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BURN OPTION! (August 14th, 2005) Article for VTES by Ben Peal, US National Coordinator |
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| Back in the fall
of 2003, I got to wondering why V:TES has a minimum library size of 60 cards. Most CCGs have a minimum deck size combined with a card limit in order to force diversity in the deck - that is, to make it unlikely to draw an important (even game-winning) combo in your initial hand. In V:TES, it is most often the case (and especially in combat decks) that you want as large a deck as possible, hence the maximum library size of 90 cards. Apart from requiring players to purchase cards, why the minimum library size? Is there a key combo out there? Can the game be broken by a deck that uses less than 60 library cards? While at the European Championships in Barcelona, I posed this question in conversation with Sten During and later with LSJ. The conclusion we came to was that there simply aren't the cards out there to break the game in such a manner, especially since each individual card in V:TES has much less of an impact on a game than a card in possibly all other CCGs out there. However, this didn't stop me from trying. ;) In my first attempt, I took a look at an old deck called Pochtli Twister made by an old-time and humorously quirky V:TES player from Boston named Keith Page. The idea was to run yourself out of a 60-card deck, then use Waste Management Operation and Pochtli's ability to recycle three cards per turn back into your library (the Twister part of the name presumably coming from the Magic: The Gathering card Time Twister). While amusing, the deck wasn't particularly effective, largely because you had to run yourself out of the 60 cards. However, with the introduction of burn option cards in Bloodlines, the deck could be made much smaller and then padded out to 60 with burn option cards. I decided that the deck would want to rely heavily on permanents for offense and defense, recycling transient offense and defense as needed. After some field-testing, The deck I ended up with was the following, named Pochtli Twister in honor of Keith Page's original idea: Pochtli Twister CRYPT [avg=6.0] 5 x Pochtli (8): NEC OBF POT cel dom 1 x Carlotta Giovanni (7): NEC POT obf dom 1 x Ozmo (6): AUS obf dom 1 x Aleph (4): AUS dom 1 x Raful Al Zarqa (6): AUS obf dom nec 1 x Agaitas, The Scholar of Antiquities (6): AUS NEC for 1 x Frederick the Weak (2): pre 1 x Basil (1): obf LIBRARY 24 x Tracker's Mark 1 x Lazarene Inquisitor 1 x Erebus Mask 1 x Waste Management Operation 1 x Ambrosius the Ferryman 1 x Info Highway 1 x Anarch Railroad 1 x Creepshow Casino 1 x Seattle Committee 2 x Blood Doll 1 x Sudden Reversal 1 x Direct Intervention 1 x The Coven 2 x Life in the City 1 x JS Simmons 1 x Tasha Morgan 1 x .44 Magnum 2 x Leather Jacket 1 x Aranthebes the Immortal 3 x Forced Awakening 1 x Enhanced Senses 1 x Telepathic Misdirection 2 x Telepathic Counter 1 x Spiritual Intervention 1 x Spectral Divination 1 x Call the Hungry Dead 2 x Conditioning 1 x Deflection 1 x Lost in Crowds 1 x Cloak the Gathering It's a very slow and ponderous deck. Offensively, it tries to get out the stealth permanents Erebus Mask and Anarch Railroad, and the bleed retainers J.S. Simmons and Tasha Morgan, then sets about bleeding. Pochtli can recycle the Obfuscate stealth cards and the Conditionings to aid the bleeding process. Getting the pieces in place is a very slow process, but once that happens, bleeds for 2 or 3 per turn will take their toll. As a last resort, recycling Telepathic Counters can help you attempt to withdraw in order to gain another victory point. Defensively, the deck banks heavily on defending against bleeds. With Pochtli's ability and Waste Management Operation, you can play as many as two copies of Telepathic Counter and one copy of either Deflection or Telepathic Misdirection every turn. Aranthebes the Immortal helps out the bleed defense, and if burned, goes straight back to your hand when your deck is depleted. If need be, you can recycle Enhanced Senses, Telepathic Misdirection, and Spiritual Divination for intercept. If you're defending against a combat deck, you can play Ambrosious the Ferryman while recycling Leather Jacket and Spiritual Intervention. I chose Tracker's Marks for the burn option cards because at the time I didn't think there was any material difference between the burn option cards, but the fact that they were red made them easier to see and therefore easier to remember to discard during other players' turns. It turns out that a better choice for the deck is Dirty Contract, as well as including a copy of Brothers Grimm. Because Dirty Contract is a master card, it can be discarded to protect Brothers Grimm. You could use other burn option master cards, such as Tabriz Assembly or Sight Beyond Sight, but you might as well use Dirty Contract since it's a common card. So how did the deck perform in tournaments? An early version of the deck made the finals of a tournament in Bangor, Maine, totally stuffing a Gargoyles combat deck with Ambrosius the Ferryman but failing to generate enough offense to prevent its Kiasyd prey from bleeding out enough players for the win. After some modification (represented by the version shown above), I played it again at the 2-round Sunday tournament at TotalCon in 2004, and this time it ended up winning. In the first round, the deck worked pretty much as planned, shutting down its predator with bleed defense, ousting a Gargoyles Rock Cat deck, then used its recycling bleed defense to stop a Ravnos deck that had Week of Nightmares in play for the win. In the second round, I was sandwiched between a Tzimisce intercept wall and an Ahrimanes intercept wall and got obliterated. Winning in the finals was a complete fluke, as that final round consisted of four combat decks, yet only two vampires ever ended up in torpor. Ambrosius and Spiritual Intervention were enough to stop my Anarch gun deck predator (Trey Morita), and I slowly but surely chipped away at my prey's (Ben pool. It turned out that my prey (Ben Swainbank) couldn't draw a Blood Doll, and that his defense was almost entirely based on The Mole, yet Pochtli Twister is designed to make all of its vampires Anarchs! Talk about weird luck! With about 10 minutes left, I ended up getting the only oust in the finals. In addition to swapping out the Tracker's Marks in favor of Dirty Contracts and adding a Brothers Grimm, I'd make three other modifications. I'd swap a Life in the City for another Telepathic Tracking, so that for no blood cost you can reduce bleeds for a total of 6 per turn, bolstering your bleed defense and improving your ability to withdraw. I'd swap out the other Life in the City for a Jake Washington, as I've discovered that cycling Jake back into your hand every turn via Waste Management Operation is a great way to frustrate combat decks. Lastly, I'd swap out the .44 Magnum for a Sniper Rifle. I thought I'd use the .44 more often during bleed actions, but in practice I felt that the deck would like stronger defense. Does the tournament win indicate that Pochtli Twister is broken? Definitely not. Like I said, the win itself was rather flukey, with some weird coincidences lining up in my favor. In practice, the deck is painfully slow, and while it can oust people and win games, it has a lot of difficulty doing so within two hours. If its prey gets off to a fast start, there's pretty much nothing the deck can do about it. Defensively, however, the deck can stop a bleeding predator to the point of lockdown with recycled Telepathic Counters and bounce. Having gone as far as I felt I could go with the idea of building a library of less than 90 cards, I put Pochtli Twister on the shelf and moved on to other ideas. However, earlier this year the idea got new life. While hanging out in the #vtes channel on IRC (irc.sorcery.net), the prospect of using Henry Taylor and Earth Meld was discussed. Henry Taylor's special reads, "After an action, you may move a combat card Henry played during that action from your ash heap to the top of your library." So, you put a Protean skill card on him to give him superior Protean, and then you block an action and play Earth Meld to strike: combat ends and untap, putting that Earth Meld back on top of your library. The next time you block, you play a second copy of Earth Meld, drawing the previous one, and then placing the new one on top of your library, thereby creating an infinite blocking loop - presumably while you protect Smiling Jack, the Anarch. I realized that once your deck is depleted you only need one copy of Earth Meld for the loop, and then immediately thought of Pochtli Twister and set out to build the deck. I came up with the following deck, named Henry Twister in honor of Pochtli Twister: Deck Name: Henry Twister Crypt: (12 cards, Min: 10, Max: 24, Avg: 4.5) --------------------------------------------- 6 Henry Taylor cel pre pro POT 6 !Brujah 1 Ramona for pro 4 Gangrel 1 Ramona (ADV) for pro 4 Gangrel 1 Chandler Hungerford PRO 3 Gangrel 1 Daliyah obf PRO 4 Nosferatu 1 Sadie pro 2 !Gangrel 1 Huang pro 1 Pander Library: (60 cards) ------------------- Master (44 cards) 1 Amusement Park Hunting Ground 1 Waste Management Operation 1 Gang Territory 1 KRCG News Radio 1 Information Highway 1 Rack, The 1 Parthenon, The 1 Powerbase: Montreal 1 Smiling Jack, The Anarch 1 Millicent Smith, Puritan Vampire Hunter 1 Brothers Grimm 1 Guardian Angel 2 Blood Doll 1 Direct Intervention 3 Protean 1 Coven, The 25 Dirty Contract Action Modifier (2 cards) 1 Earth Control 1 Horrific Countenance Reaction (4 cards) 4 Forced Awakening Combat (5 cards) 3 Earth Meld 1 Form of Mist 1 Quick Meld Ally (1 cards) 1 Carlton Van Wyk (Hunter) Retainer (1 cards) 1 Mr. Winthrop Equipment (3 cards) 1 Sport Bike 1 Phased Motion Detector 1 Ruins of Villers Abbey, Belgium Offensively, the objective is to get out Smiling Jack, then protect it with the Henry-Earth-Meld loop. It has a fair amount of permanent pool gain, which it can use either as a defensive buffer or to influence out Protean helper weenies. The defense is based entirely around the Henry-Earth-Meld loop and permanent intercept, with Henry acquiring a Sport Bike, Mr. Winthrop, and a Phased Motion Detector as fast as he can. Ruins of Villars Abbey, Belgium and Quick Meld are in there in case of Potence combat emergencies, as they provide the most card-efficient source of maneuvers, with the blood cost recouped via The Rack. I tested the deck once in a casual game in Boston and discovered that this deck is never, ever to be used in casual games. While there are a lot of ways to defeat Henry Taylor, such as Immortal Grapple, cross-table voting, Seduction, Pentex Subversion, and Kiss of Ra (*laugh*), if your opponents don't have any appropriate countermeasures in their decks, then there is simply nothing they can do about Henry Taylor. Not being able to do anything is no fun, and as such I feel that the deck is not at all suited to casual play. In the game I played, my predator got to sit around for two hours, while we watched my prey oust his prey and then my predator, and was then killed by Smiling Jack. A week later, I tried Henry Twister at one of the tournaments at Origins. It became an example of guessing the metagame perfectly right and perfectly wrong at the same time. The two previous tournaments featured a whole lot of Potence, so I figured that the next tournament wouldn't have much Potence at all, making it a great environment for Henry Twister. I turned out to be correct, as I didn't face a single Potence deck. However, in the first round my predator was Josh Duffin, playing Brinksmanship deck. How fortunate for him that I planned to eliminate my deck for him. How fortunate for him that Egotha would gain a blood every turn by flipping a Dirty Contract off the top of my deck. How fortunate for everyone that my prey, David Tatu, played Disputed Territory and took away my Waste Management Operation. Argh. Unfortunately for Josh, he couldn't draw a Dia de los Muertos or get enough vote push to be able to call Brinksmanship, and even if he did, there were Direct Interventions waiting for him. I attempted to withdraw, and Josh allowed that to happen, figuring he had a better chance of ousting my prey. In the second round (of two), my grandprey (Christian "Xian" Herro) was playing a Tremere intercept wall that also happened to use Smiling Jack for its offense. Contesting the Smiling Jack proved fruitless for the both of us. On top of it, after I ousted my first prey by simply bleeding him out, my grandprey had stocked up enough Telepathic Trackings to allow him to burn Henry Taylor. Fortunately, I was able to influence out another copy of Henry and got a Protean skill card on him, so I was mostly back in business - except that there was still the problem of contesting Smiling Jack. With time running short, I attempted to withdraw again, and my predator (Brad Cashdollar) figured that given the amount of time left, he had a better shot at ousting my new prey and getting 2 VP than he did of ousting me and my prey, so he allowed me to withdraw for the second time in the day. Somehow, 0 GW and 3 VP was enough for 4th place and a spot in the final round. The tournament had 13 players, as part of the five staggered tournaments in one day schedule, and apparently most of the tables timed out. In the finals, the deck ended up working according to plan. My predator (Carol O'Bryan) was playing a Presence-Potence Princes vote deck, except that the Potence was ranged combat, and my predator (Jared Strait) was a Kiasyd bleed deck, so there really wasn't anything to interfere with the plan. The only worry was the possibility of Jared bleeding around the table. However, my grandprey (Brad Cashdollar) had too many Deflections and too many Minion Taps to go down, and was able to oust his prey (Peter Oh) before Jared could escape the Smiling Jack and Protean weenie bleeds. Unfortunately for Brad, time ran out before he could oust Carol, and since he was 5th going into the finals, I ended up winning the tournament via tiebreaker. After having the Waste Management Operation yanked away by Disputed Territory, it became extremely clear to me that having a backup plan is necessary. As such, I'd swap out a Dirty Contract for Anthelios, the Red Star in order to bring back lynchpin masters such as Smiling Jack and Waste Management Operation. I thought about including a Secure Haven to protect Henry Taylor, but I realized that even if I could prevent minions from rushing Henry, they could still try to bleed, and if the Earth Meld loop couldn't stop that, then it didn't matter anyway, and emergencies such as Protect Thine Own and Temptation could be dealt with via Direct Intervention. Henry Twister showed itself to be much stronger than Pochtli Twister, as Smiling Jack is a greater offensive threat than the bleeds of Pochtli Twister. However, it still takes a fair amount of time for Henry Twister to develop to the point where it plays Smiling Jack, and the threat of tables timing out is still very real. Also, just as with Pochtli Twister, there's nothing Henry Twister can do about a runaway prey, and sometimes Smiling Jack can end up handing a table to someone else. However, the defensive lockdown of Henry Twister is extremely strong, and in the one casual game and three tournament games I played, I was never ousted. My overall assessment of Henry Twister is that it's a solid (and obnoxious) deck that has the capacity to win a smaller tournament, but it will have a lot of difficulty getting GW and VP necessary to win a larger tournament, and is also very metagame dependent. While I was working on Henry Twister, I wondered if there were existing deck archetypes that could benefit from having smaller libraries. The question I asked myself was, "If a deck wants to be as low as 60 cards, why wouldn't it want to be smaller?". Looking through decks in Lasombra's Tournament Winning Deck Archive (http://www.thelasombra.com/decks/clan-twd.htm), the only archetype I saw that seemed the suited to burn option was ally rush. Other archetypes are still heavily reliant upon their transient cards, but ally rush decks bank on their permanent combat monsters to allow them to win. Another conclusion I came to was that while most ally rush decks include 10-12 copies of their particular ally in their 60-card libraries, it's quite rare for them to bring out more than 4 or 5 copies of it in a game. Why not build an ally rush deck that's half the size, needing only the allies you expect to bring out? Of course, the first ally rush deck that comes to one's mind is a War Ghoul deck, and I was excited by the prospect of building a deck that needed only half the War Ghouls of a standard War Ghoul deck. I first thought of just cutting a standard War Ghoul deck in half, but I realized that it might be a good idea to add Waste Management Operation to the mix, to recycle Jake Washington and War Ghouls, or whatever cards I might need. In addition, Kindred Most Wanted had recently hit the shelves, and the introduction of Mata Hari seemed like a great opportunity. I bounced the idea off of Josh Feuerstein, and he provided this great insight: you could use D'habi Revenant as the burn option card and Mata Hari could still employ one as War Ghoul fodder. Mata Hari doesn't count as a member of the required clan while in play, allowing you to discard a D'habi Revenant via the burn option rule. However, her special allows you to still play the card normally (though Mata Hari won't get the bleed bonus from the D'habi Revenant due to card text). This got me thinking about what other burn option cards would work well. Chanjelin Ward seemed a great choice, as it could help protect Mata Hari from a Red List rush. Riddle Phantastique could help slow down a player. The Grandest Trick could help employ a retainer or get a bleed through. Eventually, I ended up with the following deck, named EconoGhoul since it uses half the usual amount of War Ghouls: Deck Name: EconoGhoul Crypt: (12 cards, Min: 8, Max: 28, Avg: 4.75) --------------------------------------------- 6 Mata Hari aus for qui CHI OBF 7 Ravnos 1 Zip ani 2 Ravnos 1 Ana Rita Montana aus dom obf VIC 5 Tzimisce 1 Piotr Andreikov aus 2 Tzimisce 1 Krid obf 2 Nosferatu 1 Hanna Redmonds obf tha 2 Caitiff 1 Denette Stensen obf 2 !Gangrel Library: (62 cards) ------------------- Master (20 cards) 1 Waste Management Operation 1 Fortune Teller Shop 1 KRCG News Radio 1 Information Highway 1 Secure Haven 1 Creepshow Casino 1 Fame 1 Mob Connections 2 Jake Washington (Hunter) 1 Brothers Grimm 1 Direct Intervention 2 Blood Doll 4 Chanjelin Ward 1 Tabriz Assembly 1 Slaughterhouse, The Action (4 cards) 4 Riddle Phantastique Action Modifier (9 cards) 1 Forgotten Labyrinth 1 Elder Impersonation 2 Lost in Crowds 2 Cloak the Gathering 1 Spying Mission 2 Grandest Trick, The Combat (1 cards) 1 Trap Ally (5 cards) 5 War Ghoul Retainer (20 cards) 1 J. S. Simmons, Esq. 1 Tasha Morgan 1 Mr. Winthrop 17 D`habi Revenant Event (2 cards) 1 Unmasking, The 1 Dragonbound Combo (1 cards) 1 Swallowed by the Night There isn't much to say about the offense and defense of this deck: it's a War Ghoul deck. It does have KRCG News Radio and The Unmasking for light intercept, and it has bleed retainers that serve both as War Ghoul fodder and bonus bleed, but for the most part, the plan is to just crank out War Ghouls and flatten vampires. Permanent stealth via Fortune Teller Shop and Creepshow Casino help the recruiting process, supplemented by transient Obfuscate stealth. Brothers Grimm makes another appearance for extra pool gain, as the deck still has a fair number of masters in it. I finished building the deck right before Origins, and didn't have time to test it out before it made its debut in a tournament. However, the deck worked like a charm. In the preliminary rounds of the two-round 10am Thursday tournament, I got 1 GW and 5 VP, and might have gotten more if it wasn't for a major oversight on the part of the table (note: Anarch Troublemaker taps _vampires_ not_minions_. Yes, we were that dumb.). In the finals I scored 3 VP for the win. I was surprised by the amount of combat I saw in the tournament - especially Potence - and was likewise surprised by EconoGhoul's effectiveness regardless. I was also surprised that Mata Hari wasn't rushed via her Red List ability at all, despite the number of combat decks I saw. Thinking about it after the fact, I think there are several reasons. For starters, getting out KRCG before bringing out Mata Hari can allow you to throw a weenie in the way, probably buying you a turn to recruit a War Ghoul. Similarly, you can use Jake Washington and Dragonbound for early defense of Mata Hari, and Jake becomes especially obnoxious against combat decks when you loop him via Waste Management Operation (sort of like a cheapo Ambrosius, the Ferryman). If Mata Hari escapes combat until your next turn, then Chanjelin Ward helps protect her and Secure Haven seals the deal. Another likely factor was table dynamics. At the particular tables I was at, the combat decks often faced the threat of big bleeds behind them, or were cross-table and didn't want to concern themselves with cross-table destablization. Something that was not a factor was the players being unfamiliar with Mata Hari. Her Red List special was mentioned frequently, and it was clear that players were considering it, but chose to act otherwise due to other factors. This isn't to say that players won't ever rush Mata Hari as soon as she hits the table. I'm sure it'll happen every so often. As such, one change I'd make is swapping out one or more of the stealth cards to Mirror Image. You'll also notice that the library has 62 cards. This is completely by accident (I really did double-check the size!), and two D'habi Revenants should be taken out. I'd also swap out a D'habi Revenant for an Anthelios, for the same reasons as before in the Henry Twister deck. Lastly, I'd swap out a D'habi Revenant for an Autarkis Persecution, as Mata Hari does have 2 votes, and this could get you some more pool gain - particularly if you loop it via Waste Management Operation! Tabriz Assembly and The Slaughterhouse were included because I could and it seemed fun, though I didn't end up using either except for discarding to Brothers Grimm. It might be best to change them to Chanjelin Wards. Despite it's success at Origins, I'd have to play the deck more to get a feel for how effective it is compared to standard War Ghoul decks. I really like the tricks it can pull, such as Riddle Phantastique, looping Jake Washington to frustrate rush decks, and looping Direct Intervention, but the vulnerability of Mata Hari for the turn before one can put Secure Haven or Chanjelin Ward on her remains a concern. While winning a tournament with Pochtli Twister was a bit of a fluke, winning tournaments with Henry Twister and EconoGhoul have convinced me that burn-option/tiny-deck tech is a credible design strategy. It does have its limits, and it is restricted to archetypes that are based on card recycling and/or on powerful permanents. I have yet to build such a deck to my liking, but it might be possible to build a multi-rush deck using this design strategy, with Mylan Horseed and a looped Forced March for untap, and an Assault Rifle or other weapon for damage. Following are some of the key cards you'll want to consider if you're looking to build your own deck with burn-option/tiny-deck tech. Have fun! Pochtli and Waste Management Operation - Straight-up recycling Brothers Grimm - Combined with Dirty Contracts, Brothers Grimm is guaranteed pool. Jake Washington, Ambrosius, the Ferryman - My combat opponents were truly frustrated by Ambrosius or recycled Jakes jumping in the way of would-be rushers. Direct Intervention - You're going to need it to protect yourself from Protect Thine Own and other disasters, and it's very, very comforting to have Waste Management Operation to bring it back. Telepathic Counter - If you're going with a heavy recycling plan, you can use Telepathic Counter for both a stifling bleed defense to add the withdrawal exist strategy to your bag of tricks. Mata Hari - Her bag of tricks is very large, especially with the added dimension of burn option cards. Factor in that she can let you play Waste Management Operation, and you've got a vampire who facilitates a lot of decks. Henry Taylor - His Earth Meld loop is highly effective, and it's a surprisingly small module to add to a deck. All you need in your library is a Protean skill card, an Earth Meld or two, and a Smiling Jack. You can add in permanent intercept to better defend Jack if you want, but the cards listed is the core. Because the module is so tiny, it's possible to combine it with another strategy, such as ally rush. Among the decks I plan to build is a mix of Henry Twister with a Renegade Garou deck, and I'm mulling over a mix with Pochtli Twister (Super Twister?). Agaitas - Sure, your prey's library is a mixed bag, but why not?. Do be careful to not fill up your hand by using him, or else you'll limit your ability to recycle immediately. Anthelios, the Red Star, The Sargon Fragment, Carlotta Giovanni - At first, they don't seem like a good cards, as you'll be quickly out of cards to discard for for their effect. However, they can be great failsafes in case something happens to your Waste Management Operation or Smiling Jack. You can also use them in conjunction with Agaitas, drawing cards via his ability, then discarding them for useable cards in your ash heap. |
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