When a bleeder (usually a stealth bleeder with OBF somewhere on his card) bleeds irresponsibly everyone complains, simply because they could've been stocked up with Spying Missions instead of all the Eye of Chaos. However, for a dedicated stealth bleeder (or the majority of power bleeders), responsible bleeding is a diplomatic tool and a "good to have" thing rather than a "must have" mechanics. Afterall, if you happen to kill your grand prey first it simply means your prey is a few Deflections less, eventually he's just going to keel over and die if he has no answer to your stealth bleeds fast enough besides bouncing.
Indiscriminate damage, however, makes the whole table hate you (most of the time), and it can really mess up your victory parade by killing off all the wrong people at the wrong time. There are token damage such as Anarch Revolt or Camarilla Segregation, but nowadays the Baali can call forth the Shattering of the Gates and make everyone suffer.
The problem of using decks like these is the issue of getting the damage to do you the most good. Most of these ID cards usually spare the user, be it conditional or simply immunize the user. Shatter the Gates is a very good example of the latter, but it belongs to pretty much a rare group of ID cards. Most ID cards cause damage to everyone who's unable to, or fulfilling a particular condition. Anarch Revolt punch everyone for 1 if he doesn't control an Anarch vampire, Camarilla Segregation hit for 1 every round to everyone controlling a non-Camarilla vampire. Some of these conditions can be achieved or avoided, but some are very difficult to overcome if your deck happen to be its target audience.
Most of the decks with ID uses it to thin down the whole table so that opponents are either too busy to survive, or have to focus on defense rather than offense. Some decks use it to supplement their fast and efficient bleeding to ensure an even faster ousting of prey - confident that their deck will be doing the most damage, and therefore their prey should be the first to die since technically they'll be losing the most pool - and every extra bit counts.
This philosophy can easily come back to bite you if your basic assumption fails to materialize - say, someone is depleting his prey's pool faster than you are - or even worse, your prey is hurting his prey faster than what you're doing to him, making your victory point swim further and further away. And if you're using those ID cards that also causes damage to you, then the situation upwind is also something you should be looking at.
And that is THE major issue with ID cards - they just hurt randomly sometimes.
There are several ways to avoid this, or to make the best of it actually. The first and the easiest, is simply not to care, planning your deck to survive until a table of 3 before you start to make sure that your prey will never kill his prey before you get rid of him. Combat decks with Anarch Revolt and Antediluvian Awakening for example, can be the basis of such a concept. Secondly, if you can bloat your ally, or help your ally defend, then your prey will have issues killing - Eagle Sight to prevent your prey's actions against his prey, or Parity Shifts to enable pool transfers; heck, even the various Boons might come in handy.
Lastly, these ID cards could be planned and used only when you're ready or when the situation is ripe. Shatter the Gate is probably most obvious of these - I mean, you don't activate it when your predator has only 3 pool left and the grand-predator has 100 of those. This, however, is easier said than done - an ID card not on table is a deadweight, and too often the ID card is dropped onto the table the moment it comes into hand. The discipline to hold on to these ID cards until appropriate is really a skill.
ID doesn't simply means damage of course, there are many ways to make your opponents suffer without direct pool damage. Discard, for example, with Constant Revolution, is pretty painful too, and will eventually cause pool damage when the opponent runs out of cards to throw. And even if the ID card has a way for the opponent to alleviate its effects, it usually causes some trouble to the party in question - and sometimes the cost is quite significant. (See Antediluvian Awakening).
(o.o)
2 comments:
Anarch Revolt is pretty useful if you can block your prey's attempts to go Anarch. There will be some decks that use anarch converts, which can throw a wrench in your plans. Have a way to block and torporize anarchs, then prevent them from either hunting successfully or being rescued.
Antediluvian Awakening is something that seems sure to hurt everyone, but it will take until the next turn to hurt you(like anarch revolt). It is impossible to control where the damage goes, so kill your prey fast or help your friends.
Smiling Jack is an interesting card for blood denial decks or intercept combat decks. Take blood off of your prey's minions to do major damage to their pool. When they are dead, move on to your next prey. This causes massive table hate and has a D action to burn it, to be ready to defend.
Shatter the Gate is a definite trick deck strategy. It probably requires Life Boon and/or really aggressive bleeding to make sure people die in order.
Well, all these ID cards attack pretty indiscriminately, which remains the same problem~ :)
Making too many enemies is definitely not a good thing, especially if it results in the demise of your grand prey~
Many events are even deadlier...
(o.o)
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