NZ Nationals / VTES Tournament

Old and new players welcome.

First tournament in New Zealand for 6+ years! — FREE entry.

Sunday 4th December, Kingsland, Auckland.

• All participants will receive a near complete set of promo cards +  booster of your choice.

• Finalists will receive pre-constructed decks of your choice

• Winner will receive a complete set of Ashur Tablets or the Monastery of Shadows and a "Table Threat" T-Shirt in your size.

Accommodation available for travelling players.

Full details available here: http://www.meetup.com/Vampire-CCG-Auckland/events/234819286/

V:TES Cards — Redesigned 2.0

Version 2.0 of the redesigned Crypt and Library cards are now available on: amaranth.vtes.co.nz

So far high res artwork has been implemented for all KOT and HTTB cards +  a few others — more to come soon.

Am fairly happy with the end results:

















And some direct comparisons:































These are all now live on https://amaranth.vtes.co.nz.

Amaranth:DB Proxy / Deck tool

Am pleased to announce Amaranth: https://amaranth.vtes.co.nz

It started off as a tool to test the redesigned cards — but grew from there into a fully fledged deck building tool.

Features include:

Print full decks (new design and old cards)
Partial print decks (good for changes / old proxies)
Full text searching / easy filters
Import from: Secret Library (public)
Export to: Lackey, JOL, Text

There's a feedback icon on cards to report any issues with cards — more features to follow soon.

iOS and Android versions will also be released soon.

Screen shots below...

Crypt card redesign

As part of the crypt card redesign side bars were needed for all 40 crypt cards.

Here are the end results:

Library card redesign.

Have had a chance to take a shot at re-designing library cards.

This design works with the standard "boxed" image artwork on cards. So it should be possible to use all existing artwork with them. The core idea is to make them as clear and easy to understand as possible.









UPDATE

To print! — time to compare to actual cards:



Bummer, turns out the first few characters of the title are VERY important. Actually, this offers an opportunity to simplify the card further and reduce icon noise. Since we now name the card type we can drop the icon to make space for the title — this has the bonus effect of the player only having to match discipline icons. Win!





UPDATE x2

Based on peoples feedback. Here's the final (or near enough) versions.

The size of title has been increased and re-positioned. The side bar has been given character without being too in your face — it's also been given a worn timely feel in keeping with the general game vibe. The texture is also partial derived from the main image — although it's very subtle.

Quick Start Decks

One of the issue promoting the game to new players in New Zealand is the lack of stock available in the country. I have built up a decent amount of starter deck stock, however they're not that good and only offer so much in terms variety (we don't want everyone playing the same black hand decks!).

So we've built decks using a shared pool of cards that are designed to be competitive from out of the box and follow popular and proven archetypes. They're packaged in a basic cardboard box with a custom label and include a copy of the new player guide so they still feel more substantial than a stack of cards.

They're also proving quite useful as decks for players to just play or to use to demo with.

Here's all the decks created so far...

VTES Card Separators Redux

So the time came to tidy up the collection again. Since the last time this was done, I have acquired quite a few cards and the seemingly ever growing pile of chaff (half completed or destroyed decks) and purchased cards was as intimidating as ever. This also lead to inefficient eBay purchases — unnecessary buying cards I already had plenty of... Not cool.

As part of this process I needed to replace my tired card dividers. Whilst they have served me well for the last 3 - 4 years, some had disappeared, others had become damaged and some I had simply not bothered to print (am looking at you Abombwe). This posed an issue as they required special printing on photographic paper and I had since left that printer in the UK.

So I took the opportunity to redesign the separators. The first priority was to make them work with standard printers / A4 paper, the second was to make them most robust yet still use standard paper. The first problem was easily solved with a new layout. The second required a little more thinking, although the solution in hindsight was obvious — sleeve the divider.

Here's the end result:

I had plenty of shiny ultra-pro sleeves which I no longer used so this was the perfect use of them.

You can download PDF templates below:

Main VTES Separators PDF (1MB)

Sub VTES Separators PDF

New Player Guide / Cheatsheet

Have had a couple of new players join and one of the things they struggled with the most was turn and combat sequencing. Including things like when to play an action vs an action modifier or even a reaction card.

So I put together a cheat sheet / new player guide which is clear and doesn't contain too much noise. It's not meant to be a replacement for the rules, but it should be enough for a new player to get up to speed with the core mechanics of the game and when to do what.

Has been picked up by the VEKN now and is also available here.

High quality A3 PDF: https://db.tt/x8Sp5wdV (11MB — recommended)

High quality A4 PDF: https://db.tt/eToTCTHk (11MB — two sheets)

150 DPI Images:

A3: https://db.tt/jxPGZCMh

A4: https://db.tt/2GtdDHAz and https://db.tt/Tx1dDhdj

This is open for discussion over at the VEKN forums here.

Up and running in New Zealand

Have been back in New Zealand for over a year now and have well and truly settled back in. That's lead to more time for VTES and our local player group has slowly been increasing in numbers — as part of that, it's time to revive this blog...

www.vtes.co.nz has also been  registered which currently routes to the Auckland player group page. Nor quite sure what to do with it longer term, but believe it will come in handy in terms of local player support.

Tournament Report — New Blood Old Blood

We had a great tournament in London over the weekend. 14 Players, 3 rounds and a final — it was a great day with new and old faces. Below is a report written by Boris who had a storming day...