Beefing up various precons

Hi guys,

new user and player here. Im so sorry to bother you guys but I need som advice on this beautiful game.

Heres my situation:

So im in the progress of getting into the game. I have a playgroup of five guys ready to go and just bought a rather huge collection of old jyhad cards. I beefed that up with buying the 25th anniversary deck, both keepers of tradition boxes and then the den of fiends deck just because I stumbled upon it. In addition I printed out several proxies of good cards and should now be able to build 5 meaningful decks. Also, I have read everything, feel I know the rules, am familiar with all WoD lore in depth, played RAGE ccg for ages, and have watched a ton of vtes games online. So yeah, thats my status : )

I started by building 5 of the barbed wire decks: tremere, brujah, gangrel, ventrue and Nosferatu from the list provided on the vekn site. But then I read som criticism on the decks in a forum. Thing is, I feel the lists I've build are better, more rounded than the ones that were being critizesed for being incoherent and having bad synergy. So maybe they were older versions than the ones that are posted on the site? Im not sure, though, so could any of you guys tell me if I should rather build these instead?

gamingwithbs.wordpress.com/2015/10/29/demo-deck-series-the-rules/

i want balanced decks that accentuate all basic mechanics of the game. Preferably all the decks should be able to win, but I know thats probably a longshot. Id love to go the basic clans as I will have an easier time introducing my playgroup to the lore that way.

What is generally looked at as the better, more fun starter decks; brett's or barbed wire?

Either way, whether I keep the barbed wire decks or build bretts instead, I would love to beef them up with a few power cards for each deck. they are worth 60 cards, so maybe just go up to 65 and put 5 fun, strong cards in each. As it is, they seem pretty basic. Which is good! but maybe a beef-up would be even more fun.

So looking at the cards in my available card pool do you guys have some suggestions on what power cards to add to each clan-deck? as mentioned, you could go outside of my cardpool too as I am willing to print proxies. But using real cards would be preferred : )

thanks in advance and once more; sorry to be of inconvenience.

best regards,
Toby

also, I've tried to check all my (super beautiful) new crypt from 25th anniversary and KoT1-2 cards to see if some could be swopped directly into the barbed wire decks that I've build as the old ones seem rather dull. basically no abilities and only few titles. I guess the most important factor is that discipline icons should match so ill be able to play the cards in the decks, but cap should match too, right? to fit the balance of the blood flow in the decks or is that of less importance? no-one seems to fit both parameters perfectly, so maybe I should just stick to the vampires in the various crypts as described in the barbed wire lists?

Definitely NO need to say sorry about requesting help on the matter!

IMO,
a new players shouldn't worry to much about the contents of the decks for the first few games.
The decks in the 5th edition core box, or the First Blood decks are all rather usable as they are. Actually more or less any BCP deck is usable as is for the first games.

Play a few games and start tweaking after that; learn to walk before you aspire to run.


That being said, I think that the first game should be played with cards which have minimal amount of text. This way the new players will be able to concentrate getting to familiarize themselves with the mechanics without excess information overload.

To quote myself from an earlier post:


"To help you and your mates battle the learning curve, here are rather optimal proxy card demo decks which were created by Peetu, Aapo and Teemu. Play a game or two with these and you should have a very firm (& uncluttered) grasp of core mechanics. And after this your transition to fuller type of decks is WAY easier.

So once more unto the breach:

drive.google.com/file/d/1lakfvGPt1nb4-7Of_nJMwCv80leOao_Z/view

EDIT 29.11.2023: Updated version of those same decks can now be found at:
drive.google.com/file/d/1DHq86mw-F2gOTEY--bZF856fVTmtG4D3/view

Idea is to have limited amount of different cards in the deck. Plus all the cards are simple ones with very little text. Many cardtypes are missing as to streamline the demo and keep it as simple as possible as not to overload them with too much info.

Once the newbies have played a game with these they should have a firm grasp of basic rule mechanics and you can hand slightly more complicated decks to them.

I recommend you keep it short and use just 20 pool.


These are tried and tested in several Ropecon with returning old hands as well as total n00bs and they've worked well.

Idea is not to teach everything but rather stick to the real basics with which you can already have a ton of fun. There is NO NEED to go through all kinds of complicated, and often obscure, garbage during a demo. Get them to make some actions and play some cards ASAP. Golden rule: FFF (Fast, Furious & Fun)!

After the basics have been learned the transition to more complicated rules matters is way easier (with this in mind I've actually been just pondering asking the guys to put more complex demo decks together which could be played right after a game with these simpler ones).


Concentrate on playing the game instead of pondering how the cards might work/when they might be played. This is achieved by:

-Using only cards that feature minimal amount of text so the n00bs quickly know how to play them.

-Using as few different cards as possible so the n00bs will have even fewer new things to learn. ("How does this card functio... Oh, I already played it last turn and so I now know already how it works!")"



So download that file, fire up the printer for those proxies and play your first (couple of) game(s) with these decks and you're off to a jolly good start!

Thanks a ton, Lönkka. Thing is, though, now I have the cards and I feel I want to use them rather than just print out a full proxy array. But I will definitely use these as guidelines.

Are the barbed wire decks and Bretts decks not considered a good starting point? seem very simple too, id say.

could any one tell me what the general difference between the two precons on the site is? bretts and barbed wire, I mean. which are considered most fun and the better starting point? sorry for spamming, but im sitting here with me cards and trying to decide in which basket to put my eggs : )