard deck. Now I guarantee that the deck wouldn't of been able to do half the shit it did had its predator been doing his job. Then again, I think he would of just table talked his predator into staying RIGHT THERE because he knew I was coming for him. So not once but fucking twice TWICE! He stole my kill using Kine Rescources Contested twice. Bullshit! So I couldn't get my 6 pool which caused my predator to oust me twords the end of the game. He ended up winning solidly. He also nearly killed me using Neonate Breech. Fuck that deck. When it came around for him to be my prey I only had two pool left, and he had 7. I couldn't stop one of my predator's vampires, so it was an all or nothing full frontal assault. I got my first bleed through which was pretty massive bringing him down to 4, then I got another bleed off which brought him down to two, and my last bleed brought him down to one. One pool left. Then at the end of my turn I discarded hoping to draw something to either let me bounce the bleed or save myself. Instead I drew the one card I would of needed to win the game. Ah well so it goes.

Then there was the Torredor deck. That poor deck. It is designed to be a tool boxy bruise bleed deck. It would of worked much better had I given it some bleed cards, and moar sniper rifles. Also I need more camera phones. Camera phones are the thing that would make that deck sing like a mother fucker. After all Camera phone+flurry of action equals horribleness. It started out well by fameing up a vampire who was across the table from him. That vampire quickly got sent to torpor. What all of us didn't expect was how long that guy was willing to let that vampire sit in torpor. That one pool a turn really starts to add up, especially with pressure from my prey. In fact that vampire never did get out of torpor, instead someone else played fame and the original control declined to contest it. The whole thing felt designed to screw with me. Anyway after I was ousted the Torredor deck just couldn't put up enough pressure on the Ventrue. Then the Ventrue player used Consanguineous Boon freak drive and Consanguineous Boon again. That gave him a solid enough lead so that he could eventually chip away at the Torredor player.

Anyway so for the most part the game is a blast and I can't wait to play again. All of these decks were mine so I plan on tweeking most of them for better efficiency. Yeah I am a one man VTES play group go me go!

CONFLICT!

So when I sat down today to write this I was going to delete the previouse post and start it again. Writing a blog entry about anything while wrapped in the comfortless arms of a mind crushing migraine is a recipie for failure. That and I couldn't link to the youtube videos I needed to make the whole point about the Beckster make better sense cause I forgot that work blocks youtube.

I also don't feel like writting about the man who was thurday. This is mostly because I don't feel like going and doing the required reading from the book of genesis. That does make sense I promise. So I am here with a brandy new blog post, and I can't really justifying deleting an old one unless I replace it with something better. Like your mom. So bravely we forge ahead.

I want to write about Vampire the Eternal Struggle. I love this game. No seriously I fucking LOVE this game. Last night I fired up boondock saints and just puttered around with deck ideas for three hours. I love how elegant the game system is, how important making deals can be, the fine art of bullying, and how there is a deck type that will cause all players to put aside their other agendas just to beat that player into the god damned dirt. I love how when I tear open a booster I cheer when I get my 20th copy of a card because you need lots and lots of doubles in order to suceed at the game, I love how every card does 2 diffrent things, I love how combat can be raw and terrifying and yet not something at all related to actually winning the game. I love all of these things about it and more. And yet I have a hard time justifying buying more cards. This is partly due to the fact that I have very few people to play with. It is also compounded by the fact that there are complications when it comes to deck building. I can't build one amazing deck, because then the other players will just get run over. SO I need to build at least 3 amazing decks, and that's tuff. Well not tuff persay it just takes awhile. Especially since everything I am really drawn to is spread out over three sets. It would help if I could get someone into it just enough for them to buy their own cards, that would make my life 5 times easier. Oh well.

I have three decks I really really want to make.

1) An Assemite/Black Hand death deck. This would be a toolboxy/bruise bleed deck. The idea is lots of aggravated damage and focused attacks keep the battlefield more or less the way I like it. II would have enough intercept to make sure that my grand prey doesn't get to uppity, and I would use Fames both as a deterrent from pissing me off and as an offensive tactic. Straight wins would be slightly difficult with the deck but I think with a couple of decently capped Assemites, I could really terrorize the living hell out of the table.

Lucky me! I almost have the crypt assembled. I need a couple of more copies of a few vampires and once I get them I'll be off to the races. I am actually really excited because I love the idea of horrible insta pain damage.

2) A Nosferatu deck. I don't know what I want to do with this deck exactly. The neat thing about Nosferatu is that they can do all sorts of really terrible things to you. Their vampires seem to excist to be just plain old annoying, and they have the capability to be irritating in every aspect of gameplay ranging from combat to voting. The weird thing about them though is that they all have the ability to be balls to the wall combat monsters, on top of being made out of asshole. They are really weird and I am very much looking fowards to using them. It is just that I am not quuuuuiiiiittttteeee sure what sort of deck I should make around them. I could make all sorts of things really. I am thinking of making the vote deck from hell. Ventrue vote decks are way to polite for my tastes. They are certainly effective but they lack the sort of malicious intent that the nosferatu can bring to the table.

3) I want a deck that uses a lot of allies. I think it is going to end up being an African themed deck, I dunno I need to figgure out what is in some of the older african precons, and then work my way through until I can get lots and lots of allies. I'm thinking of a warewolf army because in the current expansion they are plentiful and fun. The other thing that is cool about the current expansion is that it is big on superstar vampires, which is a concept that I can seriously work with.

Ah well I gotta go back and pretend to work now. Adios!