A few years back (right before the WW demos came out, I think), I put together some demo decks to focus an introductory game around game flow, card types, and basic strategies and styles. I carry these to any tournament or game outing, and I've used them a couple of times, to good reception. Some of the construction guidelines I've used:

• Short/clear text: Players will spend enough time and thought figuring out how to play their cards, help them out by using cards that are easy to read. This is hard/impossible to accomplish, given basic, wordy cards like Wake and bounces, but if most of the deck is simple, you'll have room for a few wordy cards.
• Concentrate on the basics: This concept is critical to a functioning demo; new players need to get the basics, just enough to pick up the flow and mechanics of the game. Here, S:CE, referenda, trap, grapple, agg. damage, press-step effects, lockdown, combat-ousting, etc. are excluded.
• Keep the crypts relatively small-cap: Avoid larger vamps where possible. Keep things weenie-midcap, maybe with one largish 'key' vampire (Gratiano, Black Cat, Greger Anderssen).
• Keep the decks small: 6 vamps, 40-card max. library.

Here are the first three decks:

They're basic, but they seem to go well together in a 3-player. Besides tweaking these, I'm looking around for a fourth and fifth deck. Also, several game changes (events, lots of new cards) have printed since I put these decks together. I need to decide whether or not to include those recent changes.

Last Updated on 09/25/2005
evilpootcat@yahoo.com
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