Gangrel Antitribu Newsletter

OFFICIAL VEKN GANGREL ANTRIBU NEWSLETTER VOLUME 3 NUMBER 12 DECEMBER 2000

IN THIS ISSUE ....
WELCOME TO MY HOUSE! [Fiction]
SABBAT WAR AND THE GANGREL ANTITRIBU
DECK: RAVING WEREWOLVES
NON-EUCLIDEAN COORDINATE GEOMETRY OF VAMPIRES [New deck-building tool]

WELCOME TO MY HOUSE!
	"Welcome to my house! Do please come in! Allow the servants to take
your coats. Hahaha. Actually the servants are those humans over there,
with their clothes on. These are, in fact, the canapes. I recommend the
ones with olives braided into their dreadlocks, unless you like anchovies
- Lady Legbiter spent a LONG time threading the anchovies into the noses,
navels and earlobes of those ones. O, and a cocktail - a Marguerita? A
Bloody Mary? A White Lady? Excellent!"

	I know I am chattering like a horde of carrion crows but I really am
pleased to be welcoming our newest recruits to the annual Christmas
Revel. As I usher them into the hall the Black Spiral Buddy Holly Band
begin what they fondly imagine to be a Stirring Rendition of my newly-
composed march the Path of the Feral Heart on the Pibroch Mor. Well, YOU
tell them they suck, if you dare. Meanwhile I am performing the
introductions. Wren, Ellen Fence and Darrel Boyce rapidly gravitate to
the City faction whose members are soon in animated discussion about the
matters dearest to their hearts; the best place to hide a flamethrower,
watches and knickers considered and rejected as too small and too
scratchy respectively; celerity, an advantage in combat but not when it
is your turn to buy a round; claws or spurs the best fashion accessory
for the modern undead psycopath, with many valuable insights into the
best ways of painting the former to look as though you are on the Pull.

	Omaya meanwhile is looking a bit lost, poor girl. I offer her a
grass-stem to chew in the hope of making her feel at home; deploy my VERY
limited knowledge of country and bluegrass, succeeding only in displaying
its inadequacy; and finally leave her with Caitlin and Monique. Good to
see how Monique has blossomed since the war began - Caitlin having been
promoted a generation, Monique has suddenly become more popular with
those Boys and Girls who like a Younger Fiend, and it shows. Genevieve
joins them, angrily shaking off the Mad Prince of Houston who appears to
have confused her with Samantha, and the four girls are soon exchanging
fashion tips along the lines of Burn the Laura Ashley, girl, Drop the
Bunches and Get An Unlife.

	How very happy I am as I watch my little families prattling away,
and how very many evil PLOTS are hatching in my brain as I organise the
7-a-side Huangball game which has become a traditional feature of our
Saturnalian revels. And little does the Detestable Prince of Watford
suspect how VERY many of his subjects DO know about the Sabbat War, and
will be joining it. Bwahahahahaha!!!!!

SABBAT WAR AND THE GANGREL ANTITRIBU
	Of course the new vampires and the Path of the Feral heart will be a
great boon to the Gangrel antitribu, but I just want to say a few words
about other cards in the set which strike me as having great potential
for the clan. I think that rave and Mystic Vagabond, but mainly rave, are
well on the way to making a werewolf deck playable at competitive level,
as I'll explain below. I also think The Coven, Path of the Feral Heart
and Blood of the Sabbat will turn out to be great cards for our clan,
because with the Path and Blood of the Sabbat you can bleed unblockably
for loads using Horrific Countenance and only pay two blood for it
overall! How cool would that be, for the dominate !Gangrel such as
Caitlin and Genevieve?? And prior to getting out your Path and Blood, you
could Coven your vamps back up to chocolatey-good fullness. I say nothing
of the potential of unblockable votes, because I still think the !Gangrel
aren't a frightfully serious proposition as a voting clan, City
Connections or no. Finally, our old friend Beast is now joined by a new
friend in the form of Miller Delmardigen, teacher of Bahari. I think he
is going to see a fair bit of contesting because he fits right in to a
lot of nice decks.

DECK: RAVING WEREWOLVES
	The basic idea of this deck is simple. Bring out Werewolves. Rush
people. Kill them. Then bleed your prey to death. Stay alive meanwhile by
Raving the werewolves' lives onto your blood dolls. The werewolves get
their lives back next turn anyway. This is a concept deck BTW - not
playtested or happy family-fied so quite likely to be a pile of crap. I'm
fairly confident the concept is sound, anyway.

CRYPT
Genevieve
Faruq
Ingrid Rossler
2 x Caitlin
Darrell Boyce
Monique
Wren
Sadie
Huang
2 small Gangrels with pro

LIBRARY
MASTERS [18]
Fame
4 x Blood Doll
2 x Dominate
Path of the Feral Heart
Gangrel Conspiracy
Minion Tap
Giant's Blood
Campground HG
KRCG News Radio
5 x Haven Uncovered

PROTEAN CARDS [24]
8 x Horrific Countenance
4 x Earth Meld
4 x Earth Control
4 x Rapid Change
4 x Form of Mist

DOMINATE CARDS [14]
4 x Govern the Unaligned
4 x Conditioning
2 x Grave Robbing
4 x Deflection

DISCIPLINELESS [34]
6 x WWEF
8 x Renegade garou
8 x Rave
4 x Bum's Rush
4 x Dodge
Vagabond Mystic
3 x Lucky Blow


NON-EUCLIDEAN COORDINATE GEOMETRY OF VAMPIRES [New deck-building tool]

I've been trying to draw the structure of vampire society. The basic idea
is to have the clans as the vertexes of a figure the lengths of whose
edges are proportional to the number of disciplines that are different
between the two clans represented by their ends. For example, Malkavians
and Tremere have two disciplines in common and one different, so the
Malky and Tremere vertexes are joined by a line one unit long. Same is
true for the Brujah and Toreador. Brujahs join the Nosferatu by a line 2
units long [potence is the only discipline they have in common], and so
on - you don't join clans that have no disciplines in common by any line
whatsoever.

Anyway it is quite easy to draw this figure. I usually start with a
square at the front whose corners [reading from the bottom left
anticlockwise] are the Nosferatu, Brujah, Ventrue and gangrel. Running
back from the bottom edge of this and roughly perpendicular to it is a
quadrilateral whose other corners apart from the Brujah and Nossie are
the Toreador and Malkavians. Behind this is a triangle and a pyramid and
right at the tip of the pyramid are the Tremere. The figure is non-
euclidean so you can't make it but it is immensely enjoyable to "plot"
individual vampires, other clans and your decks onto this figure - you
get a real sense of the "forces" pulling vampires and clans this way and
that, and the positions of the setites and assamites are particularly
thought-provoking, I find.

I've rather grandly called this concept a tool but I have to admit I am
not yet sure how much use it will be in practice - it helps me to think
about my deck construction in a more pictorial way, however, and I
generally find in my work that once I can picture something I REALLY
begin to understand it. Anyway, if I do figure out [a] how to use this
systematically, and [b] how to draw it so y'all can see it, you'll be
hearing about it again, soon.

***************************

So, have a great Christmas and a Happy New Year. And a special tip of the
Christmas Glass to White Wolf. It was very brave of them after two of
their clever and creative house-developed card-games nose-dived to try
again with vampires, and I'm very pleased that their courage and
foresight has paid off. See you all in the New Year for more vampy fun
and the Final Nights!