{% extends "archetypes/_layout.html" %} {% import "archetypes/_layout-erratum.html" as erratum with context %} {% import "archetypes/archive/chameleon.json" as deck_json %} {% block meta %} {% endblock %} {% block archetype_name %}

{{ ministry }} Chameleon

{% endblock %} {% block archetype %} {% trans trimmed abombwe=card("Abombwe"), anarch=card("Anarch"), banishment=card("Banishment"), chameleon=card("Chameleon"), fear_of_mekhet=card("Fear of Mekhet"), garibaldi_meucci_museum=card("Garibaldi-Meucci Museum"), heidelberg=card("Heidelberg Castle, Germany", "Heidelberg"), heidelberg_castle=card("Heidelberg Castle, Germany", "Heidelberg Castle"), revolutionary_council=card("Revolutionary Council"), sergio=card("Sergio Bueno", "Sergio"), sergio_bueno=card("Sergio Bueno"), meta=link("/strategy/articles/advanced/the-game-of-the-game", _("meta")), lutz_politics=link("/archetypes/lutz-politics") %}

Highlights

This is a Ministry {{ ministry }} combo deck using {{ sergio_bueno }} as star. The goal is to use {{ chameleon }} to steal other vampires on the table, disabling everyone else by doing so, and finish off the preys with either with {{ revolutionary_council }} or just by bleeding.

It is not easy to pull off {{ chameleon }} consistently multiple times. The card is expensive, of course, but also it can only target younger freshly arrived vampires. So you need a higher capacity vampire, and it needs to be there before your opponents influence theirs. And you have five opponents!

Nonetheless, Teemu Sainomaa won the 2024 Atlantic Cup with this deck, and Otso Saariluoma happend to make the finals of the same tournament with the same deck, so it must at least have fitted the meta very well that day.

Of course, there are a few tricks to it. Running a tight library, a lot of stealth to ensure {{ chameleon }} and the votes can go through, it aims to land a {{ heidelberg_castle }} early. The first few {{ chameleon }} will target any available vampire, with a preference for the prey or predator, a Baron if possible, titled otherwise, just an Anarch if nothing else. The blood goes back to {{ sergio }} through {{ heidelberg }} so he can {{ chameleon }} again the next turn.

During the course of the game, {{ abombwe }} is used to increase {{ sergio }}'s capacity to 10, so that only the biggest vampires can hope to escape him. When running out of freshly influenced vampires, {{ sergio }} can simply use {{ banishment }} to remove the target and, if it's influenced anew, then it can be stolen with {{ chameleon }} immediately.

Considerations

This is a dreadful deck you do not want to bring on a casual table if you want to keep your friends. It is fast and egregious and has very few blind spots. Using {{ chameleon }} to target other titled vampires as a priority, it gets the vote lock easily, even over dedicated Inner Circle builds like {{ lutz_politics }}. Those are probably the biggest threat to the deck though. Maybe it's worth including a {{ fear_of_mekhet }} or two?

{{ garibaldi_meucci_museum }} is so strong here that it's been doubled. It can fetch a needed {{ chameleon }} or {{ revolutionnary_council }}, but also end a dangerous combat if some Anarch tries to take {{ sergio }} down.

All in all it's a very strong, very hard to build, horribly crippling thing we have here. Was this only a lucky fluke because of an ideal {{ meta }} that was running too many mid-caps and not enough big caps? Or can this deck make it to the top tier in the next few months?

{% endtrans %} {% endblock %}