KGS Cards

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 int...

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.  ...

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 ...

This is a capstone of our series on crypt construction.  We'll talk about how these ideas work together and we'll discuss a few tournament-winning deck examples. Crypt Construction Blog Entries In  Understanding Basic Crypt Construction , we cover simple crypt types,  This is the basic foundation for understanding how to build crypts.   Advanced Crypt Construction (and Math!)  delves into decks that have star vampires.  We discuss why keeping the crypt size small is more beneficial and why most crypts should use 12 or 13 vampires. Even knowing the best ways to build crypts is no guarantee of success.  We cover ways to use crypt cards to help us get to the vampires we want in  Crypt Construction: Improving the Draw .  We also discuss our library options in  Crypt Construction: Help from the Library . We also had a quick update about having a plan B in  Crypt Construction: Accidents Happen . Putt...

I had originally intended to capture each day of play, but that didn't work out so well.  Week of Nightmares is just exhausting.  Not only are there tons of Vampire: The Eternal Struggle events, there are games played back at the AirBnB too.  For long-time VTES players, I will say that the Cylons did really well this week and I'll recap those events as well. I decided to drop my previous updates in favor of this more encompassing one. Day Zero There were a few of us in the same AirBnB.  We started the week cooking up some dishes that would last and help maintain our stamina.  We also had our first game of BSG.  We played a legacy format, in which any revealed Cylon or executed human is unavailable for the rest of the week.  Later in the week, we began selecting random by character type, which added more fun, as we saw less frequently used characters more often. Day One I decided to start the week, an Anson MMPA lock-and-bleed deck.  I've only play...

A companion to our previous post  Crypt Construction: Improving the Draw , which focused on crypt cards that help you improve draws.  Here, we'll discuss the various library options that help you formulate the crypt you need.  Sometimes that's bypassing duplicate vampires; other times that's just getting another vampire. Master Cards Master cards are good options for helping with crypt manipulation.  Master cancelation is rare and crypt manipulation is low on the list of targets for canceling.  This means that you can almost assuredly play these cards with little interference (exceptions noted).  These cards also leave your minions free to do other actions, like advancing your game strategy. Effective Management Effective Management is a classic, originating in the Jyhad set, and has been reprinted many times. Saves you 1 pool and 4 transfers. This card appears in 201 tournament-winning decks ....

In previous installments, we've talked about how to construct crypts to minimize bad draws, but we can only minimize bad draws so far.  We're always going to have bad crypt draws if we play enough games, so we need a plan B.  So, let's discuss ways to improve the crypt draw. What the Rulebook Gives You There is always a plan B.  The rulebook gives you an out for bad crypt draws, which is to decrypt (draw another crypt card). Spend 4 transfers and burn 1 pool to move a vampire from your crypt to your uncontrolled region. The game, however, provides alternatives to this basic plan B.  There are both crypt and library options for improving decrypting and improving on bad crypt draws. Crypt Cards That Help Decrypt We have a few options for adding cards to our crypt that help get more crypt draws.  Remember that unless these cards fit into your overall strategy that you might be diluting you crypt too much resulting in more fr...