SANguinus - discipline analysis

Once upon a time I tried to build a Blood Brothers deck. It was a long time ago
and the deck is still one of my favourite things that don't really work.
I remember at the time I could not find any decent resource about Sanguinus,
their signature discipline, and I had to learn things the hard way.
Now I'll try to summarize my findings and thoughts about this not often played
yet actually pretty interesting discipline.


General description:

Sanguinus is a discipline based on cooperation of usually same circle members
of the Blood Brothers clan. This discipline is clan-restricted and there's not
a single vampire outside the BB clan with even a basic knowledge of it.
It allows the user f. ex. to make other vampires stronger, take hits for them
or give them blood. Even with only one ready controlled BB Sanguinus can help.


Actions:

Every action on SAN has its appeal save the very expensive Coagulated Entity (quite interesting indeed, isn't it). This action card allows a vampire to enter combat with another vampire at 0 stealth
and can give the acting vampire considerable benefits based on how many same circle BB's you control. The problem is that other than Shell Game the BB's don't have any easy access to stealth and so this action is very easy to block. Compared to Oppugnant Night this card really leaves much to be desired - I only use it as the possibility to rush a second time with potentially devastating effect.
Apart from that I'd like to mention Hive Mind with both effects being very nice and Redistribution - tactical possibilities are endless! Unwholesome Bond is a pretty standard thing; nice but really nothing to write home about.


Political Actions:

Uhh, Blood Brothers prefer politics of the Finnish type. :-)


Action Modifiers:

From this card type Hay Ride is being played quite often; in combo with f.ex. Coagulated Entity,
perhaps? Or maybe Hive Mind? Depends on your needs at the time and that's the coolest thing about the card. Shell Game is the only stealth card the BB's have access to and the cost is quite high. Claiming the Body gives the BB's a possibility to play tap-and-dosomething to some extent, and again, there are some nice possible synergies between Sanguinus cards. Slake the Thirst is a really nice card even when played as a combat card (f.ex. with Taste of Vitae), but the superior effect is the thing - and again try to imagine the possibilities of combining it with other SAN cards - Unwholesome Bond? Redistribution? That's what I call an easy access to a lot of vitae. (In your face, Salubri!)
And now for the big guns - Walk of Caine is the thing that makes this clan at least a bit playable. Since with Hive Mind and Unwholesome Bond it's very easy to have 4-5 ready big guys (generally with a little help of Wider View) or 10+ vampires thanks to Hermanas being non-unique, the consequences are obvious. Fancy a bleed of 6-7? No problem.


Reactions:

Gestalt and Gestalt only. If you feel a Blood Brothers deck needs to block an action from time to time, this card makes it much easier for you. The superior effect gives the midcap Kiev and Torrance circles nice boost in resulting combat, if any. :-)


Combat:

Being more of a support discipline, the Sanguinus combat cards are pretty much of a tactical value. Brother's Blood makes it possible to use another BB as a meatshield, Coordinate Attacks and Free Fight are favoured by those who can't handle a fair fight :-), and Clockwerx may result in a WTF effect on your adversary's face.
However Octopod is a much better Blur and in combination with Three's a Crowd and Potence combat cards results in a very nice potential damage output. No need to mention Slake the Thirst again.


And that's it. There are no more Sanguinus cards. No need for equipment, allies or retainers.
Three's a Crowd and Oppugnant Night are both great cards requiring BB only, but I mentioned them already.
And finally, Thicker Than Blood has one flaw - it only works for unique vampires, so no quick Hermanas for us. However due to easy access to vitae for the BB's it could be playable to some extent. I just don't like it somehow. :-)

Again, I hope at least someone will find this rant interesting and maybe even helpful. If you find somewhere here the inspiration to build a nice BB deck, I wish you luck. If you have anything to ask me, don't hesitate to post in the discussion below.


Carpe noctem.

What Am I Up To Now?

 

Recently I had a couple of weird ideas about decks I could build - they were mostly just for fun and could not be very efficient but where's the fun in playing efficient decks?? :-) Here are some of the possibilities together with some comments as to WHY and WTfrig.



Stupid idea #1: DOM FOR OBT POT (tha) deck ft. Marcus Vitel Adv. and/or Luca Italicus w/ Lord Vauxhall and one or two other little dudes as support.

WHY? Because I am desperate to use Black Metamorphoses somewhere, I have three extra Heroic Mights and still haven't utilized all my Freak Drives (or - Tariq-Fatima deck proved too unstable and unfunny - sometimes funny for me but not so much for the rest of the guys, but much more often not even for me). Since POT OBT DOM is not a huge problem, why those big scary guys (and both of them are 10 caps, screw them)? Because of the huge cost of Heroic Might and Black Metamorphosis and the need to multiact somehow (thus the FOR, will come in handy in combat too, obviously). Right now I'm in the phase of "is it worth the time and effort and Deflections I don't have enough of or not". When ready, this deck could do some serious damage by bleeding and rushing, but I have the feeling it won't be so easy in the end. We'll see if we'll ever see.



Stupid idea #2: Hazimel & Mata Hari multiacting bleed, bind and bounce!

WHY? My reason to try and build this weird and probably unusable thing is that Sensory Deprivations are cool and Nighmare Curses are even better! Aside from that - they published two great cards for CHI AUS and then gave us like 3 guys who can inherently play them at superior and one of them is a friggin Tremere! Can anyone enlighten me as to why is it so? And because I think both Nightmare Curse and Heart's Desire are really cute little thingies (and my last attempt at using them was not a huge success, weenies and discipline cards suck even with Lilith's Blessing) I just have to try to prove they are actually playable to some extent. Both Hazimel and Mata Hari have great abilities; maybe I'll later try out Wamukota or Durga Syn or Genina, but right now Mata Hari seems to be the best quasi-support for Hazimel to me.


Stupid idea #3: Salubri and Salubri ONLY deck!

Yeah, we've moved to the realm of pure ridiculousness now. Three nights ago me and my friend Silmegil were sitting in a pub and talked about those very important things in life like what deck should I build next and my friend said - why don't you build a Spirit Marionette deck? It can do some nice things and nobody really plays it here. Then we went home and next day I started doing my research. I found out some interesting things:

1. The 2nd group vampires cost in appropriate numbers roughly the same as my Volkswagen.
2. Never build a deck without first researching the availability of the desired cards and never get too excited about an idea.
3. The scarce penalty is a bitch.

So, why Salubri only? Because I don't believe in decks where one dude does this and another dude does something else. Maybe it's because I'm a crappy deckbuilder (which is probably true, I must say), but I just don't believe these things can work. And nobody tried that out before me, judging from the deck archive on http://www.secretlibrary.info. So Minion Tapping, Renewing Vigor and sometimes maybe doing something forwards shall it be! I moved a little bit sideways from the standard Marionette + Heidelberg stuff (but I play both of these cards to some extent, just not as many of them as is probably common).


And that's about it for today, work to do (translators don't have weekends as other people do, they just work or don't work) and later in the evening beer to drink! Feel free to share your thoughts in the discussion below.

Carpe noctem.

Why and Why Now?

Hello everybody!

This weekend I participated in the VTES European Championship in Budapest and when I finally got back home, I found out I was so full of impressions I just needed to put them "on paper" somehow - that is the purpose of this blog. I'd like to post random thoughts about VTES, some board game rambling and sometimes just other things I find interesting, outraging, ridiculous etc.
I hope you'll enjoy yourselves, any comments will be very welcome.

For now I'd just like to thank Milan Horvath and the rest of the team of organizers, judges, support dudes and stuff for organizing the best gaming event I had the luck to be part of and I hope it wasn't the last time they had an opportunity to show off their amazing organizing skills.

I'll just go to torpor now and hope no-one will rescue me anytime soon. :-)

Carpe noctem.