Ebony Kingdom - Good for new players, or not?
The Lasombra
http://forums.white-wolf.com/cs/forums/t/32000.aspx?PageIndex=2
Contents of the Ebony Kingdom set:
Crypt
20 vampires that are of the clans in the Legacies of Blood starters
Library
5 cards that are playable by non-Laibon and 37 that require Laibon.
The Bitter and Sweet Story, Exile (inf), Impundulu, Jua Vema (inf), My
Kin Against the World
A returning player (Territorial Warlord Death) with no cards is asking
what to buy. He is in Fort McMurray, Canada, somewhat near Edmonton
(~5 hours away). (http://www.edmontonvtes.ca/)
His first purchase was 1 starter display and 1 booster display of
V:TES.
His next purchase is coming up this Friday, and is proposed to be:
"1 or 2 booster boxes of Keepers of Tradition, One box of Starters for
Keepers of Tradition, Booster box of Kindred most wanted, Booster box
of Twlight Rebellion, both Tenth (10th) Anniversary Sets, and maybe
and Anarch box if money allows or a Blood Shadow Court deck"
To supplement and expand this collection above, what set would you
recommend? (Knowing that he won't actually be buying Anarchs or Tenth
Anniversary.)
Teeka recommends Ebony Kingdom. I believe that he cannot be
recommending a worse set for the rest of the cards the player is
buying. Teeka can't keep his WW Forum account working, so let's
continue the discussion here.
Kevin M.
> Summary of what has come before:
> http://forums.white-wolf.com/cs/forums/t/32000.aspx?PageIndex=2
>
> Contents of the Ebony Kingdom set:
> A returning player (Territorial Warlord Death) with no cards is
> asking what to buy. He is in Fort McMurray, Canada, somewhat near
> Edmonton (~5 hours away). (http://www.edmontonvtes.ca/)
>
> His first purchase was 1 starter display and 1 booster display of
> V:TES. His next purchase is coming up this Friday, and is proposed
> to be:
> "1 or 2 booster boxes of Keepers of Tradition, One box of Starters
> for Keepers of Tradition, Booster box of Kindred most wanted,
> Booster box of Twlight Rebellion, both Tenth (10th) Anniversary
> Sets, and maybe and Anarch box if money allows or a Blood Shadow
> Court deck"
>
> To supplement and expand this collection above, what set would you
> recommend? (Knowing that he won't actually be buying Anarchs or
> Tenth Anniversary.)
>
> Teeka recommends Ebony Kingdom. I believe that he cannot be
> recommending a worse set for the rest of the cards the player is
> buying. Teeka can't keep his WW Forum account working, so let's
> continue the discussion here.
Ebony Kingdom, like most 60-card sets, is a follow-up set which
should ONLY be purchased by players after they obtain the previous
core set -- which, eventually, should be everyone.
Given that the player already bought a Camarilla-based set, he should
probably buy 1 starter and 1-2 booster boxes of KoT. Even though
the vampires won't be compatible, he will get lots of library cards
for use with his VTES decks and will be able to make a dozen really
solid decks.
And he should buy KoT while he can! :)
Kevin M., Prince of Las Vegas
"Know your enemy and know yourself; in one-thousand battles
you shall never be in peril." -- Sun Tzu, *The Art of War*
"Contentment...Complacency...Catastrophe!" -- Joseph Chevalier
Please visit VTESville daily! http://vtesville.myminicity.com/
Please bid on my auctions! http://shop.ebay.com/kjmergen/m.html
Teeka
> Teeka recommends Ebony Kingdom. I believe that he cannot be
> recommending a worse set for the rest of the cards the player is
> buying. Teeka can't keep his WW Forum account working, so let's
> continue the discussion here.
Lol, thanks.
But back up a bit, I don't necessarily recommend EK to all new players
per se.
I responded to Daimyo's words on
- wanting to try out a lot of options first, and then buying stuff it
turns out he likes, off ebay later.
- wanting to build "theme" (my impression of the word: non-tier1,
crazy-idea) decks.
- thinking about buying Twilight Rebellion without buying Anarchs.
I think that given those terms, a box of EK is not so bad, as long as
you also buy KoT. The groups are compatible, and so are the used
disciplines (more so than, say, indies or bloodlines).
The way I see it (again, given his intentions) you could throw in
Laibons in your otherwise Cam decks, and then use a bunch of EK
library cards as tricks/twists/extra options (just like the way the
Bloodlines set was designed). Should he really like the Laibons, he
can always go on ebay and buy LoB stuff later.
I said that I agree that a box of EK by itself is pretty useless, as
you can't make the most of the cards or build an optimal mono-Laibon
deck without LoB stuff, but as said, I thought that was not this
player's short term intent.
I also commented that depending on the 'level' of your playgroup, you
can have great 'starter' games playing decks that the guys on this NG
wouldn't consider any good. No harm in playing such decks to get a
feel for the game, checking out different options and getting more
'serious' later.
If someone were to say something like, "I'm going to buy a box of KoT
and am wondering what other set would go with that. I don't want to
spend a crapload of money, but just enough to make some working decks
that are on par with those of some of my longer-playing friends.", I
would not have recommended KoT at all.
Teeka
about prince-cards didn't come across the way I meant.
What I meant was, if you want to play some Prince-requiring cards in a
deck, you put some Prince vampires in your crypt.
Not all of your vampires will be Princes though. Most of your vampires
will be able to play the bulk of your deck (discipline-requiring or
requirementless), and the Princes will have their extra options.
I don't see why that can't work if you replace "prince" with "laibon",
as long as you use matching disciplines.
As I said before, this is all from the perspective of someone why does
not have access to a big collection, of course things change when
you're going for playing tier1/buying singles/building optimalised
decks.
Aaron Clark
final of a local tournament last year.
I did not own any Legacies of Blood. I could not use a single library
card in the two packs I opened. They all had to do with Ayes and
Oruns.
Anybody want an unopened Ebony Kingdom pack?
What I'm trying to say is that the new player should not buy Ebony
Kingdom unless he is also going to buy Legacies of Blood. Since he
started with the base VTES set, he should focus on Camarilla stuff.
Malone
> His first purchase was 1 starter display and 1 booster display of
> V:TES.
>
> His next purchase is coming up this Friday, and is proposed to be:
> "1 or 2 booster boxes of Keepers of Tradition, One box of Starters for
> Keepers of Tradition, Booster box of Kindred most wanted, Booster box
> of Twlight Rebellion, both Tenth (10th) Anniversary Sets, and maybe
> and Anarch box if money allows or a Blood Shadow Court deck"
>
> To supplement and expand this collection above, what set would you
> recommend? (Knowing that he won't actually be buying Anarchs or Tenth
> Anniversary.)
Keepers ofTradition, obviously, definitely, 2 or 3 boxes of boosters
and a box of starters. Also, two or three individual Blood Shadowed
Court packs, or a box of them, would be money well-spent.
If he's nearing the end of his budget, I'd say stop there.
If he has a bunch more money to spend, I'd say get 2 boxes of Lords of
the Night boosters and one box of the starters. That should give
enough material for Setite stealth-bleed, Giovanni hordes, Giovanni
power-bleed, and also some important general cards like Target Vitals;
and good group-compatibility with KoT.
TorranceCircle
This seems like the right way to go, to me. Ebony Kingdom will not
provide enough cards compatible with Camarilla clans. You would do
better with legacies of blood if your goal is to "try out" the laibon
clans by mixing them with camarilla.
Azel
I like Laibon, a lot, but not even I can recommend Ebony Kingdom w/o
Legacies of Blood support. You need 1 LoB Starter box and 1-2 LoB
Booster box(es) to really work a box of Ebony Kingdom -- as Laibon. I
think LoB is a mess because it's so damn huge, but I recognize that
it's critical if you are going to find crypt support for Ebony Kingdom
Laibon. Now that is a different route to take, sell a box of Ebony
Kingdom with a full set (or two) of Laibon crypt from LoB tacked on --
which would be intelligent packaging of left over singles from
scrounging LoB high value singles. However, KoT crypt and EK crypt do
work together in part, the big downside is half your EK library cards
are pretty focused upon the Laibon and thus would be a waste of cards
lying in wait in quiet desperation.
The big issue is crypt cards in VTES, basic functionality cards, and
then hard to find disciplines. After those are covered, core sets are
pretty much swaps of chase singles with swaths of duplicate commons.
It's actually one of the reasons I think having a Cam, Sabbat, Indie
+Laibon, and Bloodline core set would smooth things over. Cam covers
the 'first 10' disciplines, Sabbat covers half the 'first 10' + sabbat
disciplines etc, Indie+Laibon covers the other half of 'first 10' +
sabbat disciplines again, and Bloodline covers the bloodline 10
disciplines. Would be clean and neat solution to base sets -- but
that's another discussion altogether.
As a returning player -- with no cards besides 1 starter + 1 booster
of VtES (1st set?) -- I think he should focus on getting Camarilla
through the ages. He *should* buy the new base set, KoT, and he should
buy 1 starter and 1 booster box. (I don't care much about KoT, I just
want the crypt, but my situation is not a player with zero cards.)
Then, since he already has all these nice Camarilla toys from KoT, he
absolutely should get 3-4 Blood Shadow Court deck (I find 3-4 copies
of a specific vampire my personal baseline of comfort to build any
crypt I desire). With G1, G3, and G5 Camarilla, and a bucketload of
common reprints, he's in a good position to expand from there.
Next, since HttB is out as a Bloodline base set currently, I'd
recommend 1-2 LoB Boosters. First off, 2-4 Tupdogs are, like, amazing.
And with that base set you can easily have him get into HttB (and/or
Ebony Kingdom). HttB runs fine on its own, as well, so this is luxury
purchases at this point. But the LoB Bloodline library cards are
decent support. Doing this opens the most amount of clans as support
(Bloodlines+Laibon), and works best with current releases (HttB+EK).
I think Twilight Rebellion is stupendous as it is and worth the
purchase -- Anarch Convert alone assures that. Second, Anarchs and
Gehenna are the two support sets, but I don't feel he should worry all
that much about getting them (and Anarchs is not available for the
most part). The cards from those two sets can easily be traded for,
but TR is definitely worth a box; functional Anarchism (sans Barony
titles) makes his G1, KoT and BSC crypt sets open up into more
playability.
I'd avoid KMW and SoC currently. Before Sabbat (3rd ed distribution
makes gamers sad...), Black Hand, or Trophy mechanic, I'd go LotN and
get Indies; it opens 4 new clans that are quite popular with fans.
My Priority Listing:
*Mandatory Base Start*
1. KoT - 1 starter, 1 booster
2. BSC - 3-4 decks
*Current Product + Most # New Clans*
3. LoB - 1 starter, 1-2 booster
4. HttB - 1 starter, 1 booster
5. EK - 1 box
*Beloved Indies (4 clans)*
3. LotN - 1 starter, 1-2 booster
*Fun Diversity Add-on*
3. TR - 1 box
4. Trade for anarch-related singles from Gehenna + Anarchs
*Hold Off Until You're Sure*
KMW, SoC, 3rd Ed (Sabbat), NoR (Imbued)