A Guide on Playing Fatties

In VtES especially new players are very keen on playing large capacity vampires who have a large number disciplines as well as one or more special abilities. The VtES slang for vampires with a capacity of 9 or higher is "fatties" (similar to the "Magic The Gathering" term for a large creature usually with five or more power and three or more toughness). (For additional VtES terms see Lasombra's list of VtES terms.) In this article I will give some reasons for and against playing fatties as well as some tips on playing fatties more effectively.

Reasons for playing fatties

• Discipline spread needed for the deck basic functionality (and cannot be provided for by younger vampires). For example, "Saulot" has a quite unique discipline spread with "dai AUS FOR OBE THA VAL". But most decks utilize a much smaller number of discipline usually 2-3 and rarely 4 or more.
  
  Playing "Matthias" instead of "Saulot" can be more effective, "Matthias" is out in two turn instead of three, he has +1 intercept and all the clan disciplines at superior, Saulot on the other hand has all clan discipline at superior and also superior "Thaumaturgy", superior "Valeren" and inferior "Daimonium", +1 bleed, +1 strength and a very useful special ability. So if you're not planning to play the extra disciplines, you're are usually better off playing "Matthias" than "Saulot".


• Useful special abilities are often the reason for playing a fattie, and often the best reason too, if the special is going to be an integral part of the deck's strategy, e.g. "Durga Syn" doesn't tap when blocking allies or vampires with a capacity below 5, "Enkidu" has a built-in rush and +2 strength, "Nakhthorheb" has built-in untap during your turn, etc.


• Useful other permanents or traits like votes or permanent bleed modifiers also enhance the usuability of the large cap. vampires. Primary example are the "Inner Circle" members, especially "Arika" and "Stanislava" with their inherent +2 bleed and 4 votes and cool special abilities.


• The high capacity is required/favourable for certain cards, Examples:
  
  • You want to make (more) pool by playing "Ancient Influence" or "Honor the Elders".
    
  • "Eternals of Sirius" can only be played on a "Follower of Set" with a capacity of 9 or higher.
  Adding fatties to deck should then only be done if you really use these types of cards somewhat often, or to give a counter examples, it doesn't make sense to play multiple copies of "Gwendolyn" if you play a single "Ancient Influence", but nothing else that takes advantage of her capacity.


• High cap vampires can better withstand combat and other troubles like "Temptation" or "Form of Corruption". This is usually a weak argument since you often use "Minion Tap"/"Vessel"/etc. to pull blood from the vampires to your pool, a lot of minion cards cost blood from the vampires as well. During the course of a game the blood on a vampire is reduced anyway. So a vampire with a capacity of 4 and 3 blood, can often be beaten up as easily by a combat monster as a vampire with a capacity of 10 and 3 blood.
  

Reasons against playing fatties

• Fatties are very slow to influence out of the uncontrolled regions into the ready region. This is a serious disadvantage in the early game where influencing a fattie takes 3 to 4 turns, while both your prey and predator can do anything they like. This can doom your own game right from the start, when you're being bled in the early and your pool buffer becomes so thin, that you run out of space to maneuver. In an extreme case I have seen, a predator playing weenie bleed as bleed its prey playing "Cybele" for more than 20 pool (killing him course) in turn 3, the round where Cybele moved to the ready region.


• The lack of actions that a fattie has compared to 3 weenies with the same total pool cost, is another significant disadvantage. For example, 3 weenies can bleed, take control of "Powerbase: Montreal" and hunt in the same turn, while your fattie can only do one of these actions without further support.


• Some players like to play certain fatties because they are "cool" or they have read in WoD clan novel about them. This is usually the worst reason for playing a particular vampire, VtES is not a roleplaying game, but a competetive multiplayer card game. Without a sound deck with a well-rounded crypt and library, playing a deck for flavour reasons and it perfectly fits into the "World of Darkness" background, the game is doomed for you. It is an entirely different thing if your friends and you agree to build and play theme-based decks, but don't do this in a competitive environment.


• Playing fatties is often a synonym for a star vampire deck; this is a deck where the main means of winning, is a single vampire with his unique abilities which powers the main "engine" of your deck. A good example is an "Una" deck, which solely uses the reduced costs for "Fortitude" cards to play 40+ "Freak Drives" for free.
  
  The disadvantage with playing with a star vampire is, that these decks are very vulnerable with regards to this vampires. "Pentex Subversion", "Sensory Deprivation" or "Protect Thine Own" (when playing Non-Camarilla) are killer cards against a star vampire, and often against fatties in general as wells, since these decks simply cannot afford to lose these vampires. Also if you are not playing combat by yourself, you will need some kind of protection against it. This can be a "Secure Haven" or an abundance of "Obedience" or "Majesties".

Support and requirements for playing fatties

So there are a couple of things you need to do in order to support playing big caps effectively:

Influence

• Influence out a support vampire (e.g. weenie or midcap) first, then the fatties, in order to be able to act and more importantly block/react early in the game.
• You will likely need ways of increasing your amount of influence, especially if you plan to use more than one fattie. The following library cards can help: "Information Highway", "Zillah's Valley", "Grooming the Protege" and "Eternals of Sirius" (for "Followers of Set" only).
  
• Other ways of increasing a player's amount of influence require the use of certain vampires, whose special ability will do the deed. Examples are "Ingrid Roessler", "Cock Robin", "Nikolaus Vermeulen", "Saulot", "Malgorzata" and "Ayo Igoli".
  

Bloat

• You need pool gain, usually by pulling blood of the vampires. The usual way is to use the classic cards like "Minion Tap", "Blood Doll" or most recently "Vessel. This will help you either bring out additional vampires or to increase your pool buffer against attacks from your predator.
  
  Other ways often of generating extra pool include ways which take advantage of the size of the vampires, e.g. the political actions like "Honor the Elders", "Ancient Influence" or "Reins of Power", or actions like "Govern the Unaligned" or "Enchant Kindred".


• It is also vital for the fatties to regain blood lost earlier either due to "Minion Taps", etc. or by playing cards or suffering from combat damage. The widely used classic for this purpose is "Giants Blood", but since it can only be played once a game, you shouldn't rely on it. Another classic is "Voter Capitivation" for political decks, since it is not limited to a specific amount of blood that can be regained and and you can regain up to 2 pool directly. Combat decks often use "Taste of Vitae", more generic ways of accomplishing a "refill" of the vampires are "Restoration" or "Entrenching".

Multi Actions

• Ideally your high cap vampires have ways of performing multiple actions per minion phase to enhance the effectity of playing them. If that's not possible, it is also quite helpful to the ability to react multiple times without repeated use of cards like "On the Qui Vive", "Forced Awakening", etc.
  
  
  • "Freak Drive", "Forced March", "Helicopter" -- let a vampire untap immediately after an action.
    
  • "Mylan Horseed (Goblin)", "Nakhthorheb's" special ability -- can untap a vampire during the minion phase.
    
  • "Homunculus", "Clotho's Gift", "Metro Underground" -- let you pay at the end of a minion phase to untap.
    
  • "Secrects from the the Magaji", "Eternal Vigilance" -- let a vampire untap and/or block actions while tapped during another player's minion phase.

Summary
Playing fatties is not a good thing per se nor it is a bad thing either. When playing fatties it should be really worth it in terms of disciplines and special abilities. Also make sure you can bloat enough (regain enough pool) to compensate the expense for the fatties. Optimally your minion can either multi-act and/or react/block more than once, otherwise you will often be outbled or out-vote by mid-cap or small cap vampires, which have a lot more actions at their deposal than the fatties.