Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Singing a New Tune - Misery Tour

Crypt (12 vampires)
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4x Pariah
3x Zachary
1x Amisa
1x Harry Reese
1x Boss Callihan
1x Tock
1x Lena Rowe
Library (90 cards)
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Action (9)
2x Legal Manipulations
7x Social Charm
Action Modifier (21)
4x Aire of Elation
4x Cloak the Gathering
2x Earth Control
2x Elder Impersonation
2x Faceless Night
1x Lost in Crowds
4x True Love's Face
2x Veil the Legions
Action Modifier/Combat (5)
1x Rapid Change
4x Swallowed by the Night
Combat (27)
1x Body Flare
6x Claws of the Dead
4x Flesh of Marble
8x Form of Mist
2x Immortal Grapple
3x Unholy Penance
3x Wolf Claws
Master (28)
1x Blood Doll
13x Life in the City
1x Obfuscate
2x Perfectionist
5x Presence
2x Protean
3x Vessel
1x Visit from the Capuchin
My Misery deck is a variation of the deck of the same name in the KMW guide book. This deck focus on using a very challenging Vampire - Pariah. Granted, Pariah, for a 6-cap Vampire, is pretty good, but his disadvantage is pretty difficult to overcome too. Having played this deck a couple of times already I find it a rather interesting deck to use, as it provides several options in most situation, and on a good day, is pretty alright.
Pariah's combat abilities is my primary defense against my predator, since this deck has zero untaps and really can't block anything with any stealth, it also doesn't bounce, so against a bleed heavy deck it is a goner unless Pariah succeeds in rushing the predator and slow down or stall his progress enough to allow my own stealth bleeds to eliminate my prey.
Against the prey the stealth is reasonably alright, with OBF and PRO my vampires are seldom blocked, even if they try. However, the bleeds are only moderate and killing prey is not fast since my Vampires are not small enough to be considered a horde. Social Charms and Legal Manipulations do help in maintaining my pool though.
In combat this deck relies on low aggravated damage to torpor the opponent's vampires. It does has a lot of combat ends to allow bleeds to get through or against guns and other combat-abled decks that could bypass or FOR those attacks. Pariah's in-built rush ability is very good against non-combatants too, and is several occasions proved deadly to my enemies.
The large number of Masters in this deck does come up once in a while as a problem, but I find that most of the time I'm left with no master card to keep Pariah untap. The large number of Life in the City allows me to use them to replenish my Vampires' blood when I have too many in hand, and will keep Pariah happy enough to keep working.
To play this deck, it often depends on what you draw, which is frustrating, since what you're holding may not be efficient for the time. If you have a whole hand of combat, get Pariah out and quickly attack and use up those cards. If you have bleed and stealth, then go ahead and thin down your prey's pool. Pariah's abilities ensured that you should almost always have something to do. But there are days where you run out of bones to throw to Pariah...
By and large, a pretty interesting deck to play with, and quite ok too during casual environment.
(o.o)

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Pariah seems perfect to use with 9x Ashur Tablets. This way you can recycle masters to keep Pariah going longer and you can dump some of the tablets in the early game to overcome Pariah's special. Recycling some of the other cards you need is pretty good too.

xysing said...

That's a great idea!