Your counterargument has an Assault Rifle

With the VTES UK Nationals fast approaching, I travelled to Cambridge on Sunday to meet David and Manuel for some much-needed practice. At this point, I need every game I can get. If I am going to walk into a national tournament, I would at least like to pretend that my deck has been properly tested beforehand. As it turned out, this particular session was extremely useful because it helped me decide the fate of a deck I had been quietly experimenting with for some time.

You see, I love political decks. I enjoyed playing my Ventrue Princes, and Path of Power scratches that same wonderful itch of manipulating the table while pretending everything is happening through perfectly legitimate democratic processes. This time, however, I wanted something different. During previous tournaments I managed to acquire a few copies of Juliet Parr, so naturally I started wondering whether I could build a deck around her. Let the Malkavians enter politics. What could possibly go wrong?

On paper, everything looked beautiful. Titles would give me votes. Obfuscate would provide enough stealth to push political actions through. Dominate offered a fallback plan of good old-fashioned stealth bleed if democracy failed, while also providing Deflections for defence. It looked like a wonderfully flexible package: politics when politics worked, bleeding when politics didn't, and enough stealth to ensure that everyone had to sit there and listen to my proposals. There was just one small problem with the plan. And the lesson was painful.

David arrived with a Ventrue antitribu deck using Group 5 and 6 vampires following the Path of Cathari, while Manuel brought two combat-focused decks featuring Assamites. Since there were only three of us, we agreed on a simple format: the first Methuselah to oust another player would win. We randomised the seating and ended up with David (Ventrue antitribu) > Manuel (Assamites) > Myself (Malkavian vote/bleed).

This game may have been the quickest VTES game I have ever played.

Around turn four, Manuel equipped Antara with an Assault Rifle. This was apparently the moment diplomacy officially ended. Antara rushed David's vampires, then turned her attention towards mine, and within a single turn three vampires had been sent to torpor through additional strikes, presses and the inevitable Freak Drives. It was less a combat turn and more a workplace restructuring where the entire department was escorted from the building. With both his predator and prey thoroughly disabled, Manuel finished me off within another couple of turns. The whole game lasted roughly thirty minutes.

My beautiful political machine had encountered its first policy disagreement, and the disagreement had an Assault Rifle.

Fortunately, being annihilated so efficiently left us with plenty of time for another game. Manuel switched to his other combat deck, this time featuring Al-Ashrad. I had encountered him before and remembered the experience with approximately the same fondness one remembers stepping barefoot on Lego. The seating remained unchanged, although this time Manuel was the first player.

Game two was much more balanced. David brought out Elimelech the Twice-Damned and Coco Thorn, Manuel had Al-Ashrad and Blythe, while my lunatics were represented by Juliet and Andi Liu. David managed to keep the Assamites under pressure this time, which had the pleasant side effect of keeping them away from my vampires. Funny how much better political debate works when nobody is actively punching the politicians.

This finally gave Juliet room to demonstrate why I wanted to build around her in the first place. I managed to push through several political actions, and her ability to give me +2 hand size was fantastic. Those extra cards dramatically increased my options and made the deck feel much smoother. More importantly, I had little difficulty getting my political actions through. Three or four stealth was perfectly achievable, so anyone wanting to interrupt Malkavian democracy had to work for it.

The game remained surprisingly balanced until we approached the endgame. A successful Parity Shift created a net six-pool swing between David and me, giving me some much-needed breathing room. On my following turns, two Kine Resources Contested actions finished the job. After being brutally dismantled in about half an hour during the first game, the Malkavians had somehow returned from lunch and won the second.

Despite the victory, however, these two games revealed something important about the deck. Getting political actions through wasn't the problem. The stealth worked beautifully, Juliet was excellent, and Dominate gave me plenty of forward pressure. The problem was what happened when someone decided that instead of debating my political agenda, they would simply beat up the person proposing it. Against serious rush and combat decks, my Malkavians were falling like flies, and I had very few answers. Apparently "please respect the democratic process" is not a valid combat card.

The second lesson was about table optics. A deck capable of political actions, high bleeds and considerable stealth can very quickly become the problem. Even if you aren't currently winning, everyone can see what the deck might do if left alone. Suddenly your harmless little Malkavian politician is attracting cross-table attention, deals are being made about you rather than with you, and somebody starts casually asking whether anyone has a rush card. Being powerful is useful. Looking powerful can be considerably less so.

Still, that is exactly why I wanted these practice games. The Malkavian experiment was fun and winning the second game showed me that the basic concept absolutely works. Juliet in particular impressed me, and I would happily return to the deck for friendly games and further tinkering. For the UK Nationals, though, I am not convinced. Walking into a large tournament with a deck that practically wears a sign saying "dangerous but surprisingly punchable" feels like a questionable decision.

So one candidate has probably removed itself from consideration. The search continues. And somewhere on my shelf, several other deck boxes have started whispering again.

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

Custodian Hargrave

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