Starters - Improving Starters for Newbies guide.

Hey good people of VEKN

I represent a small gaming group here in Denmark (~6 players) all have bought some starters (Black hand, KoT, KMW), and I have an additional ~3000 cards to take from, (mostly Jyhad cards) and we have added a few boosters to our collection, but most often I get asked "how can I upgrade" and "what cards should I use" and I can't always answer that, since I've not been in the game for a long time, and there are a few hundred answers that might all be wrong due to my lack of knowledge.

I therefore tried to look for a thread that explores this topic "Improving Starters for Newbies", and the closest that pops up is the "The starter deck mashup project"-thread, which covers some good thoughts on how to combine two decks, but only one or two people seem to cover "why". for a newbie the choice between one or two cards can be difficult to discover and "expensive" to recover, but my group needs the information delivered in their bed, in the form of a bloody horse head.

So my question is, is there a thread that covers how to improve Starters that even a Newbie would understand- or could we possibly start one?.

(Magic fans had the same kind of "how to upgrade" for their Commander Decks, and it helped a friend of mine on the thought pattern needed to improve it .. added for reference: ertaislament.com/2011/06/21/commander-mirror-mastery-review-part-1-of-2/ ) <= closest i have to compare what I'm looking for so sorry for the false prophet game (aka Magic The Gathering)

I found this one for the KoT decks, it's a really good start locustforge.za.net/wiki/PrinceOfCapeTown/KotStarters but could use more of that sort.

It could be something along the line of:

"Brujah,- Keepers of Tradition"

Deck does and plays like a xxxx, best strategi is so and so.

To improve upon that strategic, take out yyyy and zzzzz, and put in 2x additional zzxxyy that will give more "oomph" for relative little cost.

Try getting "Brujah from hell" CAP 6, into the deck as he really improves the quality of your crypt, and adds a bit more superior Potence, which is much needed.

With all those cards out there, what would the most profitable way of upgrading a starter deck be. - or are they so notoriously bad, that nothing can be done to make them playable? and one should just dismantle them and kill off where they stand, use 1-2 of the cards and start from scratch.

Best Regards
Tallens

In general, V:TES precons have had too few masters, not enough wakes, and inferior versions of cards available on the library side. On the crypt side, the crypts often are quite atrocious, but it varies.

In terms of masters, historically, the main effects you want out of masters are the ability to gain pool (usually by converting it from blood on vampires), card cycling, and transfer acceleration. If you just add five Blood Dolls, The Barrens, Dreams of the Sphinx, Information Highway to every precon, they will be much better.

While not every deck wants to block/play reactions, many decks are advantaged by wakes, so adding five or six On the Qui Vive, Wake with Evening's Freshness, or other wakes will make the decks much better.

As for just upgrading cards, there are so many possibilities, but the general rule is that the most played cards in the game are the best versions of cards that fit those roles. For instance, .44 Magnum is much better than most weapons. Kine Resources Contested will be better than most votes.

Of course, you can also change the nature of the decks themselves. The BH !Toreador deck is just absurd in what it's trying to do.

As for crypts, if you need titles, swap out to get those titles - for instance, the KoT Ventrue deck wants Princes/Justicars. In many other cases, swap in cheaper vampires, as the precons often included vampires that didn't really add value to the deck, vampires that were too expensive for the ability of the deck to survive a predator, or vampires that needed printing and didn't make sense in the boosters. While I can see advice on a deck by deck basis for crypt changes, I actually think changing crypts is a lot easier to figure out on one's own than changing libraries.

What has helped me was just to try to take out the crap out of the starters (after playing a few games you would notice there always are several cards you will not play within 2 turns either because you cannot or there are better things to play). If you have a few different starters, try to do the same for all of them and see which wins/satisfies you the most. Then, since you already know how your own deck works, look for decks on the net using as many same cards of possible (my choice is secretlibrary.info), look for the cards they use, but you don't and decide YOURSELF if that particular card or group of cards would improve YOUR deck. Then again, check if you can afford it (Monastery of Shadows and Enkil Cog, I am looking at you ), buy the additional cards and test your deck with them.

The tough part being new is to find the proper amount of cards (e.g. do I go bellow 14 masters? are 33 stealth modifiers enough?), for this reason, always try to change things within your deck when playing casually, thus you can feel the difference whether 2 Unique Masters in 90 cards is too much or not enough.

Then you can try changing your base deck or even go looking at the cards available to your disciplines/clans that you never saw in play, think why and whether you know how to make them work and build a crazy deck for style points!

Tallens wrote:

It could be something along the line of:

"Brujah,- Keepers of Tradition"

Deck does and plays like a xxxx, best strategi is so and so.

To improve upon that strategic, take out yyyy and zzzzz, and put in 2x additional zzxxyy that will give more "oomph" for relative little cost.

Try getting "Brujah from hell" CAP 6, into the deck as he really improves the quality of your crypt, and adds a bit more superior Potence, which is much needed.

Extrala (VTES ONE) has you covered.
vtesone.wordpress.com/decks/reasonably-priced-decks/

AtomWeaver's Deck Bashing Challenge also has some good examples (and some really crappy examples).
www.thelasombra.com/dbc/dbc.htm

Recommended:
www.thelasombra.com/dbc/Lasombra-brujah-toreador-kot.htm
www.thelasombra.com/dbc/DualRavnos-byAdonai.htm
www.thelasombra.com/dbc/DualGiovanni-byAdonai.htm
www.thelasombra.com/dbc/giovanni_lotn_andy_f.htm
www.thelasombra.com/dbc/grail_1.htm
www.thelasombra.com/dbc/grail_2.htm
www.thelasombra.com/dbc/grail_3.htm
www.thelasombra.com/dbc/grail_4.htm
www.thelasombra.com/dbc/grail_6.htm


Ideally, you would narrow down the focus of a thread to a specific starter deck and talk about how to improve it. Unfortunately, there is a huge universe of cards that probably isn't available to someone that only has a starter deck. That's why the DBC was popular, as exactly what to purchase was known.

Otherwise, I recommend starting mostly from scratch, using as many cards from the starters as you find appropriate, following the advice here:

www.thelasombra.com/deck-building-theories.htm

Pick a starter, remove cards you feel are plainly not optimal, such as forgery, haymaker, etc, then adjust the crypt if you want, decide what you want it to be, then, heres the important part:
Post it on here as a deck needing help in the clinic.

Givr me an example deck and i can help.