Six Player Variant

For the past eight years or so our play group has consisted of six players. We have had to adjust a couple of rules to handle the 5 person max, and I wanted to get some opinions on anything we could do differently.

- Maximum Library is 100 cards instead of the usual 90.
- We do not impose a time limit
- We do not use a limited Blood Bank
- Vampires burn at the end of the second minion phase they've been in torpor. (recently changed to leave them in torpor until rescued)

Any sort of home-brewed changes that you've had to implement?

Out of curiosity, what is a limited Blood Bank and where is it used?

We play with a 2 hour time limit and aim to oust someone very fast.

Basically we play the game in a more brutal fashion until it hits 4 - 5 players. However the brutal trend tends to continue throughout the game.

So no special rules; just a change in player behaviour — a no nonsense just get it done approach. This typically includes players taking less interest / time asking what's happening cross cross table.

We've certainly had brutally fast games, but to most in our group that style of play is limiting and favors certain deck builds. For instance, my Setites with dominate deck would annihilate and completely inhibit Joaquin's Toreador gun deck from even having a chance to begin. Spoils a lot of the fun of creating different deck types.

Lönkka wrote:

Out of curiosity, what is a limited Blood Bank and where is it used?

I don't know about this specifically, but one variant that was presented with the V:TES rules (not the Jyhad rules) involved a blood bank that had a fixed number of counters in it. Whenever you would get blood from the blood bank - say, hunting, Fifth Tradition etc. - you took it from that pile of counters. When it ran out, no more blood for you.

I guess it was part of the attempt to make V:TES faster. One of the variants gave vampires bleed bonuses based on their capacity, which was a reasonable concept but executed in a way that meant possibly two bleed actions could oust you if you were being bled by someone big with Dominate.

I'd implement a cap to any card that refers to number of methuselah. Mainly Parity Shift and Conservative Agitation I suppose. So that they can give max 5 pool damage/swing instead of 6.