Now the Daughters had been quite an interesting force to play with before HttB, but they had always been severely limited in terms of defense, with all those pesky -Intercept things. Traditionally they have to rely on quickly killing their prey or bloating like mad in order to survive from more aggressive predators. Now from HttB, the Daughters were given a most interesting, and probably one of the most deadly weapon against predators, not to mention that it is also a great weapon against the prey.
The most common use of the Shattering Crescendoes is to remove the minions from the field of your prey (and your predator if they pressure you too much) It may seem like a difficult and expensive action to pull off - afterall, it requires 2 cards in hand at the same time, and it has no stealth - both are challenges that the Daughters will have issues with.
But let's first look at the effectiveness of this card.
At superior MEL, 3 points of damage (unpreventable), to up to 2 minions, is, well, shattering. If the action is executed at the right time, it can send 2 of one's minions to torpor. How many games do you have when you have more than 4 minions on the table - only the weenie decks usually field anything more than this - which is to say, if the Crescendoes are executed correctly, the prey/predator may be without any minions to do anything after that. It is not easy to recover from this attack, since the vampires in torpor will have no blood to recover themselves from.
What this means is that, 2 Crescendoes is probably all it takes to seriously cripple a player. And if executed in the same round against the same Methuselah, easily has more than 75% chance of doing exactly that. What this means is that, you don't really have to do this very often, once or twice against a player in a game can probably damage him enough to stop him right there.
The next issue is then the stealth. Having zero stealth is simply asking for people to reserve minions to block you. A single Carlton Van Wyk, or a No Secrets from the Magaji will have the Daughters scrambling to get enough stealth to try to pull this through. But the Daughters are no longer that lacking in stealth. First, the girls have the Paris Opera House, and the Missing Voice, giving them 2 stealth if they manage to get these into play. The Virtuosa, and if you really really want it, Day Operations, will ensure that no vampires (and nobody in the case of Virtuasa) can block this action. Expensive options, yes, but deadly enough to warrant it. Also, not to forget that Daughters, in almost every incarnation of their decks, works best as Anarchs - giving them the option to use Anarch Railroad too.
The deadliest means to use the Cresendoes is Siren's Lure. Combining Catatonic Fear with Target Vitals will ensure that the blocking vampire, if it is also selected by the Cresendoes, has the possibility of taking another 3 damage. Now this is so going to hurt.
And about getting the cards in hand - since holding 1 Crescendo in hand is a dead weight, and it might take a while for you to find the means or the next Crescendo to make it work - too few Daughters have PRO to use it at outferior, and even at basic MEL you'll need another Crescendo for it to work.
You can probably play Storage Annex for this, but don't forget the powerful Persistent Echo. If you want, you can put a couple of Cresecendoes on Persistent Echoes with your older Daughters, and then even your little Embraces, or Daughters without superior MEL can use Crescendoes at superior. And it'll become a trump card if you choose to use it either as a deterrent, or a weapon.
You can use the Crescendoes upwind or downwind, the difficult thing is choosing when to do it, and who to target. There are of course, means to nullify the power of this card. Minions immune to non-aggravated damage will ignore you, very high intercept on multiple vampires/minions will also give you a hard time, blood restoring techs such as Voter Caps and Multi-hunting vampires will also reduce the effectiveness of your Crescendoes. Even fat vampires who somehow retain lots of blood will make your life difficult.
But most of the time the Crescendoe is going to be a deadly threat. If your prey/predator make a single mistake - such as Minion Tapping a vampire below 3 blood, your Crescendoes can then jump into action and, more often than not, remove him from the game.
(o.o)
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