At Your Disposal : Force of Personality

This is a good addition from Keepers of Tradition to the PRESENCE discipline. Traditionally PRESENCE have to rely on other discipline support for stealth in order for them to get any actions through against any good blockers, this is done either through Master Card support such as Creepshow Casino or the new Monastary of Shadows; DOMINATE denial such as Seduction; or stealth-abled disciplines like the Settite's OBFUSCATE, or even light stealth from CELERITY of the Toreadors.

PRESENCE, besides being a good vote-support discipline, also has a reasonably good range of bleed cards, making it, when being the key discipline of a deck, usually a bleed or vote deck. For such decks, 2 key components are stealth and failing that, combat defense.

Quite traditionally, PRESENCE relies on combat end cards to deal with combat. The mighty Majesty is a prime example of this, and most PRESENCE decks will pack a good number of them to keep their Vampires healthy. There are other Combat End cards from PRESENCE - Staredown, Unholy Penance etc. and now, Force of Personality adds the first multi-purpose combat end cards to this arsenal, and though it is not exactly a revolutionary card like Villien or Vessel, it is a good supplement to almost every PRESENCE deck.

What is the Force of Personality good for? Well, at the very least, it is pretty much Majesty at inferior - it serves the exact purpose of Majesty at inferior PRESENCE, which is good enough if basic defense is what you need for your Vampires. There is no point using Catatonic Fear when that one point of damage isn't going to make much difference; there is no need of Unholy Penance if your Vampires are doing more damage with referendums; and it is always good to have Combat End cards that can do something else when it is not needed, or it can deliver a surprise factor in the game - this is where the Force of personality comes in.

The Force of Personality can create 2 effects when it is played. At worst, it restricts your opponent's choice of blockers - not every blocker will always have enough blood to deal with your Vampire, and if he chose badly, you can Catatonic Fear one to torpor, or even just kill off one with some other means of damaging cards, such as when a Toreador is already equipped with a .44; one less blood on the Vampire means one less round of Ghetto Combat with Indomitablity by a Ventrue, or a sudden Drawing out the Beast will suffice to torpor it when an Ahrimane is working with it.

In a deck that has cards which compliment this, such as Aching Beauty decks, or decks that pack good numbers of Crocodile's Tongue, the Force of Personality will make it most painful for Vampires to block - working together, any Vampire without 3 blood on it can forget about blocking. (if the acting Vampire can play superior for both Crocodile's Tongue and Force of Personality) That, is a most effective way of getting past blockers. Ventrues have Seduction to combo with the Force of Personality, removing the blockers that has more blood on them and force other Vampires to declare a block that they might not survive; Toreadors have the Aching Beauty and is the prime user of Crocodile's Tongue; Ahrimanes can already generate good stealth with Swiftness of the Stag and Squirrel Balance, and the Force of Personality is for them to deal with Intercept heavy blockers such as No Secrets deck, as well as creating an even more daunting combat bruise fear factor. All the other PRESENCE-abled clans will have use of this card, some have more use for it, some not so much, but always a card to consider when you have some space.

At best, when you're really lucky, Force of Personality will shut down Ally defense. Now Unmasking is a most deadly card that is common in almost all ally decks that blocks. A simple Arms Dealer will block with a +1 Intercept with the Unmasking in play, and that can shut down many vote decks (especially Ventrues). Force of Personality allows you to get through that. Sometimes, a Ventrue just needed that Far Mastery to go through and take control of that Carlton Van Wyk...

You probably won't need a lot of copies of this card in any PRESENCE deck, but I think it is always good to include a piece or two, the surprise factor that it provides is most interesting.

(o.o)y