Vampire: the Embrace (initiation cards)

I dindn't know these cards and I find them fantastic !

But for the french translation, I think it is a good idea but it will be difficult for an experienced player to play with them ^^

"Nefertiti bleede avec Piratage informatique
Carna, Princesse sorcière joue Eveil avec la fraîcheur du soir et tente de bloquer.
Nefertiti joue avalé par la nuit
Pas de bloque
Nefertiti joue enchainer, je te bleed pour 4"

Do you have both versions printed for tomoroww convention ?

Just a thought :

I have a problem with superior mettle costing a blood here.

I mean : there is in the card pool only 4 cards which can inflict more than 2 damage in 1 strike (the undead strength don't work with the bastad sword per card text) and so in all the cases except those 4 thrown sewer lid, superior mettle is a skin of rock not usable on strike for 1.
(edit : ouch, I read again superior mettle and it does'nt work against thrown sewer lid neither...)

And with the seating you propose, you have the brujah seating across the ventrue which mean unless some cross table rush from the brujah, these will be dead cards for a good part of the game.

And franckly, the ventrue will never block the FoS and when he will be blocked by the tremere, he will be at long range and/or will be dealing with theft so prevent will be dead cards alltogether.

Also, I think the ventrue will have no choice but to back kill the FoS.

I mean :

the ventrue can play safe and so play with only 11 pools of vamp (sir walter and emily/vignes)
the FoS don't have to play safe cost-wise (because a rushing pred) and so can easily play with the whole crypt (19 pools)

with nefertiti on turn 2, he can very easily bleed for 3/4 every turn with her and then bleed for 2/3 with Celine chevalier every turn
so on turn 3, 3 points of bleed and after that 6 points of bleed every turn (I don't count the bleeds from Hesha/Hadrian wich can "chump block/hunt")

so with the ventrue playing with only 2 vamp, the FoS can easily oust him in 4 turns of bleed.

And frankly, with a rush doing 2 points of damage top, the brujah will not be able to prevent it.

And on the other side of the ventrue, we have carna with 8 wake to compete with the 10 political action for the ventrue.

Hi ankha

first it s a great idea. When i tried a few years ago to initiate a friend and my flatemate, it was difficult to find balanced and simple decks to give at least basic understanding of the basic mechanism: bleed, stealth, intercept, leave/rescue torpor, hunt, combat maneuver...
For example i remember my flatemate trying several times to use an army of rats as a stealth modifier because he did not see that it was an action and not an action modifier.
and i remember this evening too at the bar when a girl wanting to learn was given an ashur tablet deck with only proxies...

for the decks, for the fos, maybe you can replace the succulent vitae by some blood theft (there is serpent tongue in serpentis which is simillar)...
Your army of rats would be nice too i think in such game as it s not a pool loss preventable and as it completes the fos . The only trouble is that there no such card for fos in regular games and it makes maybe the fos looking too much similar to the tremere deck...

by the way, if you need player to help you initiate others in paris, i m ready too
: )

Ankha wrote:

I had some returning informations:
- the Brujah deck empties too fast and doesn't handle Ardan Lane
- The FoS deck is boring. Always stealthing with stealth and getting reduced. An idea was too introduce some Temptations.
- Superior Mettle is useless
- the Tremere deck is balanced
Succeded seating order: Brujah - FoS - Ventrue - Tremere

First of all:
IMHO this is the best invention EVER since I started introducing new players.
It even made the introduction process more fun for me.

We tried this two weeks ago. I had the sheets printed months ago but never got around to prepare the decks. Glad I did it just in time for our last intro of a former Ma*ic player, although he had stopped playing years before. He still had an idea about the concept of CCGs, tapping, cardflow and stuff.

I modified the crypt to double one of the key vampires and added a third 3 cap to have 6 cards in each crypt. Being able to work with crypt draw seemed important to me.

For a second run (the 1st was exceptionally smooth and fun) we changed 4 cards into staple/basic masters, like Blood Doll, Misdirection, Ascendance or such. We just used original cards. Master phase is important in the game and also easy to grasp. After all, Blood Dolls made the game even more realistic.

Empty decks: Recursion like in draft worked fine for us.

The whole concept really helped to get a good "feeling" of the game, emphasizing the multiplayer and main aspects of the game and raise some expectations for the "real stuff". In this regard it was a great success.

Some small issues I'll be pondering about for the future:
Seating order:
The Ventrue almost never get any actions done vs the Tremere and they are easily killed by the Followers.
Thinking about adding something like 2nd Tradition.
Carna as prey sometimes kills the FoS. A bit more diversity in stealth might be an option and changing seating order.
Some better cards with restriction for use at capacity 5 or above might be worth a try, to point out the existence of requirements in preparation for disciplines.
A few more, I just can't remember right now. I'll give this more tries for sure.
I might post the modified deck-lists if needed.

Thanks a lot for the concept.
Good job.

-alf