VEKN Brujah Newsletter November 2002 Introduction Contrary to the impression one might get by reading the newsgroup our local group is positively vibrating with new CE decks (and, oh joy, new players as well) - which makes for a strange deja-vu as everybody and their grandmother is rediscovering the revolutionary approach of Malkavian stealth bleed. Interesting meta game shift, and mucho fun to ride the wave with nicely designed anti-strategies. As I am usually one to two expansions behind in deck construction, I take delight in playing Giovanni and Kiasyd these days - so no breath-taking new Brujah gizmos in this issue. I hope you will enjoy it nevertheless: solid strategy stuff with the new concealed artillery, and a cheap to build and effective deck. Fiction Uptown Girl We are up on the ride again. Cruising down south on the A 9, the old Merc humming nicely along the "We don't need The Cure, we need a final solution" compilation tape I had made for Angel when Dolby B was all the rave in high fidelity. A spliff is doing the rounds on the back seat, but I wave it away and take in the starlit Bavarian landscape as we glide towards Munich. This is the old days, and I love it! I steal a glance on Black Cat in her black cat suit doing an easy 120 behind the wheel, feel my fang pulsing nicely against the leathers I wear and smile lunatically for no apparent reason but Uma's boot brushing against my knee as she stretches lazily in the back. Quick stop at Al's derelict shop in a backyard near Karlstraße. The others go in to collect the artillery while Angel and I smoke a fag out in the cold November night. Few mortals hurry along the street, braced against the north wind biting into their soft skin. A dog takes interest in the smell of my venerable trousers, his old lady weakly tugging on the leash. I croak some unintelligible words which could pass as the Bavarian vernacular, the lady mutters something about "Gesindl" and "KZ" and Angel starts to giggle. Which indeed has nothing to do with my pronounciation, but with the insane scam we have pulled on Madame "Fuck me", as we affectionately call her. Diana Vick, more to the point, or, even more to the point, her puppy, her dog, her fucking Hell Hound which is going to be "liberated" by the ALF tonight, the poor, infernally abused (as you can clearly see from the look of his bloodshot eyes) animal - which again probably won't go down too well with Madame, hence this visit to Al's. I doesn't go down too well, at least for the ALF contingent consistsing of five activists in the latest urban camouflage trend wear. Not only isn't the Hell Hound too keen on being liberated, also the police shows up after the anonymous call Uma had placed on her mobile, intent on finding out what the fuzz in Baaderstraße is all about and, more precisely, what has happened in the old garage. They might think that the corpse of the russian mafioso drug dealer which happens to be inside fell prey to the totally-illegal-under-current-law war machine of a dog, but then again they might want to ask Diana Vick, the owner, a few questions as well. Who happens to be enjoying a night out at a third rate Karaoke bar in the neighbourhood. We take the back entrance, as the bouncers do not look like they appreciate a squad of gun-slinging punks on the premises. Our new Ventrue in residence is in the middle of a dreadful rendition of Billy Joel's "Uptown Girl" when we briskly walk her over to the bar, explain the situation to her and show her the instruments. She looks in dire need for a sip of vitae, but that will have to wait until she's back in Berlin - if Ole Willy has mercy with her, of course... Strategy Celeritous Guns With two tournament wins right after the release of the Camarilla Edition it seems that the change to Concealed Weapon brought that card towards the focus of attention in no time at all. As I wrote two months ago: "Everyone can throw together a blurred .44 deck with the new CW", which seems to be true. And it seems to be a meta game thing first and foremost: Weapons only got a little less fragile - they can still be hosed, stolen or destroyed in many ways, it's only the tedious equipping that's no longer necessary. But obf/cel is not the most unusual discipline combo in the world of V:tES, why than didn't we see more successful Disguised and blurred 44 decks before? Is it only the weenification that is possible by now, the mono Celerity approach? To a some extent the answer is yes, as pure gun rush now competes with mono Potence hordes for the King of Combat title. But as Potence rush relies on a certain metagame environment, so does celeritous gun combat - which seems to have been present in the mentioned tournaments. So how well does weenie cel gun combat compete with weenie Potence? Let's have a quick look at the pro's and con's of gun-slinging: Pro: Flexibility: A .44 Magnum is a good combat package by itself. Combined with Celerity, you will be able to control the combat situation very well - basically you choose the range. Also as your S:CE hoser Psyche is a lot less restrictive than IG, you may dodge their nastiness and still deliver the goods on additional strikes. This makes them better against certain other combat decks. Simplicity: Once you have a gun on a minion, all you need is a rush to start some serious action. Even without additional cards it's a theoretical 2 damage to your opponent and none to you, as opposed to 1 on 1 with potence rush. Of course this is oversimplified, but basically you pay 2 extra pool to give your minions 2R as a strike and an optional maneuver. Permanence: A rush deck running out of cards is not unheard of. You will have the guns, so you're still in action, whereas the potence horde is now a defenseless swarm. Persistence: By nature of their S:CE hoser (Psyche) and due to the multi-role cards Celerity offers (Flash comes to mind), gun decks have a slight advantage when it comes to battling damage prevention - many presses and restarting combat against permanent effects like Apparition. Con: Price: Mono-Celerity is by no means cheaper than mono-Potence, plus you have to pay for the guns. This is IMHO the most serious drawback, as weenie combat decks don't defend and rely on their pool cushion to absorb the damage . Fragility: Guns are equipment, so they can be hosed (DotB etc.), stolen (Fast Hands etc.) or destroyed (Peace Treaty, Shattering Blow etc.). While hitting someone with blurred hands for three is not total bollocks, the fact remains that without the guns the deck fails. S:CE: Psyche vs. S:CE is an arms race, Immortal Grapple vs. S:CE always wins. Against S:CE defense, Potence shines - especially if every rush has to count. Flexibility: Yeah, that one again... As gun combat controls the many aspects of combat, whereas potence IG restricts them to hand strikes only, there are more counter-combat strategies that kill you (Breath of the Dragon, just to name an example). It looks like weapon combat has a slight advantage these days - the most common defense by non-combat decks locally still is a good mixture of maneuvers and S:CE, and while guns have a slightly bigger problem with the latter, they take the former completely out of the equation. Still weapons are hosed by many things, but they are only one among many factors that have to be taken into (possible) consideration when building a deck. And it seems that at the moment on tournament level not many players think about Drawing Out The Beast, Blood Rage or similar weapon hosers (although these serve multiple purposes), not to mention Peace Treaty. That is a classic meta game issue, and that's why I welcome the change to Concealed Weapon: By making a strategical approach to combat that has always been there a little more playable, it leads to a greater diversification of decks - always a good thing (tm)! Although it's going to be interesting to see how well Cel/gun decks will be in the pure rush arena, concealed guns are first and foremost a very cheap combat package - not in pool cost, but in card slots. Therefore they are by now predestined to go into bruise-type of decks. The biggest problem of bruise decks to me has always been to fit decent combat, a strong payload and some form of defense into 90 cards - especially with the Brujah and their notoriously card-intensive standard combat (TS/IG/Blur, with maneuvers and Taste of Vitae on top). While a Magnum in itself is not the scariest thing in the world, it is much easier to turn it into something not many opponents want to be caught with - mainly Psyche or Thoughts Betrayed and the occasional Blur. Bruise and bleed decks suffer immensely from hand jam problems, and usually you can not wait until you have that Legal/TS/IG/Blur in hand. But if you have a gun on a minion and some serious bleed in hand, the action is go. The deck of the month is designed around this principle. Card of the month: Al's Army Apparatus Master Unique location. During your minion phase, you may tap this card to search your library for a weapon and move it to your hand. Discard down to your hand size and shuffle your library afterward. While Concealed Weapon is a very good card for all celeritous clans, Al's fabled Army Apparatus turns it into pure gold for the Brujah. It's not only perfect to get that weapon into your hand when you need it, it's also great to slim down your library after you got all the guns you ever wanted. And while the .44 Magnum is possibly the best bargain anytime, anywhere, Al's Army Apparatus gives you the chance to "dial your weapon" if you ever decide to go for a more diverse arsenal. Vampire of the month: Black Cat Brujah 5, CEL pot pre Equipping Black Cat costs 1 less pool (but never less than 0 pool). A classic 5-pointer from the original Jyhad set, it's Black Cat's special that makes her valuable to this day - even more so with the new Concealed Weapon. The one discipline you really need to make weapons hurt she has at superior, and the added Potence and Presence integrate her well with most standard Brujah strategies that can make use of equipment. When her special will not play any role, she suffers from the harsh competition in her price range: Volker is better if it's only fighting because of his title, Brachah shines in the arenas of politics and bleed because of her superior Presence. Obviously Black Cat combines well with Al's Army Apparatus, Pier 13, Baltimore and Heidelberg Castle if the idea is to equip a weenie swarm with SNS for cheap. Deck: Rush, bruise and bleed revisited This is pretty much in line with the decks that won the tournaments in London and Washington, although not strictly weeniefied. It centers around Black Cat (for her special) and the CEL/PRE fivers Brachah and Rigby, with Celerity weenies as back-up and rushers. It's a very straightforward and tidy deck concept, quite easy to play (for a combat-heavy deck). Biggest problems I had while testing it were situations where I had to rush backwards to keep a Malk stealth bleeder in line and couldn't find the necessary rush actions - the price you have to pay for the strong bleeding potential. On the upside you gain a lot of speed once you have gunned down the opposition, very important considering the relatively huge size of the vampires (Enchant Kindred superior helps here as well, of course). Crypt: (12 cards, Min: 7, Max: 21, Avg: 3,67) 1 Angel (Brujah 2, cel) 1 Antoinette DuChamp (Caitiff 1, cel pre) 2 Black Cat (Brujah 5, CEL pot pre) 2 Brachah (Brujah 5, CEL for PRE) 1 Itzakh Levine (Ventrue 3, cel pre) 1 Julian Sanders (Brujah Antitribu 6, CEL pot PRE) 1 Nik (Caitiff 1, cel) 1 Rigby, Crusade Vanguard (Brujah Antitribu 5, aus CEL pot PRE) 1 Sarah Brando (Brujah Antitribu 3, CEL) 1 Uma Hatch (Brujah 3, cel pre) Library (90 cards): Master (18 cards) 2 Al's Army Apparatus 5 Blood Doll 3 Celerity 1 Dreams of the Sphinx 4 Haven Uncovered 2 Sudden Reversal 1 Waste Management Operation Action (20 cards) 7 Bum's Rush 5 Enchant Kindred 8 Legal Manipulation Reaction (2 cards) 2 Delaying Tactics Combat (34 cards) 8 Concealed Weapon 7 Blur 5 Flash 7 Pursuit 7 Psyche Ally (1 card) 1 Arms Dealer Equipment (8 cards) 8 .44 Magnum (A note on two cards which might seem a little unusual: Waste Management Operation is in because I found myself out of cards in two games in the last few months, and I thought I had the slot. Could be anything else really (DI, Fame, Rumor Mill come to mind). The lonely Arms Dealer has two functions: get Magnums, and stand in the way of Daring the Dawns. I might turn him into a Hellhound...) Final notes: Well, thanks again for staying with me through this issue. I really don't know where my thoughts will wander for the next issue, so all suggestions and contributions are welcome at skaffen_amtiskaw"at"mail"dot"ru. Skaffen Archon of The Cold Dawn www.8ung.at/colddawn "If there is a gun hanging on the wall in the first act, it must fire in the last." (A. Chekhov)