Greetings fellow Methuselahs
You look a bit pale, are you sure you had enough sun lately? Did I say sun?! I mean BLOOD of course – have who had enough blood? There´s nothing like a good old hunt action is it? Or maybe you prefer a bleed for six pool? Anyway, EC 2017 is over, and what an experience it was. And now the NAC is coming up, with no less than eleven tournaments!
EUROPEAN CHAMPIONSHIP 2017 SUMMARY
Five V:TES tournaments where played during the World of Darkness Berlin convention, a big gathering of all kinds of World of Darkness-related stuff, hosted by White Wolf on 11-14 May. We won´t delve much further in the non-V:TES-activities, but there were several large larps, playtesting of next V:TM, workshops, contests, presentations, speeches (White Wolf, Mark Rein-Hagen, Justin Achilli, etc.) – if you want to know more about all that, check out www.worldofdarkness.berlin
On Friday: Nation´s Cup gathered 76 players and had two finals. The “best players final” was won by Alain Greiner (FRA) playing a Nephandus deck. The “best team final” was won by Emiliano Imeroni representing Belgium, playing a ani-weenie deck with anarch tech.
On Friday: Storyline “Ascension of Caine” had 39 players and was won by Rudolf Garski (GER) playing a Lasombra Baltimore Purge deck (list here).
On Saturday: EC 2017 day 1 had a whopping 157 starting players, which is a record for the EC day 1 tournament. Winner was Francois Greiner (FRA) playing a Ventrue princes with sticks deck (list here).
On Sunday: A “Shadow Twin” standard constructed tournament replaced the usual First Chance Qualifier event. 88 persons entered and Cedric Goffaux (FRA) won with a Nana Buruku & Enkidu ANI+POT rush deck (list here).
On Sunday: EC 2017 day 2 was fought by the top 40 players from day 1. The new European champion is Danilo Torrisi (ITA), playing a Saulot & The Capuchin wall deck with anarch tech. See below for an interview with Danilo. More information on all decks that was played on day 2 can be found here. A transcript of the final table can be read here.
The total sum of the turnout at EC 2017 is 400, which is the most since Budapest 2012. This is the first time attendance didn´t require qualification, but another reason for the high attendance was of course the Anthology set, given and sold to all event ticket holders. A complete card list for the new set can be found at www.worldofdarkness.berlin/vtes
Another storyline, “The Line”, was played in a less formal fashion during the weekend. Storyline coordinator Mike Nudd will tell more about the results of the storylines later – you are all still welcome to run your own storyline events and report your results to
A couple of interesting meetings also took place. Representatives from V:EKN met White Wolf to discuss the future of V:TES – it was a good meeting but we have nothing to disclose at this moment. However, we recommend you to watch the White Wolf keynote presentation from Berlin. V:TES is mentioned a couple of times and you are given some peeks into the upcoming metaplot for the World of Darkness setting. Also the annual National Coordinators meeting was held. Among the things that were discussed was where the 2018 EC will be arranged – more about that later.
The V:EKN would like to give a special acknowledgement to the non-European players who came a long way, from Brazil, Chile, USA and other places. Also a special thanks to the players took the time off to run V:TES demo games for interested not-yet-V:TES-players at the event, primarily Kai Kimmerle. There was a constant pressure for such games, and those who volunteered are worth great praise. And also of course thanks to the tournament organisers: Mike Nudd, Hugh Angseesing, Serge Cirri and Vincent Ripoll. Thank you!
You can read more about EC 2017 at Extrala´s special blog vtesec2017.wordpress.com, including deck lists for final tables, statistics and reports of Extrala´s own efforts.
Congratulations to all winners and thanks to everyone who attended!
INTERVIEW OF THE MONTH: DANILO TORRISI, EUROPEAN CHAMPION 2017
Congratulations Danilo! Let´s start with the day 1 tournament. What deck did you play and what was your strategy?
- I played a very aggressive political/bleed deck with Rafael de Corazon, Mistress Fanchon, Rebekah and Maris Streck. The strategy is to start fast with Zillah´s Valleys, bleed with Flurry of Action at superior and then vote. I played this kind of deck because I think many players have aggressive decks in day 1 to try to take a single game win to qualify for day 2. I used a bleed+political deck because many players have defense agains bleed but nothing against political.
How did it go?
- It worked very well in the first round. I took 4 vp in less than 50 minutes. In the second round unfortunaly there was a Tupdog deck at the table. It rushed down all vampires cross table, so zero points for me. In the third round I was in a table with two wall decks; one Gangrel deck and one Carna grinder deck. No ousts and 0,5 vp for everyone – a very boring game. So I got to day 2 with 1 gw and 4,5 vp.
So, what about day 2? How did you choose your deck?
- In day 2 I played a wall deck based on auspex and fortitude. The two big vampires in the crypt are Saulot and The Capuchin, but there are also some smaller vampires with aus and for, and Anarch Converts for an anarch strategy with Anarch Revolts and some other cards. I chose to play a wall because in day 2 there is less aggressive deck, so the game is usually slow. A deck like mine needs time to grow up, but when I have Saulot, The Capuchin and maybe another vampire, and eleven cards in my hand, I feel kind of immortal! My strategy is to stay alive, let some players be ousted and then play Smiling Jack or Anarch Revolt and try to defend it against only two methuselahs to take the game win. (Danilos deck list http://www.vekn.net/forum/event-reports-and-twd/75788-ec-2017-day-2-tournament-winning-deck#81853)
How did you perform in the preliminary rounds?
- The first round I took zero vp. There was two animalism-weenies, one Nana Buruku deck and one gargoyle bruise-bleed deck at the table, so my Saulot had to visit torpor many times. The second game was me > Toreador AAA guns > Toreador AAA guns > Celerity weenie with guns > Toreador AAA vote. Many contests in that game! The third game was me > Arika vote > Giotto Verducci bleed/vote > Montano Baltimore Purge > MMPA animalism with Aksina & Cybele. Both these games was good for me because they were slow. I had time to build my wall defense and won both games with 4 vp, so I was first seed in the final with 2 gw and 8 vp.
What was your strategy in the final? What was the threats for you on that table?
- My strategy was sit with Noora as predator because Saulot is immune to damage from The Unnamed and I can deflect bleeds on my prey. That way I can focus on Orian and try to stop him cross table with Eagle´s Sight or Delaying Tactics. I have no problem with Nephandus because my vampires can prevent damage and kill them easy. So my greatest problem was the Tzimisce deck, because I didn´t know what kind of combat he played and I don´t know the player. So I tried to play with two alternative strategies: block everything threatening and try to keep all players alive for two hours, or with Nooras help kill my prey with deflected bleeds. The first one worked better! :-)
Is there anyone you want to thank who helped you succeed in the EC this year?
- I want to thank all my friends in Team Italy. We talk a lot and try to help each other to build decks and choose what decks to play. This year it worked out very good for me! :-)
NAC AND WEEK OF NIGHTMARES COMING UP
North American Championship events at Origins and Week of Nightmares events are posted on the vekn.net calendar.
Week of Nightmares events start on Saturday, June 11 and will be at Fabian's Pizza at 691 N. High St in Columbus, just down the street from the convention center.
Sunday June 11: 2:00 pm start
Monday June 12: 11:30 pm start and 6:00 pm start
Tuesday June 13: 11:30 pm start and 6:00 pm start
Wednesday June 14: 11:30 pm start and 6:00 pm start
North American Championship events are at Origins starting on Thursday, June 15:
Thursday June 15: Constructed, 11:00 am start
Friday June 16: NAC Day One, 11:00 am start
Saturday June 17: NAC Day Two, 11:00 am start
Sunday June 18: First Chance Qualifier, 10:00 am start
Be sure to sign up for a FULL SHOW BADGE and use the VEKN club code. This coupon code will remove $30 from the cost of the badge. Coupon Code: LwXcDYSx
DESIGN TEAM NEWS
Round Two of the Bloodlines set playtest is underway! Round Two will conclude at the end of June. We're aiming for a late summer release for the set. If you'd like to join the playtest, please contact our Playtest Coordinator, Hugh Angseesing.
CALENDAR
Upcoming events:
June 3 - Cape Town Pre-Nationals Tournament - Cape Town, South Africa
June 4 - LIGA_NOVA_ERA_BRASIL- PB - Storm Hammer - Campina Grande, Brazil
June 11 - After Anthologies - Badía del Vallés, Catalunya, Spain
June 11 - Week of Nightmares event 1 - Columbus, USA
June 12 - Week of Nightmares event 2 - Columbus, USA
June 12 - Week of Nightmares event 3 - Columbus, USA
June 13 - Week of Nightmares event 4 - Columbus, USA
June 13 - Week of Nightmares event 5 - Columbus, USA
June 14 - Week of Nightmares event 6 - Columbus, USA
June 14 - Week of Nightmares event 7 - Columbus, USA
June 15 - LIGA_NOVA_ERA_BRASIL-AM - Fortitude Master - Manaus, Brazil
June 15 - V:TES Constructed Tournament - Columbus, USA
June 16 - V:TES North American Championships Day 1 - Columbus, USA
June 17 - V:TES North American Championships Day 2 - Columbus, USA
June 17 - Campeonato Brasileiro de VTES 2017- Manaus, Brazil
June 17 - ICON SA 2017 - Midrand, South Africa
June 17 - German ECQ: Grapple in the Art Museum, Vol. 4 - Bad Nauheim, Germany
June 17 - Brno Nights I. - Brno, Jihomoravský kraj, Czech Republic
June 17 - Bewitching Oration - Paris, France
June 18 - V:TES First Chance Qualifier - Columbus, USA
June 25 - Liga_"NOVA ERA"_Brasil_AP - Restricted Vitae - Macapá, Brazil
June 25 - ALOHA - São Paulo, Brazil
For more information on upcoming events see the V:EKN Event Calendar.
CONTACT V:EKN
You can contact the V:EKN Inner Circle members using contact forms at V:EKN.net. Also follow the official V:TES Facebook page Vampire: The Eternal Struggle and the official V:EKN Twitter account @VEKN_VTES
Blood and souls!
Greetings fellow Methuselahs
Oboy, these are busy times for VEKN volunteers working to breathe unlife into our beloved card game. Recent news:
GREAT EUROPEAN CHAMPIONSHIP ATTENDANCE
No less than 132 players have so far registered for the EC at World of Darkness Berlin! This is absolutely fantastic and we look forward to four days of great, competitive fun in Germany. Spain, France and Sweden have most registered players by now, and we also see attendants from as far away as Canada, Brazil and Chile. Tickets are still available at https://www.worldofdarkness.berlin/
ANTHOLOGY PREVIEWS ARE ONGOING
The last weeks you have been able to see previews of the brand new cards being printed for the Berlin Anthology set. So far we have presented eight crypt cards and one library card:
- Hamid Mansour (Ventrue)
- Laura Goldman (Brujah)
- Weirich Waldburg (Ventrue)
- André the Manipulator (Gangrel)
- Apolonia Czarnecki (Malkavian)
- Aisha az-Zahra (Toreador)
- Anne-Marie Bourgeois, Inconnu Recruiter (Toreador)
- Joseph Fischer (Gangrel antitribu)
- Vivienne Géroux (Ally)
You have also been served a bunch of rules updates and new wordings:
- Cards backs changes
- Tap/untap replaced by lock/unlock
- New keyword: Wake
- Singular "they"
- Attached
Not only this, but we have shown the new exciting artwork for Field Training and Enkil Cog!
If you have missed some of all this greatness, check out this posting where all of it is collected: Anthology.
If you have any comments or input on VEKN work, be it rules stuff, design stuff, artwork or anything else, please discuss it on the VEKN.net forums or contact the appropriate VEKN board member at the contact forms page.
TWO STORYLINES REVEALED
In the March newsletter we told you some about the TWO new storylines premiering at World of Darkness Berlin event; The Ascension of Caine and The End of the Line. Recently we also published the actual rules and the associated new cards. If you missed this, check it out at Berlin Storyline events 2017.
While the V:EKN recommend that you play the storyline events either at the actual Berlin event or the same weekend at your own location anywhere in the world, you are free to do so any time during spring or summer of 2017. We await your results – check out the event rules for how to report.
MORE ABOUT WORLD OF DARKNESS BERLIN
For some extra Berlin-related World of Darkness nerdiness, check out the brand new quiz app World of Darkness Quizima. It´s jam packed with questions about lore, rules and all sorts of related knowledge – and YES there´s V:TES-questions in there. Just search for “World of Darkness Quizima” in your smartphones app-finding app!
If you are also interested in the LARPs and other activities during the event, check out updates on the event blog or the Facebook group WOD BERLIN: Social.
WHAT´S DESIGNING V:TES LIKE?
VEKN Design Team member Mike Nudd delivers a fresh report from BGDevCon 2017, where he held a talk about designing V:TES cards:
What is BGDevCon?
The Board Game Developer’s Conference (BGDevCon) is an event organised by members of the UK Playtest Meetup group, aimed at bringing independent creatives together to discuss the process – and pitfalls – tabletop game design. This year’s event was held in Enfield, north London on Saturday 15th April, with over 20 people in attendance.
Why BGDevCon?
The new method of bringing games directly from inception to market via crowdfunding platforms such a Kickstarter has seen a wave of young, talented games publishers spring up around the globe. As more people bring their projects to fruition, a lot of them face the same challenges, and make the same mistakes. Events like this allow people to share knowledge and experience for the benefit of their peers. Also, many successful new publishers having successfully delivered a single game as a labour of love, are now on the lookout for new content, to help their brand and their business to grow.
Where do you fit in?
I have been designing games since I was a teenager. After helping to playtest a number of sets for VTES I was given the opportunity by White Wolf to design the official Vampire board game Prince of the City, which was published in 2006.
In 2013 I made an agreement with Grublin Games for them to publish my game Waggle Dance via crowdfunding on Kickstarter. The campaign was a great success, and after receiving many positive reviews online, the game went on to win an award at UK Games Expo 2014 for Best New Family Game.
Designs for two more of my games have been picked up for similar crowdfunding later this year: Lava Run to be published by Braincrack Games, and Dice Hospital to be published by Alley Cat Games. I am also working on many more games, some of which I hope to be published in the next 12-18 months.
Designing VTES
My game design experience helps inform my work with Ben Peal on the Design Team. At the first BGDevCon in 2016 I spoke about designing my game Waggle Dance, and this year I decided to share some of the process related to designing cards for VTES.
Designing a customisable card game is in many ways a more complex proposition than a ‘standalone’ board or card game. In the latter case the design environment is small and controlled, and can be tailor-made to suit the needs of the game, which are fixed, rather than evolving. For a CCG, it is necessary to think not just about the potential interactions with every single card already published, but you must also think about how current design may impact the design of more cards in the future.
A CCG also has very particular design considerations. In terms of deck-building efficiency, a card must be worth the ‘card slot’ in your deck, which can only contain a finite and limited number of cards. Related to this is the concept of ‘opportunity cost’ where the value of a card is directly proportional to the probability of a player using the card in each game, once it is included in the deck. This leads on to a need to balance cards in terms of their effectiveness and their versatility – every card should either be strong at one thing, or be less good but applicable to more than one thing.
Since VTES is a game fundamentally about resource management, part of the design space concerns effects which can vary efficiencies in pool cost, loss and gain. And as the major part of the game is driven by minion actions, another part of the design space concerns action efficiency per minion (which is why the card Freak Drive printed with the original Jyhad/VTES base set in 1994 is still generally seen as one of the game’s strongest cards).
As VTES is also inspired by the Vampire: The Masquerade tabletop role-playing game, there are also design considerations of a thematic nature. Most crypt cards in the game – including those more recently produced by the Design Team – are based on known characters from this source material. When we design new library cards, we must ask questions such as: is this game effect appropriate for the Discipline or sect affiliation in question? Is there existing material we can use to inform the effect, or to at least name the card?
While not all VTES players know – or care much about – this original source material, it is important for us to continue to respect it, particularly with the view of us wanting to work again with White Wolf in the future. White Wolf’s new owners Paradox Interactive are planning to release a new edition of Vampire: The Masquerade in 2018 – currently being referred to a ‘V5’ and I am looking forward to seeing what opportunities that presents for the future of VTES.
CALENDAR
Upcoming events:
May 6 – Annerley, Australia: Standard constructed
May 7 – Campina Grande, Brazil: Standard constructed
May 7 – Paris, France: Standard constructed
May 7 – Newark, USA: Standard constructed
May 12 – Berlin, Germany: Standard constructed (Nations Cup)
May 12 – Berlin, Germany: Storyline (Ascension of Caine)
May 13 – Berlin, Germany: European Championships Day 1
May 14 – Berlin, Germany: European Championships Day 2
May 14 – Berlin, Germany: Standard constructed (Shadow Twin)
May 14 – Manaus, Brazil: Standard constructed
May 28 – Macapá, Brazil: Standard constructed
May 28 – Manaus, Brazil: Standard constructed
May 28 – Mexico City, Mexico: Storyline
For more information on upcoming events see the V:EKN Event Calendar.
CONTACT V:EKN
You can contact the V:EKN Inner Circle members using contact forms at V:EKN.net. Also follow the official V:TES Facebook page Vampire: The Eternal Struggle and the official V:EKN Twitter account @VEKN_VTES
May your pool stay high and your ousts be plenty!
Some Kindred however—particularly those of the Sabbat—believe the legend is real. They look to cryptic ancients texts such as the Book of Nod as proof that Caine once walked the earth.
A select few believe that Caine’s return would signal the advent of the end times, or Gehenna. They lie in wait, preparing their forces, waiting for the signs.
 - preview.jpg) |
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| Nefertiti Advanced | Amulet of the Ancients | Visage of Caine |
- Rules
- Special cards
- Special cards (other version, may look better depending on your printer)
At the Line everyone are equals. Primogen rub shoulders with anarchs. Camarilla share the dancefloor with Sabbat. Grudges and affiliations are left at the door. It has always been this way, and the Management will tolerate nothing less.
The Line is a place to simply be. And everyone wants to be at the Line.
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