Despite having written two posts yesterday, the second could easily have been scheduled for today, I’m back with another post today.

As we await the opening up of pre-orders for the second expansion for Rivals, The Wolf and The Rat (Gangrel & Nosferatu clans). I thought I’d start looking at the Core Set and the first expansion Blood & Alchemy (Tremere & Thin-bloods clans) in an adhoc series of posts.

These posts will initially look at the pre-constructed decks (as I play them), followed by posts looking at deck building.

I’m going to give a big disclaimer before I do though. I don’t have lots of game time playing Rivals. Heck so far I’ve played it twice! So I can’t be called an expert by any standards. What I will bring to the table when I look at the decks is my experience from playing MtG, Epic the Card game and Android Netrunner.

This inaugural post will be looking at the Toreador clan pre-constructed deck from the Core Set.

The image below is the official deck list for the Toreador deck.

The rule book gives the following description for the Toreador deck.

Ideally in your starting hand you want one of the Unhosted Action – Ongoing cards, and an Attack card that increases your attack (such as Biting Comment, Seduction or Baseball Bat).

Your first turn you need to be attacking a City Deck Mortal in the Street and attaching it as a retainer to Lixue Chen. Plus playing the Unhosted Action. Unless your Unhosted Action is Beauty is a Beast then you need to play that first and use it’s ability to aid in the attack. Depending on the mortal being attacked you may not need to play an Attack card, and can save that for a later turn.

So let’s look at the cards.

Agenda/Haven/Leader

Looking at the agenda, haven and leader the word that is on all three cards is retainers. This is telling me that this deck is the Rivals version of an MtG voltron deck. I want to be attacking City Deck Mortals in the Street and attaching them as retainers to the vampires in my Coterie. Not only do I get an extra agenda point, the vampire heals one blood plus the retainer buffs the vampire in some way also making them more powerful.

Faction Deck

I like that Bella Forte and Iris Lokken synergise so well with Search Engine. Being able to control the top card to get maximum benefit from these two is really powerful.

Having two vampires that do something with retainers is good. Whether it is stealing an opponents retainers with Liza Holt or getting an influence buff from them like Muhammad Zadeh.

There are two vampires that can block ranged attacks. The jury is still out on how good these are for me. My limited play hasn’t allowed me to fully appreciate these cards.

Muhammad and Iris get nice influence boosts to sway those scheme votes. Iris is great for trying to get your own scheme through. But Muhammad once buffed with retainers is great for voting on your own schemes or an opponents.

Library Deck

42.5% or 17 cards of the Library Deck are Attack cards, with 1 duel use Attack/Reaction card. That’s a pretty big signal to me that this deck should be attacking, whether it’s your rival or City Deck Mortals in the street. I like how there are cards to drain your rivals prestige, steal a retainer or get a buff from your own retainers.

12.5% or 6 cards of the Library Deck are reaction cards, not including the duel use card. Only Fleetness fits in with the retainer plan. The other is ok for it’s shields and absorbing damage.

7 cards or 17.5% cards are Schemes. Two do something with prestige. Although it sticks in my throat with the group hug cards where I’m helping everyone. My favourite of the three is Balance of Power as it can be used to weaken my rival. I suppose in a multiplayer game you could try and politicise them and strike a deal to play them.

With 22.5% or 9 cards being these ongoing Unhosted Actions. I like these as they fit in nicely with the overall game plan. I do like Search Engine, don’t under estimate being able to control that top card of the deck. Apart from its great synergy with the two vampires mentioned above. Just being able to filter what you draw next is really powerful.

There is a single title card making up 2.5% of the deck. It feeds into the influence plan for schemes. But not sure how good this card is.

Let me know what you thought of this post in the comments below.