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Review of Vampire: The Masquerade - Vendetta
Blurb from the publisher: 'Unbeknownst to humans, monstrous vampires have been sustaining their undead lives with human Blood for centuries. Over the years, they organized themselves in a neo-feudal structure, hiding their existence behind the Masquerade - an elaborate veil of deception pulled over the eyes of the living. The city of Chicago is ruled by the Camarilla, the most widely influential vampire organization history has ever known, and like each Camarilla city, it is led by a Prince, supported by most of the local vampires. But in secret, some are conducting a proxy war to overthrow him...
Vampire: The Masquerade - Vendetta is an asymmetric card game of strategy, bluff, and deduction. Play as a scheming vampire from one of the available clans: Brujah, Gangrel, Malkavian, Nosferatu, Toreador, Tremere, or Ventrue!
Play cards and Blood at several locations to gain control of powerful allies, both human and Kindred, earning influence and unlocking their special abilities. Get new cards at the beginning of each round, and gain new abilities to surprise your opponents.
Your goal is to gain the most influence and become the new Prince of Chicago!'
What you get: Your EUR 30 or equivalent will buy you Vampire: The Masquerade - Vendetta, an asymmetrical take-that, hand management, bluffing, area control card game with bidding elements. It can accommodate from three to six players in just over 30 minutes. The game was successfully kickstarted in 2020, gathering more than five times the requested investment. Taking its full name into account, I don't need to state in which IP universe it is set in.
In addition to the 24-page English rulebook that one can also download from the publishers' website free of charge (along seven additional language versions), the game includes the following: 7 Clan sheets, 63 Clan cards (9 per Clan, 2 Starting and 7 Clan cards), 8 Relic cards, 30 Ally cards, 35 Victim cards, 7 Location cards, 4 Location tiles, 28 Position tiles (4 per clan), one Ambition token, 7 Withdraw tokens, 7 Stay tokens, 50 Influence tokens (35 x 1, 15 x 3), 40 Blood tokens (15 x 3, 25 x 1), 8 Diablerie tokens, and 3 ziplock bags.
Gameplay: Vendetta can be played in two modes: free-for-all (from three to five players), and tag-team (4 and 6 players only, divided in teams of two players each). The 4-5 player free-for-all is considered to be the main game; that's what I will explain here.
Depending on the number of players the game features from two to four locations on the board, one of which is the Prince's Haven. The clans randomly on offer in each game are equal to the number of players plus one. Thus, some factions might not be eligible to play, while one will be not be chosen by anybody. Clans are wildly asymmetrical. They have a different deck composition and an easy to distinguish play style. Once each player has chosen a clan, they receive six Blood, three influence, and their first face up Victim, along with a designated position for their clan in each location. The value-wise identical Victims don't have special abilities and are shuffled and placed in a face up deck . Allies are different to one another and may have special abilities, be them positive or negative; they are shuffled and placed in a face down deck. Some of the Allies are humans, others are vampires.
Each player starts with two standard Clan cards in his hand (Hunt and Ready). As expected, they vary depending on the clan. As an example, the Brujah, the Gangrel, the Malkavians and the Toreador steal one Blood from each rival when they Hunt. The Tremere however have to spend one Blood in order to do so, while the Nosferatu steal Blood and may then move that card to the Prince's Haven. The remaining seven cards of a dedicated clan deck is shuffled and placed face down in front of the player running the clan. Only he has access to that seven card deck.
The game is played in three rounds, each of which lasts five phases.
Feed allows the players to collect Blood from their alliances, i.e. the sum of Victims and Allies that they have accumulated in front of them. Each Victim and Ally specifies how much Blood it provides this way.
In Location Setup, one Ally is randomly drawn and placed on each location.
Hand Building allows each player to draw the top two cards from their clan's deck, secretly look at them, choose one for their hand, and place the other at the bottom of their deck.
During Planning, players take turns to play cards, and potentially Blood, at Locations. The player with the Ambition token starts first, followed by the others in a standard clockwise order. He must play one card at one of the Locations, and may play up to three Blood at that same location. Cards can be played face up or face down. The former action is free, while the latter costs Blood. Cards played face up are effective immediately, while the face-down ones must be first revealed in order to activate later. There are two main types of clan cards. Active cards only take effect during the Resolution phase irrespective of how they were played. Passive cards have preconditions that trigger them. In order for these preconditions to be valid however the card must be face up. Blood deployed on a location adds one to your total power at that location. Depending on the round the game is at, the number of Planning turns that will be played increases. There are two Planning turns on round one, three on round two, and four on round three.
In addition to his card and Blood play, a player may also drain one or more cards from his Alliance during the Planning phase. By doing so he gains substantially more Blood than if he simply collected Blood during Feed, he will however receive less Influence at the game's end, while he also immediately loses any special ability the card granted access to. If a player drains a vampire, he also gains Diablerie, meaning that he will lose Influence at game's end. If a player receives his third Diablerie, he is thrown out of the game. Thankfully, accumulated Diablerie can be used (without being spent) in order to directly deploy additional Blood on a given location.
Resolution is the round's final phase. It is broken down in five steps, which are fully executed for each location separately. Prince's Haven is always the last location to be resolved.
Withdraw allows a player present in a location to leave that location. Players secretly choose a Stay or a Withdraw token, and simultaneously reveal them. Nothing happens to those who stay. Those who leave put their deployed Blood back in their pool, and place their clan cards in front of them face up.
In Revelation the players who stayed reveal their face down cards. If any passive clan cards need to be triggered now, they do so. Active clan cards take effect during the next three steps.
Preparation allows preparation cards from the clans' decks to take effect. Examples include the Ventrue forcing the other players to move half their deployed Blood to the Ventrue position lest they lose influence, the Tremere stealing Blood from everybody else, the Gangrel stealing half the Blood of their rivals from this location and adding it to his pool, etc.
Conflict triggers the effects of conflict clan cards. Some cards have no text to activate, while others alter the calculations that will be used in order to determine the winner of the conflict. As an example, a 0 card might take the guise of the highest deployed card there, another card may be reduced depending on the Blood a player has in his pool etc. All cards have a number at the top of the card. Numbers range from 0 to 9, with 1, 2, and 3 being the most common. Following the adjustments made by the aforementioned effects, players add up the values of the cards and the Blood they played in that location. The player with the highest total value wins the conflict. In case of a tie, the player that plays earlier in the turn wins. The winner takes an Ally from the location. The second-place player takes a Victim from the deck. Everybody else gets neither an Ally nor a Victim. Depending on the round, in addition to the Ally or the Victim the best performing players also gain Influence, this time including the third ranked player. Conflicts at the Prince's Haven grant additional Influence to the winner, as well as the Ambition token. In other words, in the next round that player will go first.
Aftermath sees the effects of the aftermath clan cards resolved. This might mean stealing Blood from your rivals, moving half your deployed Blood from this location to another one, drawing an additional Victim into your Alliance if you already won an Ally or a Victim, etc.
The table is then cleaned up by moving all remaining deployed Blood to the bank, and taking all the deployed cards back into your hand. In other words, you start each new round with the cards you had already drawn up to that round plus one.
If at any point during the game a player runs out of Blood, he goes into a frenzy. Frenzy is bad. The player that caused your lack of Blood is immediately rewarded with Influence. You are then obliged to drain a random card from your Alliance. If that card is a vampire, you will of course gain Diablerie. If you have no cards in your Alliance, you lose another Influence and continue the game with one Blood.
The game ends after the third round. Each players adds up the Influence he has gathered, be it in tokens, cards in his Alliance, as well as drained Allies and Victims. Diablerie tokens count negatively. The player with the most Influence wins. Ties are won by the player with the most Blood in their pool.
The game presents four variants. The first is the three player game which requires minor adjustments on the cards drawn and the number of Planning turns per round. Location cards add a random special effect to each Location, like needing to pay Blood in order to Withdraw, increasing or reducing the cost of face down cards, etc. Relic cards are very powerful cards that can be used once per game. A player can semi-randomly choose one during setup in a process partially similar to choosing a clan. Examples include returning a drained Ally or Victim into your Alliance, looking at all the face down cards into a location, and forcing all rivals to lose two Blood after a Location is resolved. Some Relics might also worth from 1 to 3 Influence at game's end, irrespective of whether you used them or not. The final variant allows for team play. It mostly works like the main game, yet Influence is calculated per team and not just individually.
The rulebook closes with background information on the World of Darkness, as well as short write-ups for the game's seven clans. Fluff aside, a couple of lines is devoted to how each deck plays. The last page lists the game's glossary and the table of conflict resolution.
The strong points: It looks like a filler, smells like a filler, lasts as long as a filler. Yet, and seeing how Bruno Faidutti's name proudly adorns Vendetta's cover, the game comes out with a depth that blew even my most optimistic expectations. Here is why.
You only have three rounds to win the game. Don't be fooled by the multi-turn Planning phase. The Hand Building phase guarantees that you will get to use only a few cards from your dedicated deck. Thus, you know that you will never get to use all your cards. You already face a tough choice when you draw your two cards turn after turn, and have to choose one for your hand only, potentially shelving the other card forever. In Planning you can play cards. On turn one, do you want to play your brand new drawn card already, which the others know nothing about, or do you want to play only the two known ones? If you play that new card, will you play it face up, or face down? The type of the card will influence your decision, as will the amount of Blood you want to spend. Will you play straight, or will you try to bluff your opponents into thinking that you can do something outright spectacular, so that they withdraw? Bluffing and feints are an intrinsic part of the game; you can withdraw from a location, and so can your adversaries. Maybe you will do so because you want to avoid all those pesky preparation, conflict, and aftermath effects; or maybe because you wanted to exhaust an opponent's resources so badly, in order for him to be repeatedly hit with frenzy later on, potentially even kicking him out of the game before the end of round three. In that sense, the game looks poker straight in the eye, with the advantage that here you are not going to lose any money. Unless you turn Vendetta into a betting game. Which you easily can, mind you.
All that however wouldn't have worked without the highly asymmetrical decks. They feel extremely well balanced, and besides, even if they aren't and there are plays in which one is inherently better than another, the non-controlled way in which clan cards enter the game, as well as the situational parameters that affect their use reduces any balance objection into a non-issue. The important thing is for a player to understand first, how his deck works, and second, how his opponents' decks work.
If you are wondering how a game, in which only a few cards are drawn, can provide as much choice, you only have to look at its mechanics. A choice of card to pick. A choice of card to play. A choice of locations to fight for... or pretend to fight for. A choice of which location to go for first, and which second, with the additional parameter of your second choice changing because some idio- an adversary played something that made you suspicious. The choice to leave a conflict without participating even though you really wanted to be in it. The choice of Ally to pick, in case the Location that you won had more than one available. All this doesn't leave to analysis/paralysis, I assure you. First, the game has a very good flow for that to happen, and second, you play the players as much as you play the game. This is a valuable lesson of the amazing range a few otherwise simple mechanics can achieve, when they are meshed tightly enough. I don't even need to discuss the game's replayability. Add all this choice to the fact that you are only using a number of clans in each game, and we are talking about an impossible number of plays and permutations, for hundreds of hours of cutthroat entertainment.
I was very surprised to see the game play as well with three players as it does with five, at least in the free-for-all mode. Obviously enough, the more the merrier; go for five any time you can afford it. Vendetta is addictive, extremely addictive, and one of the reasons is the very short playing time. It is the kind of game that you take it out for one play or two to warm up before something bigger, and find yourself facing a revolution if you suggest retiring it to play something else. The team game has merit, even though at six players the game starts stalling. I do like the inclusion nevertheless. Just because you are six and you can't play a free-for-all doesn't mean that you shouldn't enjoy the game.
The Location and the Relic variants are both musts, at least after the first couple of games. They make your choices more important, add nuance to your bluffing, and increase both complexity and the required analysis. I don't believe I will play a game without those now, unless I am teaching the game to newbies.
Thematically speaking Vendetta fares very well. Its engine points to the lore behind the World of Darkness, even though one can observe the abstracted elements. The feeling is there, and that's what's important. I wouldn't call it fully thematic in the likes of War of the Ring (Second Edition), this however is nowhere near a paste up.
The production values are exquisite. The artwork is tastefully done, and is fully in line with the rest of the IP. I like the very stark contrasts in the palette, with the flashy neons juxtaposed against the more sober whites and blacks. The insert is fit for purpose, and can accommodate the cards even after sleeving (yey!). Providing zip-lock bags is a classy move. I can't help but smile when I see smaller publishers like Horrible Guild go for it, when bigger publishers let you dry.
At 30 EUR Vendetta's price is a bargain, and I see some vendors selling it even cheaper than that. A nice little gem at a fair price; now that's a treat.
The weak points: Luck, bluff, take-that, and quite the analysis when you get to know the decks. I counted all these as positives. If you don't like one of them, this might not be the game for you.
Notice how I stated 'when you get to know the decks'. Indeed, on your first half dozen to dozen plays, when you still don't know the decks, the game will feel substantially more random than it should. No alarm; so does poker. Easy fix: the first times you play Vendetta, forget the rule about clan selection and have each player play the exact same clan for two, three, four games in a row. Start alternating these same clans afterwards amongst the players, without picking new clans. In your next session, try the clans that were left out, again multiple times in a row. In such a way, you will get to know what you are doing in the shortest time possible; that's when the game becomes interesting. In that sense, one can accuse Vendetta that even though it will be most likely used as a filler, it requires investment in plays before one has the tools to fully appreciate its capabilities.
Conclusion: I have reviewed many games which punch well above their weight, and Vampire: The Masquerade - Vendetta is one of the best. If you are a fan of V:tM you will buy it for the theme, safe in the knowledge that the game delivers in spades. If you are not, you will buy it for the crunch, the adrenaline and the ruthlessness, knowing that such a short duration game will repeatedly hit the table. Filler or main attraction? Both, for the price of the former.
For more info on Vampire: The Masquerade - Vendetta and the Horrible Guild visit their website at https://www.horribleguild.com.
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