One or two weeks ago I had a conversation with Ben Peal which was really inspiring. He actually called my TGB deck a "Villein Deck" more or less claiming that the Villein is actually your most important card. Next day I played my Hardestadt deck, which is a Villein Deck, too. This whole Villein Deck thing got really stuck in my brain and I just had to write this article.
In almost any Big Cap deck the most important thing is getting enough pool back in order to pop out 1-2 new vampires and still having enough pool to survive. In the good ol' times we played Minion Tap which got Sudden-ed from time to time. These days most of us play Villein which gets Wash-ed all the time, though the Sudden vs. Wash seems a much more difficult choice than the Minion Tap vs. Villein decision.
I tried to reload my memories which I have left somewhere in the deep v:tes ocean of my subconsciousness (poetry attempt: fails) and took a look at all my games I played with Mid/Big Caps. Almost every time my first Villein got Sudden-ed I couldn't make a game win, or even had a hard time to make a Vp. This is mainly true because the decks I played with didn't use any cards like Govern the Unaligned or Fourth Tradition: the Accounting. If you have no access to these kind of actions you will have a hard time to "play your game" once your Villeins got canceled.
Why am I writing all of this? There are two reasons. The first one being the pure and simple fact that entirely relying on Villein is bad. When building a deck you should try to avoid to plan your entire pool gaining mechanism on master cards. The problem is, that there are vampires who can't do better. In this case it is worth considering playing much more Villeins than you actually want to play in a game. Jay Kristoff's deck is a great example for this! You will find a second or third Villein soon enough to find your way back into the game after a Sudden-ed first Villein.
The second reason: Back at the NAC 2009 I've seen many big cap voter deck, which actually seem to dominate most of the day2 events and other "important" tournaments because of their very strong table control abilities. Most of these decks rely on an early pool gain. If you are aware of this you can easily tweak your deck against them. Play any kind of fast deck that can cause serious pool damage and throw in at least 4 Sudden Reversal's and a couple of delaying tactics. Save these cards to cancel their pool gain, even cross table if needed. You should be able to cut your way through the table!
The bottom line: Villein is a strong card, but planing your entire deck around it makes you vulnerable. Have alternatives or exploit this weakness! As always feel free to comment and share your ideas!
by: Mephistopheles
I don't know that it's fair to call it a Villein deck any more than the old version using Anthelios, Anson, and Minion Tap was a Minion Tap deck. The ousting mechanism is through unblockable votes. Many decks have 10x Govern, are they Govern decks?
ReplyDeleteIt is best to have multiple ways to re-use or re-capture pool spent on minions, just like it is good to have multiple ways to get stealth, oust someone, etc. You want to be able to play your game, so be smart building decks!
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