It was another Monday Night VTES at our FLGS. We had a slightly lower turnout compared to usual with just 4 (including myself) turning up: Sutekh23, Marty the Man, James Fynan and myself. We had a new guy come along and play the first game with Sutekh23 keeping an eye over his shoulder. He had a go with my Sleazy Malks for Newbies deck. It's basically a fat wad of Kindred Spirits, Eyes of Chaos, Stealth Cards and a few crazy fun Malky Stuff (Malk Pranks, Muddled Vampire Hunters w/ Disciplineless combat, etc). It took a VP before I managed to get through it using my Trochomancy Deck (I am convinced that it needs something else but it did well with Martin Frankel and Solomon Batanea out early and an Anima Gathering for Solomon before bringing out Sennadurek... MAN Sennadurek is a nice vampire, that text is great).
After playing a few weeks as the predator of James' Unnamed deck, I'm convinced that a couple of cards in particular are really awesome and that the Unnamed needs something else in the tank than what James is giving it. Evil Eye is BAD(tm). We have a moderately combat-heavy social metagame (I was playing Martin Frankel Rush/Burst of Sunlight, Marty had Lorenzo Punch You To My Ready Region and Sutekh23 had my Theo Eats with Chopsticks deck) and Flames of the Netherworld + Evil Eye is a nasty combat defence module. I do think his Unnamed deck needs Homonculus and probably also needs either Perfection or to bleed using Forgery. The deck is basically Unnamed bleeds for LOTS with The Hordes, bloats 2+ pool (depending on Social Charms or Greater Curses or...) and then spends most of that bloated pool untapping. The Unnamed at least needs an alternative untap, OR, there needs to be more Path of Evils in there (or a better way to defend them). I think a Homonculus would end a lot of James' woes in having his deck crushed between flick and a bleedy-predator place. It also needs some kind of defence, even if it is Rush upstream using [dai] or [mal] or [str] or the Unnamed's own bad mojo (1 blood to get 2R Agg).
Things are going ahead reasonably with the ConFlict Charity Games Day. It will be really good if we get a big turnout from Sydney, at least amongst the VTES players. The Flames of War guys seem very keen to do a recreation battle, like the battle of El-Alamein or similar.
Homunculus and Metro Underground are the way to go .. and only with Enkil Cog on The Unnamed the target on her forehead becomes sliiightly increased. ;)
ReplyDeleteI suspect that a simple defence module would be to untap with Homonculus during your Grand Pred's turn, use Enkil Cog to then rush during your GP's turn and do your best to agg a vamp into torpor. Flames of the Netherworld + Evil Eye should do most of what you need it to do... along with a Bum's Rush or Ambush...
ReplyDeleteHmmm, rushing with Enkil Cog .. your local metagame is more combat-heavy then mine. I would have suggested bleeding a second time. :)
ReplyDeleteWell, if you are S&B and you've got to worry about S&B without intercept, or dominate... your solution is "Potence Intercept" [aka Rush your pred into near oblivion so they at least make a good speed-bump for your Grand Pred]
ReplyDeleteTo deal with stealth/bleed, bloat, AI and bleed reduction, combined with not trying to block anything is usually good enough to choke people on stealth. If Unnamed bleeds twice, there's four pool plus whatever other pool gain tech you threw in(I am Legion, Social Charm). Sure it costs a pool to untap(unless you use homunculus on your pred's turn), but you gain it back and then some. If you play Unnamed + non-infernal obf pre dorks, your upkeep is minimal.
ReplyDeleteThe biggest issues with using that [dorks + more bleeds] in the deck in question is:
ReplyDelete#1 It uses The Hordes as its primary bleed modifier w/ Path of Evil Revelations to minimise the cost of untapping. Plus minimises pool cost by using Tending the Flock to get them for free.
#2 It has negligible intercept, but even a moderate stealth S&B deck should be able to find other actions to burn stealth, like destroying the Path or stealing other things on the table like PB:M, Rack, etc.
#3 It as a fairly stable combat module (that stands up very well against a lot of standard combat) with a very short chain (2 cards), so it seems sensible to modify it to include a proactive combat module to remove key heavy-bleed vampires.
However, I'm not in any way saying "no" to those ideas. I also don't yet have a full decklist on hand. So when I get it from the deck's owner, I'll post it.