Fall of London Spoiler List

I had a few minutes this morning and I got curious about which Fall of London cards were left to spoil, so I decided to create a complete list of the Fall of London cards with links to known spoilers. I’ll try to keep this updated as we find out more information. If you spot spoilers that aren’t shown here, please let me know! Enjoy!

Crypt cards:

• Abraham Mellon (Malkavian, 8 cap)
• Adelino da Silva (Brujah, 5 cap)
• Adisa (Banu Haqim, 3 cap)
• Ayse Dhanial (Tremere, 4 Cap)
• Chun Hei (Brujah, 7 cap)
• Daria (Nosferatu, 5 cap)
• Darius Shirazi (Malkavian, 6 cap)
• The Guardian (Nosferatu, 4 cap)
• Gwenllian Arwyn (Brujah, 9 cap)
• Lady Scarlett Churchill (Ventrue, 5 cap)
• Mickey Wheeler (Gangrel, 5 cap)
• Mithras (Ventrue, 11 cap)
• Oskar Anasov (Nosferatu, 8 cap)
• Queen Anne (Ventrue, 10 cap)
• Regina Blake (Toreador, 5 cap)
• Richard de Worde (Nosferatu, 8 cap)
• Rose Abawi (Toreador, 4 cap)
• Rowena (Gangrel, 7 cap)
• Sri Sansa (Tremere, 5 cap)
• Valerius (Ventrue, 9 cap)

Library cards:

• ECTU Operative (Non-unique Ally)
• Enhanced Coagulant (Equipment)
• Michael Harris, the Incinerator (Unique Ally)
• Mithraic Cultist (Master)
• Mobile HQ, Operation Antigen (Master)
• Ritual Goblet (Equipment)
• The British Museum, London (Master)
• The Mithraeum, London (Master)
• The Shard, London (Master)
• Valerie Diaz, Antigen Commander (Unique Ally)

Burn what you must

Greetings fellow Methuselahs! I bring exciting news. No longer am I merely evaluating the spoilers posted by others. Now I have my own spoiler to preview. Many thanks to Henrik Klippstrom and the Black Chantry team for reaching out to me with this opportunity. Let’s dive straight in.

Michael Harris, the Incinerator is a unique ally who costs 3 pool and has 3 life, 1 strength, and 1 bleed. He also possesses the Operation Antigen trait. Black Chantry was kind enough to verify with me that this trait has no rules associated with it (making it more like Black Hand than Red List). So we’ll really just have to wait and see what kind of benefits Michael and ECTU Operative get by having it. I think it’s reasonable to conclude that Mobile HQ, Operation Antigen and/or Valerie Diaz, Antigen Commander will provide some benefit. Anyway, going back to Michael’s stats, he’s roughly on par with allies such as Brigitte Gebauer or Outcast Mage while having no clan requirement. And while neither of those allies is meta-defining, both see at least some play. So there you have it, a slightly expensive ally who may see some fringe play.

Spoilers fit for a King

I’m back with more analysis of spoilers from the Fall of London set. These Ventrue crypt cards were revealed on the Information Highway blog. They did a great job analyzing the cards, but I wanted to work through them myself. If you’re fond of strange analysis, then you might enjoy this article, but make sure to check out the original linked above!

Let’s proceed in capacity order. Starting with Lady Scarlett Churchill. Scarlett has 4 points of disciplines, putting her 1 behind the standard curve. Her special unfortunately does little to offset that loss. Effectively having a second clan is neat, but I would be more excited if Scarlett played better with Toreadors. One way this could have been done is giving her inferior Auspex or Celerity.

So, can you combine Scarlett with members of clan Toreador? Well, there are four in Groups 5, 6, and 7 that have Fortitude (all inferior) and three that have Dominate (2 inferior, 1 superior). Maybe that’s something to work with? She could also fit into a weenie Presence deck, but there are already eight other capacity 5 vampires with superior Presence in Groups 5 and 6. So… Scarlett isn’t bad, but I’m not really sure what to do with her special right now. At worst, it’s the equivalent of having an inferior discipline that you’ll never use.

Hideous Spoilers

At last the spoiler season for the Fall of London is upon us! Since my involvement with the VTES community mostly happened between White Wolf abandoning the game and its reresection by Black Chantry, I’ve never really gotten to experience a full VTES spoiler season. So I’m pretty excited. Now, I wish I was coming to you with more spoilers, but sadly I have none to offer. I suppose that I arose from torpor too recently to get my hands on dem juicy cardz. But I am very intrigued by what I see and I thought I would write up my thoughts in blog form.

I initially thought I would write an article about all of the cards that were spoiled on Wednesday (Aug 17), but I quickly realized that I had too much to say. So today’s article will just focus on the Nosferatu crypt cards. The original spoilers and commentary can be found on the KGS Cards Blog. The article is excellent, and I highly suggest that you check it out! Below are my thoughts in case you’d like a different perspective and analysis. I anticipate writing up something about the other spoilers soon. In the meantime, you can check out some Ventrue and Gangrel crypt cards.

Let’s proceed in order of capacity with The Guardian. 3 disciplines for 4 capacity is pretty standard, but those who don’t have all clan disciplines are a bit more rare. Animalism, Celerity, and Potence certainly suggest a combat-oriented vampire. Making use of that Celerity is going to be difficult if you want to stay in clan. Currently, the only other Group 5, 6, or 7 Nosferatu with Celerity is Oskar Anasov (who is spoiled below). 2 vampires is just not a good place to start a crypt construction. I wouldn’t count on much more crypt support in Group 6 as it is starting to get awfully full (17 vampires once this set is released, which will make it the second largest group). It’s honestly a shame that The Guardian is so loyal to the Camarilla. His Celerity might be easier to use if he were to join the Anarch Rebellion.

Have you heard of Set, our lord and savior?

Oh my, it’s been a crazy couple of months. I’ve purchased a house and moved to a new city. The good news is that North and South Carolina has thriving VTES communities, which I look forward to joining. So, I’m sitting in a house full of boxes that need unpacking, but the itch to think and write about VTES is back and I am powerless to resist. So, let’s conclude our investigation into how the Followers of Set have transformed into the Ministry. Previously, I wrote about what the implications of the loss of Serpentis and the gain of Protean (at least in VTES). Now it’s time to consider the Ministry as a whole.

General Thoughts on the Ministry Library

It’s important to remember that the Ministers have changed sect from Independent to Anarch. This switch results in 40 additional discipline-less cards as well as 8 that require a Baron title. They also gain ~15 Anarch cards that require either Obfuscate or Presence. On top of all this, Protean just has more cards than Serpentis did. The point is that the Ministry has seen a dramatic expansion in their card pool. So, what can they do with it?

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New Combat Options

Offensive Combat: The switch to Protean gives the Ministry some real fangs. It is impressive how bad Serpentis combat was, despite the large volume of combat cards. But Protean offers excellent access to aggravated damage (mostly at short range, but long range in a pinch), as well as a good smattering of maneuvers and presses. Critically, the other clan disciplines – Obfuscate and Presence – really struggle in offensive combat, so Protean fills a significant hole for the clan.

Defensive Combat: Having access to Presence means that the Ministers already have access to excellent defensive combat options in cards like Majesty and Staredown. But Protean may be the only discipline in the game that can offer alternatives at a similar (or dare I saw superior?) power level. I suspect that Earth Meld and Form of Mist in particular will be welcome additions for The Ministry.

Our powers renewed: A welcome to Protean

This is a continuation of an in-depth investigation of a major change in the V5 lore that impacts VTES: the reorganization of the Followers of Set into the Ministry. Ministers in VTES are different in two key ways. First, rather than merely being Independent, they are full fledged members of the Anarch rebellion. Second, their signature discipline of Serpentis has been rolled into Protean, meaning that their clan disciplines are now Obfuscate, Presence, and Protean. These two facts effectively make the Ministers a different clan than the old Followers of Set.

Last time, I investigated what the clan lost as a result of losing Serpentis. Today’s topic will be what they gain with access to Protean. This is going to necessitate a review of all cards in that discipline, which means that we are going to get into some pretty subjective territory. You are welcome to disagree with my card rankings or my thoughts about the discipline as a whole, and I urge you to post your thoughts in the comments below. But please keep the discussion civil.

Ok, with that out of the way, let’s take a look at Protean! The discipline has 50 cards. However, there are 8 that I won’t be considering here: 3 are bloodline discipline cards with an “outferior” Protean effect (such as Ears of the Hare) and 5 are Dual discipline cards that require Protean and a non-clan discipline which makes them difficult for Ministers to play (such as Instantaneous Transformation). However, I will be including Anarch cards as the new Ministers are Anarchs. I’ll put these Anarch-specific cards in italics for clarity. That leaves 42 cards to review.

I’ll begin by presenting my ranking of these cards on a 1-5 scale from Forgettable to Excellent. It is important to note that I will be reviewing these from a Ministry perspective. There are cards (like Deep Ecology) which would be ranked substantially different if they were considered for a different clan. From there I’ll look at groups of cards with similar effects to really see what Protean has to offer. Ok, let’s get started!

What we leave behind: A farewell to Serpentis

V5 – the fifth edition of Vampire: the Masquerade Role Playing Game – makes a number of changes to the clans, sects, and disciplines of previous editions. Some changes seek to update the metaplot to the 2020’s. While other changes appear to be the result of a desire to reign in the explosion of new material written for the RPG in the late 1990’s. It was an era when new clans, disciplines, bloodlines, and secret organizations were bolted onto the setting in a somewhat haphazard manner. So I can understand why the V5 designers would want to simplify things a bit.

Regardless of their purpose, all of the changes in V5 will have lasting and significant impacts on VTES. Some of these are minor inconveniences likes rules where two clan icons should be considered the same (Assamites may play Banu Haqim cards and vice-versa). Others are more dramatic such as the complete removal of disciplines and bloodlines.

Today, I want to start to consider one significant change in V5 and how it impacts VTES. The reorganization of the Followers of Set into the Ministry changed more than just the clan’s name. First, the Ministry belongs to the Anarch rebellion (which is now a separate sect), whereas the Followers of Set were merely Independent. Second, their signature discipline of Serpentis has been rolled into Protean, meaning that their clan disciplines are now Obfuscate, Presence, and Protean.

Quick-Start Guide Update!

Greetings Methesulahs,

Over the last six years, I have lived in a part of the US with no active VTES players other than my spouse and I. We ran a few demos to see if we could create a local group to no avail. However, due to a job change, we will be moving this summer to Charlotte, North Carolina, home of the Queen City VTES group and a 2 hour drive from the VTES: Florence SC group.

The thought of once again playing this great game has done much to rekindle my interest (turns out that it’s hard to stay excited about a game that you don’t play!). So I’ve started going through everything that has happened since I stopped playing in 2016, which is a lot. Black Chantry Productions has released a lot of exciting content and made some welcome changes to the game. I will certainly have more to say about all that in future blog posts.

But I also logged into this blog and took a long look at the stats and viewership, and I was frankly surprised by what I saw. I haven’t regularly posted about VTES since 2016, but traffic has stayed relatively high even with no new VTES content. The most popular articles (by FAR) were those written for new players. It was both gratifying to see how useful these articles still were, and also somewhat embarrassing as they were in desperate need of updating. Not only did they use old game terms like “tap”, but most of the most important links were broken (RIP Secret Library, you will be missed).

So I am happy to report that my 5 most frequently visited articles have been heavily edited and updated. I’ve reigned in my wordiness, updated game text, links, images, and far more. These should once again been useful ways for a new player to learn the game. For those curious, I’ve included links to these 5 pages below:

New Players’ Corner

Quick-Start Guide Introduction

Part I: Minions and Actions

Part II: Turn Sequence

Part III: Combat

That’s all for now. I may also update a few other pages (like the demo deck series), but there is simply too much content to update it all. Plus, I would like to write new content about the Fifth Edition era of the game and all the changes it has brought. But mostly, I am just looking forward to playing again!

Until next time, may your bleeds never be bounced and your votes always pass!

A Bolt From the Blue

Welcome back! It’s time for us to take another look the Evangelion Card Game, powered by the Chrono Clash system. Today is my final deep dive article into the colors, or factions, of the game. Each article examines at a single color – what it has to offer and speculates on tactics that could be employed against it.

As a reminder, my analysis is based off a complete list of the cards in this game that I made. The card list (and my analysis) can be found here. In this document, you’ll notice that I put battlers into one of four categories: EVAs, Pilots, Angels, and Other. Two of these categories are huge monsters – biomechanical EVAs or unknowable Angels, and the other two are humans – Pilots and Other. Pilots, for those new to the game, can come into play in two ways – as an independent battler, or as an “attachment” for an EVA. While piloting an EVA, the pilot adds its strength and special abilities to the EVA.

Ok, with all that out of the way, let’s turn our attention to Blue. My previous articles on Red, Green, and Purple are also available if you want to catch up.

Purple People Eaters

Welcome back! It’s time for us to take another look the Evangelion Card Game, powered by the Chrono Clash system. Today, I’ll be continuing my deep dive into each of the colors, or factions, of the game, taking a look at what each has to offer, and speculating on tactics that can be employed against that color.

As a reminder, my analysis is based off a complete list of the cards in this game that I made. The card list (and my analysis) can be found here. In this document, you’ll notice that I put battlers into one of four categories: EVAs, Pilots, Angels, and Other. Two of these categories are huge monsters – biomechanical EVAs or unknowable Angels, and the other two are humans – Pilots and Other. Pilots, for those new to the game, can come into play in two ways – as an independent battler, or as an “attachment” for an EVA. While piloting an EVA, the pilot adds its strength and special abilities to the EVA.

Ok, with all that out of the way, let’s turn our attention to Purple. My previous articles on Red and Green are also available if you want to catch up.