Negative Experience with Den of Fiends for New Players

Over the past few weeks, I've been hosting online demos of VtES for different groups of beginners. Typically I have 4 players participating in a demo, but occasionally there are as few as 3. We've been using the 5 preconstructed decks from Black Chantry (4 Sabbat + 25th Anniversary) and I'm running into a recurring problem:

The Den of Fiends deck has so many intercept and wake options that it can shutdown just about every action that its predator and prey attempt to perform. This level of denial is resulting in some frustration and negative first impressions toward the game because, frankly, it's no fun when you can't use your cards. It also doesn't help that the Tzimisce deck is the best at combat of the 5 decks (with Nephandus coming in a distant second).

For example, in our last demo the Den of Fiends player blocked 100% of the actions attempted by their predator (who was playing the Pact of Nephandus deck). Not a single action succeeded.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to deal with this? Or some easy-to-offer advice for the other decks/players that don't have enough stealth to escape the Tzimisce wall?

Of course, one option is to not allow this deck to be used in demos, but I find that to be a poor workaround. Intercept/action denial is a part of the game, so ignoring it isn't a long-term solution. Most of my players would see that as a flaw of the game and decide not to play.

Thanks ahead of time for your help!

Did the Den of Fiends player make any VP ?

Rynkle wrote:

Did the Den of Fiends player make any VP ?

In one demo yes, in the others no. Granted, it's not feasible to play a demo game for 4 beginners to completion over video, that just takes too long. Demos are meant as a taste. Unfortunately, the action denial of the Den of Fiends deck is making that taste rather unpleasant and is driving some potential players away from the game.

I suggest to swap some cards. According to your description of the problem (and without much experience with the deck) I would take out 2 wakecards and 2 interceptcards for some actions like Tasha Morgan, J.S. Simmons, another Living Manse and an Army of Rats to let the Den-Player be more active and to lower the defensive quality a bit. If then the deck is at a disadvantage versus the Parliament of Shadows, you could add Deep Songs instead.

Advice for the Nephandus-Deck: If you sit next to a wall you have to rely completely on Antonio D'Erlette and his special. He will perform no action at all. Then, when you brought out some Nephandi they will do the work. They should be able to cope with the Tzimisce well enough.

Yipe wrote:

...
Does anyone have any suggestions on how to deal with this? Or some easy-to-offer advice for the other decks/players that don't have enough stealth to escape the Tzimisce wall?

Of course, one option is to not allow this deck to be used in demos, but I find that to be a poor workaround. Intercept/action denial is a part of the game, so ignoring it isn't a long-term solution. Most of my players would see that as a flaw of the game and decide not to play.
...

In the paper-rock-scissors setup of various archetypes, one might sit on the table and be 100% dead without any actions possible without cross-table help, especially when it comes to "good" decks. Surviving next to wall deck without pure block denial and/or tools to win the combat requires social manipulation by pointing to the rest of the table that one deck will only get stronger if it's not stomped out now. Naturally that might require streak of "failures" but eventually the table should agree to bounce odd bleeds, rush a bit or toss few extra pool damage from votes to the direction of the wall deck. Just to ensure it cannot sit comfortably beyond lunge bleed building up but instead has to focus solely on staying alive. For new players the act of whole table taking a turn to kick one player even by cross table allies might be very alien concept, but it's important to understand how backstabbing and changing of power balance in the table requires it.

My recommendation, for pure honesty, is to ditch the sabbat precons and 25 stanislava in favor of more new player friendly decks (first blood, the forum alternatives here etc) that help them get more accustomed to the simple actions of the game. Bleed, vote, rush, blocks etc all should somehow become familiar during a demo. After they've learned to handle those, they have more tools in the box to start figure out the more social game aspects that they've already taken part in by seeing how table might easily collapse one way or another.

But if you insist on keeping the Black Chantry sabbat precons and 25 stanislava as a new player experience, I recommend giving Nephandi deck one or two skin of nights that Antonio can use to prevent sudden burning during lunge along with Burst of Sunlight and Recure of the Homeland that thaumaturgy weenies can use to threaten non-prevent decks. Waking to block weenie Recures takes resources and if the vampire diablerizes the weenie away cross table should vote burn to keep the table balance. I would recommend Memories of Mortality as it was traditionally paired with Nephandi for proper trap combat but as it's been on the tournament ban list since tournament players disliked Imbued timeouting their games, it might cause new players unnecessary questions. But it should be there.

Overall I recommend reading through; vtesone.wordpress.com/2015/08/18/deck-archetypes-nephandus-mage-update/
and vtesone.wordpress.com/2016/02/23/deck-archetypes-weenie-auspex-update/#more-11941

just in case you already have not done so as they go more into details of pro's and con's and how to handle things.