Thoughts on: predator is right (1st part)

Hi folks!

In today’s article I am going to explain my „oh so controversial” v:tes rule. I am aware that the vast majority of v:tes players will always argue with me about this. This rule is by far not a golden rule featuring an absolute truth, but it is very valid in certain situations. In this article I will go through these points:

I. To what kind of decks does this rule apply?

II. Time factor and phases of the game.

III. So why not going forward right away?

IV. Examples

V. Conclusion

I hope this article will make my point of view clear. I personally think that the reason why most players (even very good ones, like members of the Hall of Fame) think that you either can’t win with combat decks or that it is way more hard to do it, think so because they or not playing by the strategy described here. This article is not only a summary of my individual thoughts, I came to these conclusion by observing successful combat deck players and taking the advice given to me by more experienced players. I have to give a special tribute here to Sebestyén Balázs (aka Sebestien Galas), who thought me some of the more important points you will read here. Balázs is a very successful Hungarian player, who did play many combat decks and piloted them to several finals and tournament wins (although plenty of them were not reported). I also need to make this clear: in no way do I think that I am (or players like Balázs are) a better player than those who can’t play combat decks (successfully). I do think however, that we do play differently. While playing a bleed, vote, bloat and breed deck or whatever combinations of these exist will require you the “prey is left” attitude combat decks (most of them) do work differently. There are few players who are expert at both.

I. To what kind of decks does this rule apply?

I pretty much answered it above: combat decks. There are of course many different sub types of them. While I think that all combat decks should be played according to this strategy, you can say that the fewer defenses (intercept, bleed bounce, pool gain, etc.) your deck has the more this rule applies. Also add to this list certain types of toolbox decks, especially those who need time to set up.

II. Time factor and phases of the game.

Regardless of what kind of decks people play, I often see the same “mistake”.  They try to push forward in any situation and if they are not doing well you see that they become stressed. Some players can lean back and prepare a launch, but even many of these tend to lose patience. Let me quote Stefan Ferenci, who was one of the best v:tes players in his active time: “rushing gives you vp’s, patience gives you game wins”. So true. When asking people why they are pushing or trying so hard instead for just staying untapped and discarding for a couple of turns they tend to answer something like: “I need to oust my prey!” or “but I have to do something”. Foks! A game win achieved in the last 2 minutes is just as valuable as one achieved after 40 minutes and way more valuable than a single vp achieved in whatever short time!

The phases of the game often look something like this:

1. Transfers and first actions (early phase)

This is the time when people bring out their first vampire and go for their first few actions. Many decks do play cards that add pool from the pool bank to the vampires in the uncontrolled region. This is the time they play it. Other decks will want to fetch that important equipment (Soul Gem, Heart of Cheating, etc) or setup with permanent intercept (Raven Spy is the most common).  This phase is rather peaceful.

2. First forward actions (early-mid phase)

This is the time when bleed decks go for their first Kindred + Stealth + Confusion (Govern + Stealth + Conditioning, etc) “combo”, vote decks play the first KRC or Parity Shift, wall decks start blocking more frequently and combat decks should rush backwards (explanation will follow later).

3. The blood is flowing away (mid phase)

There is a natural tendency in this game that with the time progressing, the overall amount of blood on vampires will get less and less (despite cards like voter cap, etc.). This tells us two things: 1) the less blood the easier to torporize and 2) try to avoid getting low on blood. It is this phase that a combat deck can start causing damage effectively.

4. Collapse (mid-end phase)

At this point either somebody is already ousted or is in big danger. We have a table threat and the table is not balanced anymore. The weaker players try to avoid the strong one from winning, or they try to make their only vp before the strongest player takes the rest. It can also happen that everybody is weak and the slightest mistake or bad card draw will be the difference. Overall pool is low and some vamps are emptied or in torpor.

5. Game over (end phase)

This is the short period when it’s obvious who will win and they just play because giving up is lame, or we reached an interesting heads-up where two players are fighting for the game win, both with a reasonable chance of getting it.

III. So why not going forward right away?

This is the most important part. There are many reasons and I couldn’t clarify all of them to write them down so I will go with what seems clear to me. First of all you want to avoid the natural fate people meet (regularly). You don’t want to get low on blood and pool by the time you reach mid phase. As a solid goal you should try to reach having around 3 mid (6-8cap) cap or 5 low cap (3-5cap) vampires with almost full blood and 10+ pool, once you reach mid phase. This can be almost always achieved only if you don’t have to face and deal with pressure from your predator’s side. Remember that any good bleed or vote deck is built around the idea to deal massive damage on one single turn. Skilled players will often try to oust combat decks in a single turn instead of continuously putting pressure on it. That’s why they will try to make deals like “I won’t bleed you if you don’t rush back” or say “Hey, why are you hitting me, I didn’t do anything”. Don’t be a fool. They are just waiting for the moment to try the one-turn-oust. Their deck is specialized on this. That is why you should rush backwards first, especially if facing disciplines like Dominate, Dementation or Presence. If you hit them before they can prepare you buy yourself valuable time!

Of course meanwhile our prey is doing his job. Let him do it, let him even take a vp if that grand prey could become unpleasant to you. Just make sure your prey won’t make the game win and doesn’t become too strong. Don’t panic, our goal is to oust him, you just don’t need to oust him right away. Remember we have 2 hour time to win. A strong prey -> weak grand prey -> strong grand predator -> weak predator. Of course very generally spoken, but this is in our favor. Also don’t get me wrong: we do not want to back oust, we just want to make our predator so weak that he needs to play for the survival. In the case that our predator plays a deck that can only go forward feel free to back oust.

How are we going to win you ask? Let’s say we reached our goal, we have 3-4 mid caps in play. Our deck should include Fame and Dragonbound as well as other sources of ousting power (political cards in a deck like bruise and vote, +bleed from either Deep Song, or Dominate (remember Euro Brujah), etc.). Alternatively we just have 5+ vampires (weenie Potence, DBR). Let’s do some math. Let us say we did torporize 1-2 weenie support vamps from our prey so we don’t have to deal with that one later. I’ll go with 1 being a pessimist. We have the Fame and torporize 2 minions from our prey in the first turn we decide to finally go forward. We got the famed one. That is -3 pool and 3 vamps down. He rescues 1, so he’ll lose 2 pool from Dragonbound (should we have it). At this moment our prey is already quite under control. Since he wants to rescue and has already vamps down, there is really not much left to go forward with. Next turn we need 2 vamps to finish up the rest and have a free action to either bleed or vote. Let us say it is a bleed for 2. So far damage is: 3 from Fame, 1 Fame untap, 2 Dragonbound, 2 bleed, 1 Fame untap and let us say only 2 Dragonbound = 11 pool in 2 turns roughly. Wow. Believe me I’ve done better quite often.

This is why this strategy works. A combat deck is not good if you want to suddenly oust somebody, but it rocks if you want to lock down a strong deck. Let us say your prey has 3 mid caps that can multi act and cause a potential damage of 15+ pool/turn (seen that quite often). Your prey has ~15 pool. Doesn’t he seem like he is winning the game? Well a good combat deck, with some preparation can send all those vamps to torpor in one round (or 2 in one -> 1 rescue -> 2 next round) at 0 blood. Without vampires that 15 pool isn’t that scary.  Since you let him play he did the dirty job for you and weakened his prey, so you have potentially 2 vp’s in front of you. You can do the math without Dragonbound, but with an occasional bleed 3-4 with Conditioning that nobody can deflect, or a Parity Shift that nobody can block, etc.

Another reason why you want to delay your forward play is this: people don’t like combat. If you start the game with going forward you will use up your resources just to see your grand prey rescuing your preys vampires. You will have pressure from your predator and you will come to the fate of v:tes namely that you get low on pool and blood with time. Not good.

Once we reach the next phase (collapse) we need to make sure that we are the strongest player. Also: in either the case that our prey made a vp meanwhile or that we more or less accidentally back ousted our predator or even both we will find our self in an actually better position than a 5 player setup could be. The fewer players there are in this phase the less vampires do we have to send to torpor. In a 4 player setup we can even offer somebody a vp which we can easily achieve (basically you shouldn’t go for this, but it is an option). A three player setup is easy to win with combat.

That‘s it for the first part. I hope it made some things clear. In the second part I will give examples, all taken from actual games that did happen. Those examples will make many things clear. This article repeats many points from my previous thoughts on: combat decks articles. In this one it is organized differently and shown from a different point of view. This article will be translated to Hungarian and be added to the “Magyarul” page.

Thank you for reading,

by: Mephistopheles