New Vtes Expansion Rumors

We might get new Laibon vampires after all! Some interesting news came from the newsgroups and from the white wolf live journal.

KOTEK art direction is currently in process. That can only mean one thing: Kindred of the Ebony Kingdoms! It’s always good to have additional laibon vampires and toys!

Decks used in Friday Night Fight

Since it’s been well over a week now– its kinda impossible to remember the details of each game. Especially hard since we all finished past 1am haha. I did try something new though: I finally made a Trophy deck!

I know its been years since Kindred Most Wanted showed up but this is honestly the first time I’ve tried making a Trophy deck mainly because I always thought the trophy mechanic is a bit clunky and definitely hard to pull off properly.

What do you need for a trophy deck to work? A lot.

1. A red list minion or a way to make someone red list
2. A way to rush AND burn the red list minion
3. A way to avoid or prevent blood hunts if you diablerize the red list minion

Thats a lot of requirements right there. Do the benefits match the pain you’ve been through? Honestly i don’t know but i think it breaks even. Barely.

Not counting any votes, there are currently 2 actions to make someone a red list. Red List and Public Enemy. Of the two i think red list is less situational but that all depends on your metagame of course.

In order to play Red List you need a titled vampire. Relatively easy for most decent combat decks. Another good effect is that the victim can’t block your action. I’d still try to add some extra stealth in since this is the main point of a trophy deck. No red list minions equals at least four wasted card slots in your deck.

With all of that in mind, I settled on the archons of vtes to try out the trophy mechanic. I needed a safe, fool-proof way to avoid blood hunts and the choices were either Theo Bell or Muaziz. I didn’t even bother to consider Samat Ra (setite) or Tariq (assamite red list) since they didn’t have the necessary combat disciplines i needed.

Comparing Potence and Thaumaturgy, potence can cancel dodges and combat ends, send a vampire to torpor with disarm, burn a vampire outright with decapitate. With respect to thaumaturgy’s anti-fortitude cards, it was no contest.

Using Theo Bell equals Euro Brujah. So hello to Donal, Constanza and Volker. Add in Anvil for an extra titled vamp for 6 and the crypt was set.

For my trophy selection, I added Trophy: Hunting Ground, Trophy: Revered, and 2x Trophy: Domain. That would give me a nice intercept effect similar to No Secrets from the Magaji and a Rack effect and +2 bleed for the oust.

I saw some decks on the newsgroups (I’m looking at you xzealot/norm) and most trophy decks had only about 4-5 trophies and about 4-5x red list actions.

I personally thought 5 redlist actions isn’t enough for a 90 card deck so i added an extra one or two.

On the first game it worked pretty well, not as well as i’d hoped but good enough. I managed to get 2 trophies on Theo Bell (hunting ground and domain) and even one on Anvil (revered).

I also added 5x Brujah Debates so that might have affected the deck (good on some games terrible on others).

I’ll post the deck list here later over the week.

I also cobbled together another deck that i’ve never tried before: Anarch Barons. I played tons of anarch decks but i’ve never really tried the political aspect of it. I’ll also post the decklist here in a few days. I thought it was a clunker of a deck since it had a lot of moving parts (6-8 disciplines ftw!) But the surprise of the night was: it swept a table haha. While the strongly favored Euro Trophy just managed 1-2 vps. Odd how things turn out.

That’s it for now. Deck lists to follow!

Upcoming games!

I’ll be scheduling some casual Vtes games for the weekend so I’m currently busy tweaking and making new decks. I’ll post the results of the bloodbath next week.

Fanchion Fever

There seems to be a lot of buzz in the Vtes newsgroup about Mistress Fanchion, the new Tremere Inner Circle. I just saw at least three or four decks already posted for comments. In terms of gameplay, Fanchion is a powerhouse. I think Extrala did a comparison study of Vtes vampires recently and Fanchion was at the top of the list in terms of sheer number of superior disciplines. So yeah, I can definitely see the interest in creating fun or wacky Mistress Fanchion decks.

Taking a look at her discipline spread also gives me some ideas for decks but for many players, her ability is also something to be considered. The ability to fish out a key card from your library is just awesome. Drawbacks? Limited untap. Which is important for an eleven cap vampire. Rutor’s hand is a must.

VIC, OBF, CEL, and the standard Tremere disciplines of THA, AUS, DOM makes her hard to beat in combat. She has access to aggravated unpreventable hand strikes, blood theft, ranged aggravated strikes, damage prevention from three disciplines, and several ways to stop/foil combat ends. Maneuvers and presses are also readily available.

I’d make a combat deck with Fanchion as the key vamp. Ready access to Magic of the Smith and Rutor’s Hand with four votes and three bleed with DOM is a frightening thought. I’m not comfortable making a combat deck without immortal grapple so I think the first step would be to grab a Hand of Conrad asap. TheLasombra had a nice idea to pair her up with Sha-Ennu since they share a lot of disciplines together. I think I can take advantage of that superior CHI by smithing up an Eye of Hazimel. In that way Fanchion can get both POT and CHI with a built in rush.

It’s fun to take advantage of non fortitude damage prevention since at least two people in the local metagame use Tremere decks. Rego Mortus and Horrid Form will be fun to use. I’d throw in some Apparitions once Fanchion gets the eye.

Offensive options include: the standard Tzimisce package of either long or shirt ranged aggravated damage. Chiropteran Marauder, Breath of the Dragon. It’s also possible to use Blood Fury backed up with Horrid Forms and Chiropteran Marauder for anti-fortitude combat. CEL adds support by additional strikes like Blur, Flash for maneuvers and presses and Psyche! for reactive anti-combat ends.

Mistress Fanchion definitely opens up a wide variety of options for putting the hurt on someone! I think it’s time to get started on making a deck!

Tweaking Your Malkavian Starter: Advice for New Players

Some tips for for new Vtes players or for people on a budget: minimum investment can be as low as 2 starters.

We got a box of KoT starters recently so I decided to try to build a viable deck by combining two Malkavian starters. Of course the oust method will be sneak bleed as there were absolutely no damaging votes included in the precons. First thing to do is trim one deck by taking out all the useless cards. I started by removing nearly all the equipment and master cards. The focus of this starter was evident in the amount of blood gain in the deck to fuel Tryphosa’s ability. So to sum up: remove almost all of the blood gaining cards. Goodbye Life in the City, Coolers and Forgery! I kept The Coven though.

Next, sort through all the action modifiers. I’m really not a fan of Into Thin Air because the drawback is too much for me so I removed all copies of those along with Change of Target. I kept the combat cards: all four copies of Glancing Blow because sometimes just a point of damage prevention can save your vampire from torpor or outright destruction.

Reaction cards were trimmed down to just On the Que Vive and Spirits Touch. I really don’t plan on blocking much since blocking also means combat. Bounce is still the best defence since it helps get the oust.

Taking a look at the offensive package, the Malk starter comes with six copies of Kindred Spirits and six copies of Eyes of Chaos. Add in the contents of the other starter and that number doubles. Enough for a four player game maybe.

The master cards were almost useless since Bleeding the Vine and the High Museum of Art, Atlanta have large disadvantages. Key master cards are: Vessel, Giants Blood, Elysium: the Arboretum, The Coven and Effective Management.

After trimming the all the fat, I came up with a deck of around 60 cards. Just double up on the bleed, stealth and combat cards. Crypt selection is also important so I would advise on trading for some copies of Gem Ghastly and Arthur Denholme. Mid cap bleeders both with superior Dementate.

That’s the deck. It most likely won’t win any tourneys but it’s a great and cheap way to introduce the game to new players!

Gangrel Combat

I blame Wrath of the Lich King for this delayed post!

Since everyone and their mother probably has a few packs or starters of KoT by now, I think it’s time to talk about some deck ideas that are currently swimming in my head. One of them is: Simple Gangrel Combat.

Since the days of Jyhad and Ancient Hearts, Gangrel combat has pretty much stayed the same, using almost the same cards. Claws (wolf claws or claws of the dead) and Fortitude Prevention (skin of rock or skin of steel). Sabbat added Carrion Crows for environmental damage and Ancient Hearts added Dog Pack as a foil to combat ends.

Assuming your Gangrel already has a Dog Pack equipped (or hired since it’s technically a retainer), your combat chain would still consist of just 3 cards: Crows pre-range, Strike hands, Claws, Prevention. Simple and effective for most decks without dodges or prevention.

The last casual game I played showed me that the Philippine metagame hasn’t changed much. There’s still a lot of combat and combat avoidance in the form of Fortitude and combat ends.

I’ll try to make a basic combat package this weekend and see if I can tweak it to survive and hopefully dominate the local meta.

Key Gangrel vampire for my deck? Ariadne. Immunity to bloodhunts is simply too good to pass up.

Friday Night Fight!

I had some free time last Friday so I called for an impromptu Vtes game at my condo. Usual worries were getting enough players to show up and the fact that I didn’t bring any Vtes decks so I had to either use an old deck lying around the place or build one from scratch. I did both with some tweaks hehe.

Since I got my KoT earlier than expected I brought along all the new vamps from the set leaving behind all the Toreadors and Caitiff because I wasn’t inspired enough to play around with them. That left the new Ventrue and Brujah vampires with their shiny new off clan disciplines and fancy artwork and the Gangrel who certainly looked ferocious enough to make a few interesting combat or intercept decks. The Nosferatu and Malkavians were kinda just thrown in the box for emergencies.

I wasn’t surprised when I found out that I didn’t have enough time to make a totally new concept deck using the vamps. I had dome errands to do during the day and they only left me with an hour to make a deck which is normally impossible for me since I like fiddling around with card ratios. I quickly decided to do a semi-trick deck with a hopefully fun twist. An all Jyhad Deck! The deck had to contain nothing but cards from the Jyhad base set with no banned or restricted cards.

I had a plan to play the first game using an all Jyhad crypt and library so I settled on the most tried and tested deck design for that particular base set: Old School Ventrue Law Firm! Nothing like the good old team of Nash, Crowley and Bridges to get a game going hehe. As a further twist to make things interesting I decided to play it using 8x First Traditions and Parity Shifts. Can I have some cheese with that? Yes please.

It actually did well but not as spectacularly as I would hope, managing to get only 1-2 VPs but no table win. There was a surprising number of votes on the table! Intercept wasn’t much of a problem strangely since adding some seductions for key actions was often more than enough to get through.

The next game was also different since I then switched crypts using the new KoT Ventrue with Posh Spice Justicar Beckham to speed vampire transfers. This game I had some minor problems with intercept as David managed to get an early KRCG and I drew into my Sudden Reversal one turn too late. Despite all that it still managed to get around 1-2 VPs before being ousted in the end. Then again my memories of that night are kinda fuzzy since we all stayed up til 3:30ish in the AM! This was due to a late game start of 9:00 PM due to the heavy pre-christmas traffic.

Despite it being the same old pure Jyhad deck, using it with the new vampires made it seem different. The titled Vampires were lower in capacity and had some interesting powers. It goes without saying that the discipline spreads were also different but with a trend towards DOM for more bursty bleeds with Conditioning.

Last game was a 6 man table but Aurelio had to leave on account of the late hour and the fact that his girlfriend was also falling asleep hehe. Here’s the funny part: we decided to let him scoop up his cards but left his pool where it was for his predator to go through. So in effect it acted like a pool wall between me and Faust. Interesting thing that happened? That pool wall lasted longer than Faust and Jason! It even gave David a hard time hahaha! Definitely the best predator I could hope for hehe. I switched decks and decided that one of the decks lying around the condo was still salvageable with a minor tweak. So I used the good old fashioned Stanislava Baltimore Purge deck -evil grin-

The MVP card of the night? Forced March. Nearly everybody was using it that night! I also noticed that Stanislava had the necessary disciplines to carry it off so I quickly added some before the last game. Another fun thing about the last game was that I didn’t even need to purge in the first 30 minutes since a few vampires went to torpor through some unfortunate combat care of Mark and Faust. Stanislava happily graverobbed some of David’s and Jason’s vampires with Beastmeld for unblockable tech. Needless to say that I got my only game win on that last game.

I’d like to thank the guys who showed up for playing until the early hours (3:30am!!) of the morning: Faust, David, Aurelio, Jason (Faust’s friend) and Mark.

Hot New Justicars From Keepers of Tradition

Took some pictures of the new Justicars. I think I’ll try to make a deck using all three of them haha! They have several overlapping disciplines so it’s not exactly an impossible deck concept. Just not tourney viable but fun!

Keepers of Tradition First Impressions

The cards are finally here! There’s so much information to process so this may get cut into several posts. The best thing for me about a new VTES expansion is always the new Crypt cards. The first thing I always consider when making a new deck is which vampires can do the job effectively and as cheaply as possible. I don’t want to waste my transfers and pool on a 9 cap titled vampire when a 6 cap vampire has all the disciplines I need at superior.

So I was very excited to find out that each clan in the Camarilla would be getting around 16-17 new vampires! More vampires means more options for deck building and that’s always good.

The first thing I noticed when I opened the starters was the packaging. It looked similar to the Blood Shadowed Court mini expansion which had a plastic protector covering the traditional cardboard starter box. I took a photo using my iPhone’s camera indoors so the picture may be a bit blurry. I must say, the new packaging was a very nice surprise! I think future VTES expansions should follow this trend. The standard cardboard box actually doesn’t have any indication of what clan it contains so it’s perfect for sealed deck play. Best thing about the new vampires? The artwork! No more mono artists per expansion like the much talked about Christoper Shy and Larry Snelly (although I do have a fondness for Snelly’s non-photoshopped work).

When I was sorting through all the vampires from the booster box I opened there were 3 standouts that immediately grabbed my attention: the three hot new Justicars from Brujah, Ventrue and Tremere. And I really mean Hawt. The new Tremere Justicar alone is almost soft core porn! I think a lot of people will play her just for the janet Jackson nipple effect hehe.

The Calm Before the Storm

Things are a little slow this month as players are still waiting for the release of Keepers of Tradition. Spoilers for all the pre-cons have been released and new library cards and vampire crypt information is almost complete. It’s interesting to see how the new group 4-5 Camarilla clans have been designed. The Toreadors have a number of vamps with either dom or DOM. The ventrue on the other hand have lost the much needed OBF and gained some interesting new off clan disciplines that seems to be pushing them towards combat or intercept. Hardestadt is really going to be a fearsome combat monster.

I can’t wait to get the new cards so I can try to make a working Ventrue combat deck using: POT FOR and PRO! A Ventrue intercept deck is also interesting…

Hopefully I can tear myself away from WOW to make some more Vtes decks before Keepers hits the Philippines but I doubt it hehe.