Subject: [newsletter] Pander 'Back in Style' July 2004 Newsletter Date: Wed, 7 Jul 2004 23:56:40 -0700 Message-ID: Official V:EKN Pander Newsletter July 2004 Official V:EKN Pander Newsletter - July 2004 Contents - Life in the City (Vampire fiction) - Street Smarts (Clan Strategy) - Tools of the Trade (Discipline overviews) - Aces up our Sleeves (Card overviews a. crypt b. library) - Word on the Street (Reader feedback) - Ante Up (Deck designs) - Peace Out (Conclusion) Life in the City A fan contribution from Latin America. A fantastic job, especially since English is not his native tongue. Please, give a kind round of appreciation and enjoy! One day in the life of... Christine Boscacci. - by Sergio Ordoñez Philadelphia, June 18, 23:57 "Before you go to sleep, say your prayers and hope for pleasant dreams" - that was all that Christine says to his victims after take his blood. That night was like the others, no one in the streets seems to notice that already someone was screaming for help, after a few minutes Christine exit from the ally walking peacefuly and looking his clothes. "Dammit, I have to change my clothes again, damn you pretty boy!"- say to his recent victim that lay upon some garbage. "The kids never learn to have some respect with his superiors, now I hope that this show of Who is the Boss learn some of respect" she look to the boys and see how this unfortunate soul try to scream and separate his hands. She put her jacket and take a look to both sides and walk to the club few blocks away and reminded the time of the meeting with his pack. The watch point 23:58 and she hurry her steps, the meeting was pointed to midnight and some of her pack-mates have the damned mania of being punctual. The club was already full, and if not was that the pack have the control of this place they never find a place to his meetings. The ambient was nice and the they are waiting for her in the VIP area of the club, the VIP sign was on and few pleople asking to themselves why the lights was on sometimes and others not, and the only pleople that know the anwser was the pack. They conditioning to the owner that when another vampire was in this club, he have to turning on the light how measure of protection and to the pack the sing meaning "Vampires In the Pub". Christine enter in the club and walk through the crowd of the place to the VIP area. One of the pack take notice of the arrival of Christine and make signs to take her attention. "Hi, your are late", say a pack mate. "Shut up, it's was only a couple of minutes", she replied and taking one of the chairs she sit down. After a few minutes of looking to each other the Ductus take the word. "Reports" said the Ductus firmly to the pack. The five members of the pack looking to each others again and then to Christine. She said nothing and the members really don't understand why she couldn't make her work. The Ductus was a Brujah Antitribu ex-Marine and he doesn't like a NO from his pack. His pack mates looking her with almost some kind of reproach, but they always have the same anwser, every time that the Ductus give her a mission like that, he always get the same: nothing. She only have a couple of years with this pack and all in the Pack have a special kind of affection on her, but she only have this kind of affection to someone, but she don't remember who was this person. After five minutes of silence, a pack member raise the voice to calm the tension in the air. "I can finnish the her mission" said the Paul fearfuly, he was a Ventrue Antitribu and he was trained in the arts of tracking "I know some people that can give us the info that we need", the Ductus look to Paul firmly and made some kind of gesture indicating him approval. He stand up and walk to the door, loosing among the people gathered outside the salon. After an hour of talk, the remained members of the pack stand up and said good bye to each other, Christine was almost in the edge of the door when she hear the voice of the Ductus, "HEY", he said loudly, "come here and take sit, we have to talk", he was looking her with a expresion of tell me what the hell is happening with you. She replied "I don't wanna talk anymore, I'm tired", her voice was almost like a little girl talking with her father. "What!?" he said angrily "can you repeat the sentence?" "I said: I don't wanna..." she can't finnish the sentence when she found against the wall and the Ductus in front of her with a look of I will torn apart piece by piece y dear one. She look her Ductus with a look of terror and picturing her death in her mind. "Why the fuck you always come here with the same answer when I give you a fucking order of try to get some fucking info about something?, WHY!? He demanded "By your fucking fault our beloved friend would be without revenge, and God save them if we get the track" his eyes was almost red, she can feel the presure of his hands upon her arms hurting her and she try to talk but the fear was overwhelming. After a moment she get the strength to talk "I...I don't know what to said, I just... I just don't have the resources to acomplish the mission that you gave me" she said fearfuly, and then he retreat and send the table for the air breaking the window. "Get out of my sight!!!"· he demanded. She lowered her sight and walk out the room whispering something: "Damn you bastard, what do you think you are, my father?, sucker! I took the life of my father so I will took your life in my lips when the time comes, I only hope that the time will be very soon." She looks her clothes and said "Damn. Now I really have to change my clothes!!" then she realize that a guy was looking her, "Hey pretty boy, do you want some action this night?, because I need liberate some tension" the boy smile and took the proposal, that was the last everything to the boy. Few block later someone was following the steps of Christina, and he said something after stop in another Pub, "My dearest, the time that you ask would be soon, more soon that you could dream" and then he vanish in the air. Street Smarts Well the torch has been taken up and Pander regains their standing among newsletters. We fought so hard to get standing in the Sabbat, and now we must fight to keep our newsletter existence. We are survivors and won't let a bit of apathy get in the way. So get ready we are back and ready to mix it up. And mix it up we will, group 4 is starting in earnest. This Gehenna set we see a second moderately large capacity Pander (with a pretty spiffy special) to set up a bigger, badder presence on the scene, Matthew Romans. Now we have our own big guys to help push our weight around. The only thing is we'll still need some buddies because we don't have enough in our group 3/4 selection to do all that much. But then that should be fixed up soon and most other clans are in the same boat right now, too. Soon more doors shall open to us. But what does this capacity do, besides survive longer? Well, being a target of Esgrima and Cardinal Benediction is pretty nice. That and the other 7 cap, Alfred Benezri, is pretty nice for votes, so we need to start taking up the battle to political floor! Matthew and Alfred can blend in this respect - Alfred merged can field 3 votes, and Matthew can be the target for Cardinal Benediction as well as having two disciplines good for sneaking votes onto the referendum floor, along with being able to play Telepathic Vote Counting. They both can be the target for Esgrima (though I'd be careful including it into your vote deck, though). And they can now help us lessen the penalties by getting around several low-cap hosers. I expect to find one or both of these big Panders to pop up in new experimental Sabbat vote decks - not only do we count as a clan but we are making our move in the political arena! Woo hoo! Tools of the Trade 'K, I need to do a discipline overview of what's available to us Pander. Our despicable analog within the Camarilla, the Caitiff - pathetic whelps, are all over the map as we are; though they do have a particular strain of auspex, celerity, presence, and potence running through them. We need to discern any patterns or strengths within our ranks (so that we may turn our enemies into a bloody smear): ani [1,0] ; aus [4,1] ; cel [0,1] ; dem [1,0] ; dom [4,0] ; for [2,0] ; obf [2,1] ; obt [1,1] ; pot [3,1] ; pre [2,2] ; pro [2,0] ; tha [0,2] ; vic [3,0] (Alfred Benezri and his advance alters this list a bit, but not too much.) Noticeable strengths are auspex, dominate, potence, presence. Obfuscate and vicissitude are worthy runner-ups. So we share 3 out of our 4 major strengths with the Caitiff dogs... curses. But we have dominate! A-ha! That alone is a huge advantage for us! Also our strengths are backed up by 4 vampire options per discipline strength compared to the limited 3 that the measely Caitiff have. And our runner-up discipline strengths, obf and vic, have 3 vampire options alone! Mwa ha ha, we so thoroughly outclass them. We can work with many of the powerful clans within the Sabbat with this discipline spread, so we'll be easily in demand. Ha! We will see action and gain experience and beat you Camarilla Caitiff wimps - you've been warned. Aces up our Sleeves Crypt Matthew Romans Clan: Pander (group 4) Capacity: 7 Disciplines: AUS OBF OBT pot Sabbat: During your untap phase, Matthew can burn a blood to tap a younger non-Independent vampire controlled by your prey. Rarity: Gehenna:U Whee! A big guy! And a versatile one at that! With his special he invites himself into many a deck. The Sabbat and the Camarilla sects are often represented in games so you'll most likely see a younger non-independent vampire controlled by your prey. This ability along with OBF and OBT screams action pusher. But what will he push? Depends on who he plays with. He can sit with Malk/Malk! and bleed quite nicely, notably being able to Pulse of Canaille and Spying Mission. With OBT/pot he can blend with Lasombra and with OBF/pot he could work with Nos/Nos!, though I'd use him more with political than combat decks; his special would give some flexibility with stealth slots and his AUS would help open more bounce options. In fact his special can lend himself to clans that might need some help tapping out blockers to get actions through. With AUS and his special alone he can make an interesting sideboard choice in Tor/Tor! and Ven! decks. And if you are running a few discipline Masters in your deck anyways you can choose him to increase his range of targets. I'm particularly interested in seeing any Ven! decks running with Seductions and Sleeping Minds. I'm attempting to create a simple Pander vote deck with him at the moment; I think his presence will help be a solid foundation for future Pander decks. (I will be very interested in finding out any great combat deck uses for Matthew - as cool as the special is, I don't think it'll be all that important in a combat deck.) Library Ghouled Street ThugType: Ally Requires: Pander Cost: 2 pool Ghoul with 2 life. 1 strength, 0 bleed. Ghouled Street Thug may strike for 1R damage. Ghouled Street Thug may play cards requiring basic Potence as a vampire with a capacity of 2. Any cost in blood is paid with his life. If a card would give him blood, give him life instead. Rarity: Sabbat:R SW:R Well, it would be nice if we had more Pander library cards. Oh well. But, he is a halfway decent ally. That he may strike for 1R damage is pretty cool. And then he can play cards requiring basic potence, too. Not bad, not bad. A quick upgrade to the ally would be IR Goggles to let him survive longer while still dishing damage. It is a conservative style of play, more appropriate to blocking and squeezing out worth over time. Another way would be gunning the basic potence angle, which I'm sure we all can figure out how to use to steam roll over a minion. But one potence card that is really interesting to use with this ally is Stunt Cycle. To deal 3R and prevent 1 is a sweet deal for no life - though it is avoidable by minions with celerity. But this card blends quite well with Bum's Rush and Ambush. With the spare maneuver from those cards, Fake Out, or even a pair of Goggles you can pretty easily keep at long and play Stunt Cycle. All you have to do is avoid minions with celerity (and preferrably those that can steal blood) and pick off the weak. Another interesting thing to keep in mind are those diverse potence cards that people too often feel they don't have the actions to cycle with, such as Rampage and destroy weapon strikes. Ghouled Street Thug is a solid ally that needs a little tooling to shine, but is worth the effort. Word on the Street Well, I'm fresh faced on this side of the street, so I haven't had a chance to hear anything yet. But my ears are perked listening to whispers... Ante Up Still tweaking an Alfred Benezri, Matthew Romans, Cristos Mantigo, Bruce de Guy deck idea. Leaning towards non-pre politics and juggling an equipment angle. It's a start with the new vampire groups. I'm leaving slots open to your imagination. Deck Name : Pandering to the Electorate Author : Azel Description : This is just a simple sampling on the new Pander voting idea. The grouping restriction binds the options available to this deck. That and Alfred Benezri and Matthew Romans have divergent discipline spreads. To get around most of that I decided to focus on politics and strong shared disciplines. It is an aus/dom/obf deck, so the power of those disciplines would be carrying this concept. Even still it is quite toolboxy. I like the idea of sloughing off blood and running past tapped minions. I'm keeping out combat cards and leaving the deck at 70 cards because I want to leave an amount of flexibility for anyone else who wants to tailor this deck to their environment. PS: Don't be afraid to contest the Anarch Troublemaker! Crypt (12 vampires) Capacity min: 5 max: 10 average: 6.84 ------------------------------------------------------------ 2x Matthew Romans 7 AUS OBF OBT pot Pander:4 2x Alfred Benezri 6 PRE THA aus dom bishop Pander:3 2x Alfred Benezri Adv 7 PRE THA aus dom bishop Pander:3 2x Dr. Douglas Netchu 6 AUS OBF dem dom Malkavian:3 2x Cristos Mantigo 5 aus cel dom obf pre !Toreador:3 2x Bruce de Guy 10 AUS DOM FOR OBT cardinal !Ventrue:4 Library (70 cards) ------------------------------------------------------------ Action (4) 2x Pulse of the Canaille 2x Scouting Mission Action Modifier (27) 4x Bonding 4x Crocodile's Tongue 4x Faceless Night 1x Forgotten Labyrinth 4x Seduction 5x Sleeping Mind, The 2x Spying Mission 3x Telepathic Vote Counting Equipment (10) 1x Chalice of Kinship 1x Delivery Truck 2x Incriminating Videotape 2x Laptop Computer 2x Local 1111 1x Sport Bike 1x Tapestry of Blood Master (13) 3x Anarch Troublemaker 3x Blood Doll 1x Demonstration 3x Dominate 3x Minion Tap Political Action (9) 2x Cardinal Benediction 4x Kine Resources Contested 3x Sabbat Priest Reaction (7) 2x Deflection 2x Obedience 3x Telepathic Misdirection Crafted with : Anarch Revolt Deck Builder. [Wed Jul 07 23:39:16 2004] Peace Out 'K, hope you enjoyed the revival of the Pander newsletter. Forgive the craftmanship, been having one busy year. Contributions and comments welcome at opaopajr@comcast.net And remember, prey is to the left.