Tuesday, April 6, 2010

New Deck: Music for Royalty (Improvements needed!)

This is pretty much built from scratch, figured I should elicit some comments before trying it out at my next game. General idea is to get out Daughters to provide blood gain and pool damage, and some Ventrue for votes and bleed bounce. Overcome blocking with Siren's Lure, Freak Drive, Scout and Anarch Troublemaker. Plenty of blood gain to fuel Freak Drives and other stuff.

Possible weaknesses include mixed crypt, dedicated combat deck, and not getting vote lock. Suggestions on deck improvement sorely needed.

Sources of inspiration: Saw Ian Lee's G2/3 Samedi deck with a million Freak Drives, bleed enhancers (moved around with Heidelberg Castle) and Off-Kilter. Wanted to do something similar but with a different clan. Plenty of TWDA decks with breed/boon Daughters but that's not my thing. Ben Peal's TWDA Daughters deck with Siren's Lure as "stealth".



Crypt
2x Scout Youngwood 8 MEL OBF PRE for qui Daughters:6
2x Hillanvale 5 FOR MEL obf Daughters:6
2x Harlan Graves 4 FOR mel pre Daughters:6
1x Janet Langer 3 MEL pre Daughters:5

2x Graham Gottesman 7 DOM FOR obf pre tha Ven:5
1x Victor Donaldson 6 DOM for pre Ven:5
2x Emily Carson 5 DOM for pre Ven:5

Library
Master (17)
3x Blood Doll
6x Life in the City
1x Jake Washington
2x Conductor
1x Bastile Opera House
1x Anarch Troublemaker
1x Heidelberg Castle
2x Agent of Power

Actions (17)
4x Governing the Unaligned
4x Benefit Performance
3x Fanfare for Elysium
3x Lily Prelude
3x KRC

Action Modifiers (29)
5x Madrigal
2x Virtuosa
8x Siren's Lure
14x Freak Drive

Reaction (12)
8x Deflection
4x On the Qui Vive

Equipment/Ally/Retainer (5)
2x Camera Phone
1x J. S. Simmons
1x Tasha Morgan
1x Codex of the Edenic Groundskeepers

Combat (10)
8x Soak
2x Skin of Rock

8 comments:

  1. Throw in a leather jacket, if you are taking the equipment then Freak driving after, you can equip with the jacket as well. every minion that equips with the jacket will untap at the end of the turn!

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  2. Cool idea; deck's currently at 90cards, what would you recommend taking out for leather jackets?

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  3. You do know how expensive and difficult it is to get 8 Siren's Lure right? And 14 Freak Drives isn't that cheap either~ :)

    The mixed crypt is further hindered by your library's composition since half of your vampires cannot use DOM, and the other half cannot benefit from MEL/Clan cards. Your vampires are too big for this strategy to be effective.

    If you only need bouncers, consider adding DOM master disciplines or using 2-4 cap DOM weenies (Inferior DOM will do, how many times you wanna bounce anyway?)

    You should reconsider your master cards, since you do not have enough Daughters to actually benefit enough from Conductors and/or Bastille.

    Soak is ineffective against aggravated decks, you need other FOR cards to help, such as Rolling with the Punches. Consider PRE combat end cards too - Anarch Daughters with Groundfighting, Target Vitals and Catatonic Fear is a force to be reckoned with.

    You should have some MEL stealth too, Siren't Lure isn't that fantastic if the opponent has more than 1 vampire to block.

    Daughters deck who used Youngwood should be maximizing her OBF.

    If you want to go for single clan, then the Daughter's answer to bleed defense is usually bloating, but now they can Shatter too~

    Forget about the Leather Jacket, your girls have FOR man!

    (o.o)

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  4. correction: 2/4 have FOR, 1 has for, one has no fortitude.

    I think that if you go with a ventrue/daughters deck, you could use fewer mel cards and more presence.

    Tap and bleed is a common strategy and if you throw in some votes and bloat, you could do well with a bunch of freak drives.

    Some classic tap and bleed tech includes Anarch Troublemaker, Misdirection, Pentex Subversion, and Mind Numb. Scout has a great special(not even an action!) that can help with this.

    Ventrue include more votes, some clutch dominate, and have presence and fortitude built in. Don't forget Ventrue Headquarters!

    I'm picturing a few Virtuosas in there to send a key action through or boost a bleed, a couple Lily Prelude, Perfect Paragon, etc.

    Reclaim blood through perfectionist, jake washington, blood doll, maybe restoration.

    Emily Carson's special is gold.

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  5. I'l try not to ramble, but I have lots of ideas about this deck as I am trying something similar with the daughters(but not with Ventrue) as well.

    I am only making suggestions for the 'untap/take multiple actions' part of this deck. You may may need more than deflection to keep yourself alive. The purpose of the leather jacket is to be untapped at the end of your turn, specifically the dominate bounce capable vamps.

    Having played with Ian, one source of your inspiration, and many others that use the Hiedelberg to move around the bleed power, like camera phone and Tasha Morgan, this deck probably needs time to build. I think you are trying to take as many actions as possible to overwhelm your prey when the time is right.

    I've seen this type of deck with Black Hand using tattoo signal and guarded rubrics, Thaum/using Rutor's hand, FOR/using freak drive, and even with the Imbued and the power that lets them untap after equipping. I think the daughters and their great new votes and things is a cool spin on this!

    You only need one leather jacket. It is not to prevent or to untap during your turn. It is to untap at the end of your turn after you have taken two or three actions with each minion. Basically bleed with minion A then Freak. Minion B takes the Cam Phone and leather jacket and freaks and bleeds. Minion C repeat, Minion D repeat, and so on. Then start the votes! This takes time for set up and skill at getting your actions through for it to work.

    The first time I saw this my prey was at two pool. He bled his prey for 18 pool. I thought it was no problem , "so what if he has six more pool, I have plenty of minions. i can get through 8 pool on my turn." As I was salivating over my next VP, my prey says," my turn ends, all my bounce minions untap because they all equipped with (the same)leather jacket." Ouch!

    Maybe take out a soak for the jacket. Deversify soak as an agg poke deck will truly make you sad! (roll with the punches, skin of steel, etc.)

    To what Brandon said about reclaiming blood, maybe aaron's feeding razor as another option? Hunt for two freak for one = net gain of one or two with perfectionist.And it can be taken or moved with Hiedelberg as well.

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  6. Good point. If you use a lot of equipment it can all be moved around at the same time. If you go truly equipment crazy, consider Pier 13, Port of Baltimore and/or NRA PAC. Vast Wealth is always cool, too.

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  7. Really great comments!

    Regarding the cost, I actually have a decent amount of Freak Drives and Siren's Lures. Small cap dom weenies are possible, though i do need some votes to help the vote angle. Inferior pre on many of the Daughters makes Bewitching Oration inefficient and have to rely on Madrigal.

    I thought about adding in Missing Voice (+1 stealth @ MEL) but there's the space constraint.

    Tap and Bleed is a good strategy, at least to force my prey to use wakes to attempt each block. I would probably take out Governing and put in Mind Numb.

    Thanks for the Leather Jacket trick, didn't realize that grabbing the equipment from another minion is also called equipping.

    I'll switch 2 Skin of Rock for Rolling w/ the Punches, and 2 Soaks for Leather Jacket. 1 Conductor switched to Ventrue Headquarters, 1 Life in the City for Pentex (how did I miss that?).

    Brandon: a possible use for Nod! :)

    Pool gain is limited to Blood Doll + blood gain and Benefit Performances; I'm having a hard time seeing how w/o the Embrace/Con Boon path this deck can survive. Where is the Off-Kilter?!? (this card is getting better and better the more i think about it).

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