This article has basicly combined the concerns of many regarding the ability to make a deck with 20ish (or more or less) S:CE cards in a NL or SPTR environment. If I didn't include an arguement, let me know, and I'll get back to it.
Most decks tend to build up a defense against each strategy. For a S:CE deck, one has the ultimate defense against most combat, only really in trouble if someone Hidden Lurkers, etc... As a result, a deck will almost always use S:CE over other options. The only really reliable cards to fall back onto are damage prevention (Fortitude or Sideslip). Why manuever when you can S:CE? This is the main weakness of the S:CE deck... S:CE is the only thing it tends to use.
What this means is that a deck attacking a S:CE deck will not have to use its manuevers, presses, etc... There is little card waste (most often a strike card and a card to get into combat). This can be cut down by a number of combat clans, by striking lightly at first. Celeritous combat can do sneaky things, hit for hand damage (1), and if they don't majesty, celeritous strike them, hard.
This is how the "big hit" comes into things. Once an opponent is out of S:CE in hand, for reasons gotten into below, they are in trouble. If you are playing combat, and do have presses and manuever, if they are playing S:CE, their only option of getting more cards in the combat is by playing cards. If they don't have that S:CE card, since S:CE is often the only combat card they'll have, they aren't going to draw another one. You can tear an opponent to hell. Gangrel can press and press until they are done with the opponent and ready for more.
All of the "anti-S:CE" cards are (arguably) useful in their own right.
Peter Bakija writes:
A counter disection of anti S:CE cards:
Immortal Grapple: [Good, but rare and needs manuevers for back up]
Rareness is an issue for IG, but the "manuevers" are not really necessary. Most S:CE decks cannot manuever. Heavily useful in any Potence combat deck.
[Fast Reaction/Hidden Lurker: Takes two minions and combat cards]. Not a very reliable or useful combo.
If one is not playing a combat deck, then this entire arguement is relatively unimportant. If one is playing a combat deck, then this card is extremely useful. Not only can the opposing minion not S:CE, but they cannot even strike. This provides the perfect opportunity for the "big hit." Extremely useful in any Auspex/Obfuscate combat deck. > Psyche: Yeah, it starts combat over, but then they get to draw another S:CE card. Doh. I've just used 2 minions and at least 3 or 4 cards. You have used 2 cards and one (untapped) minion.
You have used one minion and one card (Psyche). They need to have two S:CE ends in hand in order to not actually have to fight. This is another way to "prime the pump" by either have this minion or the next one nearly ready to jump down the throat of a Methuselah with 2 less S:CE. Useful in any Celeritous combat deck.
These cards are useful, but so are the other, easier options to get rid of a S:CEnding Methuselah: Forcing the hand. If a Meth. is constantly using S:CE, these cards are leaving their hand. Let's look at how much of a deck would need to be S:CE to be constantly ready, on average:
# combat per
table rotation % S:CE in deck
1 ~14.3%
2 25%
3 ~33.3%
4 40%
5 ~45.5%
6 50%
When that S:CE is not in hand, if combat occurs the S:CEnder is in deep
trouble. Not only is this combat a doomed one, but any other combats
until they can cycle cards.
The Gangrel is touted as defenseless to the S:CE deck. While they are perhaps the worst hit, they have many options, as Wyatt Cheng and Alec Habig(??) wrote. Since S:CE decks are not likely to manuever, the Gangrel will only be "wasting" its get into combat card in return for one S:CE card. Using Haven Uncovered's and light intercept (from Raven Spies and Cat's Guidance) will keep the S:CE deck under constant attack at the cost of a few cards useful in any context and absolutely no wasted cards. The moment a Gangrel deck gets can be taken advantage of wonderfully with presses and a final Wolf Claws.
Combat encompasses one-third of the "major strategies" in Jyhad (along with bleed and vote). As such, most "good decks" prepare defenses for each of these three main strategies. Good players realize that they must keep their opponents possible defenses to their own strategy in mind when creating a deck. For Malk S&B, one must realize that someone might have a lot of permanent intercept, and thus throw in Seductions. For a combat deck, one must realize that there might be celeritous combat, agg combat (from Tremere/Gangrel), or Run-Away combat. One should always act accordingly. In making a combat deck that you feel could be succeptable to S:CE, throw in more Haven Uncovered/Bloodhunts/Archons than Bum's Rushes. If you have access from your disciplines to the other anti-S:CE cards, throw in a few or many, depending on how well they fit in with the total action of your deck. After all, they all have uses in their own right.
In order to have a reliable defense against a combat deck that would kill them, they need a large number of S:CE (see above). If they have a S&B predator they need a lot of deflections/auspex reduction. If they have a political adversary, they need political power. Simply put, the sheer amount of space that the S:CE cards are needed to be reliable bog down the deck so that it cannot do anything else as well as another deck could. It cannot bleed as well, vote as well, or do anything else as well or as reliably as another, similar deck could.
This is basicly the problem with all focused decks. They gain strengths in one area (combat avoidance, for example) at the expense of everything else in their deck.
A number of decks can take care of a heavily S:CE. My own decks (for the most part, all having at least decent "generic" defenses):
If a S:CEnd deck isn't winning too much, why consider it a problem? The idea of players not playing to win is a far different arguement than S:CE. If the problem is boredom, see below.
Anyone can make a boring deck in virtually any environment (say above 3CL).
Under Golden Tenets, it is assumed that Form of Mist at Superior is played as an action modifier. After all, you are modifying the action. That should solve that problem. Under the SPTR, a clause to make all cards that modify actions be played as action modifiers has yet to be released to the supporters (along with other proposed changes) for their decision, but it should soon be official SPTR stance.
Peter Bajika writes:
Malcom, the main point of this thread (well my main point, anyway) is not
that a deck with 20 Majesties can't be beaten, but that a deck that is 25%
Majesties and 75% something else will completely nullify a combat deck
that is 100% combat, and a combat deck more or less needs to be 100%
combat to be effective because combat decks are far more card/combo
dependant that most other deck designs.
See the above. Note that pretty much any 100% combat deck will be by any number of decks. A 100% anything deck is not robust and doesn't typically deserve to win if it doesn't put into consideration counters to its counters. Remember, combat decks can use the principals of Forcing the Hand, and Hitting Hard, simply due to the way that S:CE keeps combat cards in the hand of the combat deck. Any 100% combat deck had better have some way of dealing with its counter (S:CE), whether it be simply more Haven Uncovered/Bloodhunt/Archon or other "permanent" combat cards or S:CE "hosers".
I, also, in the face of that sort (10 DC, 10 MisD, 30 Cond) cheese would grab some wine and crackers, and announce "It's Fiddler Crab season and I am a Fiddler Crab. Shoot Me! Shoot Me!" until I was dead, and then join the loser table :-)
Under SPTR or NL/GT I don't see the above deck winning at any table, unless it got extremely lucky.
Robert Goudie wrote:
While I don't dispute your statement that a deck with 20 majesties in
it will rarely win, I believe that it's a problem that these decks even
exist.
Why? If a player is not playing to win, that is a problem in-and-of itself. If they are, they will soon play something else that will win more often.
I wrote:
Well, first of all, some clans just can't do everything. I mean, why
would a Ventrue deck be worried about their opponent playing S:CE? They are
the ones who want to use it themselves to avoid getting killed.
As I said, they are not too badly hit. After all, why should they care? I was not trying to say that any clan should try to do everything.
I wrote:
What has the S:CE deck done? Screwed one clan, the Gangrel. In return
for which, they are only likely to win if their only opponent is a
Gangrel fighter. They still need to have a way to kill their opponent
efficiently, and if their hand is clogging with S:CE cards, how will they
do that? Under the Golden Tenets, its not likely just bleeding.
James wrote:
So where does that leave me? I play a Gangrel combat deck; do I just
give up, and say "Well, the Gangrel are just screwed. I guess I should
just play the Brujah instead."
Even under GT, it would more often go like this:
A: I bleed you for 7. At +2 stealth. Again.
B: Grrr... On my turn, I go to beat up your vampire.
A: OK, I S:CE.
B: Oh, well.
No repeat actions there, just me being feeb.
The above is highly unlikely to happen. Maintaining both high bleeds, high stealth, and S:CE is virtually impossible as of yet. Even when the Setites come out (Obf/Pre), maintaining the combination in hand consistenly is simply next to impossible, let alone providing any kind of bleed or vote defense.
Reasons that the S:CE deck is not degenerate: