Recruitment Exercise - Good for the Black Hand?

Amenophobis wrote:

Haze wrote: the original definition doesn't matter; on the internet it means "I know you are, but what am I?"

You lost me here (sorry, non-native speaker). Can you elaborate a bit?

"Projection" is a complex psychological term. See, for example, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection

On the Internet, accusing someone of projecting typically actually means "You called me a poopyhead because you're a poopyhead. POOPYHEAD."

Haze wrote: the entire black hand concept is one of the most uninteresting concepts ever added to the game, one tier above the nigh useless redlists and trophies.

Here I absolutely disagree, buddy.
I like the concept of Black Hand. I like the Watchtowers, the Seraph based cards, the cards that interact with Sabbat-Vampires. Maybe the concept isn't earthshaking strong, but it is NOT uninteresting.

And how can you call the trophy concept boring and useless? It is hard to make a tournament winning deck out of it, but it is fun trying to build a good trophy deck. I love to play my Hardestadt-Trophy-Deck and it is feared in our playgroup.

So IMHO these concepts wouldn't have been chosen as a theme for the first VEKN-made expansion for sure, but still they are nice add-ons to an already great game.

Joscha wrote: And how can you call the trophy concept boring and useless? It is hard to make a tournament winning deck out of it, but it is fun trying to build a good trophy deck. I love to play my Hardestadt-Trophy-Deck and it is feared in our playgroup.

Boring = Too many moving parts to make work so I can't be bothered. The difficulty of the challenge makes it not worth attempting ergo "boring".
Useless = Unlikely to win me a tournament ergo "useless".

I don't love the Trophy Mechanic. I love the IDEA of the Redlist-Trophy Mechanic but it has always felt like a card that would make for a fantastic set of Storyline-type ideas (even as a way to add new 'non-canon' vampires into the game). But considering that the few "Trophy Decks" that I see winning anything tend to either be Walls or the Anson Trophy Breeder... suggests that the setup for a Trophy is far less valuable in VTES than it is in VtM. (Having a HG would be Golden... getting given a small domain would be equally golden... getting a whole clan who will just 'let you be' equally golden... but in VTES they're not spectacular)

Thematically, it strikes me as odd that some vamps are redlist. Ok, really one, Qawayayayablah, the g5 !salubri with +2 strength. Its funny that combat heavyweights lime Enkidu amd Germaine are, but i have the book, they are in there.
But i dont see redlist as a drawback for someone too scary to rush. I mean, Enkidu only has little fortitude, so my playgroup doeant fear him, but yoi get the idea.

The problem is as mentioned, the moving parts. Hardestadt is one of the strongest vamps for the archetype, but ive seen other justicar level vamps run the action, especially with muaziz.

Combat in a vaccuum having toys for burning minions would help them, but the additin of the action by a titled fatty slows it down. Really, i would like to do more with trophies, but its a chore. It at least gives combat something to do early game, i guess.....

Bh is simpler, and its biggest priblem is wallpaper from both BH sets. How many copies of remover or the bloodingo other meh commons will you run? One to two remover, normally.

They could have planned support vamps around the seraphs of eaxh grouping, making Jalaan have good combat , banjoko bh weenies with dom, more small assamites in g5 for bh, etc, but the closest is eleiemelech havimg marge, lily, and hagar in his grouping, and later nicomedes.

Crypt support is key for bh if you dont just spam the kamut and untaps. Then, you have a good deck WITH kamut, untap, maybe shakar and or remover. Thats why watchtowers get used, filling in for disciplines mattering in decks.

Still, less troublesome that anarch or research degelopement though.....