Lyrics of the Night : Prey-Predator Relationship

The 2 most important entity to you the moment you sit on a Vtes table, are your Prey, and your Predator, their wellbeing directly impact your success on the table, and therefore, one should quickly decide on what to do with them, and how to deal with them. This is almost like the mission statement of a running company.

For the prey, it is usually rather simple. He is 6 pool and 1 VP to you, a floating VP for you to go grab as soon as possible. You want him dead, ousted, removed, or at least not putting up any aggressive defense against what you want to do to him.

When dealing with your prey, there is only this couple of things you want to consider. First, if he is weak, or you think you can circumvent or defeat his defensive mechanics, then there is absolutely no need to negotiate or respond to any of his deals - just oust him and end his misery. Unfortunately, this magical situation is seldom straightforward, and rarely come early. So there is some window for a certain level of negotiation on most games.

Key number 1 is to make him look forward. Having a prey dedicating all his effort in defense is not a good thing. You want him to move some (preferably most) of his pool to influence minions where you can bypass or destroy, indirectly bleeding him; and you want him to weaken his prey as much as possible to open the way for you to get that VP after you got rid of him. In order to do that, you have to talk to your prey a little, reduce his anxiety about your offensive capability, and perhaps even make him a deal or 2 to entice him to take up some offensive actions against his prey. You should always remember that when your prey fights his prey, he has a chance of losing minions, blood and other precious resources (not to mention the ability to block you) that you otherwise have to take out yourself.

There is also another, albeit pretty sad situation, where you're in a position where you see very little chance of ousting your prey. Perhaps your predator is too strong, perhaps your prey hose your deck's primary and maybe even secondary path to victory, or perhaps you have a terrible draw, or luck dictates that you lose a critical minion early in the game. In such cases, it makes most sense to ask your prey for a deal. Let your prey has all his freedom in killing his prey and every other prey he has, except you - you want a deal whereby you help your prey kill everyone else, and then he let you have the final 2 VP by yielding to you at the last. This is a pretty good proposal to most preys, especially if you still have some punch in your deck, or your predator is truly fearsome. Sometimes, it can be the case where your prey simply requires you as a buffer for a couple of turns before he is ready. By getting this deal, you'll have had a chance to turn an otherwise zero VP game into a 2VP "second place", very favourable in a tournament. Not to forget that your prey might still become too weak along the way and you can then re-negotiate to let him yield prematurely since he can no longer get any VP. (Word your negotiations carefully)

Of course, don't do this the moment you see the prey bring out Enkidu, or be intimidated to do so. This should be a last resort where you have little to no chance of continuing the game the normal way.

It is easier to help your prey sweep then it is for anybody else, so this is one last weapon that you can use when all else have failed.

As for the predator, well, you're his VP and 6 pool, so most of the time his proposals to you will simply be variations of "Die, Scum!". Occasionally you might get something like the above, but that is rare. However, when your grand-predator is getting close to oust your predator, you can then start negotiations that is similar to the above by offering help when you can - intercept from your KRCG, some Consanguinous Boons, or even rushing your grand predator's minions. This is of course to prevent a stronger predator from coming into the picture - and during such cases you usually will get quite good deals from your predator. Don't just let him die like that unless he chooses to. Worst comes to worst, offer him the deal that was highlighted before to entice him to hang on. A pool buffer is the best defense one can ever have.

If your deck has the ability to intercept your prey's of predator's actions, then there usually is quite a bit of bargaining. The norm to remember is that, don't bother to block things that you think will hardly affect you - Camera Phones on your prey's minions, Ablative Skin or Armor of Terra where you use Coma in combat, your predator's minions' hunt when they need it to defend against his predator (when he's hunting he's not bleeding, you can then block his bleed) The same goes for combat - try not to reduce your predator's minion count to too low a level where he cannot defend against his predator, but you don't really have to consider too much where it comes to your prey, though sometimes you may want him to have some minions to go forward.

Basically, the whole idea of prey-predator relationship is very similar to the common distribution of a KRC's damage points - 3 to your prey, 1 to your predator. For those who still don't get it - 3 to your prey because you want him dead as soon as possible, 1 to your predator to reduce his resources and force him to adopt a defensive stance rather than spending those resources on ousting you.

Happy hunting.

(o.o)