Decks used in Friday Night Fight

Since it’s been well over a week now– its kinda impossible to remember the details of each game. Especially hard since we all finished past 1am haha. I did try something new though: I finally made a Trophy deck!

I know its been years since Kindred Most Wanted showed up but this is honestly the first time I’ve tried making a Trophy deck mainly because I always thought the trophy mechanic is a bit clunky and definitely hard to pull off properly.

What do you need for a trophy deck to work? A lot.

1. A red list minion or a way to make someone red list
2. A way to rush AND burn the red list minion
3. A way to avoid or prevent blood hunts if you diablerize the red list minion

Thats a lot of requirements right there. Do the benefits match the pain you’ve been through? Honestly i don’t know but i think it breaks even. Barely.

Not counting any votes, there are currently 2 actions to make someone a red list. Red List and Public Enemy. Of the two i think red list is less situational but that all depends on your metagame of course.

In order to play Red List you need a titled vampire. Relatively easy for most decent combat decks. Another good effect is that the victim can’t block your action. I’d still try to add some extra stealth in since this is the main point of a trophy deck. No red list minions equals at least four wasted card slots in your deck.

With all of that in mind, I settled on the archons of vtes to try out the trophy mechanic. I needed a safe, fool-proof way to avoid blood hunts and the choices were either Theo Bell or Muaziz. I didn’t even bother to consider Samat Ra (setite) or Tariq (assamite red list) since they didn’t have the necessary combat disciplines i needed.

Comparing Potence and Thaumaturgy, potence can cancel dodges and combat ends, send a vampire to torpor with disarm, burn a vampire outright with decapitate. With respect to thaumaturgy’s anti-fortitude cards, it was no contest.

Using Theo Bell equals Euro Brujah. So hello to Donal, Constanza and Volker. Add in Anvil for an extra titled vamp for 6 and the crypt was set.

For my trophy selection, I added Trophy: Hunting Ground, Trophy: Revered, and 2x Trophy: Domain. That would give me a nice intercept effect similar to No Secrets from the Magaji and a Rack effect and +2 bleed for the oust.

I saw some decks on the newsgroups (I’m looking at you xzealot/norm) and most trophy decks had only about 4-5 trophies and about 4-5x red list actions.

I personally thought 5 redlist actions isn’t enough for a 90 card deck so i added an extra one or two.

On the first game it worked pretty well, not as well as i’d hoped but good enough. I managed to get 2 trophies on Theo Bell (hunting ground and domain) and even one on Anvil (revered).

I also added 5x Brujah Debates so that might have affected the deck (good on some games terrible on others).

I’ll post the deck list here later over the week.

I also cobbled together another deck that i’ve never tried before: Anarch Barons. I played tons of anarch decks but i’ve never really tried the political aspect of it. I’ll also post the decklist here in a few days. I thought it was a clunker of a deck since it had a lot of moving parts (6-8 disciplines ftw!) But the surprise of the night was: it swept a table haha. While the strongly favored Euro Trophy just managed 1-2 vps. Odd how things turn out.

That’s it for now. Deck lists to follow!

Why Anarchs?

The anarch deck concept is a tricky one. The question one has to ask is: is it worth it to go anarch? Right now thanks to the new cards from Twilight Rebellion it’s now easier to make a vampire go anarch but what are the benefits of being an anarch?

Looking at the anarch library cards shows a strong selection of master cards, Baron themed votes and of course the different kinds of 3 ways. The keyword for playing anarchs: Versatility. Looking at my anarch decks and the other decks from the newsgroups and TWD shows that the majority of the decks tend to lean towards a toolbox approach. Jack of all trades decks who can bleed a little, vote with barons, fight a little and block some actions. I like the fact that it can adapt to many situations without much difficulty.

There are always exceptions to this such as Matt Morgan’s assamite barons deck which is purely political with no combat at all. Ben Peal recently won an NAC tourney with a modified version so that speaks well for the power of anarchs as a set.

Anarch master card support is really awesome. Take a look at The Anarch Free Press. Intercept for just one pool with a secondary use similar to a hunting ground. It’s an auto include in all my anarch decks. Hospital Food functions pretty much the same way as a means of blood gain. I consider it as the anarch version of a hunting ground. I don’t always include it in my decks but if I have space then it’s ok. Club Illusion can be a double edged sword since other methuselahs can turn anarch and use it too but I consider it only as a minor inconvinience since they basically spend one turn and a blood or two going anarch. Twilight Camp and Seattle Commitee offer ways to go anarch without spending an action and blood but it’s also important to draw them early. The additional hunting ground boost of Twilight Camp also makes it an auto include in most of my anarch decks usually replacing Hospital Food. Anarch Railroad is simply too good especially if your current playgroup is intercept heavy. This is also an auto include in most anarch decks most especially a Barons vote deck.

Politics

I really love the idea of the Baron concept. Getting a titled vampire only requires stealth and a minimum capacity of 5. This is a good thing for clans without any titles or inherent vote push disciplines like presence and melpominee. Fee Stakes are currently in the spotlight due to some strong tournament showings by Matt Morgan, Robin Tatu and Ben Peal. Assamite support using Alamut and weenie vampires such as Web of Knives Recruit have proven the power of anarch votes using the key card : Revolutionary Council.