Progeny: Northern Ireland

Hello!

Just wanted to share:
colerainegamers.co.uk/
--> Card Games
--> VtES Demo on 9th of May

This is actually looking good. I'll let you know what happens. Too bad I don't have any really good demo decks, and especially the Salubri one worries me, but I omitted all cards with more than 4 lines of text from the decks: for example Heidelbergs, Scalpel Tongues, Traps, outferior disciplines and the such..

The Toreador is basically Presence bleed actions and Votes with Aching Beauty and Majesty+Torrent, Samedi an ally deck with only Reanimated Corpses and Shambling Hordes, !Nos made out of two Black Hand starters and extra stuff from !Salubri starter, and the Salubri+Malks deck I'll be using myself - without any horrible techs! The Ravnos one worries me, 'cause it uses dominate and thaumaturg with chimrestry and animalism, but I'll try to pick out the sharpest of the guys in there and hand the deck to him.

There's a bit of a problem with my decks usually being a bit too defensive. I do have plenty of equipment with me here though - omit some reactions largely, and/or change them to nice and easy equipment?

The package I was thinking the guys should buy is 4 different starters from Black Hand, 3rd Ed and Keepers of Tradition, + Blood Shadowed Court from www.vtes.de. Depending on their preference, I'd just either hand the cards out to them untouched, rearrange the starters thematically, or break down them completely and either give them the cards sorted out as a whole, or arrange them thematically and hand out piles of cards.

I'll try to write some kind of a report once things unfold!

Wish me luck! I know Extrala said that it's not a factor, but it helps me be at ease - I have no idea how the guys are going to welcome this. They have quite a lot of roleplaying background, I first met them playing V. the Masquarade, and they're organizing pretty lively Yu-Gi-Oh tournament every month. So fingers crossed.

Good stuff, great to hear it.

Let me know if any of them feel like making the trek down to Dublin and I can throw some free cards at them (not many, but not nothing either).

Or if they don't then I can try and keep an eye out for them at QCon, but that's months away and I'll probably forget

Today was a very busy day, for almost all but the Vampire people. There was huge loads of tournaments going on for only 20-30 people in total, so there was obviously little time for people to involve themselves in learning a new, time consuming and pretty challenging game.

I eventually demoed it to one of the girls, and let her bleed my !Nos guys to death with her Toreador. Okay, maybe I intentionally chose not to rush her prince this one time, and tapped all of my vampires to give her a nice and clean oust, and forgot to play any Sense The Savage Ways on superior, but she was looking pretty happy when she found out, after being on a defensive stance for a couple of turns, by herself, that two untapped vampires means two pool damage against my three tapped nossies, when I was only at two pool. Was pertty fun, to be honest!

I think I did pretty good, taken into account that she didn't have any experience with CCGs, and very little with boardgaming. She was playing a Toreador in their (pretty interesting looking!) VtM campaign right now, though, and all of their group are supposedly very, very much into the campaign. Also, I think I made the demo just long enough without her getting frustrated, and letting newbies win is always a cool thing. And, honestly, she did good.

Let's just see what the others can do then! Next attempt will be on Tuesday, which we'll most likely pretty much dedicate to VtES alone, for those who are intersted. I made it perfectly clear that if you wanna have a go, like for real, which many, many of the people said they would, they need to have 2 hours to commit to it - no Yu Gi Oh tournaments or Pokemon or CoD matches going on in the middle! This'll be so much better maintainable when there are no distractions like that about.

So there'll be a proper VtES day coming up. People are really into it, though, I can tell - even though there are always people, obviously, who just go on with being interested just to be nice.

I'm gonna push the potentials a bit, though. I think the kids need just a bit of a guiding hand.

What I'll do, is preparing starting hands and stuff, so that people will have nothing more than basic action cards, propably a master or something, and stealth or +bleed action modifiers in their hands. I mean, for 20 minutes we just bled eachother when demoing for Jodie, with no cards being played other than stealth or intercept. I threw her with sewer lids only when it was cool story wise. Combat cards and the such will come in game after 10 cards or so, and the vampires will be set so that everyone will have some votes and stuff. The Toreador will vote, and everyone should have a say in that.

So, all in all, I'm very very tired and that's the excuse for the lengthy ramble, and all the sucky grammar, but it was fun. And, I hope, will be. I'm just tired of trying to smile and sound happy, relaxed and friendly even though I'm feeling like shit for a moment.

You can see the discussion and stuff from the link I gave in the first post.

Cheerio!

Things made short and simple after today:

//thumbs up


Add a tired, tired smile, and a torporized demoer. We ran the game after the 1½ hour demo for 3 hours, and the guys were so into it they didn't even feel tired. The girl ravaged me again, and this time I didn't even hold back. Then she ousted the a-bit-too-reckless Nosses after me, and had a longish duel with Salubri+Malk thing, who had it pretty easy for most of the game, and eventually prevailed.

Afterwards a long talk of the game and who they might find getting interested in the game. Definitely not most of the Yu Gi Oh guys. They came and watched for 10 minutes, got a bit bored and left taking their silly duels.

It's a good thing, right, when the guys are asking after 4 hours game if we could have another session soon?

Why do I always update the news on this flank this late at night?

Anyways, things just exploded in Coleraine once the kids actually got the hold of their cards. During my absence they took up and played game after another, mixed and mashed decks, got at least three more people playing, two of which actually ordered cards online already... Coleraine embraced the unlife like progeny should, up and proper neonites!

I really feel really bad I need to leave in less than a week's time. I'd love to come back, if not for anything else but Vampire, and have a look at how they're doing! I could imagine well, by the enthusiasm that's swirling around. I'm seriously left open mouthed here. The guys and gals are like they never played a game before, and love it.

And it's always heart melting to see your babies take their first steps, so it is. "Do I get extra bleed from the edge?", "I'm attacking you with Lutz!", "Is attacking taking the pool away or blood away?", "Does my turn continue after I oust?", "Rowan Ring's not even funny! Straight to torpor?!", "Maybe I'll buy Call of the Great Beast from ebay before Zakk gets to - otherwise we're doomed!". Deep sigh. I remember how we were those years ago, I do. And this one guy's mismash of !Gangrel and !Malkavian was awesome - just that he had a bit of a problem with his fortitude and animalism cards, for an obvious reason!

Fun times. Now I'll just need to try and keep in contact with them, and force them into keeping me updated on what's happening there. And eventually get them in contact with Seamus, once they've learnt the basics amongst themselves, and, and, and...

And then new kids back in Finland. Fun times. But what about my own unlife...?

So yeah, Coleraine: ~8 fledgling vampires, up and growing. Joensuu? Let's see about that in a month.