KGS Cards

Another Week of Nightmares has come and gone.  As usual it was a blast to spend the week with good friends.  The attendance was higher this year, which is a good sign.  This is a recap of my experiences this year.  A little less detailed than last time, but hopefully you enjoy the review. Day 1: Week of Nightmares Event 1 As is tradition, the first event takes place outside of Columbus at Comic Shop Plus.  This is the venue that I normally travel to when playing in tournaments.  So, I am quite familiar with everyone.  The meta here has been greatly impacted by the V5A sets.  I had been holding off playing anything from them because I hate contesting.  However, I decided it was time to unveil my Banu Haqim breed-and-bleed deck. It was a nice mix of combat and survivability for the meta.  Being able to hit or bleed for a lot with Embraces changes the dynamics of the table.  In the final, my Embrace played and broke a Weighted Walking ...

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 featu...

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...