Introduction: Late may with temperatures far below what even a Swedish like myself would consider acceptable. The heavy clothes I had planned to stove away over a month ago disappear rapidly when I read the heated discussions about the Gehenna expansion though. I've never seen the aggravation before, even though there were a lot of heated speculation if the game could survive the change in layout that came with the Camarilla Edition. This time it's worse, but then I wasn't there to take part of whatever outcries were caused by the 7/7 change neither. Still, from where I sit now the game seems stronger than ever before. Anyway, this is a newsletter for a clan, and rather than voice my opinion whether the news introduced are good or not I'll concentrate on how the Toreador can make most use of them and what eventual pitfalls we need to be wary of. In an earlier newsletter I wrote that the Black Hand expansion had comparatively little to take into consideration for the Toreador. With Gehenna it's the other way around – too much in fact to go into a single newsletter, which gives me material for more newsletters to come. Gehenna – immediate needs for Toreador: I'll concentrate on two types of cards that would concern the clan in the near future – Vampires and Events. Both will probably see lots of play during the coming summer, but as is the fate of most cards, only the vampires make a repeated comeback as players find out which library-cards work in real play and which do not. We have received two group four vampires, and for some types of decks they are fantastic vampires easily used even before we see more from the same group. Vampires: Name: Muhandis Clan:Toreador Group: 4 Capacity: 8 Discipline: for qui AUS CEL PRE Camarilla. Muhandis must burn 1 blood to attempt to block a vampire. +1 bleed. Name: Fahd al-Zawba'a Clan: Toreador Group: 4 Capacity: 4 Discipline: for cel pre Camarilla Paired with two group three Toreador we have a splendid backbone for play with Toreador Grand Ball. Name: Madame Guil Clan: Toreador Group: 3 Capacity: 10 Discipline: for pot ser AUS CEL PRE Camarilla Toreador Justicar: +1 bleed Name: Annabelle Triabell Clan: Toreador Group: 3 Capacity: 9 Discipline: dom for AUS CEL PRE Camarilla Primogen. Anabelle can give all Toreador +1 bleed for the remainder of the turn as a +1 stealth action that costs one blood. If the action is successful, Annabelle untaps. With four vampires sharing inferior fortitude we get a lot of unblockable actions as long as we don't bleed and we don't run out of Freak Drive. Votes, creation of new vampires, equipping and, to a lesser extent, recruiting are all means of getting a stronger position or putting pressure to the other players. Solid blockers can only watch in desperation as their hands slowly fill up with intercept-cards that are of no use. With Celerity as an in-clan discipline the Toreador are well equipped to defend the Toreador Grand Ball, especially as Auspex also is an in-clan discipline. Now there are two ways of looking at this. Either grab the weaponry and try to gun down anything that comes your way or don't bother defending actions aimed at the Grand Ball. In the latter case you only want to get as many actions out of a played Ball as possible. I have tried both strategies and with the Gehenna expansion the latter becomes even more interesting than ever before, but that's for a later newsletter. Now for a dangerous vampire: Name: Count Germaine Clan: Brujah Group: 4 Capacity: 8 Discipline: obf CEL FOR POT PRE Camarilla. Minions opposing Germaine in combat cannot use weapons. He can enter combat with any Toreador controlled by another Methuselah as a (D) action. With potence and celerity at superior he's a menace to any deck. Superior fortitude makes him a formidable foe and his two specials make him the doom of any gun-wielding Toreador-deck. Events: Most of the current talk on-line is about the event-cards. There is already one Toreador-orientated deck-type that will benefit from events, and that is Anson/Parthenon with an absurd amount of master-cards. Adding events to the equation has a twofold benefit. First, any deck benefits from a steady flow of cards, and with a deck that basically skips the minion-phase an opportunity to play yet another card is a good thing. Second, most of these decks are based on a steady decrease of resources and with most of the events keeping a steady pressure on the table you're the most likely to benefit from the added attrition. Another aspect easily forgotten is that clan is not sect. Apart from the sheer difficulty to ever getting Fall of the Camarilla and Fall of the Sabbat into play any Anarch-deck will benefit from this happening, even if said deck is Toreador mono-clan. I'll list some event-cards and point out how they can be used. The following cards have been left without consideration: Absimilliard's Army, Becoming of Ennoia and Nightmares upon Nightmares. The first because it's a one-oust card where you have little control of who goes first, the second because relying on other players to play with a certain type of special cards amounts to the same as relying on them to play a certain clan and the third because it looks like a card for the editor of a Harbinger of Skulls' newsletter. Name: Anthelios, The Red Star Gehenna. Once each master phase, a Methuselah can use a master phase action to exchange a master card in his or her hand for one in his or her ash heap. This is an obvious addition to the Anson/Parthenon -type of deck mentioned above. For the price of one master phase action you can get rid of multiples of cards in play and retrieve a transient you're currently lacking on your hand. It's a fantastic way of always having a Sudden Reversal or Direct Intervention on your hand. Name: Blood Trade Gehenna. Burn all boons in play. No more boons may be put in play. During each Methuselah's untap phase, that Methuselah may move a blood from a vampire he or she controls to a vampire controlled by another Methuselah. This is the counterpart to most Anson/Parthenon -decks. If you're having problems with some players using that kind of deck over and over again this card makes sense the same way as Archon Investigation does if you always see bleeds for five or six accompanied by seemingly infinite stealth. Name: Blood Weakens Gehenna. Do not replace until a vampire commits diablerie. Cards that require any Disciplines to play are not replaced until the end of the current action or until any Methuselah's hand is empty (whichever comes first). Any vampire who commits diablerie is immune to this effect until the next Gehenna card is played. In the typical prince/justicar gun-deck waiting to block any offending action this card goes a good way towards securing that you stay alive should another combatant come your way. This is especially true of combat decks relying on smallish vampires and a multitude of transient combat cards. Name: Conquest of Humanity Gehenna. Do not replace until your next discard phase. Requires at least two other Gehenna cards in play. During each Methuselah's untap phase, he or she may chose a location controlled by his or her prey. The chosen location is burned unless its controller burns 2 pool. Difficult to get into play and probably of little worth the larger the tournament you're playing in. Still, if you're used to players that need tables for six players even if you are only four to have room for all those locations adding a blood there, a vote there and an occasional pool there, this is the card to put a stop to those estate owners. Name: Dragonbound Gehenna. Do not replace as long as this card is in play. During each Methuselah's discard phase, he or she burns X pool, where X is the number of vampires in torpor he or she controls. Watch out for this card unless you're the one putting your preys vampires into torpor. As Toreador you're also more likely to torporize your predator than your prey, and even though getting pressure off your back is a good thing you normally want your predator weak, not ousted. Clan Toreador is also one of the clans that lend itself to a crypt of small vampires relying heavily on combat avoidance and accepting that a number of small vampires will end up in torpor never to be rescued again. With this card in play that is no longer a viable option. Name: Fall of the Camarilla/Sabbat Do not replace as long as this card is in play. Requires at least three other Gehenna cards in play. There is no Camarilla/Sabbat. Any Camarilla/Sabbat vampire is considered Independent. The Sabbat version of this card comes with a clause making it impossible to play if there are any Black Hand vampires in play. Extremely difficult to get into play, and of very little interest unless you rely on the titles available to the Toreador. For most vote decks using modifiers to get their votes through this card actually enhance those decks, even if they use titles as any given table is likely to have more permanent votes belonging to the same sect as the voting one. Name: Fueled by Heart's Blood Gehenna. Do not replace until a vampire commits diablerie. Put 10 counters on this card. Remove one counter each time another Gehenna card is put in play. A blood hunt cannot be called on a vampire whose capacity is greater than the number of counters on this card when he or she diablerizes a younger vampire. As some other Gehenna Events this card has a replace if diablerie clause. First of all this is a handy card for your big, titled gunning vampires. Second, this and other events that are replaced after a diablerie can be used as a trap in order to actually play the seldomly seen Sixth Tradition: Destruction. With Toreador Grand Ball in play nothing short of Rewind Time or Direct Intervention will prevent you from burning a vampire. What's next: With the next newsletter I'll summarize my view on the rest of the events as well as present some more cards of interest to clan Toreador. By that time I also hope to have some experience of actually seeing the new cards in play. Playing as often as I do I still don't know all the cards from the Anarch expansion and even less those from the Black Hand. As of now Gehenna is a vast amount of text with little context, and I believe that the coming summer will see the Black Hand expansion hitting the tournaments rather than the Gehenna. As usual, by hitting I mean winning tournaments rather than just existing as an annoyance. That anarchdom will have an increased appeal seems certain but we still have to wait to see if that concept will truly be strong enough. Black Hand received a marginally wider array of opportunities, but I personally believe that we will have to wait for at least another expansion to make it a strong enough concept. That the coming expansion is announced as focusing on the independents make this an even less likely occurrence, but I'm getting used to see a few nice surprises given outside the formal scope of each expansion. Sten During