Followers of Set newsletter. September 2008 Hello, I wrote this newsletter almost a year ago but for some reason I forgot about it (oops). But even though it might be almost a year old I still feel I should give the newsletter a try and hopefully continue the series. Being almost a year old leads to some timing errors but shouldn't be to much of a problem. Please keep in mind that this newsletter will focus mainly on beginning players and that this particular newsletter is intended as an introduction to the series which led to a fairly short letter. Feel free to comment. ================================== Followers of Set Newsletter. September 2008 Author: Paul Wiggers 1. Introduction Lords of Night has hit the shelves some time ago and gave us some new goodies for the independents. A lot of newsletters focus on the advanced side of the game, adding out of clan disciplines and trying new and funky tricks. Not this one. This newsletter series will focus primarily on the new players out there. Players who have just started the game and who don’t own a big pile of cards. I have the feeling that the Followers of Set are able to bring new players into the game and giving them a challenge later on when they are becoming experts themselves. So here it goes, the first in a line of new Followers of Set newsletters. I hope you enjoy it. 2. Getting started The best place to get started with the Followers of Set is to get two Lords of Night starter decks. I choose these starters since they have just been released and should be easily available from the local reseller. In this edition we will construct a deck from the two starters only. No boosters or other cards are added. In the following newsletters I will report on how the deck did in our meta game (I might even take it to a tournament) and make some adjustments to the deck as required. This allows us to create a competitive deck with limited resources. But first things first. The content of the Followers of Set starter deck: Crypt (12) All vampires are group 4 2x Nakhthorheb 10 OBF, PRE, SER 2x Sundervere, The Devil Brahim 8 AUS, PRE, SER, THA, obf 2x Halim Bey 6 DOM, SER, obf, tha 2x Renenet 5 OBF, PRE, ser 2x Marla Kenyon 4 PRE ser 2x Bello Equitone 2 ser Library (77) Master (11) 1x Crocodile Temple, The 1x Dummy Corporation 1x Khobar Towers, Al-Khubar 1x Opium Den 1x Secure Haven 1x Serpentis 1x Temple Hunting Ground 2x Vessel 1x WMRH Talk Radio 1x Wash Action (20) 2x Blithe Acceptance 4x Dream World 2x Enticement 1x Form of Corruption 1x Mesu Bedshet 2x Public Trust 4x Revelation of Ecstasy 1x Summoning, The 3x Temptation Action Modifier (20) 3x Approximation of Loyalty 2x Cloak the Gathering 2x Into Thin Air 3x Revelation of Desire 2x Spying Mission 4x True Love’s Face 2x Truth of a Thousand Lies 2x Veil the Legions Reaction (13) 3x Confusion of the Eye 3x Ecstacy 2x Eluding the Arms of Morpheus 2x Mental Maze 3x Revelations of Despair Political Action (1) 1x Hierophant Ally (1) 1x Tutu the Doubly Evil One Combat (11) 3x Jones, The 4x Majesty 1x Revelation of Wrath 3x Unholy Penance The first thing that we can see here is that the deck contains a good amount of bleed. Since this is probably the easiest way to start we shall continue on that path. So first thing we need to do is to get rid of those cards that have nothing to do with bleeding. So out are the WMRH, The Summoning, 1x Confusion of the eye, Mental Maze, Hierophant, Tutu the Double Evil One, The Jones and Revelation of Wrath. We keep two Confusion of the Eye as vote defense. Since we have a limited amount of pool gain we need to watch the cost of some cards. Khobar Towers is great, but not in this deck, same goes for Secure Haven so we scrap those cards as well. This leaves us with some room to add cards from the second starter. Looking at what we have so far we are going to need more stealth and more combat survivability. After some scrapping and adding I came up with this deck: Crypt (12) All vampires are group 4 3x Nakhthorheb 10 OBF, PRE, SER 1x Sundervere, The Devil Brahim 8 AUS, PRE, SER, THA, obf 2x Halim Bey 6 DOM, SER, obf, tha 2x Renenet 5 OBF, PRE, ser 2x Marla Kenyon 4 PRE ser 2x Bello Equitone 2 ser Library (90) Master (12) 1x Crocodile Temple, The 1x Dummy Corporation 1x Opium Den 2x Serpentis 1x Temple Hunting Ground 4x Vessel 2x Wash Action (24) 2x Dream World 4x Enticement 2x Form of Corruption 2x Mesu Bedshet 4x Public Trust 6x Revelation of Ecstasy 4x Temptation Action Modifier (26) 4x Cloak the Gathering 4x Into Thin Air 6x Revelation of Desire 4x Spying Mission 4x True Love’s Face 4x Veil the Legions Reaction (17) 2x Confusion of the Eye 5x Ecstasy 4x Eluding the Arms of Morpheus 3x Revelations of Despair Combat (11) 8x Majesty 3x Unholy Penance I have played it during our meta game and although I died horribly to two combat heavy decks, it did fairly well. Off course the deck still has some major issues but that is material for the next newsletter. You will totally destroy single vampire wall decks. Just put a corruption counter on it fast and let Nakh do the killing. Send in some bleed, untap and throw an enticement. Very easy but oh so effective. Against other decks you can use the same tactic, you just have to use more corruption counters ;-) 3. Now what? Like I said the deck still has major issues and it still needs some drastic changes. I will continue with this deck in the next few issues of the newsletter. For now I just let you play with the above deck and let you make some changes of your own. See how you fare when instead of bleeding you go for the temptation route. Maybe try out the new spell of life card, use allies etc etc. Till next time, Paul Wiggers