Playing with Anson

Welcome to a new series of strategy articles examining various popular decks or deck archetypes. It won’t be exhaustive, and it will be biased. But hopefully you’ll find it informative and interesting. And perhaps fun.

Let’s start all the way back in 1994; let’s start with Anson.

Who’s this Anson anyways?

Anson is one of the most popular vampires in the game. And it’s for a good reason. He is arguably one of the best crypt cards in the game, at the very least in the first few groups G1-G3. So let’s take an introductory look at him today.

There are many reasons why you might want to try Anson. Perhaps you want to play with him because he is a tournament powerhouse, having put up many solid results from all the way back in 1994; or you just want to experiment and play your first MMPA or Toolbox deck; or, perhaps, you simply love the Toreador clan; or, shockingly, you somehow find his art alluring and feel an urge to watch his long tongue all night. I wont judge your reasons here. Instead, I’ll move right on and simply help you make a new friend from Seattle.

More long tongue, if that’s your thing…

Anson decks (and especially Anson Guns decks) are usually considered Toolbox decks, not hyper focused the same way that say, a stealth+bleed deck is. Instead, a toolbox deck allows you to do a little bit of everything. You take actions, you block, you fight, etc, perhaps you even get to use some fancy guns. And, thus, there are naturally many many different ways to build your Anson deck. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, and let’s start with the basics.

The Crypt

Anson is in group 1. So the only possible pairing is group 2. Furthermore, his disciplines make him mainly pair up with other Toreadors, Brujah, and some of their antitribu. Remember, there are not all that many clans in G1+2.

Anson is mainly famous for using his Celerity as the primary discipline of choice. And then sometimes splashing in a few Presence and/or Dominate cards. But you can certainly build it differently.

One common way to build and play Anson is the so called “AAA”, focusing on the Anson, Anneke, Alexandra trio. This is a good crypt if you don’t just want to fight, but instead want to play around with other strategies. Perhaps cards such as Aching Beauty, or maybe more Politics. Either way, for AAA your crypt may look something like this:

Crypt (12)

• 4 Alexandra
• 4 Anson
• 2 Anneke
• 1 François Villon
• 1 Masika

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Unfortunately for you, I won’t be talking too much more about this build in this article, but you can look at the deck from Jeroen van Oort and read his comments about it at this link if you want to try this.

Similarly, you can use AAA based crypts to play Toreador Grand Ball by just adding a few tiny small Toreadors on the side. There really are many ways to go about it.

Alternatively, as we will explore in depth in this article from now on, you can build the Celerity-Guns Prince crypt, combining the Toreadors with the Brujah. In which case you might instead get something not entirely unlike this:

Crypt (12)

• 1 Anneke
• 4 Anson
• 1 Black Cat
• 1 Constanza Vinti
• 1 Dónal O’Connor
• 1 Marcellus
• 1 Sarah Brando
• 2 Volker, The Puppet Prince

Here, Anson is the obvious star, and Volker is second best. The priority with this crypt is:

1. Have superior Celerity on everyone.
2. Have as many princes or Justicars as possible. Which in turn allow you to play some excellent cards requiring those titles. Mainly Second Tradition: Domain and Parity Shift.

Volker having both with as low a capacity as 5 is insanely good, and his drawback hardly ever matters.

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Playing with guns

The most popular, and arguably the best, way to use Celerity, is in combination with guns. Unless you do like Stanislava and only use it for multi actions but now we’re off topic. Guns also allow you to play a surprisingly compact combat package, sometimes as low as 30 cards, while still allowing you to put up a good fight and torpor others quite reliably, and also having lots of space to fit all those other toolbox cards.

The weapon of choice is of course the well-known duo of Concealed Weapon, and .44 Magnum:

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I won’t be explaining every card here. But the basic idea is really to abuse this Magnum as much as possible from now on. If you can ever catch an opponent in a round of combat where they play no cards, you’ll maneuver to long range, shoot for 2, and take 0 back. All without even having to play any cards yourself. But, of course, as with any combat deck, you really really want to torpor them. So you use Celerity combat cards to make additional strikes, or additional rounds of combat.

Psyche! is by far the best card for this purpose. If your opponent has no cards in hand, or if they only play a defensive card like Majesty or Rolling with the Punches, then Psyche! is your best friend. It’s not an additional strike, but in these combat scenarios, it is even better. Just like an additional strike it will deal 2 extra damage, but it also counters those S:CE or Fortitude cards. And you can also play any number of them: chaining 4 or 5 in a row is brutal when your opponent already burned all their combat options in the first round of combat. The only real reason to play anything else, like ordinary additional strike cards such as Pursuit or Blur, is for the situations where your opponent is fighting back, perhaps with a weapon of their own.

The deck is capable of being very aggressive in combat, and has an excellent rate of torporing others. This is more or less a natural consequence of Celerity, a discipline that contains lots of good offensive cards, but almost nothing defensive. Constructing a combat package that hopes to survive mostly on the basis of long range, and lots and lots of bullets. But, as the deck only really uses one discipline in combat, you naturally will find yourself being disadvantaged against other proper combat decks playing a lot of both good offensive cards and defensive, but surprisingly often, the glass cannon approach can deal with them as well, simply by dealing so much damage and shooting so many times. “The best defence is a good offence” is an old and proven adage.

The glue

The real reason Anson works as a toolbox deck, whereas most others struggle, is because he has an almost unique access to one of the best sources of consistency in the entire game. The deck plays a combo of two great cards that together help it find the correct cards at the correct time, and avoid hand jams, to an almost impossible degree. And those cards are of course Infernal Pursuit and Ashur Tablets.

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Infernal Pursuit is an extremely powerful card, allowing you to aggressively cycle multiple cards quickly as soon as you get into a combat situation. It is the reason the deck can reliably find the Concealed Weapon + Magnum early, but also the reason it can easily get rid of excess copies of those cards later. The only drawback being that you’ll likely run out of cards in your deck before the match finishes. But, Anson’s ability to play extra master cards allows you to easily counteract this, and play a pile of Ashur Tablets, helping you both recycle  cards so that you won’t run out, and readjust the ratios in your deck to the current board state. All in all very nice.

As a rules clarification, when playing Infernal Pursuit and Concealed+Magnum together:

• First you need to have the gun in hand to even get the opportunity to play the Concealed Weapon.
• Then, replace those cards one at a time, so draw 2 discard 1 for the Concealed Weapon
• Then put the Magnum in play, pay for it, and then draw 2 discard 1.

Personally I like to keep it very clear and put the CW face up with the Magnum face down next to it on the table while I do the draw and discard stuff in the remainder of my hand, since it is technically legal to discard the magnum and thus potentially make the Concealed Weapon fail (unless you drew a 2nd Magnum). Weird rules interactions aside, let’s go on.

The limits of the Toolbox

As previously mentioned a toolbox deck gets to do a little bit of everything, but, as a trade off, it doesn’t get to do any one thing really well. You only play the very best and most efficient cards in each category, but then basically nothing extra on top of that. So your reactions might for example be entirely composed of Second Tradition Domain, and maybe a few Deflections. That’s it, you won’t catch someone who regularly gets 3 or 4 stealth.

You will for example never fight as well as a pure combat deck that uses 2 or 3 different combat disciplines and 45+ combat cards. You will never intercept as well as a true wall deck with 30+ reaction cards. And you won’t be able to vote freely in each and every game like a Ventrue Lawfirm.

But as a trade-off, you also have fewer weaknesses. Compared to a stealth and bleed deck that is usually almost entirely defenceless, you can at least put up 2 intercept. Similarly, you also have enough votes to always be at least a part in any political negotiations. And, if you get rushed you can fight back.

How do you win?

A toolbox deck like this can take a lot of practice to win with, looking at a typical deck list it is not always obvious how you are supposed to oust your prey in a timely fashion. And similarly, if your predator really wants you dead you don’t have all that much defence either. So it can be tricky.

The way I usually try to steer the game is to make it possible to “split the table” with my leftmost cross table ally, that is, my prey’s prey. Trying to steer the game into a final 1 vs 1 against them, and in the end ideally giving them 2 VP, and myself 3 VP and GW. This is by no means the only way to play the game, but it is a good plan A at least. Let’s try to describe the ideal game, it won’t be possible every time, but it will be achievable a lot more often than you’d think.

Early game:
First you have to just focus on getting 2 vampires, preferably Anson & Volker, and give them each a gun.

Next, combat, intercept and rushes. And, your first rush is probably going to go on your predator. In fact, your first rush is almost always on your predator. Trying to use an opportunity to cycle your cards, conceal out your gun, and torpor your biggest threat before they have had time to set up properly. They will hate you for it, and ask you why you aren’t going for your prey, but an undisturbed predator almost always means you’ll die. And survival is critical. One rush now can save you 3 rushes later. There is basically no way for this deck to get a GW without also getting that last-man-standing VP. It’s very far from a Stealth Bleed deck that can snag 3 quick VPs before the predator catches on.

The middle game:

You are now 30+ minutes into the game. Everyone has started to get set up, the edge is getting passed around, people are trying to make deals. And your predator looks sad realising that they won’t be winning this table from torpor. Ideally you leave them with just enough vampires alive so that they feel they can’t afford any offensive actions, and instead have to spend all their time looking over their shoulder at their own predator.

Now, you have to put enough pressure on your prey so that your “ally” can start steam rolling forward. This is also important because it will take you quite a lot of time to wear down your prey, who now is probably in a fairly good spot having been a bit ignored, going after both their vampires and their pool. In addition to blocking and rushing forward, you also want to spend some time building up more permanent cards in front of yourself. Grabbing a The Rack, or Powerbase: Montreal. Or bringing out an extra vampire. A 3rd one is really nice to have even though it might not find or afford a gun right away.

The late game:

If all goes well, you’ll usually manage to torpor most of the vampires of your two neighbours, leaving them with 0-1 vampires each. Your “ally” should also now have a very good game, as it is usually said that whoever plays without a predator is the most likely to win the table. So you should expect them to get 1 VP fairly consistently here. And then, right before your “ally” grabs his or her 2nd VP (by ousting your almost defenceless predator this time) you’ll try to finally oust your own prey who has been limping along for quite a while now, even if this means you have to do some very weak or underwhelming actions such as bleed for 1 or bleed for 2. Stuff you would never want to spend any time doing early in the game.

And then, it’s now a 1 vs 1. Whether you’ll win this 1 vs 1 depends on many things, but hopefully you have had plenty of time to set yourself up, get a lot of pool, equipment, locations, and blood on your vampires. And, as always, combat decks are overwhelmingly favoured in 1 vs 1 situations compared to most other deck archetypes. Regardless, you try to just torpor their vampires, or vote them out with a vote lock, depending on exactly how both your list looks, and how the game looks.

Complications:

Of course not every game will go as described above. One of the most common obstacles is if your other cross table “ally” (on the right, your predator’s predator) gets the quick VP (ousting your freshly crushed predator), thus leaving you now with an entirely new predator before you have even managed to wear down your prey. This is problematic, as you will probably have to back rush at least once more, again, and it certainly makes things tricky. Just remember the classic wall deck concept: if you get last man standing, and your prey has 0 VP, you always get the GW. So, depending on how your prey is doing, you can still salvage this.

Another problem is if your preferred cross table ally isn’t able to have a good game, maybe they just get ousted by your prey before you have time to torpor their vampires. This also makes it much more complicated. Not only do you now have to kill your prey before they get 3 VP (so just playing it slow is not an option), but you also have one less ally that can help you vote, or rescue from torpor, or such. In this case you kind of just have to hang on, and adapt to the game as it unfolds. Hopefully trying to regain some control or vote lock by the time it is down to 3 players.

And, instead, sometimes there is some other player who is having a real good time, getting more and more minions and more and more pool, and then you just have to put everything else aside and do whatever it takes to stop them before they run away with the entire table and get 5VPs. Your bleeding and outsting powers combined with your very limited minions and actions (playing so many big vampires that only take 1 action each), mean that you can’t beat someone who has 7+ minions and bloated past 25+ pool.

Sometimes your prey realises what is about to happen early, and they decide to also go backwards. They see you rushing your predator and they know that they will be next. Now with both your neighbours cooperating together to bring you down, it will be almost impossible to win. On these tables you have to practice smooth talking and politics and hope you can look non threatening for long enough that one of the cross table players can help you out. But it’s unlikely.

And lastly, you might be placed next to a bigger fish, or a bigger badder wolf. A combat deck that you simply can’t power your way through, and once again, you’ll need help. Having a deck full of Bum’s Rush or Second Tradition: Domain is no good if you don’t think you can survive going into combat with their vampires. This is one of the worst things that can happen to any combat deck really. And rarely is it actually worth playing a real “anti-combat” combat package yourself, unless you live in Finland perhaps.

When you try to block a bigger fighter…

Sample decklist

There are many decklists for Anson Guns out there if you search for them. Some with more combat, and others with more forward power and voting. TWDA is full of decks, many built by players who are better at the game than I am no doubt. But it would be criminal if I didn’t use my own list here, because if I didn’t actually think it was good, why would I be playing it? I would say that my list is perhaps a bit more heavy on the masters, and more focused on efficiently beating up non-combat decks. But that’s mostly based on my expected meta game (not contesting The Parthenon or Ashur Tablets all that often for example). I’m sure the list can be improved upon in the future, probably by cutting down a few library cards to the low 80s.

Crypt (12 cards)

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Library: (89 cards)

Master (34)

1x Archon Investigation
12x Ashur Tablets
1x Erciyes Fragments, The
1x Fame
1x Giant’s Blood
4x Haven Uncovered
3x Parthenon, The
1x Perfectionist
1x Powerbase: Montreal
1x Rack, The
1x Tension in the Ranks
5x Villein
2x Wider View

Action (3)

3x Bum’s Rush

Equipment (7)

7x .44 Magnum

Political Action (2)

2x Parity Shift

Reaction (9)

2x Deflection
7x Second Tradition: Domain

Combat (34)

1x Blur
6x Concealed Weapon
7x Infernal Pursuit
9x Psyche!
6x Pursuit
1x Side Strike
1x Sideslip
3x Taste of Vitae

Further reading:

Thanks for reading this basic but wordy introduction to Anson, and especially Anson Guns. And, since I’m far from the first to write on the subject. I’d advise anyone who’s interested in more to read that written by those who came before me. For example, this article Codex of the Damned, or this one from VTES One.

Conclusion

I hope you enjoyed this introduction to the Anson Guns deck. Maybe you want to play it yourself now, or maybe you’ll simply be better prepared next time you face it on the battlefield.

If you enjoy this sort of content please reach out and leave a comment, and we’ll try to include more of it in the future, perhaps even make this into a new series of analysing classic decks in our beloved game.

See you around…

Lallo

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