Official Nosferatu Antitribu Newsletter Volume 2 Issue 3 ---------------------------- In this issue: Intro and a comment on Fiction Vampires of the Month: Yong-Sun, Harmonist and Yong-Sun, Harmonist (Advanced) Cards of the Month: Hidden Lurker Strategy of the Month: Outside Disciplines? Decks of the Month: a Mateusz/Lurker deck and a submitted !Nos/!Malk Black Hand deck Introduction: I must have been kidnapped or something. Honest. It's been a few months, but the newsletter returns. I blame the holidays. Archives of clan newsletters are now not only being kept at www.thelasombra.com but also by White Wolf at http://www.white-wolf.com/VTES/newsletter/nl_date.html – much thanks to them for acknowledging this newsletter. Oh yeah, and the other, lesser clans too. Fiction: Fiction is what the other clans tell one another to keep their pawns placated and happy. We Nosferatu Antitribu know the fearsome truths. Vampires of the Month Yong-Sun, Harmonist Group: 2 Capacity: 10 Discipline: aus ANI OBF POT THA Sabbat Cardinal: As a (D) action, Yong-Sun may burn the top vampire of your prey's crypt. Yong-Sun, Harmonist Level: Advanced Group: 2 Capacity: 10 Discipline: aus ANI OBF POT THA Advanced, Sabbat cardinal: Yong-Sun gets +X bleed, where X is the number of vampires in the target Methuselah's ash heap. Not a bad pair of vampires. The basic Yong-Sun's special had been derided for years as mostly-useless. About the only use anyone had found for it was combining it with Marked Paths to generate future stealth on something basically innocuous. Aside from that, though, the basic Auspex and Advanced Thaumaturgy are just fantastic. Rutor's Hand on a big vampire is always beneficial to balance out the high capacity. Magic of the Smith lets you be more selective in grabbing your equipment (if you go that route.) Recent cards make Yong-Sun even better: Nose of the Hound with that inferior Auspex is just plain better than a Bum's Rush or Ambush, as now they need an intercept to deny your maneuver (and the maneuver is oh-so-important to a Grapple-Rush deck.) And post-Camarilla Edition, the THA/POT combo is pants-poppingly improved thanks to Blood Fury and Blood Rage now being hand strikes and strength-based. It's not hard at all to build a deck around Yong-Sun built around Nose-rushing and THA/POT combat, with a sprinkling of ANI intercept. Yong-Sun is also a Cardinal, which is extra-nice. Sure, he can't become an Anarch, but who cares about that anyway? (Hi, Eric!) There are some truly useful cards usable by Cardinals that get overlooked a lot – I've personally gotten a lot of mileage out of Fire Dance in recent months, as it combines beautifully with inferior Bursts of Sunlight. Also, if you're planning to Rutor's Yong-Sun, you really should include a Blood of the Sabbat, as you probably will be taking a large number of directed actions with him and BotS will gain you blood even faster. Eternal Vigilance is also useful if you plan to act a lot with him; having a permanent source of untap on your biggest, scariest combat vampire is a highly effective deterrent to your predator. Heck, given the prevalence of Sabbat vampires thanks to Black Hand, you might even find a use for the Cardinal Sin cards in an intercept deck. But ah, the Advanced. Suddenly that ‘burn a crypt vampire' isn't so useless after all. Even before you merge, merely trashing your opponents' vampires via combat gains Yong-Sun bonus bleed, a nice power to have in a rush deck to finish off a crippled prey. And when you do merge him, you get to burn a prey's vampire out of his crypt, which immediately boosts his bleed. If you are using this tactic, it's much more important to get the basic Yong-Sun out first. You want to be able to start burning vampires as quickly as possible, to build up the bleed for when the merge happens. The Advanced version's special is largely wasted if you haven't got a way to burn the vamps in the first place. I've tried a combo of 3 basic, 2 or 3 advanced, and 2 Gift of Experiences in a 90-card deck with reasonable success at getting him out and merged quickly. You could potentially go higher on the Gifts if you also plan to include Cicatriz, as you can use her discard special to cycle the excess Gifts faster. Card of the Month: Hidden Lurker Hidden Lurker [Jyhad:C, VTES:C, SW:C, CE:U] Cardtype: Action Modifier Discipline: Obfuscate Only usable by a ready untapped vampire other than the acting minion. Only usable after a combat between the acting minion you control and a blocking minion. [obf] Tap this vampire. This vampire enters combat with the blocking minion. The first round of this new combat, the blocking minion cannot strike. [OBF] As above, with an optional press. Here's an overlooked card. The traditional knock on it is that once you play a Hidden Lurker, your opponent knows you have it, and simply won't block anymore to clog your hand on it. Which means you have to combine this with actions that your opponent simply can't afford not to block. The Nosferatu Antitribu have several scary combat-vampires that make excellent Lurkers – Mateusz Gryzbowsky is the obvious one, with his +2 strength, but there's a number of +strength vampires in the clan now to pick from. One vampire you might not think of using this with is Smallpox Griet. Giving Smallpox a free punch-and-press that won't be dodged or S:CE'd makes it much more possible to inflict her hideous disease. Keep in mind that while Hidden Lurker prevents the opponent from striking, it does not prevent them from maneuvering or preventing your strike. Since they don't strike, there's no harm in combining it with Drawing Out The Beast, which will stop the maneuvers and presses-to-end (and at advanced, does another point of damage). Against damage prevention, well, you'll just have to do more than they can prevent. Environmental damage works well for this, forcing them to expend multiple prevention cards most likely. Permanent environmentals like Murder of Crows and Wolf Companions heighten the comparative card-costs. Also note that the press at superior is not necessarily to continue – it can certainly be used to get one free hit in on a combat-worthy deck and then have the press to end should they try to get to round 2 to strike back. Always handy against, for instance, those Walk of Flame decks. So, what can you do to insure that your opponent really, really wants to block you? Yong-Sun's "plus bleed only against you" special is one route, as are Spying Missions, rushing of Fame'd vampires, Tier of Souls to steal their blood and gain you a bonus bleed. Bleeding for a lot with Laptops, Computer Hacks, bleed retainers or other gimmicks works. Pentex Loves You! turns any bleeder into a potential problem. Mixing in a few Mask of 1,000 Faces also helps, as they can't assume that the bleed for one with a weenie isn't really a tooled-up plus-bleeder. None of the Nosferatu Antitribu start with bonus bleed (one of the clan's true weak spots, really) so you'll have to find ways to boost their bleed through other means. One way to do this is through the use of some outside disciplines like using Ingram's AUS to Pulse him, or the Dominate on Julio or Tarbaby to Condition bleeds. Tock can Legally Manipulate with the best of them, too. But using out-of-clan disciplines for the !Nosferatu is not as easy as it might be for other clans, as noted below. Strategy of the Month: Outside Disciplines? In some ways, the Nosferatu Antitribu cry out for more disciplines. A lot of players feel that ANI/OBF/POT has some really severe liabilities, namely combat defense and bounce, both of which are true. Only one of the !Nos possess superior Auspex to bounce with, and only three (Cailean, Julio and Tarbaby) can Dominate-bounce, and the dom/DOM vamps are big. Only Teresita has fortitude for damage prevention and/or freak-drive multi-rushing. So there's some definite limitations. Here's the breakdown of outside disciplines (counting Yong-Sun once): Obt: 1 inf Dom: 2 inf, 1 sup Pre: 1 inf, 1 sup Vic: 1 inf Nec: 1 inf Aus: 2 inf, 1 sup For: 1 inf Cel: 2 inf, 1 sup Ser: 1 inf Thn: 1 inf Tha: 0 inf, 1 sup That's it. I've discussed the uses of Celerity in a previous newsletter; besides that Auspex and Dominate would seem to be the most useful. Which is nice. Really, the clan is very scatter-shot in their out-of-clan disciplines. Thanatosis? Vicissitude? Necromancy? No Protean, very little Presence. Basically, if you plan to use an outside discipline, you're going to have to include either vampires from other clans, Discipline masters, or build your deck around one or two core vampires. Or all of the above. This is certainly doable, but it can be a little taxing if you are planning to keep the deck storyline-legal (primarily !Nos). Sanguine Instruction also helps propagate the chosen out-of-clan Discipline through your minions (and has the minor benefit of capacity increase as well.) You don't actually have to use them to be competitive, fortunately. Straight-up !Nosferatu decks have made the finals of or outright won several tournaments recently with divergent strategies (Wall/Smiling Jack, Potence Rush, to name two), so contrary to popular belief, ANI/OBF/POT is definitely viable. It's certainly fun to change things up and experiment with outside disciplines, but not a vital necessity. What disciplines work best? That's partly a matter of your play environment, of course. Thaumaturgy (as noted above) mixes well with the Potence and gives some interesting other options like Rutors or Magic of the Smith. A little Protean would make for multiple-aggravated hand strikes and/or a combat ends. Fortitude would let !Nos wade into combats with less fear. Dementation or Dominate would up the bleed potential, certainly. Celerity provides maneuvers and first strike options. Auspex makes for massive amounts of intercept, or for Revelation-ing the bounces and combat-ends away. But keep in mind that the more you add of an outside discipline, the less you can include of the three in-clans without losing focus. It's often best to pick one or two aspects of the out-of-clan discipline and key on that, or else plan to drop one of the in-clans entirely from your plans. Decks of the Month: First, here's an example of a deck using some of the concepts outlined above. I haven't had a chance to really try it, so feel free to offer commentary as you like. Second deck is a !Nos-heavy Black Hand AUS/OBF deck that Ankur's been winning games with. Deck Name: Hateful Lurker Created By: John Flournoy Description: Use Mateusz as your Hidden Lurker to slap anyone foolish enough to block. Pulse Ingram and use him and other minions to bleed out anyone foolish enough not to block. Crypt: (12 cards, Min: 19, Max: 32, Avg: 6.42) ---------------------------------------------- 4 Mateusz Gryzbowsky ANI OBF POT 8, Nosferatu antitribu:3 4 Ingram Frizer ani pot AUS OBF 6, Nosferatu antitribu:3 2 Kendrick ANI aus obf POT 7, Nosferatu Antitribu:2, Priscus 1 Roger Farnsworth aus OBF 4, Malkavian antitribu:3 1 Shannon Price ani obf 3, Nosferatu Antitribu:2 Library: (90 cards) ------------------- Master (18 cards) 4 Auspex 4 Blood Doll 1 Information Network 4 Minion Tap 1 Nosferatu Kingdom 1 Pentex(TM) Loves You! 1 Powerbase: Montreal 1 Shanty Town Hunting Ground 1 Tension in the Ranks Minion (72 cards) 1 Burning Wrath 6 Carrion Crows 4 Drawing Out the Beast 8 Hidden Lurker 1 J. S. Simmons, Esq. 3 Laptop Computer 4 Lost in Crowds 4 Mask of a Thousand Faces 4 Murder of Crows 2 Nose of the Hound 4 Pulse of the Canaille 2 Revelations 2 Sanguine Instruction 3 Spying Mission 1 Tasha Morgan 6 Taste of Vitae 5 Telepathic Misdirection 1 Tier of Souls 4 Undead Strength 7 Wake with Evening's Freshness ---------------------------- Deck Name: A Kamuting we will go Created By: Ankur Gupta Description: Black Hand standard deck that does AUS/OBF. Piotr gains you lots of pool before he bites it. Crypt: (12 cards, Min: 13, Max: 29, Avg: 5.50) ---------------------------------------------- 1 Tarbaby Jack dom ser ANI OBF POT 8, Nosferatu antitribu:3 2 Teresita for ANI OBF POT 7, Nosferatu antitribu:3 1 Kazimir Savostin ani pot AUS VIC 7, Tzimisce:3 3 Ingram Frizer ani pot AUS OBF 6, Nosferatu antitribu:3 1 Dolphin Black AUS DEM OBF 6, Malkavian Antitribu:2 1 Colonel cel dem obf AUS 5, Malkavian antitribu:3 2 Piotr Andreikov aus 2, Tzimisce:3 1 Roger Farnsworth aus OBF 4, Malkavian antitribu:3 Library: (90 cards) ------------------- Master (13 cards) 1 Admonitions, The 1 Bleeding the Vine 4 Blood Doll 3 Corporal Reservoir 1 Information Network 1 Nosferatu Kingdom 1 Shanty Town Hunting Ground 1 Watchtower: Four Ride Forth Action (20 cards) 9 Bloodwork 9 Reunion Kamut Action Modifier (8 cards) 4 Art of Memory, The 6 Cloak the Gathering Reaction (25 cards) 6 Ministry 5 Spirit's Touch 6 Telepathic Misdirection 4 Wake with Evening's Freshness 4 Forced Awakening Combat (8 cards) 2 Aura Reading 6 Thrown Sewer Lid Ally (6 cards) 6 Marijava Thuggee Combo (10 cards) 10 Swallowed by the Night ---------------------------- -John Flournoy