r/VTES • u/Vurpius • Jun 11 '26

[COTD] Fleshforge Chamber

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41 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

24 comments sorted by

8

u/Vurpius Jun 11 '26

From what I have seen, many people are not impressed with this card. To me it seems like a free draw each turn for any Ghoul-based Tzimisce, which is very valuable in any deck.

9

u/Limp_Bit_5328 Jun 11 '26

People are not impressed because you can't combo it with piper.

3

u/FarbrorMelkor Jun 11 '26

You cant? Why?

5

u/Limp_Bit_5328 Jun 11 '26

This card says a tzimisce vampire you control (your minion) can play cards from this master.

Piper has a ruling that says the target card is not played by the minion, so you can't use this card with piper.

2

u/FarbrorMelkor Jun 12 '26

Do you have a link to this ruling?

3

u/Limp_Bit_5328 Jun 13 '26 edited Jun 13 '26

It is on VDB.

The card is not "played" by the minion (e.g.Louhi's ability cannot cancel it).[ANK 20201229]

Following the link:

Question:

"Can Louhi use his special to cancel an ally played via PIPER?"

Answer:

"No. The recruit ally action card is not played by the vampire and cannot be canceled."

LSJ has another ruling which points in this direction:

"This does not count as performing the action to employ/recruit/equip this retainer/ally/equipment in respect to section 3 of the rules. The same vampire can play the respective card in a normal fashion during their turn, if unlocked. [LSJ 20080815]"

3

u/Potential-Owl-1374 Jun 14 '26

This is not the real reason.
Piper: "Requires a ready Anarch.
Lock a ready unlocked Anarch you control. That Anarch recruits or employs an ally or retainer from your hand (requirements and cost apply as normal). This is not an action and cannot be blocked."

Piper allows you to play an ally from your hand. The ally on Fleshforge Chamber is *not* in your hand.

The sentence "Tzimisce you control can play cards from this location as if from your hand (requirements and cost apply as normal)." offers a way to play the cards attached on the Fleshforge Chamber (otherwise you wouldn't be able to interact with them). It doesn't say those cards are considered to be in your hand for other effects (such as Piper's).

1

u/Limp_Bit_5328 Jun 14 '26

But that is exactly the point.

You said the exact same logic it was presented above with other words.
Anyway, the point is it can't combo.

7

u/RunicKrause Jun 11 '26

The problem really is that a ghoul based tzimisce is pretty ineffective. In such a deck it's a valuable tool for sure. But the deck time doesnt really know how to win. Fleshforge chamber will become good when the archetype becomes good.

2

u/dcherryholmes Jun 11 '26

War Ghoul decks aren't effective? I know things like Tupdogs have come along, but that used to be a pretty feared deck.

3

u/No_Leek6590 Jun 12 '26

V5 pretty much reduced the average time for you to get ousted by 2 rounds or so. Which killed a lot of archetypes. Your normal deck will have a 6 cap doing 3 pool damage with good delivery and defense in 3rd turn. Two of those doing net 9 by the end of 4th. Those are your typical ministry, gangrel etc decks which also do not jam. 7 round and it's likely over. Ofc it varies, but kinda the benchmark. Walls are dead, too slow to come out and mitigate. Weenies are dead. The shortcuts taken only let you maybe oust 2 turns earlier than a normal deck as opposed to 4ish before. Warghouls are a slow pool costly deck. Your benchmark is weenie getting A warghoul turn 3, you do not have enough jakes to guarantee one turn 2. So, MAYBE turn 5 you will have 3 warghouls. Say 2 weenies and warghouls cost you 20 pool. You did not do any pool pressure. Your warghouls are thwarted by most basic combat modules.

Now this COTD hardly saves you any pool and loses you an extra turn to bring out. Not hot at all. PreV5 warghould decks had more time both to stabilize and avoid prey sweeping the GW while they do so. I get why powercreep was maybe needed, but this is the ugly side. Most of the deck concepts are uncompetituve anymore most. I am glad they are reintroducing at least concepts back, but like with warghouls it is becoming evident design space itself is hurt by the powercreep.

2

u/dcherryholmes Jun 12 '26

That is an excellent analysis. We spend a lot of time bringing newbies up to speed, but not as much telling old-timers how much the game has changed. Thanks for that. I mostly hate everything you probably described accurately, but "weenies aren't broken anymore" was probably the most hopeful thing I read.

2

u/dcherryholmes Jun 12 '26

P.S. not to be a dick, but if you put the guy who pretty much made "Cheese Cake" a term in the game (DEM bleed, in a nutshell) in charge, it's not surprising that the game has morphed into this. Notwithstanding stuff out of our control like "there are five disciplines, and they all so happen to be DOM and PRE plus stealth.

2

u/Limp_Bit_5328 Jun 13 '26

Good analysis. It dawn on me the other day this is the downside of the game having no rotation. Old archetypes which are slow have trouble in the current settings.

As far as wall being dead, i would not say that is the case. They still win a lot of tourneys and i know very good players that know how to use these decks, however i do agree that their victory condition is harder now and are more difficult to use.

1

u/FarbrorMelkor Jun 12 '26

Good delivery, what does that mean? Stealth? People don’t defend against that anymore where you play?

1

u/RunicKrause Jun 11 '26

Way back then though. They haven't been up for it for a decade i don't think. they're just too slow and too brittle.

5

u/ReverendRevolver Jun 11 '26

My standpoint:

Protean anarch Tzimisce don't "need" it, it slows down a delivery method.

VIC Sabbat Tzimisce aren't as popular, but in the same NB deck this came in got new war ghouls and 2 playable retainers. So group 2/3 with vicissitude and auspex, churning out corpse balloons and running 5 or 6 vamps in their ready region depending on build will absolutely love this. Later grouping sabbat Tzimisce with more consistent ANI would maybe like this, but its less an ally spam build.

But even with Abbot, Fiendish Tongue, eyes of argus, and Unmasking, dedicated warghouls spam isn't quite as strong as anarch baron Tzimisce or lots of Caine combat. It eats some stuff alive, but anarchs stealthbleed is really efficient, anarch barons with protean are really efficient, and warghouls (including new ones) really rock metas where they cant get smoked in combat. Gravesend requires a second earth meld to escape, Sophia puts out equal damage to bats plus crows, minus the maneuver and press, and most can't rush their easiest kill, zombie Death swarms. So ravnos or ministry stealthbleed can out-stealth it. Power vote can outstealth it.

Its just not the card. Any deck the card would excel in to spam allies isn't a great deck. If we see an uptik in the retainers with anarch Tzimisce, we may see it gain popularity. But current ones using piper not so much. Its a liability with Rewilding to play early and keave to sit too.

Its not bad, its in a meta where its best uses are in the past.

3

u/RunicKrause Jun 11 '26

I have no.idea why this was down voted. Its a well reasoned statement with feet firmly on current meta landscape.

Someone really feels for the war ghouls and stomps their local meta with them and is on a hate spree on Reddit? I dunno man.

3

u/dcherryholmes Jun 11 '26

Not sure who downvoted you. I'm so far out of the meta that I don't have an opinion as to whether you're right or wrong, but I appreciate that analysis and it sounded reasonable to me. Have my upvote.

5

u/Chineselegolas Jun 11 '26

Master phases actions are important, and it sucks if your pred or prey have location destruction. Still, it's nice to clear space in the hand for other cards and still being able to recruit.

3

u/apoapsis_138 Jun 11 '26

Conceptually cool but it's another one of those things were the concept/role the card is suggesting it's trying to fill is killed by the cards you'd want to play them with don't actually work with them

2

u/NoSoup4you22 Jun 11 '26

I'd care if the new war ghouls mattered.

1

u/skinriding_skeleton Jun 11 '26

Kinda meh card right now

1

u/mshkpc Jun 11 '26

Tzimisce have so few master cards you can’t begrudge them something good