Vampire: Elder Kindred Network Newsletter December 2018

I agree about the nephandus precon. When I think about fun vtes nephandus is never in the picture. Shambling horde deck, sure.

Made some jokes about Ben net decking precons and competitive big lasombra vote with a friend. New product is good but I'm not sure this is ticking the boxes for me.

Well, I've desperately been wanting Nephandus, so I'm really happy about the reprint. Even if, as a side effect, that means facing a bunch of other Nephandus decks all of a sudden.

I'd imagine that the Toreador antitribu deck will also probably bring with it reprints of The Embrace, which is needed.

I mean, c'mon... I get the impression that any effective preconstructed deck, other than some vanilla grinder, will make things less fun for some players, because everyone has certain deck types that annoy them. Stealth bleed? Groan. Weenie Dominate bleed? God dammit. Imbued? And so on. I personally hate playing against heavy walls, and with the Tzimisce precon, now it looks like there's about to be a whole bunch more, but I'm still excited to see them. I'll probably even use a lot of those cards to make my own, because I love the new art I've seen so far in it.

Let me restate. I'm not sure nephandus swarm showcases good points of the game to new players.

Some of this, I'm sure, is the nostalgia for the games we used to play with precons. Competitive precons are just more regular vtes.

So then what deck types would showcase the good points of the game? Do people who actually play Nephandus decks have the wrong idea of what fun is? Not sure I understand the gripe regarding Nephandus decks.

Kraus wrote:

It is a fricking Naphandi deck featuring Anton. Saying "it might not be that kind of deck" is kinda insulting (or stupid, but i know you ain't so it can't be that).

Not what I meant. If the problem was that the crypt might not be good enough and the game experience is bad for the player if Antonio is not drawn, or it's contested, well we'll see if there are any ways to work around that in the deck.

A bit of an obscure post on my part, I'll give you that.

Proper power level for pre-cons is an excellent idea. I wouldn't mind having something like EC finalist decks as pre-cons or something in the future. A batch of 5 top tier decks for your play group, right from the shelf? Great!

Of course discretion is needed.

I agree that non-"starter" precons totally need to be on a playable high level of power.

But.

While I was putting together some.e basic data on "cost of entry" comparing us to the 3 most popular 2 player tcgs, I came across something that makes me disagree with putting real people decklists out as precons; players always embellish upon common archetypes to reflect thier play styles. The best example of a ln aggressive malk 94 deck I scooped off of post HttB TWDs contained several Wash. I own tons of Wash, but the cost of Wash apparently is higher than I believed it was, which elevated the cost of our entry level aggro deck. Still under the equivalents for the 2/3 other games I understand enough to honestly say have entry level aggressive decks, but higher.
I believe the deck was the best for my comparison, and the owner is a hall of Famer with a long history of being rated top 10 globally, (sitting for awhile right behind TTC Master years back when his rating was nigh unpassable) but here's the conundrum;
Do you make the precon a mirror of one players style for an archetype, or do you make it indicative of the archetype as a whole?
I'd much rather see a proper streamlined homogeneous deck that is well rounded and has contents that represent the multiple potential facets of the deck.
Obviously, this is bigger importance with !ventrue grinders than stealthbleed, but point still stands; a grinder precon needs to represent the things the archetype does, not just look at one deck from one event. Also, making Eyes of Argus, Daring the Dawn, Freak Drive, Deflection, Govern, Smiling jack, TV, etc readily purchasable in one box has a broader appeal than omitting one staple (that's used in quantities greater than 4/deck to boot) in order to copy one deck over another.

But I agree on 5 top notch decks ready to roll out of the box. I Also think Nephundi is less oppressive than Tupdogs(or both in unison...), and isn't a bad choice. Nephundi can work well with a broader toolboxy build with MotS and typical govern, deflect, eyes of argus, bowl of convergence, ivory bow stuff tremere/!tremere can do. Precons making the cardpool more accessible to newcomers is enormous. I have no idea what's In Said decks (other than Carolina valez art from a V20 supplement that looks like a better version of what she looked like in MbN) but the good deck improving cardpool has appeal to established players and newer ones.