A 5th Deck

If you are going to buy a box of LotN starters, I recommend also getting a box of LotN boosters, because the vampires in the starters are for most parts fairly sucky (FoS started being exception) and the vampires in the boosters gives you option to build much better crypt.

Thankyou for the heads up about the quality of vamps! Maybe I won't get LotN then, as I don't currently have the cash to do both. Maybe i'll stick to the KoT starters in that case.

Yours,

Max

MaxO wrote:

I'd like a Camarilla deck aswell, to offset the Sabbat, but are their cards rarer than the Sabbat ones?

Also, what is a Prince deck?

Yours,

Max

A prince deck is a deck that heavily utilises, well, Princes. So a bunch of your crypt cards are going to be vampires that have the title of Prince.
What's good about being a prince? There are a whole bunch of really, really strong cards that start off with the text "Requires a prince or justicar" text. Justicar vampires are rare, usually expensive, and you are only ever allowed to have one Justicar in play of a clan (if another one comes out, they contest the title, which isn't fun for anyobdy). But you can have a million princes if you want (and can afford them).

So the idea is you put out princes, and you play lots of cards that say "Requries a prince or justicar", because they are some of the strongest cards in the whole game. (the fact that each prince has a title worth two votes is nice too).

The two strongest are probably Second Tradition: Domain (aka 2nd Trad), a powerful reaction card that lets you untap AND block with +2 intercept in one card, very nice. The other is Parity Shift, almost certainly the most powerful vote card in the game. If the vote passes, you get to steal X pool of a player, where is X is the number of players in the game, and give it to anyone you want. Generally you take pool from your prey, and give it to yourself. If there are 5 people in the game, you can steal 5 pool from your prey and give it to yourself, for a net swing of 10 pool, in one card. Some people consider this card to be almost broken, despite its unusual restriction: the player you steal from must have more pool than you. If you are a bit creative, you can probably think of some sneaky ways to lose pool in your turn to get below your prey's total

Anyway prince decks are very strong.

The two most favoured clans for a Prince deck are Brujah, and Nosferatu. Both have good cheap princes.

With a box of KoT you can build three new decks just by mashing the clan decks together. The Toreador is the exception. Out of the box it is meant to be a bleed/vote-and/or-intercept/ celerity gun deck. Unfortunately, it does not have enough of either strategy to be very effective in my opinion. However, with the third edition decks you have and the ventrue decks you might get you can make an interesting toreador deck too. You can add diversified intercept from the other clans that have auspex and turn the tore deck into a good intercept deck adding extra celerity may help also. or you can take all the majesties from the ventrue and change of target from the malkavians and bleed/vote with multiple actions. Also, there are planty of princes in the tore deck and you can use the cards that require princes with the tore deck. Just some thoughts.

MaxO wrote:

I got my 3rd ed start box through, and man this game is fun!

Did you go ahead with the purchase of the ex-player's collection?

I've seen that cash is not superfluous for you, so that might be your best bet for expanding in many directions.

I disagree about the quality of the vampires in the Lords of the Night starters, they are fine for what they are. The decks are no worse than the Keepers of Tradition starters that have vampires that take more than 1/3 of your pool to put into play and give you no way to recoup that investment in a reasonable amount of time.

The next box of starters you should get should be determined by your interest or the interest of your players. If you have an interest in independent vampires in the RPG, go LotN. If you have an interest in Camarilla vampires in the RPG, go Keepers of Tradition. It will be easier to buy boosters that support the independent vampires than it will be to buy boosters that support the Camarilla vampires. To best support the Keepers of Tradition vampires, you will want to look at acquiring a played collection.

Adonai wrote:

I disagree about the quality of the vampires in the Lords of the Night starters, they are fine for what they are. The decks are no worse than the Keepers of Tradition starters that have vampires that take more than 1/3 of your pool to put into play and give you no way to recoup that investment in a reasonable amount of time.

I agree that the vamps in lords of night starters are fine.

When I posted about the keepers of tradition toreadors earlier I was thinking of the Ventrue deck that has great library cards but many vamps that cost 10 or 11. If you can get more than one out you might be in buisness but you probably will be ousted or fighting just to stay in the game before you can get two out. The toreador can still vote well and they have lower costing vamps. If you take the cards from the ventrue and use them to make a vote toreador deck it could be a solid deck for people to play and learn the game.