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Showing posts from April, 2022

Evaluating New Blood: Toreador

Black Chantry is releasing a new set of demo decks, New Blood.  Like First Blood, there are five decks with the same clans as the Fifth Edition boxed set: Malkavian, Nosferatu, Toreador, Tremere, and Ventrue.  Let's take a look and see how the Toreador deck measures up for new and established players alike. New Blood: Toreador Black Chantry describes it as a deck that "tries to take political control over the game." This sounds like the V5 Toreador build. Like most Toreador builds this deck is susceptible to trouble if the surrounding decks have any intercept whatsoever.  Toreador Grand Ball attempts to work around this problem, but that is either a temporary solution or a resource that has to be defended. As a Demo of the Game As the most straightforward political deck, this shows off both the strengths and weaknesses of votes.  There's a smattering of defensive options, in bleed reduction, a little bounce, and a little intercept

Evaluating New Blood: Tremere

Black Chantry is releasing a new set of demo decks, New Blood.  Like First Blood, there are five decks with the same clans as the Fifth Edition boxed set: Malkavian, Nosferatu, Toreador, Tremere, and Ventrue.  BCP switched things up and gave us both Tremere previews, so we'll skip to that. New Blood: Tremere Black Chantry describes it as a deck with "a defensive stance...[and i]t weakens its enemies with persistent attrition."  This deck is heavily oriented toward defense.  I've seen smaller reaction packages in larger decks.  This deck is going to survive; is it going to oust? It has some payload, but it feels a little lacking to me.  With the Arcane Library , Blood Dolls , and blood theft, you should be able to turn the minion advantage eventually. As a Demo of the Game This decks offers demo players a nice mix of bleed, block, and combat.  New players will be able to experience the basics of the game.  Building up permanents,

Evaluating New Blood: Malkvian

Black Chantry is releasing a new set of demo decks, New Blood.  Like First Blood, there are five decks with the same clans as the Fifth Edition boxed set: Malkavian, Nosferatu, Toreador, Tremere, and Ventrue.  Let's take a look and see how the first of these decks measure up for new and established players alike. New Blood: Malkavian Black Chantry describes it as a "toolbox that mixes bleeding and political actions." Malkavians playing politics?  This is atypical unless Lutz is involved.  Here, we have an a nice mix of bleed and political actions.  With easy access to stealth, we should expect most of them to succeed.  With most clans having access to bounce and with such a plethora or titles, however, will the bleeds hit the right target or will the referenda actually succeed? Well, not everything should succeed.  Real games are often full of failure, bounced bleeds, and torporized vampires. As a Demo of the Game This deck is a r