In order to avoid the Sixth Tradition, I've been buzzing to gather all my cards from the various hiding places in the work room and transferring them to the study room to make space for the immediate conversion of the work room into the play room for the kids. Under the ever watchful eyes of my wife-sama, I quickly Auspexed all my cards and moved them quickly (and incredibly efficiently) to their new haven.
And since I'm sorta having a long vacation, I also took this opportunity to re-sort the messy lot, throw cards away to the pool (yap, one new batch just reached PI yesternight), and also re-tuning the old decks to fit new environment. The fact that no new cards will be appearing for a while allows me to finally get the decks into more or less a "final" version to test out (and what a disaster one of them was on Tuesday - so much for High Orun and Typhonic Beasts).
However, in tuning decks I suffered from the same symptom that plagued me during my U days - the first few chapters of every text book was painstakingly analyzed, memorized and compartmentalized neatly into little drawers in my mind, and God forbid the examiner from using materials from the remaining 20 chapters or so...it was a testament to Singapore's examination system (or the fact that I was in fact, a genius without knowing it), that I could make it out of the school in the first place.
So here I am, STILL tuning the first 3 decks in my whole lot of decks, all of them had names starting with the letter A. Well, if all goes well, one more "A" deck and I'll reach "B".
One of the decks that I worked on today was my Along Came A Spider Akunanse deck, inspired probably somewhere from the net, and pushed on by Bann's early experiment on destroying every single vampire I had with the No Secrets from the Magaji. Of course, this deck, over a span of over 2 years, had evolved significantly, and I could say that it is now completely and totally mine. That said, working with this deck makes me really really thinking about the discipline ABOMBWE.
ABOMBWE is a teddy bear discipline, with the discipline symbol that looks like a teddy bear to me. As a deadly combat discipline its symbol is kinda tamed. POT had a fist, ANI had a claw, and here we have all the aggravated thingy from a teddy bear.
That said, I must say that ABO, being the first of the disciplines in the alphabetical order, is indeed one of the most unique and interesting discipline, though it did suffered, like most other Laibon tech, from a need of further expansion to make it truly a competitive discipline when compared to the other "mainstream" or even some of the more developed Bloodlines disciplines. Sadly, that day will be rather far away at this point of time. I only hope I could live to see it before the final death.
Actions
The ABO discipline has no action cards whatsoever, and is probably the only discipline that can claim this. (Even Flight has Dive Bomb)
Modifiers
ABO is quite a toolbox discipline actually, its action modifiers are pretty spread out for effects. You have bleed enhancement, stealth, and even block denial (we'll talk about those skins later) The modifiers are quite efficient since most of them don't cost blood, the downside is they're also limited in their applications - for example, Predator's Transformation gives +1 Stealth even at basic ABO, but must be used as the action is announced, reducing the surprise element and generally waste that one card if no one is going to even attempt to block in the first place. That said, generally the modifiers are still very useful in almost any decks that use ABO - I mean, +1 bleed is always good, so is +1 Stealth, and the block denial from Devil Channel Throat comes in handy when one is playing elder Akunanses (or Ugadja)
Combat
Here's where ABO shines. Devil Channel : Hands and Invoking the Beast are probably the 2 most commonly seen combat cards for ABO combat. Combined we'll be looking at a lot of aggravated damage over here - which is scary. The other Devil Channels give additional strikes, presses and some of the other ABO cards provide strength enhancement etc. But the 2 key ABO combat cards will probably remain DC : Hands and Invoking the Beast. As for combat avoidance, Whistling up the Beast and Devil Channel : Feet are useable but nothing to write home about.
Combining ABO with ANI (in clan) doesn't exactly work very well, since ANI combat pretty much will be able to handle the opponents by itself in their patented ways without the ABO's otherwise close combat emphasis - the only probable utility is Devil Channel : Feet, and even that is highly questionable. At close ANI really isn't that fantastic by itself, and though Carrion Crows can still add to the close combat that ABO so excel, it doesn't really matter a lot if sending to torpor is all the ABO monster wants. Maybe Drawing Out the Beast can prevent the opponent from getting away to long... ANI, however, provides good means of entering combat with Deep Song and Taunt the Cage Beast.
That brings out the other in clan discipline that truly aids the ABO combat - FOR. FOR allows the ABO combatant to survive most combat up close, while still providing some extra stuff that ABO combatants will benefit from - such as presses - be it from Hidden Strength, or Indomitability, or the extra Maneuvers from Unflinching Persistence. In this aspect, FOR is a lot more complimentary to ABO in combat.
Reaction
Predator's Communion is a good untap card with Intercept. Besides that, the others are quite laughable.
Misc
ABO makes all the Rotschreck decks cry. Pretty much EVERY ABO card allows you to discard it to cancel a frenzy card, removing all possibilities of Rotschrecking your blocking minion - this is a big deal as it also cancels all the nonsense Frenzy cards such as Drawing Out the Beast and so on - creating ample possibility of using weapons in combat freely. Combine that with FOR, and your blocking minion is immune to all those normal means of getting rid of blockers - Kiss of Ra? Checked. Outside the Hourglass plus Domain? Checked. Rotschreck? Check. Nothing short of a Dawn Op Weather Control/Lady Thunder can prevent you from fighting the minion up front when you successfully block his action - which again is not a big deal given that the vast majority of ABO vampires (the older ones) has ANI from on-board Intercepts, and the Laibons have No Secrets from the Magaji; not to mention that all three in-clan disciplines of the main ABO clan - the Akunanse provides good intercepts.
Crypt
Spanning over 3 groups, there are only 24 vampires with ABO, and it is not as easy to place ABO on vampires without it as the ABO master discipline card is one of the few that do have limitations (it is also the only one (Agent doesn't count) that is a Trifle).
The Akunanse is the key clan that has this discipline. Every Akunanse has it, and you'll be surprise to find so many other random vampires having this discipline too, and it is with them that you may find interesting use of the ABO discipline in many exciting possible means, especially for the non-Laibons. (Sadly, all of them have it at inferior, and can only shine if you drop an ABO master discipline on them)
Skin...
This thing is really hard to work I tell you. Really hard. For now I'll probably just say leave it alone for the far future when Vtes comes out of torpor.
(o.o)
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