Kindred Most Wanted is the latest expansion for Vampire: the Eternal Struggle. There are four preconstructed starter decks for this expansion. The full card list for these decks can be found at http://www.thelasombra.com/decks/

As with my previous precon deck reviews, I will be aiming towards examining three areas:

First, is the deck good for new players?

Second, is the deck good for veteran players?

Third, does the deck capture the desired theme well?

As always, of course, the review will be full of amusing typographic errors, and inaccurate speculations about how useful a card is going to turn out to be.

Pretty pretty shiny cards

The first thing that strikes you with these new precons is how pretty they are. The boxes are of a much better quality than previous expansions, being slightly larger and far more durable, and with a nice gloss sheen.

The artwork inside is all good, and for once there seems to be a consistent artistic style running through the expansion. The manga comic style is thankfully dead and buried (and burnt and removed from the game) replaced with an almost impressionistic style of art.

The artwork seems to have taken a much more adult and macabre turn as well. Whereas previously the worst you had was splatterpunk explosions of gore, some of the cards are now distinctly odd looking. One card, for example, has artwork of a guy with what looks very much like a dog down the front of his trousers. yes, that is as odd as it sounds. Another (True Love's Face) has two naked waif like vampires engaged in a lesbian kiss.

Naturally I put that card aside for "later study". :)

The Vampires

The vampires that come with the Alastor deck tend towards the larger capacities. Many have votes and all are combat competent. None of them are stinkers, but none of them seem too bad either.

The Anathema deck vampires are more mid sized and are more about survival than dishing out the hurt (as is appropriate).

The Baali deck, oddly, only has 4 Baali out of 12 vampires. Add this to the fact that they are all Set 4, and the old ones are all Set 2, and you will find that you still can't build a pure Baali crypt very effectively. Worse still only three of the other vampires have Daimonion. I took all my collection, took the new stuff and put it together and despite my best efforts I could not build a decent Daimonion based crypt, at least not without diluting in Serpentis or Thaumaturgy. Needless to say, I was a bit disappointed.

The Gangrel Antitribu deck was rock-solid. Only one vampire off clan, and he is an Assamite with the right discipline pick anyway. All round I'd say this precon had the best vampires. The nice thing is also that with Set 2,3 and 4 Gangrel Antitribu in fair abundance there is now a variety of crypt building options.

Core Cards

As always the bulk of the precon decks are made up of older cards rather than new ones. As has been the style for the last few expansions Kindred: Most Wanted is not really designed to stand alone and you can't really build a deck off just its cards. As this is intentional design I can't really complain too much about that, but it's worth noting to new players that you'd be better off with one of the older expansions.

For new players the Alastor deck has a lot fo good core cards such as Minion Tap, Govern the Unaligned and Blur. For veterans, most will be glad to see three copies of Second Tradiion: Domain, a core card for many Princes decks.

The Anathema deck gives us a couple more Taste of Vitaes, which I never have enough of, and another Society of Leopold, which is a firm favourite of mine from the Jyhad set, plus 3 Voter Captivations and 2 Free State Rants. If I were going to buy a deck again for the core cards it would be this one.

The Baali deck was probably the least useful for pulling apart for utility cards. A Tremere player may appreciate the Bursts of Sunlight and extra thaumaturgy cards though. A Baali player will need several copies of this deck just to get all the Daimonion cards they need, though I wouldn't try playing the deck straight out of the box as it has serious balance isssues.

The !Gan deck has Archon Investigation, which every player should carry in a sneaky-bleed heavy environment, a spaltsworth of rush cards for the new players, and some Stutter-Steps too. Not much there for a player with a well rounded collection already though. For me the Black Spiral Buddy was a good find, though.

New Cards

The Alastor precon has Slave Auction, which is similar to the old Investment cards int hat it pulls back pool slowly over time. Big Game is a rush-card which targets Red List vampires especially well - this seems to me to be a bit weak compared to older rush cards especially given that Red List vampires can be rushed inherently anyway. Of particular note is Trumped Up Charges, a political card which makes a target Red List (bad thing) but gives them lots of votes (good thing). I like double edged cards like this, as they have multiple functions for different deck types. Powder of Rigidity on the other hand is a hoser card for certain disciplines, and as with all hoser cards not really that useful in the long term.

The Anathema precon's new cards bored me silly, though Threestar Cab COmpany is nice, there's nothing else really good there.

The Baali decks new cards are mostly oriented around Infernals, which is fair enough, Ruins of Charizel is functional for a Baali deck, Bloodstorm fo Chorizon is not very good (IMHo and Book of Going Forth By Night is quite nice.

The Gangrel Antitribu deck has damage prevention int he from of Leathery Hide, which is welcome, plus Protean based intercept in the form of Sonar. Sad bastard that I am I had to immediately text all my friends to tell them that Protean based intercept has entered the game.

In fact, the expansion as a whole has quite a lot of cards that add light intercept in unexpected ways. This could represent a significant metagame shift, though I expect many players will stick with the tried and tested methods of Sports Bikes and KRCG news radio for light intercept.

Are the decks good for new players?

They are well balanced and have a good spread of core cards. However VTES is a complicated game at the best of times and new players are probably better off getting a Camarilla or Sabbat starter to grasp the fundamentals of the game.

Are the decks good for veteran players?

Again, yes and no. They have a few cards that you may be short of that you may want to stock up your collection with, but the feeling you get when you go through a lot fo the stuff is that they are either multipels of cards you already have boxes of, or new cards that aren't very useful.

All in all, I would recommend the veterans to stick to booster packs only.

Do the decks capture the theme well?

I think they do.

The Alastors deck is a vicious "gonna hunt you down deck" though it does lack some punch. The Anathema deck lets you fee like you have a few powerful but greatly persecuted vamps. The Baali deck is full of gnarly evil. The !Gangrel deck gives you a good feel for the city gangrel and their pack based lifestyle.

None of the decks really reflect the contents of the booster boxes however. The boosters tend more towards adding new tricks to pre-existing decks, rather than standing alone (as, for example, Bloodlines, Anarchs, Final Nights or Sabbat War did). The expansion is very comparable to Gehenna in that the booster packs are very much aimed at the veteran player.

Conclusion

Any die hard vampire player is going to have to get at least a booster box of Kindred Most Wanted. However the starter decks are decidedly less exciting. I really enjoyed the Gangrel Antitribu deck, but I felt the others were less essential as buys.

New players - buy a starter of Camarilla or Sabbat War instead.

Veteran players - stick to the boosters.