Archived from groups: rec.games.trading-cards.jyhad (
More info?)
In message <uGMZe.197$DY.67@newssvr33.news.prodigy.com>, Name
<name@name.com> writes:
>I have noticed that in tournament games some players will deal with the
>stealth bleeding predator by simply not blocking the bleeds, hoping that
>then their predator will have too many stealth cards in their hand.
>
>However, whenever I have tried this it has never worked! I end up just being
>bled for large amounts by several minions -- and he might just have only had
>one stealth card in his hand!
I've often seen players try to block a bleed or two, only to see stealth
card after stealth card pumped out. At which point, they start doing
other things - be it sitting on their hands, bouncing or whatever.
Also, many successful stealth bleed decks know about this tactic, so
even if you don't block they will often have card cycling to hand.
Obviously, they'd rather use something else if they can, like playing
the cards, but cyclers like Dreams of the Sphinx and The Barrens are
good for a wide variety of decks. There are also potentially good
sources of stealth that are less vulnerable to card cycling worries -
Marked Path, for example, might make a few showings, good for stealth
but playable (from your hand) without the normal excess stealth
concerns.
Also also, most decks tend to have zero to light intercept (the
occasional Telepathic Misdirection for intercept or bounce, the odd
master intercept location), or heavy intercept (e.g. a wall deck). IME,
the ones that include medium intercept are the Prince decks which are
relatively easily spotted - and you can often take those out with cards
like Seduction. Ministry might also be a possibility, with Black Hand /
Seraph vampires - I've not seen that turn up so much in practise, but
I'm sure someone's doing it somewhere.
The point is that most of the decks you'll see, I would wager, have
light intercept - so you don't need heavy stealth. The wall decks will
be able to generate huge amounts of intercept pretty quickly (as they'll
often have a couple of intercept locations going off quickly), so you
either rely on speed or trying to take out the blockers. For that
reason, cards like Seduction are great, or Call of the Hungry Dead or
Elder Impersonation. So a strong stealth bleed deck these days will
often be relatively low stealth, but with a few block denial cards -
Seduction is also relatively easy to cycle, even if people aren't
declaring blocks, for instance.
So, here you might well conclude that a player who's designing a strong
deck will try to out-think you in this regard and make her deck much
less vulnerable to the "Don't block, he'll get jammed!" strategies of
the past. And IME, with good players, you'd be right. People who are
just throwing the deck together in twenty minutes, people who over-
estimate the power of stealth bleed and inexperienced players may make
the mistakes. So in those situations, it may well be worth it.
However, the general point about knowing / guessing well what's in
someone's hand is interesting. If you're a later prey, you can go
through their ash heap and look at the ratios. If there are, like, 5
stealth cards and 15 bleed cards and the odd master or two, and he
hasn't been ditching one sort of card like crazy, you can often take
that as a reasonably reliable guide to the deck composition. (In fact,
some players have used such information to try to clone decks.)
If you're also worried about what players are carrying, there are simple
ways around it - Owl Companion, Revelations, Aura Reading etc. These
obviously only lend themselves to certain deck-styles, but you might
well be able to find a few decks in there that you want to play, that
are enjoyable for you.
--
James Coupe
PGP Key: 0x5D623D5D YOU ARE IN ERROR.
EBD690ECD7A1FB457CA2 NO-ONE IS SCREAMING.
13D7E668C3695D623D5D THANK YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION.
If that
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