Lyrics of the Night : Hunting Ground

Hunting Ground is an almost standard issue for most clans as a source of blood replenishment for your precious Vampires. They are almost identical in cost and nature, differing only in name and clan requirements. The vast majority of them cost 2 pool, is unique, is considered a Hunting Ground location, and provides 1 blood for any ready Vampire that you controlled, and Vampires can only get blood from 1 Hunting Ground every turn - meaning, a Vampire cannot get multiple blood even if you control multiple Hunting Grounds.

There are 24 standard Hunting Grounds, for those who are interested in what they are, you can look up Anarch Revolt Database. These Hunting Grounds can only come into play when you have a relevant Vampire of the required clan in play, which is one of the limits of Hunting Grounds. Most decks that I've seen do not play with more than 1 kind of Hunting Grounds, sometimes you see 2, but I've not seen any decks in my area that uses 3 Hunting Grounds. The value of the Hunting Ground is not really that fantastic to have decks that go around them. So even if you have Vampires like Mata Hari, you normally would not include more than 2-3 copies of Hunting Grounds in your deck. So what's the point of a Hunting Ground? Well, there are not many ways to just "give" blood automatically to your Vampires, and when your Vampires run out of blood they'll need to hunt, which will slow down your pace and sometimes put you at jeopardy. Not many decks will spend their time targetting your Hunting Grounds too, you generally don't see people investing their Arsons and Unnatural Disasters on your Hunting Grounds; in fact, even Disputed Territory do not normally go after it, though I do see more of that happening. By providing one blood every turn, where you can either Blood Doll them back to you, or use it to power up whatever stuff you want your Vampires to do, it is a good investment as numerically you'll start gaining by turn 3 if your Hunting Ground is still operating. Also, the Hunting Ground provides that blood during the Untap Phase. So if you have a Vessel in play, that blood can be funnel back to your pool to pay for some long-lasting cost, such as Antediluvian Awakening or Smiling Jack, and it is actually a pretty good way to support either their use or prevent them from destroying you. Note that most Investment cards supply the pool in the Master Phase and most "damage" masters do their thing during the Untap Phase. Of course, there are some cards that can be used as semi-effective combos that Hunting Grounds will add some utility to. An example will be Powerbase : Savannah, or the Vampire Guillaume Giovanni - but these are generic combos that do not actually require Hunting Grounds to work. There are some bloodlines that do not have a Hunting Ground to their clans. These clans do sometimes get something that provides similar effects, or have means to gain blood in other ways. But some Bloodlines get similar cards that not only acts as a Hunting Ground, but provides superior functions to it. For example, the mighty Tabriz Assembly of the True Brujah. The Tabriz acts as both an Elder Library and a Hunting Ground, but it only provides blood to True Brujahs. The Hougan acts 1 blood to a Samedi, and the Samedi can tap to gain another blood, it can also be transferred as an action to other Samedi. Other more unfortunate bloodlines don't even have these substitutes. The Daughters of Cacophony must rely on their Concert Tours to gain blood, the Gargoyles can only rely on their Fortitude actions to do so, and the Salubri relies on their Obeah card Renewed Vigor to supply the blood. For these, and some bloodlines, simply do not have any Hunting Ground-like cards to help in getting blood. The Twilight Rebellion included the Anarch only Poacher's Hunting Ground, which is a pretty interesting as it only provides blood when there are other non Poacher's Hunting Ground on table, and they have to belong to other Methuselahs - it can, however, provide blood to multiple Vampires if there are enough Hunting Grounds on the table. To be honest, this does not really seem like a big deal, but an undisturbed Hunting Ground in play can be quite an effective support in long run - blood to power up weenie bleeds which requires blood, blood to funnel back to pool as a consistent 1 pool bloat every turn, blood to allow Vampires to play blood-intensive cards again and again every turn. However, these are not going to win you games, as they're simply support cards, and generally not key to your strategy. (o.o)y