Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Compendium of Resources Extraordinary : Heirs to the Blood : Kiasyd Pre-Con Starter

The Kiasyd has always been one of the strongest Bloodlines, with their superb in-clan disciplines and excellent bleed ability. The HttB Kiasyd starter is one of the strongest of the starters, and is pretty good value for money too, since it comes with many out-of-print OBT cards.

Any decks with Kiasyd will normally utilize their incredible bleed ability, this starter is no difference. And even though it didn't use the traditional stealth disciplines, its stealth bleed capacity is easily comparable to the Samedi starter, if not more, since many of the MYT cards are stealth-abled and multi-functioned.

Crypt
Of the split clan starters, with the exception of the Gargoyles, the Kiasyd's crypt is more effective than the Samedi and !Salubri, owing to the fact that most Lsaombras can use the OBT cards and some MYT cards to a certain effectiveness. The Lasombras are kinda on the fat side though, so as with all other starters, it is still most efficient to bring out Kiasyds than Lasombras, and almost never will you benefit from bringing out a fat Lasombra unless you have absolutely no choice, or you're winning with flying colours.

The new Kiasyd - Isanwayan, is an excellent vampire in this starter. He is cheap enough and has all the necessary disciplines plus a pretty good ability, though it is unlikely that you'll be using it very often. Pherydima is another excellent Kiasyd to have on the table, but the Kiasyd crypt is so good, that pretty much anyone will be able to add significantly to your effectiveness on the table vs any of the Lasombras.

For the Lasombras, try to just use the younger ones such as Ermenegildo, Andrew, or Virginie. The others are a little too expensive to influence early unless you have no choice, or you intend to superior Govern a lot.

Primary Path of Ousting
Bleed, bleed and bleed. There are not many other options for this deck. Resupply your vampires' blood with Capitalist and Hunting Ground, bleed with Governed the Unaligned and Bonding, stealth through with your myriad supply of OBT stealth cards supported by Stone Travel. Most of the time you should be quite successful. Barring extensive bouncing you should be able to get rid of your first prey with impunity. (If it's a wall deck, too bad) You even have Blind Spots to handle the occasional irritating blocker.

Of all the starters, this one has nothing else to fall back on. You have to bleed to kill like there's no tomorrow. There are many stealth cards and bleed enhancements to help you achieve that, you even have a couple of Nocturns to apply more pressure for your bleeds. Ridiculously obvious.

Combat
Kiasyds traditionally has excellent combat defense. OBT combat end cards combined with Fae Contortion can handle almost everything, as long as you have the blood to power it. Tinglestrip in this starter gives the Kiasyd another option that can be quite handy if equipped with superior MYT. Of course, being a pre-con starter you don't expect this deck to survive against good combat decks, but it has enough cards to deal with casual combat and is perhaps one of the better ones where even the off-clan vampires are covered with some combat cards.

Against combat decks, the Zaire River Ferry should be slapped on a vampire as soon as you can. It saves live.

Defense
You have some intercepts, and even a Channel 10. You probably may not want to engage in pointless fighting, so if you have older vampires such as Pherydima, use the Obedience to your advantage. On the other hand, you can use Covincraft and Folderol to reduce bleeds against you for those bleeds that you fail or not willing to block.

Strangely, despite the mighty DOM, this starter didn't come with any bounce cards.

Pool Recovery
Zip, nothing besides the Vessel and Villein package, with 2 Wider View threw in for fun. But you should be killing your prey fast enough to consider that pool recovery.

Where you go from here
Kiasyds are so good that for a bleed deck, the Lasombras have no advantage besides the Path of Night. The crypt is now deep enough for the Group 4-5s Kiasyds to really shine. Remove all Lasombras and complete a Group 4-5 (or 3-4) Kiasyd crypt, throw in more MYT stealth and defense cards, add in a couple of Deflections and some more DOM bleed goodies, and you're all set. Enhance your combat defense with either the almighty Entombment / Arm of the Abyss route, or just stick to the Fae Contortion / Oubliette route.

Value for Money
Very high, with Blanket of Night and Shroud of Absence being the most sorted after cards.

(o.o)

No comments: