Overview
The First Blood: Tremere introductory deck for Vampire: The Eternal Struggle focuses on bleeding your prey with limited stealth, blocking potential threats and bruising your opponents in combat.
In the early game, bring out the highest capacity vampire in your uncontrolled region who has superior Dominate, so that, once in play, that vampire can play superior Govern the Unaligned to move 3 blood from the blood bank to a younger vampire in your uncontrolled region. By using your transfers wisely like this, you can get many vampires into play fast.
Once you have two or three vampires in play, start taking either the Govern the Unaligned bleed actions or your vampires’ inherent bleed actions to bleed your prey. If your prey attempts to block, either play a Bonding action modifier to increase both stealth and bleed, or try to send the blocking vampire to torpor in the resulting combat.
Additionally, put cards in play that allow you to weaken your opponents’ vampires so that they cannot block you or take actions against you:
• Get Ivory Bow and .44 Magnum.
• Get Thadius Zho and Charnas the Imp.
Your defensive module is strong and primarily based on blocking any action that deals pool damage to you (for example, bleed or political actions) and also on pool gain and bleed redirection.
For the blocking module to be more consistent, you need to get permanent intercept equipment (Sport Bike) as soon as possible.
Your pool gain mainly comes from these cards and effects:
• Blood Doll: You can gain 1 pool per turn for each Blood Doll you control.
• Arcane Library: You can use it to gain 1 pool per turn.
• Ousting your prey: You gain 6 pool when your prey is ousted.
Strategy tips
When in combat, steal blood as a strike with Theft of Vitae, press to continue combat with Apportation, and either steal more blood or, if equipped with a weapon, strike with that weapon.
On some occasions, you will have the chance to play Walk of Flame, a combat card that cannot be played on the first round of combat. Use it preferably to burn an empty opposing vampire as a strike, even though you can also play it to send an opposing vampire to torpor.
Block any action that deals pool damage to you (for example, bleed or political actions), or any action that gives permanent intercept to your predator or prey (for example, Raven Spy), or any action that moves blood to an uncontrolled vampire of your predator and, to a lesser extent, of your prey.
If your predator is playing the First Blood: Malkavian deck and you have an unlocked vampire with permanent intercept and enough intercept reaction cards in your hand, have that vampire attempt to block any action your predator takes, so that they run out of stealth action modifier cards.
On the other hand, if your predator is playing the First Blood: Malkavian deck and you do not have any vampire with permanent intercept or enough intercept reaction cards in your hand, do not attempt to block any actions taken by your predator, so that they cannot play any stealth cards in hand and get their hand clogged with them.
You will rarely have a perfect hand, so good hand management is essential to increase your odds of winning. Therefore, always use a discard phase action to discard a card you do not need (usually reaction or combat cards).
Another factor you should take into account during your minion phase is the order of your actions. Since your resources are limited, have your vampires take the least important actions first and the most important ones last.
And finally, make sure everything you do brings you one step closer to victory. Be patient, and do not let your emotions interfere.
How to build a competitive deck with two First Blood: Tremere decks
Since tournament legal Vampire: The Eternal Struggle decks consist of a minimum of 60 and a maximum of 90 library cards and a minimum of 12 crypt cards, you could combine two First Blood: Tremere decks in order to build a competitive deck meeting both requirements (see below):
Crypt: (12 cards)
2 Aidan Lyle
2 Claus Wegener
2 Muhsin Samir
2 Rutor
2 Troius
2 Zane
Library: (86 cards)
1 Academic Hunting Ground
1 Arcane Library
4 Blood Doll
1 Chantry
2 Vast Wealth
4 .44 Magnum
1 Charnas the Imp
12 Govern the Unaligned
1 Ivory Bow
2 Sport Bike
1 Thadius Zho
6 Bonding
8 Apportation
10 Theft of Vitae
2 Walk of Flame
4 Enhanced Senses
5 Forced Awakening
5 On the Qui Vive
4 Precognition
4 Spirit’s Touch
8 Telepathic Misdirection
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Note: This article can be downloaded with additional graphics in PDF format: How to play the First Blood: Tremere deck
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