Official VEKN Gangrel-antitribu Newsletter Volume 3 Number 11 November 2000 In this Waiting-for-Sabbat War issue .... FICTION: Ascendance CARD OF THE MONTH: Ascendance DECK: Path of the Feral Heart FICTION: Ascendance As the earth warms ferocious gales and floods are sweeping across Southern England. The gales hardly bother the vampires at all, but floods are a different matter, threatening their subterranean crypts, forcing them up onto the dangerous surface. In Southsea the Cruel but debonair Prince of the City is draped over a leather sofa reading an anthology of World War I poetry and plotting his next move in the jyhad. The wind batters at the turret window, sounding like disembodied fingers scrabbling to be let in. For the moment the Eagle has only one enemy to think about, a non-aggression pact with his predator having been formed for the purpose of destroying this enemy, the Vile and Insane Prince of Portsmouth. What is old leggy doing tonight, he wonders idly. No sooner has the thought formed than his eyes dilate, his mouth opens slightly, and his spirit wanders over the city, swift as the wind, penetrating walls and floors to the inner sanctum where Legbiter hatches his despicable schemes. Ah, he is reading too! My, what a pile of books, forsooth! Let's see .... Golconda in Ninety-Three Easy Stages .... The Little Book of Regaining Humanity .... How to be Merciful ..... Feng Shui for better Ascendance .... Caine's blood and bones, the Old Fool has finally lost it! EXCELLENT!!! Wasting his time with all that mystical gobbledegook while wiser demons put their resources into slaves or the stock market. The Eagle allows himself a little disembodied chuckle and returns to his physical shell, confident of victory. Out in the night, the minions of Legbiter, fortified by a massive dose of their master's blood, are on the attack. Their enemies, distracted by this raw display of Ancient power, are helpless as Rends-the-Treehuggers stalks the Ventrue justicar to her lair and rips her head off. The coup de Grace comes from Starweaver the outcast Mage, and by the time of sunrise another episode of the Jyhad is over, with Legbiter triumphant. CARD OF THE MONTH: Ascendance This is the first and possibly only Card of the Month feature in this newsletter, and it's a plug for what's generally seen as one of the worst master cards in the game. i have been using it as part of my Cheapass weenie allies/vote deck and have been having lots of arguments with John Eagles about whether this card is worth having [his view being that Short Term Investment is better]. i think the card is much better than he thinks, or than i used to think. Furthermore, i think i can PROVE that it is better than competing pool-gaining cards. Judge for yourself! The following, hopefully self-explanatory [i just KNOW this will get chewed up when it posts], table shows the cost/benefit ratio for the various gain-pool-on-your-master phase master cards. CARD COST IN POOL COST IN MASTER BENEFIT BENEFIT PHASE ACTIONS /COSTS [MPAs] [POOL + MPAs] Ascendance 0 1 1 1 Short-Term 1 4 3 0.6 Investment Protracted Investment 3 7 6 0.6 Slave Auction [5-player game] 1 6 5 0.71 i'm willing to debate the equation of pool with master phase actions as costs, but i would argue strongly that if you ARE going to put master- phase pool-gain cards into your deck then they really OUGHT to be Ascendances! OK, so Ascendance costs you no pool and one master phase action, and it gives you one pool. If you divide the benefit [1 pool] by the sum of the costs [0 pool + 1 Master Phase Action [MPA] = 1] you get 1. Short term investment costs you one pool and 4 master phase actions [1 to play it, 3 to remove the pool]. You gain three from it. 3/5 = 0.6. Doing the same calculation for Protracted Investment you also get 0.6. Slave Auction for a 5-player game gives you 0.71. Ascendance, in short, is the most cost- effective pool-gain-on-your-master-phase card in existence. DECK: Path of the Feral Heart One of the preview cards from Sabbat War is Path of the Feral Heart, a burnable master card that gives the !Gangrel an edge in playing Protean cards. In its honour i've constructed the following deck, which aims to get maximum mileage out of the card by using as many expensive Protean cards as possible. Probably the deck is too unfocussed, but i certainly think there are interesting future opportunities for the !Gangrel implicit in this card. CRYPT [12 cards] 3 x Genevieve 3 x Caitlin 3 x Sadie 3 x Monique LIBRARY [90 cards] MASTERS [18] 3 x path of the Feral Heart The Hungry Coyote Auspex Dominate Campground HG 2 x Blood Doll Minion Tap Depravity The Rumour Mill Pentex Loves You! City Gangrel Connections Legendary vampire Tomb of Rameses III Giant's Blood Dreams of the Sphinx Disciplineless [16] Cardinal Benediction 3 x Kine Resources Contested Ancilla Empowerment 2 x Consanguineous Boon 5 x Wake with Evening's Freshness .44 magnum Leather Jacket 2 x Cryptic Rider Protean [16] Horrific Countenance Shadow of the Beast 2 x Shadow of the Wolf 2 x Rapid Change 2 x Uncontrollable rage 2 x Body Flare 2 x Wolf Claws 2 x Dissolution 2 x Earth Control Auspex [12] Pulse of the Canaille 2 x My Enemy's Enemy 2 x Enhanced Senses 2 x Spirit's Touch Telepathic Misdirection 2 x Aura Reading 2 x Eagles' Sight Animalism [12] Army of Rats 4 x Rat's Warning 4 x Cat's guidance 3 x Carrion crows Dominate [8] 2 x Grave Robbing 3 x Conditioning 3 x Deflection Fortitude [8] Restoration Masochism 3 x Skin of Steel 3 x Skin of Rock OK, this newsletter is slightly early because by tomorrow it will be obsolete - Sabbat War pre-release tourneys will have been held, and by next month i hope to have digested the set sufficiently to offer some thoughts about how the Gangrel antis measure up in the transformed World of Darkness! Until December, then, cheerio!