Hit me baby, one more deck

The VTES UK National Championship is happening at the end of this month and, after some careful planning, calendar negotiations and presumably a successful political action at home, I managed to register. I have attended a few smaller tournaments by now, but this will be my first properly large event. Last year's championship had 27 players, many of them elders who have probably forgotten more about VTES than I have learned so far. Obviously I am extremely excited. I am also experiencing the healthy amount of terror expected from a neonate voluntarily walking into a room full of Methuselahs.

There is, however, one important matter that needs resolving before then: what on earth am I going to play?

At this point I have several candidates, and every time I think I have made a decision, another deck whispers seductively from the shelf. The whole situation is starting to remind me of a Britney Spears song, you know, the one where you make a questionable decision and then somehow do it again. One evening I'm committed to the Hecata, the next I'm polishing the Ventrue, and by Wednesday I'm staring lovingly at my Tremere cards again. Oops.

The Hecata: The patient candidate

The obvious choice is my Hecata deck. I've played it several times now and genuinely enjoy how it operates. Recruiting allies and slowly building an undead workforce is tremendously satisfying. There is something wonderfully reassuring about looking across the table and realising that your domain now employs several corpses. The zombies are particularly good at draining blood from opposing vampires, although serious combat decks can dismantle them rather efficiently and Strike: Combat Ends remains the undead equivalent of someone simply closing the door in your face. Family Gathering, meanwhile, has become one of my favourite cards in the deck. Accelerating out additional vampires means that by the late game I can sometimes have one or two more bodies available than I otherwise would, and those little vampires can make a surprisingly large difference.

The problem is speed.

Hecata don't generally produce enormous bleeds. The deck needs time to establish itself, recruit allies and fill the table with enough unpleasant things that my prey begins reconsidering their life choices. Shroud of Decay can be fantastic, but its superior effect also requires my prey to have enough cards in their ash heap. In other words, death cannot be rushed. Apparently there is paperwork.

According to my VDB research, Hecata won twelve tournaments last year and six so far this year. Clearly they can win, but piloting them often feels like preparing an elaborate funeral: everything needs to be arranged properly before the guest of honour (let's call them prey) can finally die.

The Ventrue: Previous management experience

Then we have the Ventrue Princes.

This is the deck I took to Bedford, where, somewhat unexpectedly, it carried this neonate all the way to the final table. Naturally, this means the Ventrue department has included "proven tournament performance" prominently on its application. My reasoning at Bedford was fairly simple. The environment seemed full of combat-heavy decks, and combat-heavy crypts often meant fewer titled vampires. If my Ventrue could survive the violence (and Fortitude is rather useful when someone attempts hostile corporate restructuring with a Torn Signpost) I hoped my Princes could dominate the political game.

Surprisingly, the calculation worked.

Once referendums actually happened, votes were rarely my problem. Getting the political actions through was another matter. Ventrue have many wonderful qualities, but quietly sneaking through the back door isn't traditionally one of them. If the table decides that your political action must not happen, reliable stealth would be rather useful.

The bigger question is whether the Bedford strategy scales to a much larger tournament. Four Ventrue tournament wins this year according to VDB doesn't exactly suggest that the aristocracy is currently enjoying a golden age. Still, Ventrue have survived far worse things than an unfavourable meta. They would probably describe it as a temporary market correction.

The Tremere: The emotional favourite

Then there are the Tremere.

I took my Tremere toolbox to my first tournament and, while the results weren't spectacular, I loved playing it. The deck has answers to almost everything. Auspex provides intercept. Dominate gives me powerful bleeds and Deflections. Thaumaturgy provides a respectable combat package. It feels like carrying a large toolbox into someone's house: I may not know exactly what is broken, but I'm reasonably confident I brought something that can fix it. Or set it on fire...

I also simply love the clan. Their lore, their aesthetics, their cards, if tournament performance didn't matter at all, I'd happily bring the Usurpers again. Unfortunately, the current numbers are not particularly encouraging. According to VDB, Tremere haven't recorded a tournament win this year so far. Somewhere, an entire Chantry is pretending this statistic doesn't exist.

Part of me would love to be the neonate who changes that number from zero to one. The more rational part of my brain has calculated the probability of this happening and quietly returned to the library. Hopefully future releases give my favourite blood sorcerers a little assistance. Until then, the Pyramid remains under review.

The Malkavians: The dangerous consultant

Recently, I've also been looking more seriously at Malkavians.

My wife loves them. More importantly, she seems to particularly enjoy using them to remove my pool, so I've had plenty of practical demonstrations of what they can do. And annoyingly, they can be very good. They can stealth bleed. They can power bleed. They have access to politics. Auspex gives them defensive options and intercept. Dominate gives them excellent forward pressure. Obfuscate makes stopping that pressure considerably more difficult. It's an impressively complete package wrapped inside a clan whose members probably shouldn't be trusted with scissors.

I suspect I could build something interesting here. Whether I can do so without slowly losing my own mind during the process remains to be seen.

The Other Applicants

The Salubri power bleed deck has proven itself remarkably effective in Aaron's hands, although taking his usual deck to Nationals feels slightly like borrowing someone else's favourite sword before going to war. Diana and the Toreadors remain tempting because I enjoy political decks immensely, and the Path of Power continues whispering promises of Sabbat Cardinals, political manipulation and entirely reasonable amounts of backstabbing. So yes, there are options. Far too many options.

There are, however, several clans that have already been politely informed that their applications were unsuccessful.

Definitely Not Gangrel

Let's be honest: Gangrel are doing perfectly fine without me. They already have 21 tournament wins this year and counting. Clearly the wilderness department has met its quarterly targets.

I'm not suggesting that my participation would somehow upset the competitive ecosystem (I have a healthy understanding of my own abilities) but Gangrel hardly need another volunteer. I'm also fairly confident I'll encounter them across the table anyway. Probably while they're rushing something I care about.

Definitely Not Tzimisce

You know my position. The Tzimisce know my position. Everyone is comfortable with this arrangement. I sincerely wish their players the very best of luck. Preferably at another table.

Probably Not Lasombra

This one actually hurts because I love Lasombra. They have Dominate. They have excellent combat. They can play politics. They have shadows. They have style. They approach negotiations with the reassuring energy of someone who has already arranged your disappearance. Unfortunately, other people also seem to have noticed that Lasombra are good. And that creates one terrifying word: contesting.

I dislike contesting. Nothing destroys the fantasy of being an ancient supernatural mastermind quite like discovering that another ancient supernatural mastermind has brought exactly the same vampire and now both of you are standing there awkwardly arguing over custody.

So Lasombra will probably remain safely at home.

The board will reach a decision

And that's where I currently stand. Hecata offer familiarity and an army of dead employees. Ventrue have previous tournament experience and an excellent management structure. Tremere have my heart and an alarming absence from this year's winners list. Malkavians are standing in the corner smiling suspiciously (someone should probably check the fire extinguishers before asking what they're up to). Meanwhile several other decks continue submitting unsolicited applications.

I have a few weeks left to make the final decision, tweak the library and hopefully squeeze in some practice games. I'm not expecting to walk into the UK Nationals and suddenly become an elder. My ambitions are considerably more realistic: play some good games, secure a few victory points if possible, learn something from much more experienced players and avoid doing anything spectacularly embarrassing. And if everything goes horribly wrong? At least I'll meet more VTES players, come home with another story for the blog, and have several hours on the drive back to explain to myself why I definitely chose the correct deck.

The game never ends, only pauses. I'll see you at the next move.

Custodian Hargrave

The Seventh Tradition: Panic

A few days ago, Vampire: The Masquerade Sixth Edition was announced (player pack here, storyteller pack here)  and, judging by the internet, someone had accidentally started a global frenzy check. Social media transformed into one giant Elysium where everyone was passionately explaining why V6 would either save Vampire forever or personally set fire to their favourite clan. I downloaded the alpha playtest the moment it became available.

My feelings can best be described as 50% excitement and 50% existential dread.

I remember V5 receiving a similarly divided reception. The Hunger Dice, the Beckoning, the fall of the Tremere Pyramid, the Second Inquisition: many of those ideas felt controversial at first. Over time, though, they became some of my favourite parts of the game. Our tabletop group still alternates between V20 and V5 depending on the kind of story we want to tell, so I promised myself I wouldn't judge V6 too quickly.

Then I started reading.

Tabletop changes

Mechanically, V6 isn't trying to be "V5 with a few tweaks." It's a much more fundamental redesign.

The biggest headline is that Vitae and Health are effectively merged into one resource, meaning almost everything your vampire does now draws from the same pool. On paper, I actually like the idea. It reinforces the constant struggle between power and survival. Every Discipline activation becomes another little negotiation with your Beast: "Do I really need to survive this fight, or would I rather cast one more ritual?" That feels very VTM. In reality spending life to use a supernatural ability feels bad. I do not think this will be great, but we shall see.

There are some nice quality-of-life improvements though. Character creation now revolves around lifepaths, relationships and your sire's influence, which immediately caught my attention. The idea that your sire's personality shapes your starting resources and even your disciplines feels incredibly thematic. A Ventrue elder should raise a very different fledgling than a Toreador diva or an absent-minded Tremere Regent. That's exactly the sort of flavour I enjoy seeing in a roleplaying game.

Unfortunately, not every mechanical change landed quite as well with me.

The new dice system replaces V5's Hunger Dice entirely. Instead of replacing dice with Hunger, the Storyteller now subtracts dice from your pool based on difficulty, and successes only occur on 8, 9 and 10.

This worries me.

One of the reasons I loved Hunger Dice was that they constantly reminded you that the Beast was present. Success always came with a price lurking in the background. The new system feels much more mathematical than thematic. It also appears to reward larger dice pools even more heavily than before. Watching the demonstration game, the vampires often felt surprisingly ineffective. Of course, this is only an alpha, but my first impression wasn't particularly encouraging.

The discipline earthquake

Now let's talk about the part that immediately made my VTES brain start calculating future decklists. The Discipline changes. Some clans escaped untouched. My beloved Ventrue continue being sensible adults with Dominate, Fortitude and Presence, while Banu Haqim, Brujah, Nosferatu and Toreador also remain comfortably familiar.

Everyone else? Well... Someone clearly walked into the Discipline cabinet with a blender. The biggest casualty is Protean. Gone. Just... gone.

Gangrel now receive Animalism, Celerity and Fortitude, while the Ministry lose Protean as well in favour of the new Corruption Discipline. Protean powers are now merged into Animalism. As someone who has recently spent a great deal of time building Gangrel decks around Protean tricks like Earth Meld and Form of Mist, this feels like a particularly strange decision. Those powers are almost synonymous with the clan. Removing Protean from Gangrel feels a little like removing fangs from vampires because they're "too iconic." On the other hand, Nossies will be happy with their new tools I guess. 

Meanwhile Lasombra now choose between Corruption and Oblivion, Tzimisce can apparently choose between Tellurgy and Vicissitude, and Tremere gain access to either Blood Sorcery or Necromancy.

Which brings me to my favourite undead necromancers.

Spare a thought for the Hecata...

Or the Giovanni. Or both. When V5 introduced the Hecata, I had mixed feelings. I always loved the Giovanni, and initially I wasn't thrilled about them merging into one giant necromantic family reunion. Eventually, though, they won me over. So much so that I stopped chasing old Giovanni cards and instead invested heavily in Hecata because I assumed that was where the future of Vampire was heading. Now V6 quietly brings the Giovanni back. Part of me is delighted. The other part is staring at my Hecata deck wondering whether we've all just been through a very expensive identity crisis.

The Giovanni now use Auspex, Potence and Necromancy instead of the classic Dominate combination. On the tabletop I can certainly appreciate Auspex. In VTES... let's just say if someone offered me Dominate back, I wouldn't spend very long negotiating. There is one encouraging detail, however. Lasombra retaining Oblivion means Black Chantry could theoretically continue expanding Oblivion-based archetypes even if Hecata receive fewer new releases (if any). As someone who has recently become suspiciously fond of summoning zombies, I choose to interpret this as good news until someone tells me otherwise.

What about the Sabbat?

One thing noticeably absent from the current alpha is meaningful discussion of the Sabbat. No real mention of the sect. No discussion of the Paths. Readers of this blog already know where my loyalties lie. I absolutely love Path of Power and Path of Death. One lets me manipulate the table through politics, while the other lets me recruit zombies and generally behave like an enthusiastic undertaker. Between those two archetypes, they cover an alarming percentage of everything I enjoy doing in VTES.

Hopefully they're simply outside the scope of the current playtest rather than quietly disappearing into the night.

And then there's Black Chantry...

One group of people I don't envy at all is the Black Chantry design team.

Every major tabletop edition brings changes to lore, clans, Disciplines and identities. Meanwhile, they somehow have to keep VTES coherent while respecting both decades of existing cards and whatever new direction the roleplaying game decides to take. That cannot be an easy balancing act.

Looking back over the years, they've had to adapt to the rise of the Hecata, changing sects, changing Disciplines, and now potentially another significant shake-up. Whatever your opinion on V6, that's an enormous design challenge.

Final thoughts

At the moment, my feelings toward V6 are probably best described as cautious optimism wrapped in healthy scepticism. I genuinely like some of the narrative ideas. I genuinely dislike several of the mechanical ones. Thankfully, this is still an alpha playtest. That's precisely what playtests are for: to identify what works, what doesn't, and hopefully improve the final product.

So for now, I'll do what every good Tremere researcher should do. I'll read. I'll test. I'll provide feedback.

And then, like every Ventrue pretending to remain perfectly composed while the world changes around them, I'll quietly hope someone at White Wolf decides that perhaps upsetting every clan at once wasn't the wisest political strategy. I'm really curious where everyone else stands. Which V6 ideas have you enjoyed so far, and which ones leave you reaching for an older rulebook?

The game never ends, only pauses. I'll see you at the next move.

Custodian Hargrave

Where fate meets darkness

Although Malifaux Fourth Edition has been out for some time now, I only managed to play a couple of games. Life has an annoying habit of getting in the way of hobbies and without regular games, even familiar rules begin to drift back through the Breach. When James and I finally picked a date for a game a few weeks ago, I immediately started looking forward to it.

It also gave me the motivation I needed to finish another piece of terrain for my western table. A lonely market stall had been sitting unpainted for far too long, patiently waiting for inspiration to strike. Thanks to the school summer holidays, I found myself with an enthusiastic painting assistant. My daughter joined me for the project, and I was genuinely impressed by how steady her brushwork was. Together we finished the market stall in just two days, perfectly in time for Monday's game. Every gaming table tells a story, and now this one had a little bit of ours built into it.

James and I already knew we wouldn't have time for a full game before the club closed, so we agreed to treat it as a practice skirmish. That suited me perfectly. My rules knowledge needed dusting off almost as much as my measuring tape. For my crew I chose Kastore and the Returned keyword. Ancient vampires? A flying sword? What's not to love? James answered by bringing Seamus and the Redchapel crew, a master I'd barely encountered before. I had no idea what to expect, which in Malifaux usually means you're about to learn something the painful way.

By the time James arrived, the table was ready. Wooden houses lined the dusty streets, the saloon waited for its next inevitable bar fight, the gallows stood as an encouraging reminder to behave, abandoned carts littered the roads, and my freshly painted market stall proudly took its place among the scenery. Seeing painted terrain actually being used always feels strangely satisfying (the density is still not sufficient though, progress needs time).

The first duel went James' way, making him the attacker while I defended. Our strategy was Informants, with Runic Binding, Harness the Ley Lines, and Detonate Charges available as schemes. The Flank deployment immediately promised a very different game from the straight-line brawls I was used to.

Having only played Kastore once before, I knew mistakes were inevitable. And mistakes there were.

The first was forgetting to resolve Hunger tokens at the end of activations. Kastore was probably looking at me with centuries of disappointment while I quietly skipped one of his defining mechanics. The second was spreading my crew far too aggressively during the opening turn. I was so eager to occupy the board that several models wandered outside the range of abilities that rewarded staying together. It turns out that "divide and conquer" works much better when you're the one doing the conquering.

For my scheme, I chose Runic Binding. The objective is very thematic: place three Scheme Markers to form a magical triangle, then trap enemy models inside it. In my enthusiasm, I overlooked one tiny detail: the markers must all remain within fourteen inches of each other. My triangle was less "ancient ritual" and more "ambitious civil engineering project." To make matters worse, my final marker was placed by the last model I activated that turn. Since the scheme only scores at the end of an enemy model's activation, I'd missed my opportunity entirely. A perfectly avoidable mistake, but an excellent lesson. Despite that, the first turn wasn't without success. Both of us concentrated on the strategy, and I managed to score the opening victory point by controlling two Informant markers. I also received my first practical demonstration of just how much ground Seamus can cover. Watching him disappear from one part of the table only to casually reappear somewhere completely different is unsettling enough in the lore. Experiencing it across the tabletop is even worse.

Turn two became an exercise in damage control. I repositioned my Scheme Markers to create a legal triangle, finally bringing Runic Binding online. At the same time, Kastore and Seamus decided that diplomacy had failed and settled matters personally. Elsewhere, poor Gwyn found herself on the receiving end of Seamus and Madame Sybelle at the same time. Surviving that encounter felt like a victory in itself. While I slowly lost control of the strategy markers and was forced to retreat, I finally completed Runic Binding and scored two victory points from it. James answered by claiming another point from the strategy, leaving the game nicely balanced.

By then it was clear we wouldn't reach the end of Turn Three before the club closed, so we packed away the models and spent some time discussing the game instead. Practice had been the goal all along, and on that front the evening was a complete success. I'm still spending more time reading character cards than making brilliant tactical decisions, but every game makes the rules feel a little more familiar.

Most importantly, it reminded me why I enjoy Malifaux so much. Every crew feels wildly different, every master brings unexpected tricks to the table, and every game leaves me with a list of ideas to try next time. The Breach has finally reopened. And somewhere in the darkness, Kastore is still thirsty.

The game never ends, only pauses. I'll see you at the next move.

Custodian Hargrave