Getting into the game!

MaxO wrote:

Could you give me any more detail on the independent and Laibon clans?

Could you be a bit more specific in what you want?

How to play the independent clans (Newsletters, rest of page is out of date):
Assamite
Followers of Set
Giovanni
Ravnos

Laibon don't tend to have newsletters, they had too much overlap with other clans in terms of their disciplines and strategies and newsletter authors didn't get inspired for them.

Everything Akunanse
Akunanse Letters 1
Akunanse Letters 2
Guruhi
Osebo

Tournament winning decks for each clan:
www.thelasombra.com/decks/clan-twd.htm

Preconstructed decks for each clan/set:
www.thelasombra.com/precon_decks.htm

Laibon are in 2 sets:
Legacies of Blood (boosters sold out, starters available)
Ebony Kingdom (plentiful)

Independents are available in many sets:
Dark Sovereigns (sold out, generally)
Ancient Hearts (sold out, generally)
Final Nights (sold out, generally)
Kindred Most Wanted (plentiful)
Lords of the Night (plentiful)

MaxO wrote:

Thanks for the fantastic reply bakija. I'm really glad that this game has such a friendly and helpful online community. I'm going to look into all the different clans you mentioned - The African and independent ones in particular. I like my "rebel" decks in fluff, so once I get the basics down I'd imagine i'll throw myself into them.

Could you give me any more detail on the independent and Laibon clans?

Oh, sure--Jeff posted links above to specific information, but the short version:

The Independent Clans:

-The Giovanni are kind of the Goodfellas-esque gangster vampire clan. They have Potence (good for beating stuff up), Dominate (good for bleeding), and Necromancy (good for making zombies and deck recursion). They can make pretty good stealth and bleed decks (kind of a basic deck strategy) as they have Dominate, and they can make all sorts of weird decks based on zombies, ghouls, and wraiths. Mostly, though, they are reasonably good 'cause they have Dominate, and Dominate is the strongest discipline in the game.

-The Assamites are the middle-easterny, arguably kind of offensive terrorist/assassin vampire clan. They have Obfuscate (good for hiding and sneaking), Celerity (good for being fast in combat) and Quietus (a pretty combat specific discipline). The Assamites are generally regarded as not that good, as Quietus is often called the worst discipline in the game, as it is expensive and hard to use. The last couple expansions bolstered them up a lot.

-The Ravnos are the Roma/Gypsy-esque trickster vampire clan. They have Fortitude (good for not getting hurt), Animalism (a very versatile discipline good for combat and a lot of other things) and Chimeristry (an illusiony discipline that does a lot of different things). They are mostly good at making blocky kind of decks as Animalism and Chimeristry are good for that. They have a very strong card called Week of Nightmares that makes all your vampires extra powerful for a period of time, and eventually blows up and kills all your guys, so make sure you have won before that happens.

-The Settites are the Egypty vampire clan. They have Obfuscate, Presence (good for bleeding and voting) and Serpentis (another clan specific discipline that does a lot of different stuff, but kind of focuses on stealing your opponents guys). They are good at sneaking, bleeding, and voting. And stealing your opponent's guys.

The Laibon Clans:

-The Guhuri are the "ruling" African clan. They have Presence, Potence, and Animalism. They are good at fighting and voting.

-The Ishtari have Fortitude, Presence, and Celerity. They are reasonably good at voting and also fighting.

-The Osebo have Potence, Auspex (the discipline that makes you good at blocking folks) and Celerity. They are good at fighting and blocking things.

-The Akunansi are the weird spidery clan. They have Fortitude, Animalism, and Abombwe, a Laibon specific discipline that is good for fighting and a couple other things.

The Laibon vampires suffer from there not being a lot of vampires available to each clan (kind of by design)--the Camarilla/Sabbat/Independent clans all tend to have about 25 vampires available for a given deck you are building (out of a pool of about 60 total vampires per clan--there is a "grouping" rule that limits what vampires you can use in a given deck) where the Laibon clans only have about 15 vampires available for a given deck out of about 16 total. Which makes building decks a lot more difficult, as you have trouble getting a good crypt built.

As far as deck archetypes go, there are three fundamental types, I guess roughly corresponding to the three types in magic (beatdown, combo, control): bleed, vote, and combat.
Bleeding is the most straightforward and overall probably the most successful and the one you should probably learn first. You put bleed cards in your deck, which are actions and cards your minions play to make your prey lose pool (life). You also need some cards to get around their defenses, which is usually done via stealth (which lets you sneak around blockers, like unblockable creatures in Magic). Pretty straightforward.
Voting is trickier. Voting cards often do powerful things, like let you gain a lot of life or make your prey lose a lot of life (in a way that is hard for them to defend against), but you need to pull off two angles: get your actions through, and push the vote through. It's harder to set up but the rewards can be great if you pull it off.
Combat is the most difficult. It involves your minions destroying other people's minions, rather than attacking your prey's pool (life). i.e. "how about you and me fight!". They come in two flavours: rush and block. Rush decks are where your minions directly attack other minions who you've decided you don't like, and bash them up in combat. Block decks work by blocking actions that you don't like, and bashing the minions up in combat when you block them. Both are tricky to get to work, especially rush.

I'd start with simple bleed decks, to get the feel of how actions and reactions work, then move onto voting, and then combat.

Best bleed clans: Malkavian, !Malkavian, Giovanni, Setite
Best voting clans: can be an odd mix, but Toreador, Lasombra and Brujah are good
Best rushing clans: Brujah / !Brujah, Nosferatu / !Nosferatu, Gangrel
Best blocking clans: Tzimisce, Tzimisce, Tzimisce (also Gangrel and Ravnos are pretty good)

Adonai, Bakija and Dasein, thankyou for these fantastic responses.

And thanks to everyone who's commented on this thread, you've made my entry into this game easier than I could have imagined.

Is there a website for beginners out there which goes into more detail about deck types etc?

Yours,

Max

MaxO wrote:

Adonai, Bakija and Dasein, thankyou for these fantastic responses.

And thanks to everyone who's commented on this thread, you've made my entry into this game easier than I could have imagined.

Is there a website for beginners out there which goes into more detail about deck types etc?

Yours,

Max

I would spend some time on this site:

www.thelasombra.com/

Check out strategy, deck building, and demoing the game.

Welcome to the fold!

MaxO wrote:

Is there a website for beginners out there which goes into more detail about deck types etc?

I don't know that there is specifically a website for beginners, but www.thelasombra.com is probably the best VTES resource out there. Just dig around--there are an infinite supply of decks and articles by clan and whatever.