Advice on starting a new VTES group in the Black Chantry era

self biased wrote: I'm working on making staple proxies available on a general level.

That would be great!

I started looking into what's in the Black Hand starters. It seems like they're super good additions (if you get a pair) to the Black Chantry ones. A Nosferatu deck could be a great 5th deck in there, and the contents of others have plenty of cards that boost BC starters. BH starter strategies aren't exactly super fine tuned (Cryptic Mission, seriously?), but they have good cards and an alternative crypt. Also, you'll get a good enough Dementation bleed deck from those.

3rd edition starters are even better, but harder to get. A doubled up Malkavian starter would be great as a fifth wheel though.

Displays (2 starters each) are still available from Fantasiapelit for a very, very reasonable price.

www.fantasiapelit.com/index.php?main=ai&kat=single&mista=indeksi&etsittava=_100233

Basically, don't buy boosters (unless you get, say, a very affordable box of 3rd ed), always go for starters, old or new.

The best idea for a new group will probably be buying things as a lot, and pooling up the cards. Make 5 or 6 decks (6 might be optimal with BH or 3rd ed starters to support BC ones), rotate and fine tune them together for a while until people get so psyched that they really want to make their own decks and get their own cards.

Remember to keep us updated on how things shape up! Everyone loves to hear from new groups.

ps. As you start out, I would strongly suggest you ALWAYS have the 2h time limit. Even if your tables take ages with mistakes in rules and checking cards and people not knowing what to do, it is still a solid choice to keep the time limit. That teaches you first hand that a) games will not take so long that you'll want to hang yourself and b) table timeouts are finein VtES. It's common, even.

You'll get the games going, learn stuff, end at time and start another game with the knowledge you gained in the last game. Playing first time might take hours if you're not confident in how the game plays, how decks play and how you play. It's better, I'd suggest, to just play more incomplete games than trying to finish a slog of a game.

4 players, even 3, is fine for getting rules down, but the real VtES experience start with 5 players.

Kraus wrote: Displays (2 starters each) are still available from Fantasiapelit for a very, very reasonable price.

www.fantasiapelit.com/index.php?main=ai&kat=single&mista=indeksi&etsittava=_100233

Thanks for plug mate!
Be advised that there are just few odd displays left so these will be gone VERY soon.

It is the law of the jungle: the quick will eat the tardy.

Kraus wrote: Basically, don't buy boosters (unless you get, say, a very affordable box of 3rd ed), always go for starters, old or new.

Slightly higher number of these still left but will be soon all gone too.
And then they'll only be available with noticeably higher price sticker.

Just sayin'...

Kraus wrote: I started looking into what's in the Black Hand starters. It seems like they're super good additions (if you get a pair) to the Black Chantry ones. A Nosferatu deck could be a great 5th deck in there, and the contents of others have plenty of cards that boost BC starters. BH starter strategies aren't exactly super fine tuned (Cryptic Mission, seriously?), but they have good cards and an alternative crypt. Also, you'll get a good enough Dementation bleed deck from those.

3rd edition starters are even better, but harder to get. A doubled up Malkavian starter would be great as a fifth wheel though.

Displays (2 starters each) are still available from Fantasiapelit for a very, very reasonable price.

www.fantasiapelit.com/index.php?main=ai&kat=single&mista=indeksi&etsittava=_100233

That's exactly what I did! Snatched a display of BH starters and 2 pairs of !Malkavian and !Brujah 3rd Edition starters from Fantasiapelit - glad to see that I seem to have made the right choice. I already received them and mashed them based on this , this and this . These might not be entirely optimal, but at least it will leave some room for improvisation and improvement.

Actually, what do you think might be the trickiest deck to operate of those BH or 3rd Edition ones? I'll be the only person that has at least a rough idea about the rules and I'm the one most excited about the game - it makes sense that such a deck is played by me and not one of my guinea pigs

Kraus wrote: Remember to keep us updated on how things shape up! Everyone loves to hear from new groups.

ps. As you start out, I would strongly suggest you ALWAYS have the 2h time limit. Even if your tables take ages with mistakes in rules and checking cards and people not knowing what to do, it is still a solid choice to keep the time limit. That teaches you first hand that a) games will not take so long that you'll want to hang yourself and b) table timeouts are finein VtES. It's common, even.

You'll get the games going, learn stuff, end at time and start another game with the knowledge you gained in the last game. Playing first time might take hours if you're not confident in how the game plays, how decks play and how you play. It's better, I'd suggest, to just play more incomplete games than trying to finish a slog of a game.

4 players, even 3, is fine for getting rules down, but the real VtES experience start with 5 players.

Thanks for the pointers, I really appreciate your help. I managed to get 4 other people at least interested in trying, so fingers crossed. I will definitely report back!

Those mash up decks make all sorts of sense but could all be slimmed by 10 cards and made better in the process.

I could take a look tomorrow and see if i could take some cards out.

I wonder what happens when you have those 3rd ed starters there to shake things up.

My plan is to get a set of the new starters and maybe an anthology kit to see what I can put together. This would be enough for four players to have some customizability and not play the same exact decks all the time. Also consider Preston's "barbed wire" decks if they are still available:

prestonpoulter.com/2011/11/01/barbed-wire-vtes-decks/

For around $50 you can get basic starter decks that you can always cannibalize for cards to get started if you need to.