Andy

A Timetable of Planned Temple Meetings:

Regular meetings are held on Tuesdays, 7.30pm upstairs at The Graduate Pub, Mitchum's Corner.

Next meeting: Tuesday 13th August 2002. From 7.30pm.

Heart of Darkness: Cambridge
This is the next tourney being held in Cambridge in August. It will be a standard sanctioned constructed tourney (no camarilla set if it is released, existing cards less restictions only). It will be on the 20th and 27th August. Most of you should have received details by now. If you haven't, let me know, but I'll mail again soon. Main Prize 8x10 photoprint of Alejandro (new Tremere Antitribu) from the new set by Ken Meyer Jr. Entry £3.
There are some extra prizes for the largest amount of minions controlled at any one time by a Methuselah, and the largest amount of non-prevented damage in a single strike (in base units, rather than counting aggravated).Prizes will be signed cards. Only the first two rounds count for this though.

Pre-release:
I promise you will know as soon as I do when it will be (in Watford unfortunately for us.) GenCon UK is again going to be held at Olympia. I am planning to go for possibly all four days. There is usually V:TES tourneys on all the days, as well as plenty of pickup games. I don't know the exact schedule yet, I am awaiting the almighty Dave Hammond and Mike Nudd to have this sorted out.
One definite event is The National Cup, currently held by Rob Treasure. Assuming he makes it, it will be a chance to defeat possibly the greatest player in the world, and if he doesn't, at least it won't be going home with him yet again. This is most likely to be held on the Saturday, so hopefully see some of you there.

I am also planning a sealed deck using the new Camarilla set in September, where the prize will be an official VTES edge counter. Cost and date tbc.

New Set: Camarilla Edition

New Card Layout:

The cards have a new layout (although the cards backs remain unchanged, of course). Each card, both crypt and library, has an attribute bar along the left side where the attributes of the card (clan, discipline, cost, etc.) go. The red capacity circle remains in the lower-right corner, however. The card-type-specific backgrounds have changed as well, both for crypt cards and for library cards.
The icons for blood cost and pool cost have also been updated. If a card costs blood, the amount is shown in a red drop. If a card costs pool, the amount is shown in a white diamond with a vampiric skull. In both cases the icon appears in the lower left corner of the card.

New Rules:

Grouping:
As we have already made public, The Camarilla Edition introduces a hundred (100) new vampires. Ninety (90) of these vampires are Camarilla, fifteen (15) in each of the clans: Brujah, Malkavian, Nosferatu, Toreador, Tremere, and Ventrue. This new influx of vampires, no matter how well balanced individually, could give too much power to Camarilla deck builders by increasing the selection of available vampires (making crypt selection more like building customized vampires). To ensure on-going play balance (for this set as well as future sets in which new vampires will appear), The Camarilla Edition introduces a new attribute, a number, on each vampire for grouping (shown just above the upper-left corner of the text area). Crypts must be built using only vampires from a single group or using only vampires from two consecutive groups. The group of a crypt card from previous sets with no group number is determined as follows. Cards from the 1994 and 1995 base sets (vampires with no expansion symbol in the upper right corner of the card) are Group 1, while cards from the expansions (Dark Sovereigns, Ancient Hearts, Sabbat, Sabbat War, Final Nights, and Bloodlines) are Group 2. So all of the decks built with those cards remain legal.
Players might confuse this with the way the DCI retires old cards sets for DCI Standard tournament play, (some other trading card games have done something similar as well) but the difference here is that all groups (all cards) are tournament legal - there is no phasing out of old cards, just segregation of groups.

No Repeat Actions:
The new base rules incorporate a variation of the No Repeat Actions special floor rule from the V:EKN tournament rules. Instead of restricting repeats by (a sometimes difficult to define) type, a minion cannot:

• bleed twice in a turn
• take a political action twice in a turn
• use the same action card twice in a turn
• take the action allowed by a card in play twice in a turn

Allies Using Disciplines:
The new rules explicitly state how to handle allies that can play cards that require disciplines (which are, of course, only playable by vampires that possess those disciplines by default). None of the allies in The Camarilla Edition have this ability, though, so this rule won't affect players who are just starting out with the The Camarilla Edition. Here's the text of the rule from the rulebook:
Some allies have the ability to play certain cards "as a vampire." In these cases, the ally is treated as a vampire for all effects generated by the play of the card. The ally’s life represents his blood (to pay costs, for example). Any blood he gains or loses as a vampire equates to a gain or loss of life for the ally. For purposes of that card, the ally has a capacity of 1 by default (for use if the card requires an older vampire or a vampire of a given capacity). The ally is treated as a vampire only when playing the card and, for cards such as actions and strikes that are not resolved immediately, for the resolution of the effect. In particular, the ally is not treated as a vampire for effects of the card once it's in play or for lingering effects generated by the card. If the ally gains life in excess of his capacity, it doesn't drain off, and if the effect inflicts aggravated damage on the ally, he burns life as normal. However, if the effect would send the ally to torpor, then he is burned instead.

Miscellaneous:

• Default bleed and strength for both vampires and allies is 1 (allies used to default to 0).
• The term Action Card refers to all cards that are played to take an action, including equipment, ally, and retainer cards (returning to the original Jyhad usage).
• Retainers no longer automatically heal at the end of combat.
• A blood hunt is called automatically after every successful diablerie. It is not optional, and it is not the fifth step of diablerie.

New Cards

The Camarilla Edition contains 115 new cards, all of which are available in the booster pack assorment. 100 of those are new vampires (and all of the vampires in the booster packs are new): 15 for each of the six clans Brujah, Malkavian, Nosferatu, Toreador, Tremere, and Ventrue; and 1 for each of the basic Sabbat clans. The rest are library cards:

Uncommon
Baltimore Purge
Bounty
Scrounging
Weighted Walking Stick
Will of the Council

Rare
Abandoning the Flesh
Brothers Grimm
Gregory Winter
Tension in the Ranks
Zoning Board

There are some more important changes. I'll post out a checklist and a cards changes list next time.

A Decklist: