Tactics: Suspense & the Unexpected

I have just been reading this thought by ICLee on his Wordpress Blog (Reach in VTES) where he talks a little about "reach". It's all about how you squeeze those last few points of damage out of everything to kill your opponent (particularly from a MtFleecing perspective). But it leads to one of those things I remember doing myself early on... and something that seems to continually get me and others VPs.

(Note: These are my ideas and tend to work for my own playstyle, but maybe by throwing the ideas out there we'll all learn more about the game we all play)

Suspense & the Unexpected

Suspense is the basic idea of keeping your prey just slightly on edge and your predator uncertain. Now there are plenty of ways to do this. The point of building a little suspense in them is so you can affect their mindset, get them off-balance and exploit any misplays made by those around you. It can be any kind of suspence, but the simple start of it is: if people are not always sure of what you might do, then they'll be more cautious for fear of finding out.

A couple of the more accomplished players from the Blacktown group have had different tactics for managing suspense. My own method is to play as if my own ousting is so far from ever happening I can take a nearly reckless disregard for my own position; some players have learned to identify when this might be a bluff but they aren't there yet. Another used to 'Cry Poor', where he would always turn around and claim how low his pool was, how beaten up his vampires were, how likely he is to be ousted any second, etc before he would then turn around and dump most of his hand into a killing lunge to get a VP and often table dominance. Another is a "Pointer" who would commonly highlight the potential of other players to soon win the table or provide "advice about who would be the most likely target for such and such a card". They're all a method for doing the same thing: maintaining some suspense between yourself and the others in the group.

One of my other preferred tactics has been the "Threat before Vote Terms are Declared", where you threaten imminent violence on the player who so much as deems to put that remaining point of a KRC anywhere near your pool... of course before you do everything to vote it down and then obliterate as many of that players vampires/pool. With the right deck, it works beautifully, especially my own !Salubri Bleed & Rush deck... nothing says "Don't do that again" like rushing and deal 7 undodgeable aggravated after cancelling a S:CE or a prevent card.

To illustrate the "Never play like you're about to die" kind of bluff, with one of my first decks I would regularly equip Allison Maller with a Sport's Bike and Bang Nakhs. In that deck Allison was my Speed Bump. An action was declared by my predator (like say... Hunt, or even less likely to long-term affect me but was undirected) and Allison would declare a block attempt. It didn't matter that I had seen him dump two GtUs forwards with Conditioning backups and he still had 2 or 3 other minions... the point to my Predator was "You better have a plan cause I'm happy to block this pointless action you're taking first...". It was even better if I had about as much backup for that statement as a wetted tissue. However, most of the older players from that group remember the game where Allison Maller blocked 5 actions in a row, using 4xWWEF and all sorts of Celerity Combat to stay alive. It's stuck in their mind and while I dismantled that deck years ago, I sometimes get the feeling that those guys still worry when they see all of my vampires tapped out; they always think I do it when "I have a Plan (tm)".

Other standard tactics are similar to those suggested in ICLee's post: the Unexpected
Many of my own decks have the Unexpected.

• My Mexican Sl*ts deck has the because it utilises Zip Guns and Suppressing Fire as a way to bypass Chi-Walls using Draba. For every other wall-ish decktype it behaves like a mild S&B deck, but with someone using Drabas regularly the unexpected event is reducing their intercept instead of generating stealth. It makes you less predictable, less expected and while it can encourage a little defensiveness it can push that emotional button that can lead to mistakes. This deck also contains minimal combat: Unflinching Persistance, Thrown Gate, Zip Gun and that's about it. Expectations it counters: #1 Draba Always Works, #2 BB's = Combat Combat Combat, #3 Putting them in torpor works (read Redistribution again people...)
  
• My Lasombra w/ Animalism deck has the unexpected because it packs some significant Potence beatdown for a deck that holds predominantly Dominate & Obt Sleaze Bleed. The other dirty trick it tries to utilise is using Animalism untaps so I can flick away with Dominate for as long as I want, and 2 +1 Intercept cards. It slams on through the usual Dominate bleeds like all Obt-Dom bleed... and then when someone is planning to smash you with a rush, it turns around and drops Earthshock or Pushing the Limit before reclaiming what it can with a Taste of Vitae to have that extra unexpected element. I'll probably post this thing up later. Expectations it counters: #1 S&B Doesn't do combat, #2 S&B without Auspex can't block votes, #3 A probe-bleed will sucker out wake so I can follow up with more bleeds.
  

Now the reason for including these is purely because people have expectations and by breaking them, hopefully early, they will be worried about what other expectations they cannot rely upon anymore. And that will keep suspense going on for a large part of the game and you can exploit that.
Losing Suspense is the big, big falldown of a lot of players. You either show yourself to be such an all-pervading threat that nothing but your immediate ousting will make the table comfortable, or a toothless tiger that can be dutifully ignored while people get on with the business of killing their prey. (Which may just be you). I used to do a horrible stunt on one of my fellow Blacktown players: repeatedly pester, usually in combat as his predator. There were a number of ways to provoke him but the result was the same: he would throw his whole game-plan out to recklessly assault his predator. It would often come close to having him lose the game, forget about his VP and set yourself up to probably gain a VP if you could survive the short-term blast from this player.

Losing Suspense also happens when you prove that your deck has precisely one trick, this is always the downfall of classic well-known decks or deck archetypes such as Malk94, AAA, Cybeleotron, etc. While these decks are stellar, reliable, and in their own way truly awesome they have been analysed, viewed, predicted and pulled apart. They hold no mystery and little suspense. You see Quira and Dolphin Black on the table with 1 Kindred Spirits in the ash-heap and it won't matter if the rest of the deck is a Malkavian Dementia + Derange trick deck, it will be labelled as Cheese-Bleed for the rest of the game because it is threatening and holds no mystery. Unless you can prove it is not resulting in suspense.