VTES Online — Lackey CCG vs JOL + ARDB

How many acronyms can you fit in a title? Over the last few days I've been trying out the various forms of VTES online and thought I'd report back on the results...

The Joy of Ebay

Had an ebay auction arrive today, a random collection of Jyhad cards — pretty much perfectly new. They arrived in a cassette holder which I suspect had held treasured musical tapes not long before the cards were placed and entombed within it for almost a decade. It was a decent buy and contained a number of rares from the time including The Embrace, Ghoul Retainer, Freak drive, Rumours of Gehenna.

My coverage of the Jyhad base set is fairly complete, although I find it useful to grab a collection like this every now and then. It enables me to keep more decks assembled and hopefully to distribute some cards as required — it's also novel and provides all sorts of nostalgic goodness...

Immortal Grapple — VTES Artwork

Here's another take on a popular card — Immortal Grapple

This one was a struggle from the offset, I had a clear image in my head about how I wanted to to portray the shot (a much smaller minion being mangled by a much larger one viewed from the larger minion's perspective) — although this posed problems in terms of scale. The other difficulty was getting the balance right between the image reducing well and looking too cartoony...

VTES Tournament — London 7th January

There's another VTES Tournament happening early January at the Jugged Hare.

This time round I'm going to play a tried and tested deck — not an untested experimental one built the night beforehand. Anarch Free Press post: Tournament 7th January 2012 London

Hopefully it'll be possible to get a few 4 - 5 player games in before then (numbers were low last night) — if you've got easy access to Victoria Station (train / tube) come and join us! It's a relaxed atmosphere. We meet at 7PM and manage to fit in two 2 hour games in and finish up normally by 11PM — leaving plenty of time to
catch the tube / train home...

Last big VTES order — Thanks www.vtes.de

I received a large delivery from vtes.de this week and spent part of the weekend sorting out the cards. As usual, the service from Walch & Nusser was great. If you're based in Europe, you've only got the next few weeks to place an order with them — so make the most of it.

This will likely be the last large VTES order I place (asides from a few singles here and there). I grabbed a few extra starters to keep sealed for any friends that I may be able to introduce to the game. Would love to pick up a Keepers of Tradition booster — but have reconciled that I'll need to simply be patient and buy the key cards individually (Ashur Tablets, Deep Song, Enkil Cog etc)

Without Walch & Nusser or other European suppliers it's going to be quite hard for new players to pick up the game (especially at a competitive level) — they provided a valued service and will be missed.

Villein Errata — Updated 2012 tournament rules

The official tournament rules for 2012 have been released. The most topical aspect is a tweak to Villein designed to bring minion taps back into play:

Villein:
Master: trifle. Put this card on a vampire you control and move 2 or more blood from that vampire to your pool. Minion Tap cards cost { you } an additional pool. Villein costs an additional pool to play on this vampire.

Another notable change is support for the upcoming fan set:

Section 4.1 Cards allowed:
Cards allowed All cards in a player's deck must be genuine Vampire: The Eternal Struggle or Jyhad cards or official V:EKN issued cards from the only authoritative source www.vekn.net. When using V:EKN issued cards they must be color printed on standard paper and inserted into opaque sleeves before another Vampire: The Eternal Struggle or Jyhad card, this requires opaque sleeves for the whole crypt and/or library. 

The complete rulings for 2012 are available here: Rules Team Rulings 02-DEC-11

UK Nationals — Final Results and Match Report.

The results of the UK nationals has been posted over at the Anarch Free Press — including a brief match report on the final: www.anarchfreepress.com — results and final match report

Burst of Sunlight — more VTES artwork.

I decided to have a go at some more VTES artwork and taking into account the lessons I learnt from the last card. I spent quite a bit more time on this one, but I'm very happy with the results:

Although I got caught up in the detail (like the last card) this time I was able to ensure that the image was striking and would scale well by using plenty of contrast (including colours). Again I used Sketchbook Pro on the iPad — I'm happy with the process, it has quite a natural feel to it (you don't really get more hands on) and I doubt I'm going to bother with a tablet. For those interested here's an overview of the process:

Basic VTES set buying guide.

Just came across a useful breakdown of the various VTES sets, what to buy and what you should expect to pay — it's a useful guide if slightly dated:

VTES Newbie — Guide to Collecting VTES

The most obvious change is the availability of the more recent sets (Keepers of Tradition etc) but a lot of the information seems to hold true and it contains a useful overview for new buyers. The site also has some good pointers for teaching the game to new players — definitely worth a quick scan.

UK Nationals — 10 hours of VTES!

Our local VTES venue was the host for the UK Nationals on Saturday and what a day it was. The turnout was good (especially given the awesome weather) and atmosphere was great — friendly players and at a homely venue. Unfortunately (from a blog perspective) I got quite caught up in my games, so coverage is going to limited, sans notes and to keep it simple I'll refer to the decks versus player names.

Unusual evening at the Jugged Hare

Played a number of small games on Monday night at the Jugged Hare. Numbers we're very low as a few people were returning from the EC that day, so after discussing what decks would suck the least in a 2 player game we got started.

VTES Card Artwork

After reading that the VEKN were looking for artists for a possible expansion set, I thought I'd have a go creating some artwork during TV series / movie downtime. For convenience, I thought the iPad would be the best thing to use and downloaded Sketchbook Pro an App I've had success with on my phone.

The next task was to decide on a card to create artwork for. One of my favourite cards (artwork and functionality) was the "Taste of Death" from the Final Nights set, unfortuantely this was was muted somewhat in following releases:

Hmm. This card deserved some justice and should rightly strike fear in the hearts of other methuselahs. So it seemed like the perfect choice — here's my attempt at it:

What I found quite interesting was the degree of detail required due to the size of the card. The image contains far more detail than is actually required — a lot of it's lost when printed and is only visible when zoomed onscreen. The turnaround time was fairly good (a couple of hours) and I believe a decent amount of time can be saved by spending less time detailing.

I imagine that artwork for vampires would require the detail as it occupies the majority of the card — so perhaps a vampire will be my next attempt. The other thing observed was the boldness required in terms of colour and linework (again due to the size of the card) — so that's definitely an area that I need to improve upon.

I'm not sure if I'll submit any cards to the VEKN, it depends on how much time I spend chilling out in front of the big square box. That said, I really like the idea of having artwork featured — that would be very cool indeed.

So, any suggestions for what card to target next?

Bringing Order to Chaos — sorting out the cards.

I spent a large part of the weekend sorting out my collection. After asking around for ideas on how to do so I believe I reached a balanced approach without having to head down the meticulous A-Z approach (not a realistic solution for myself).

Essentially I've broken down my cards by discipline and then when warranted: action, reaction, combat, ally etc... this allows for  granularity when required and "just a bunch of cards" for disciplines that I don't carry much of.

I wanted a quick way of spotting and scanning through cards. So I created a template for all of the disciplines, clans and master card types. The great thing about this approach is that a) I can create / print new separators as needed and b) I can "flick" through the cards as if it was a record or heaven forbid a CD collection which is very quick and convenient. You can download the PSD template here.

I ordered a large number of smaller (500 - 1600) cardboard boxes to store the cards in smaller more manageable groups (versus large boxes of 5000). Unfortunately the small boxes are landscape oriented which means they don't work with the separators I've created. So for the time being I'll still have to use some of the unwieldily 5000 boxes.

The end result is really functional and as a bonus also looks great. Hopefully it'll help things along in terms of deck building — no doubt I'll still experience those "where is that card!" moments...

Into the big bad dark world...

Having played VTES for a number of years (predominately with friends in private) and after an extended period in Torpor I thought it'd be a good time to take to the public game and document my excursions.

Re-committing to a game that's been killed of commercially is definitely somewhat illogical. Cards are harder to come by (even essential pre-constructed deck cards like Villein are pricey on eBay), booster boxes are getting harder to come by (especially for the more powerful sets) and trying to convince friends to take up a difficult (and undead) game definitely poses a challenge...

However it's a game I enjoy playing, the levels of intensity reached and moments of serendipity warrant time and effort invested.

So here we go, another VTES blog with a writer hoping to learn something along the way...