Last night saw Diego and myself play our first four player game of Vampire the Masquerade Rivals.

Before then we had only played head to head (in other words two player) and three player games.

But this game was a first for Shane and Marcin also. It was the first time they were playing the game. Noobs in other words. Or to remain on theme, fresh blood!

Whilst waiting for Marcin to arrive we went over the rules for playing the game with Shane. Or the most relevant ones to get started. Some you can avoid until they crop up, like schemes. Otherwise it’s rules overload. And it probably felt like that anyway.

The three of us then “played” a couple of rounds with Diego and myself explaining what we were doing as we played. It was during this learning play Marcin arrived.

We had already given Shane Brujah to play for the evening. It’s probably the easiest of the four core set clans to play. We had also planned for Diego’s copy of Brujah to be played by Marcin, with the added house rule suspending the unique vampire rule for the evening. However Marcin felt the call of Toreador.

We drew for our rivals which saw Shane and myself drawing each other’s token. Which basically left Diego and Marcin each other’s rivals.

I needed to be drawing rituals and finding Sonja Valentine. But my deck seemed to be working against me on that front. I only started drawing rituals late in the game. Too late to be any use to me. My leader was in torpor mending. So I had no blood to use that would hurt my rival. My three vampires I did have out were dangerously low on blood. I had three prestige left. They were dead cards at the point they showed up.

For a couple of rounds it wasn’t in anyones interest to attack my three weak vampires. If Diego or Marcin did they left it open for Shane to grab the win. If Shane did he left it open for Marcin to grab the points win (at that point in time Marcin was in the lead with five agenda points). To make the situation worse we had three S.A.D. Agents in the Street.

Before Diego grabbed the points victory by leap frogging Marcin with six agenda points, and knocking out Shane. It was getting to the point of I could have won on my turn. Shane was on a single prestige. He only needed one of his vampires to die (it’s how Diego triggered the end of the game). S.A.D. would have weakened his remaining vampires more than enough to make sure which ever one I attacked they would have gone down.

I liked that last bit of the game. Anyone of us could have potentially grabbed a win. Sadly Diego did!

My only agenda point for the evening was from putting Shane’s leader into torpor.

Although Shane is shown as zero points below. Which is correct. He was knocked out by Diego, so any agenda points he had don’t count. However if in a tournament I believe we would still record Shane’s three agenda points as they are used in rankings or something like that.

Still a fun evening playing a great card game with some great people.