V:EKN Clan Brujah Newsletter, June 1999 Master of puppets I'm pulling your strings Twisting your mind and smashing your dreams Blinded by me, you can't see a thing Just call my name, `cause I'll hear you scream Metallica, "Master of Puppets" DEATH TO THE VENTRUE The Anarch Free States are the Ventrue's worst nightmare. But with their princeless cities run (and overrun) by gangs of anarchs who have little respect for the Traditions, the Anarch States are also a Brujah paradise. Loosely governed by the Brujah MacNeil, the region is home to more anarchs than any other, and one of those anarachs is Smiling Jack. Believed to be a 17th Century Caribbean pirate, Jack is a 10th-Generation Brujah Iconoclast dedicated to overthrowing the Ventrue. His base is the Anarch Free States, and his allies are the wildest and most fanatical of the area's anarchs. Of late, Smiling Jack has dedicated himself to revealing the weakness of the Ventrue Princes of the Midwest, and his weapons in this war are newly embraced Caitiff vampires. Jack's modus operandi is as follows: he and his band of influential anarchs visit a city ruled by a Ventrue Prince, embrace a handful of strangers (sometimes as many as ten) in one night, and then skip town -- leaving the Prince to contend with a fresh crop of pissed off frenzy-prone Masquerade-violating Caitiff who hate absolutely everyone. If the city's Prince cannot contain these neonates and preserve the Masquerade, then he is unfit for leadership and should be overthrown, preferably by the city's Brujah. Needless to say, this is also great fun. This month's offering is a story deck based around Smiling Jack's operations in the weak, decadent Ventrue cities of America's heartland. Using Smiling Jack as its anchor, this deck combines pool gain, weenie bleed, voting and rush tactics into a hybrid toolbox of sorts. I say "story" deck because the idea seed around which it grew was a story element from the World of Darkness, and because it isn't really a theme deck. To my mind, a theme deck is one in which all or most of the cards are included because they fit the deck's underlying premise -- not necessarily because they are effective individually or in combination with one another. By way of contrast, not all of the cards in Smiling Jack Pays A Visit are there because they fit the deck's theme. Most of them make sense (at least to me) within the context of the story that the deck would be trying to tell during play, but ineffective theme-related cards have been left out. For instance, given that Smiling Jack and his flunkies are embracing complete strangers, The Embrace would be a more logical card to include than The 3rd Tradition: Progeny -- but The 3rd Tradition is a better card (assuming the crypt contains enough Princes to make it useful), so its in the deck instead. What I'm getting at is that this deck stands somewhere between a theme deck and a win-at-any-cost tournament deck, but I still don't think it would fare too well in serious competitive play. DECK: Smiling Jack Pays A Visit [ Crypt ] 1x KoKo--2 pot 1x Lupo--2 pot 1x Agatha--4 POT 1x Hector Sosa--4 POT pre 1x Hugo--4 POT pre 2x Volker, The Puppet Prince--5 pot Prince 2x Rake--6 pot pre Prince +1 hand dmg. vs. Ventrue 1x Tatiana Romanov--7 PRE Prince +1 bleed 2x Anson--8 PRE Prince +1 master action 12 vampires (average 5.08, worst 29) [ Library ] 6x Minion Tap 2x Anarch Revolt 2x Blood Doll 2x Misdirection 2x Potence 2x Presence 2x Smiling Jack, The Anarch 1x Dreams of the Sphinx 1x Fragment of the Book of Nod 1x Giant's Blood 1x Information Highway 1x The Parthenon 1x The Rack 10x The 5th Tradition: Hospitality 10x The 3rd Tradition: Progeny 6x Bum's Rush 6x Social Charm 4x Legal Manipulations 4x Kine Resources Contested 1x The 1st Tradition: The Masquerade 1x Rumors of Gehenna 6x Immortal Grapple 6x Torn Signpost 6x Undead Strength 6x Wake With Evening's Freshness 90 cards (24 master, 36 action, 6 political action, 18 combat, 6 reaction) STOP AND SMELL THE CHAOS For starters, here's the card text for Smiling Jack, The Anarch (incorporating current DCI errata): Title: Smiling Jack, The Anarch Type: Master Cost: 0 Rarity: Rare Set: Jyhad/V:TES Text: Unique Master. During your untap phase, move 1 blood from your pool to Jack. During each other Methuselah's untap phase, he or she burns 1 pool or burns 1 blood from a vampire he or she controls for each blood on Jack. Any vampire may burn this card as a (D) action. The significant difference from the physical card text lies in the reference to "each other Methuselah," which means that while you lose a fixed 1 pool per turn, everyone else is paying for -every- blood that's on Jack. This is evil, and will earn you the enmity of every player at the table...which, from a PO'd Brujah anarch's perspective, just means you'll have more targets to choose from. ;-) With this in mind, I would classify this deck as Bruise & Breed, as the majority of its cards are focused (appropriately enough) on popping out Progeny and beating up other vampires. Conceptually speaking, the deck can be broken down as follows: Bruise: 24 Breed: 22 Bleed: 12 Pool Gain: 8 Vote: 6 Bleeding Everybody: 4 Toolbox: 12 Within these categories there is considerable overlap. For instance, the principle breeding combo is 3rd Tradition followed by 5th Tradition, but 5th Tradition can also be combined with Minion Tap for pool gain. Similarly, Blood Doll is great for pool gain (especially with 5th Traditions in the mix), but also good for breeding, as you can replenish the base cost of a 3rd Tradition every turn by blowing a point through the Doll. I think the basic ideas behind this deck are fairly clear, so I won't go into them in great detail. Since the deck contains a little bit of everything, how you go about winning will depend on what you draw the most of. With a fairly high-cost crypt, you'll probably get off to a slow start; this in turn means you should start breeding as soon as possible. The crypt is roughly divided into breeders (everyone with a title) and fighters (the vamps with potence), and judicious use of your fighters should give you some breathing room. Once you've got a few Progeny in play, you can move into Bruise & Bleed mode, try for Tap & Bleed, or kick back and defend a Smiling Jack or Anarch Revolt while gaining pool from 5th Tradition/Minion Tap. If you can keep Smiling Jack around for a few turns (until its got several pool on it), then play an Anarch Revolt and pass a 1st Tradition, you can sit back and skip three turns -- taking no pool loss from SJ or AR -- while the rest of the table either wastes actions getting rid of SJ/AR or dies as slow and painful death. This is very cool, but be sure to have a host of untapped vampires, a couple of Wakes and a hand full of combat cards lined up before you try it. THE REVISED DECK COLUMN Each month, this column will present the previous month's deck in its updated form. Revisions will be based upon suggestions made by members of the Jyhad community (usually drawn from rec.games.trading-cards.jyhad), and credit will be given for suggestions received. The result should be a much-improved version of the original deck. Based on comments made by Peter Bajika (PDB6@aol.com), I've reworked last month's deck, The Brujah School of Dentistry. I've added some hand cycling utilities in the form of The Barrens and the Fragment of the Book of Nod, taken out the Computer Hackings, and upped the Rampage count by one. This incarnation should run more smoothly and efficiently than the last one. DECK: The Brujah School of Dentistry [revised] [ Crypt ] 1x Hasina Kesi--1 pot 1x Lupo--2 pot 1x Jacob Bragg--3 pot cel 2x Dre, Leader of the Cold Dawn--3 pot cel 1x Hector Sosa--4 POT 1x Agatha--4 POT 2x Jimmy Dunn--4 POT CEL 1x Sela--6 POT cel Bishop +1 bleed 1x Gaspare Giovanni--6 POT cel +1 hand dmg. 1x Anvil--6 POT CEL Primogen 12 vampires (average 3.75, worst 21) [ Library ] 4x Potence 4x Haven Uncovered 4x Blood Doll 1x Fragment of the Book of Nod 1x The Barrens 12x Bum's Rush 2x Rampage 12x Immortal Grapple 10x Torn Signpost 10x Undead Strength 10x Pulled Fangs 9x Taste of Vitae 7x Flash 4x Blur 90 cards (14 master, 14 action, 62 combat) See you in July. :-) ------------------------------------------------------ Martin Ralya - Prince of Ann Arbor - skywise@umich.edu ------------------------------------------------------