Getting back into the game after a 20 year hiatus

Some background: I played Vampire as a teenager when it was still called Jyhad. At one point or another I had stacks of cards in my parents' attic but those didn't survive years of spring cleanings. At the time I doubt we ever played completely rules correct games, but I liked the setting and art and always wanted to give it a real shot.

That brings us to last night, when I read the news about the Black Chantry reprints and a little nostalgia + curiosity compelled me to buy one of each of their sets. I've read that Vampire's deck construction has no card limits so, in theory you could need way more than the MTG 4x playset of some cards, but is that a common thing? Just trying to understand if I need to ever consider buying multiples of the BC reprintings or if one copy should mostly do the job?

Also follow-up question: is there any loose timeline for new reprints? I know the current sets are supposedly not enough to build playable decks so I'll have to hang on for awhile before I can play (because I'm not paying the after-market prices for original stuff).

Let me first say welcome back.

To your first question, for the most decks you need more than one package.
Par example for a political deck you play more than 6 or 8 damaging votes(if you cannot bring you cards in the ash heap back to your deck), or in a celerity/gun combat deck you need maneuver...

And for next year there is announced a 5 starter package.
As far as I know there is no fixed point of sale for now.

Does you local area have an active play group? Some old players have starter decks to give away to new players and or have a bunch of old cards they don't need they might be willing to give away.

Otherwise if you're just starting with a few friends you can just play with what you have and everyone should be on a level playing field. Once you start playing more experienced players you can look at picking up singles for decks you might be interested in. You can get some rather cheaply online while others might be harder to come by but its still going to be less costly than a standard MTG deck by a mile.

Welcome back to the game!

Nope, no local playgroup. I'd probably be doing all the deck-building for a small group of friends. Curated board game type of thing.

Maybe I'll give online play a shot at some point. I've done the Lackey/OCTGN thing before and don't love it, but it's probably the quickest way to really understand rules.

Thanks for the feedback guys.

Proxy Demo Decks are a great place to start for learning how to play!

coffeetv wrote:

Nope, no local playgroup. I'd probably be doing all the deck-building for a small group of friends. Curated board game type of thing.

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?usp=drive_open

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!")