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 Nosferatu deck measures up for new and established players alike.
New Blood: Nosferatu
Black Chantry describes it as a "builds a strong defence with many animal helpers [that] slowly gnaws at its prey" This sounds like a typical Nosferatu build. Like most Nosferatu builds this deck is susceptible to trouble if the permanents don't get into play or are removed from play. Because the deck focuses on permanents, it will be slower to set up than decks using transients, making it weaker in the opening. but stronger in the endgame.
As a Demo of the Game
As a demo of the game, this is almost a complete opposite of the Malkavian deck we looked at. This is a defensive-minded deck. The deck features nice permanents, like Preternatural Strength and intercept locations and retainers. It also has permanent sources of pool drain for your prey's pool. It is setup to defend its own pool and these resources.
This deck hits the harder bits. Combat tends to have a lot of steps, so any deck that wants to force the issue via rush or intercept and has combat cards to play is going be harder to demonstrate. There's nothing wrong with this, in general, but this deck features non-standard combat steps with Immortal Grapple. With Strike: Combat Ends present in three of the five decks, having Immortal Grapple is a necessary evil.
For New Players
This deck offers quite a few new cards for players that have gotten into the
game with BCP. (We'll talk about the brand new vampires in a bit.)
- Owl Companion
- This amazing retainer gives everyone a view of you opponent in combat's hand. Knowledge is power and in this game that you can use that power to gain advantage over your opponents.
- Potence
- Skill cards are not the most sexy cards, but new players need to have access to them. In most cases, I think build-a-bear decks are not worth it, but skills cards have their uses. (I should probably blog about that.) Realistically, we should get all of the skill cards into the BCP card rotation.
- Rat’s Warning
- Getting bled? Unlock and then decide. This card works perfectly with Protected District. If you actually want to get into combat, the press works well with either Carrion Crows or Preternatural Strength.
- Tier of Souls
- This card has seen a card text update to also take life from allies. This change makes the card make sense. It's bounce-proof bleed boost, which is nice. The action can double as a rush in some circumstance, which can be good or bad. Expect to need stealth if you want the action to succeed.
- WMRH Talk Radio
- One of the cheaper media outlets and one of my favorites. WMRH has a drawback if you fail to block, but you could fail to block twice and be no worse off than if you had played London Evening Star. Since you're putting this into a deck that wants to block, you should expect failures to be low. Even if you do fail, you're paying the cost over time, unlike the Evening Star, which is also beneficial.
What's Missing?
There are a few cards that haven't been reprinted that would have been good
includes. SchreckNET is a promo that
hasn't been reprinted. It offers another way for this deck to obtain
hand information, and if nothing else, cycles easily as an action that
provides an unlock. Hugh mentioned during a
VTES Mexico interview
that because SchreckNET doesn't exist in the
current (V5) World of Darkness that is why the card is unavailable to reprint
in this set. Kindred Intelligence is
another clan card worthy of a reprint. Given the smaller size of the g6
Nosferatu, being able to bring more of them into play is a good idea.
I would have like to see Pack Alpha in this
list, but given my complaints about the combat complexities, it's hard for me
to really want this for a demo deck.
Conquer the Beast hasn't seen a reprint since
1995. The superior is a superior Trap,
but instead of automatic presses, it gives you all of the power to control
whether the combat continues. (I don't even own any copies and I really
wish I did.)
New Blood: Nosferatu Mash-Up
With the First Blood decks, BCP released a How-To-Play download for it, which
included instructions on making a "real" deck by putting two copies
together. While I expect BCP will do the same, here's my first cut at
the mash-up.
Deck Name: New Blood: Nosferatu Mashup Author: Karl Schaefer Description: This version accentuates what the base deck is doing. More permanents, more combat, more reactions, etc. Crypt (12 cards, min=23 max=28 avg=6.17) ======================================= 2x Cedrick Calhoun 7 pot ANI DOM OBF Nosferatu:6 2x Nathaniel Bordruff 7 ani DOM OBF POT Nosferatu:6 2x Dowager, The 6 aus pot ANI OBF primogen Nosferatu:6 2x Larissa Moreira 6 pot ANI OBF primogen Nosferatu:6 2x Lenny Burkhead 6 obf pot pre ANI primogen Nosferatu:6 2x Horace Radcliffe 5 obf ANI POT Nosferatu:6 Library (72 cards) ================== Master (9) ---------- 6x Blood Doll 1x Fame 1x Labyrinth, The 1x WMRH Talk Radio Action (12) ----------- 1x Army of Rats 4x Creeping Sabotage 3x Deep Song 2x Preternatural Strength 2x Tier of Souls Ally (2) -------- 2x Underbridge Stray Retainer (5) ------------ 1x Murder of Crows 1x Owl Companion 3x Raven Spy Action Modifier (3) ------------------- 1x Lost in Crowds 2x Spying Mission Action Modifier/Combat (2) -------------------------- 2x Swallowed by the Night Reaction (19) ------------- 4x Cats' Guidance 6x Forced Awakening 3x Protected District 3x Rat's Warning 3x Warrens, The Combat (20) ----------- 4x Carrion Crows 4x Immortal Grapple 8x Roundhouse 4x Taste of Vitae
Fifth Edition-New Blood: Nosferatu Mash-Up
Taking it a step further, let's take a look at what a Fifth Edition-New Blood
mash-up would look like. These two decks work great together. I focused on the
I vampires, but you could go the other way too. The mix of decks
also gives you a lot of different reaction options. I just don't like
Instinctive Reaction, so maybe it's less good
until you get more permanent intercept. Most decks with Animalism want to
feature Sense the Savage Way, but that's not
useful for this grouping because of their size.
Falcon's Eye offers an additional piece of
transient intercept if you can get your hands on it. Even a couple of copies
would help supplement the reaction package.
I didn't want this deck to get too big. If the removal of the
Instictive Reactions is making it harder to
block, consider adding the Tier of Souls to
boost your bleed output to become more aggressive. I didn't include this card,
which I like, because I wanted to focus on the pool drain effects.
Deck Name: V5-New Blood: Nosferatu Mashup Author: Karl Schaefer Description: Mostly like the original V5 with some additional reliability. Make the combat package more reliable with Carrion Crows and Immortal Grapple. Crypt (12 cards, min=16 max=25 avg=5.33) ======================================== 1x Cedrick Calhoun 7 pot ANI DOM OBF Nosferatu:6 2x Dowager, The 6 aus pot ANI OBF primogen Nosferatu:6 2x Larissa Moreira 6 pot ANI OBF primogen Nosferatu:6 2x Lenny Burkhead 6 obf pot pre ANI primogen Nosferatu:6 1x Horace Radcliffe 5 obf ANI POT Nosferatu:6 1x Wauneka 5 ani aus obf POT Nosferatu:6 1x Aunt Linda 4 obf POT Nosferatu:6 1x Ryan 4 ani obf pot Nosferatu:6 1x Baixinho 3 ani obf Nosferatu:6 Library (79 cards) ================== Master (13) ----------- 2x Blood Doll 1x Fame 1x Guardian Angel 1x Haven Uncovered 1x Labyrinth, The 1x Rebel 1x Slum Hunting Ground 1x Smiling Jack, The Anarch 2x Vessel 1x Warsaw Station 1x WMRH Talk Radio Action (14) ----------- 1x Army of Rats 5x Creeping Sabotage 6x Deep Song 2x Preternatural Strength Ally (2) -------- 2x Underbridge Stray Retainer (5) ------------ 1x Murder of Crows 4x Raven Spy Action Modifier (2) ------------------- 2x Lost in Crowds Action Modifier/Combat (2) -------------------------- 2x Swallowed by the Night Reaction (22) ------------- 6x Cats' Guidance 2x Forced Awakening 2x Guard Dogs 2x On the Qui Vive 4x Protected District 2x Rat's Warning 4x Warrens, The Combat (19) ----------- 4x Carrion Crows 6x Immortal Grapple 5x Roundhouse 4x Taste of Vitae
For Established Players
Let's start with the new vampires. They're attractive to new players,
but may be the real gem for established players, especially those with large
collections.
- Cedrick Calhoun
-
A 7-cap with
D , butp . He has a vote drawback, but that's easy to avoid, given that he has no title and group 6 Nosferatu don't make the best voters anyway. - Nathaniel Bordruff
-
Another 7-cap with
D , buti this time. He's got a rush special, which is always nice for decks playing combat cards. Being able to ditch extra red cards whenever you want can be critical to success.
There are a lot of useful reprints in this deck. More
Preternatural Strength? Yes, please. A nice
amount of Creeping Sabotage and
Protected District to add to any V5 deck.
Immortal Grapple is usually needed in
quantities of 8+, so more to add to the Nosferatu or Brujah decks.
Mixing It Up with KoT Nosferatu
The new vampires work nicely with
Alonso Petrodon, who also has
D . They could be part of a stealth bleeder, featuring
Malkavians. Dominate adds a lot of power to this grouping, though I
wonder if they'll really feel like Nosferatu decks.
Stanislava (with D ) represents a
large portion of the Gangrel wins, but those decks never feel like Gangrel
decks to me. In the same way, I expect these two to provide winning
strategies, but it will be Chicago by Night Nosferatu deck instead of
traditional Nosferatu. Nothing's wrong with that, it's just a different
flavor.
Outside of the Dominate, most of my ideas revolve around
Nathaniel and
his enter combat special. Will we get a
Beast
and Theo redux with
Nate and
Theo? The latter set
has Dominate on both vampires for extra ousty goodness. A few
Conditioning and
Deflection in an otherwise fighty deck to
improve the ability to oust and to survive.
What ideas come to mind when you see these new Nosferatu?
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