OFFICIAL VEKN BAALI NEWSLETTER VOL. 1 NO. 1 DECEMBER 2001 THE DANCE OF CORRUPTION Editor: David Anderson-Dávila In this issue: 1. Introduction 2. Fiction 3. Card of the Month 4. Strategy 5. Deck of the Month 6. Conclusion ---------------------------------------- 1. Introduction to the Dance ---------------------------------------- "It is better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven." John Milton, Paradise Lost Welcome to the first issue of the official VEKN Baali Newsletter, The Dance of Corruption. This newsletter will be devoted to detailed discussion of the Baali bloodline for Vampire: The Eternal Struggle. The Bloodlines expansion for V:TES is due out in less than a month, and it promises to bring great things to the game. In the following months, you can expect to see strategy tips, discussion of cards, and decks that utilize the Baali. For this month's newsletter, I thought it would be highly appropriate to introduce the Baali and comment on their place in V:TES. The Baali, in the World of Darkness, are the monsters that your mother warned you about. They are demon worshippers, serial killers, and corruptors. They have the faces of angels, the semblance of demons, and crave power, over the world of men and of supernatural creatures. They are allies of dark forces and wield terrible powers as a result. The Baali, in V:TES, promise to be very interesting indeed. Their disciplines include Obfuscate, Presence and Daimoinon. Future newsletters will analyze the Baali's use of these disciplines in detail, but is should be obvious that they will excel at stealthy bleeding and also at stealthy voting. They share two disciplines with the Followers of Set, so mixing the Baali with the Setites should be very straightforward. In a couple of weeks we will see what Daimoinon will allow them to do - their infernal pacts grant them demonic powers, and their allies are the demons of Hell, so the Baali and Daimoinon cards should be a real treat. ---------------------------------------- 2. Fiction ---------------------------------------- Fall From Grace - Chapter 1 "If it makes a difference, I never had a choice either," said the well-dressed demon in a voice like grinding glass. The club was loud, but its voice was surprisingly easy to hear over the din. "HE made us what we are - no souls, no choices, eternal slaves to HIS will. When HE was questioned I knew I had to rise up and join HIS opposition. We were cast out of Heaven, but gained our freedom as a result." It sipped its martini, sensing again the tempest of confusion, anger, resentment and need for vengeance stirring in its vampire companion's head. "And look at you, cut down in the prime of your life, reduced to being a parasite, a blood-sucker, living from night to night like a hunted animal..." "I am no animal," the vampire said. "Of course you're no animal, my lady. You are better than that. You can be MUCH better than that, if you want." Its voice was mesmerizing, and filled with conviction. "I just want them all to pay for what they did to me!," the vampire said, looking up from her untouched beer. A single blood tear dripped from one eye, staining her pale cheek with a line of crimson anguish. "You will have your vengeance, and more, I promise you. I will grant you strength beyond that possessed by others of your kind, the power to cloud the minds of your enemies, and the will to rule them all, if you so wish it," the demon was smiling now, a disturbing sight with its mouth full of needle-sharp teeth. "There is a price for my services, of course." "Anything. Name it and I'll pay it! They took me from my husband, my daughter, my life! And for what? The fun of it! I want them to suffer! I! Want! Them! Dead!," she screamed, slamming the table to punctuate her last few words. "Be calm, my lady. You will have what you wish for and those that did wrong against you will suffer. Oh yes, they will endure the flames of Hell itself for all eternity if you desire. Just pledge yourself to me and to my master, and you will have all the help you need," the demon whispered. "Sell my soul? Is that all?," she smiled. "If a monster I must be, then a monster I shall be!" Something in her smile, in her dead eyes, and her eager, quick acceptance gave the demon pause. "Do not take me or my offer lightly, my lady. HE has forsaken you already, that is true, cursed you as he did Caine. You cannot enter HIS kingdom and must live eternally here amongst the mortals, feeding on them as they do upon cattle. Your soul, a small piece of it anyway, is an insignificant price to pay for the power to seek your revenge, and access to the allies that will help you exact it. The price is small, but the consequences are grave indeed." "What do you care? You're getting my soul. I just want the power to destroy those bastards. I want the power to make them all pay, damn the consequences!" The demon sat there for moment in silence. He could feel the power of her will radiating like the sun. Dangerous, this one. It would be better to take this one's soul one small piece at a time, lest she grow too powerful too quickly. It wouldn't do to unleash full-fledged minions of Hell upon the world. Not yet, anyway. The demon smiled as it pulled a rolled-up parchment from its coat pocket. "There is the small formality of the contract," it said, smiling warmly at the vampire. "Just sign on the X. In blood, of course." ---------------------------------------- 3. Card of the Month ---------------------------------------- Given the recent sneak preview in the newsgroup, we actually have one Baali vampire to talk about. He's big. He's bad. He's Huitzolopochtli. Huitzilopochtli Baali, 10 Capacity AUS DAI DOM OBF POT PRE Independent. During your master phase, you may pay a pool to gain a Master Phase Action if Huitzilopochtli is ready. +1 bleed. Infernal. What can you not do with this vampire? He can bleed, vote, intercept, do combat, and all at stealth. And all that without using Daimoinon! He mixes well with the Malkavians, the Setites, the Nosferatu and their antitribu cousins, the Toreador and their Sabbat counterparts, the Giovanni, and the Lasombra. He's large enough to use Govern the Unaligned, Scouting Mission or Enchant Kindred to help bring out just about every other vampire in the game. Give him a Fortitude skill card (or two, so he can play Freak Drive and block without fear of having his Ra Kissed) and he is golden. Use a Zillah's Valley to help put him into play if you're concerned about his size and how long it would take to get him into your controlled region. And you get all this for the low, low price of 1 little pool to help untap him each turn (apparently it cost 1 pool to untap each of your Infernal minions each turn). It's not so much really, when you can just Govern backward to help get it back. Or just call a vote and play Voter Captivation to get it back. Everyone is going to be using Huitzilopochtli at this rate - why not be the first in your group to give him a try? The sticking point is Daimoinon. What the Hell is DAI good for? I guess we'll find out in a couple of weeks. ---------------------------------------- 4. Strategy ---------------------------------------- There is no Baali-specific strategy to discuss until the Bloodlines expansion has been released. Given the Baali disciplines, however, I expect to be discussing politics and stealth bleed to some extent in the upcoming months. I am sure there will be much more to talk about... For this newsletter, I would like to address the issue of big vampires. In my opinion there is only one issue of concern - speed. Big vampires have lots of disciplines, special abilities, titles and blood to pay for all the cards they can play, and this is what makes them attractive to play. The problem is that it takes a lot of time to influence a large vampire into play. Let's use this month's Card of the Month for an example. Huitzilopochtli is a 10 capacity Baali. In the best case, you go fourth at a four player table and you will get him out on turn three (4+4+2). If you play Zillah's valley on turn one or two, you will get him out on turn two (9+2). If you play Information Highway on turn one, you will also get him out on turn two (6+4). So, to get this 10 capacity vampire into play in less than three turns requires that you have and can play one of these Master cards in your opening hand, or very near the top of your library when the game begins. In the same amount of time, for the same amount of pool, your opponent can influence out four 2 capacity vampires by the end of turn two. By playing Effective Management on turns one and two, your oppenent could have six 2 capacity vampires for a total cost of 12 pool by the end of turn three. What's the difference? Huitzilopochtli can take one action per turn, or stay untapped to block one of your predator's actions. You could always play Wake With Evening's Freshness or Forced Awakening to defend against multiple actions, but this requires you to have those cards in hand to play. Four 2 capacity vampires can take four actions per turn, or stay untapped to block four of your predator's actions. Additionally, with four minions, you can afford to take a few actions and leave a few minions untapped for defense. Why does it matter? This should be obvious. A Methuselah that can take more actions per turn over the course of the game has a better chance of ousting his or her prey. More minions equates to more actions. There are exceptions, of course, but the basic point remains. But does it really matter? No, not really. A single large vampire can be as effective as several smaller vampires over the course of the game. The secret is two-fold: 1) make each of the large vampire's actions worth many of the smaller vampires' actions, and 2) give the large vampire a way to act more than once per turn. Huitzilopochtli with a Pulse of the Canaille can bleed with Legal Manipulations, Command of the Beast and Conditioning for a total bleed of 10 (3+2+1+3+1) in one action. This takes one action and one card to acquire the Pulse, and then one action and three cards to bleed for 10. Without the Pulse, Huitzilopochtli would still bleed for 8. Four 2 capacity vampires can bleed with Computer Hacking for 8 pool per turn. This takes four actions and four cards. This is less effective than Huitzilopochtli's single bleed action, but this is hardly a fair comparison. For example, it would take four blockers to stop the four 2 capacity vampires from bleeding, but a single blocker could stop Huitzilopochtli. Then again, Huitzilopochtli has a lot of disciplines that would make it harder to stop his bleed action (e.g., OBF for stealth, DOM for Seduction, Sleeping Mind). In a way it all balances out. Do you still disagree? Let me expand upon the example. Assume that you and your predator are the only ones in the game and you each have roughly twenty pool left. If your predator has the four 2 capacity vampires and is using Computer Hacking to bleed you with each one each turn then you must be able to survive losing 8 pool per turn or be ousted. If you control Huitzilopochtli then you have several options to defend against those four minions: 1) you can act to bleed your prey for 8/10 per turn until he is ousted (this would take 2 or 3 turns), 2) you can stay untapped and block one bleed per turn, hopefully torporizing one of your predator's minions per block (this is not too hard, Huitzilopochtli has POT), 3) you can play Minion Tap to take blood off of Huitzilopochtli to increase the amount of pool that you have, 4) you can untap one or more times each turn to block one or more of your predator's bleed actions, 5) the list goes on... Admittedlly this example is not complete and may not be the best one to illustrate my point, which is simply that the game has built in mechanics to help balance the number of actions that can be taken with the effectiveness of each action. This is the classic weenie vs. fattie problem, but I believe that it has a very simple solution. How to make fatties more effective. In order to overcome the sheer number of actions that a horde of smaller vampires/minions can take you must be able to both maximize the effectiveness of each action that you take with a large vampire and also include a way to increase the number of "action opportunities" (i.e., the number of actions or reactions) available to your large vampire. To increase the effectiveness of each action taken by a large vampire you must use its disciplines. These are what separate the large vampires from the smaller vampires - the access to both higher levels of and greater number of disciplines. Any minion can bleed with Computer Hacking for 2. Only a big, powerful vampire like Huitzilopochtli can pull off a bleed for 8. There are many ways to increase the number of action opportunities a large vampire in a given turn. You could use Rutor's Hand or Freak Drive. You could use the various untap sources (Homonculus, Metro Underground, Eternal Vigilance, 2nd Tradition, Wake With Evening's Freshness, Forced Awakening, etc.) to let the large vampire both act on your turn and react on another Methuselah's turn. In fact, that last point brings me to the final conclusion of this argument. If you want to use large vampires then you must include a large number of cards to increase your action opportunities. In fact, my suggestion is that if your average crypt capacity exceeds 5.5 then you should include a significant number of cards (e.g., at least 25 of 90 cards) that accomplish this purpose. Let's simply call this a Action Opportunites Module. For example, a stealth bleed deck using Huitzilopchtli may include 8-10 untap sources and 8-10 bleed bounce and/or bleed reduction cards as its action opportunities module. The Giovanni Power Bleed deck that I played in the Crusade: Atlanta tournament on 17 Nov 2001 has 29 out of 80 cards used for defense and/or increasing the action opportunites available to the vampires in the crypt (7 Wakes, 6 bounce, 3 Obedience, 3 S:CE/Dodge, 2 Leather Jackets, and 6 intercept cards, and 2 disposable allies). Please keep in mind that the size of your defense module will vary depending on the type of deck you are playing. Also, my suggestion is based on observation and partial success in implementation. Your mileage may vary, but if you care to give it a try, even if just for the chance to play with vampires that actually use more than one of their disciplines, then please do and let me know how it works for you. ---------------------------------------- 5. Deck of the Month ---------------------------------------- Since we don't have the Bloodlines cards yet, there is no deck of the month featuring either the Baali vampires or their cards. Until then, try using Huitzilopochtli in one of your stealth vote decks. In the future, if you have an interesting or effective Baali deck and want to see it immortalized in this newsletter, feel free to send it to me at dmd1966@yahoo.com. ---------------------------------------- 6. Conclusion ---------------------------------------- I hope you enjoyed the first Baali newsletter. The next official newsletter will be the January 2002 edition. We will all have had a month or so to play with the new cards, and even though the holidays will cut into our play time, I am sure that I will find time to write something useful. Until then, be wary of well-dressed strangers offering really interesting deals in dimly lit bars. And don't sign any contracts in blood, either. If you have any comments or suggestions, please send them to me at dmd1966@yahoo.com. David Anderson-Dávila