Double DJ mentioned in a post that when he started playing, he bought a couple of starters at a friend's new store. Also, the deck mash-up challenge has always put forth that buying two pre-con decks and mashing them together is a good way to get started as a new player.
I bought a Toreador (Camarilla edition) starter and a Toreador Antitribu (black hand) starter. My first deck was a terrible toolbox Tore Anti deck that was the classic newbie "stay alive but never oust" type deck. For a second deck, I traded some of the vamps from the Toreador (CE) deck for more type 1-2 vamps and was given a Mariana Gilbert By Mike Courtois to round it out. It is an old school Toreador deck which I still love to play (even though I haven't played it much lately).
So, what were /was your first starter deck/s?
My first deck came out of two Keeper of traditions Toreador starters ( I started playing just when Kot came out... well, actually a little earlier, but i held my purchases until the KoT Starters hit the stores), enhanced by a couple of cards that my already-playing-friends-which-hooked-me-up gave me (DoubleDJ and Megabaja from these forums amongst others). I guess it was also a standard "Never die, gazilion intercept/wake/magnum combat" deck for newbies.
From there on, i managed to get my hands on 4 3rd edition Tzimitze starters (Since then, they were my favourite clan from the FRP), and the ball rolled downhill from there... I was hooked B)
Camarilla Edition Brujah was my first. Second I bought Camarilla Edition Toreador. Today I own at least one copy of each and every pre-constructed starter and at least two copies of each since Third Edition.
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Jyhad starter. Totally unplayable with random card & crypt selection but I still remember going through the cards first time and wondering how cool looking the art was compared to Mtg
Two CE Brujah starters... I cobbled together some bits and pieces with others and bought boosters. It was amusingly irritating at staying alive, which I think has become a fairly formative part of my general play.
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My first was a Jyhad starter deck.
Trying to build a playable deck from a couple of hundred full retail price Jyhad cards back in the day was pretty miserable.
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> Trochomancy wrote:
> Jyhad starter. Totally unplayable with random card & crypt selection but I still remember going through the cards first time and wondering how cool looking the art was compared to Mtg
>
I actually had about 800 (small card box) cards 5-6 years before I started playing, mostly because of what you said-the art was so nice. I particularly liked the art for the Toreador and gangrel Vamps.I had always thought this is a game I have to try some day.This actually made it easier to build the Toreador group 1-2 deck.
I was playing Magic at the local card shop and some guys came in and handed me a starter and said I could have that if I wanted to try out the game, been playing for 9 years ever sense.
I started the game by buying 3 V:TES starters I don't remember anything about what I got in those other than the fact that there were at least a couple copies of Dragon's Breath Rounds, which I thought was the coolest card ever. Oh, and I remember pulling a copy of Zebulon, and thinking "That's Stevie Wonder!"
Camarilla Edition Toreador Starter. That with two boosters of Camarilla Edition took me through a year of VtES. Good times.
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I bought a 3rd Ed Malk starter and a Tzimisce starter, plus about 4 booster packs from the White Wolf store in 2007. If I could have done it again, a 3rd ed starter box at less than retail price with cheap shipping would have been much better for not too big of an investment.
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My first was a random Jyhad starter. Bunches of clans and skills, made playing the game totally random until I'd bought enough boosters to actually make a coherent deck. All I remember specifically about the early days was that I was one of the few in our group to have a Renegade Garou and I used it every chance I got.
Brujah! from sabbat war. Loved it when I got Richter in the crypt. Only problem in the beginning was that I thought I needed strike cards to play blur:P
Camarilla edition Malkavian. Yes, in our early first games where ravnos starter and a Toreador! starter were our only decks, I got used to winning hundreds of games XD.
Anarch Baron starter. Made a 1GW 3VP's with it in my very first game among experienced players with good decks. Never made a vp with it again after that though...
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Mine was a Jyhad starter deck back in 1994. I got some powerful Tremere in it, and I began to think of building a Tremere deck.
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I think it was the !Malkavian from 3rd Edition ... easy to play and threatening ... I cannot recall how many times Korah or Dolphin Black got PTOed ...
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My first starter was a Jyhadstarter. Very mixed cards with random rares. I think I've got a Freak Drive among them. But I'm not sure anymore.
My first real starters were the Sabbat War Starters. Tzmisce and Lasombra were really good. But !Ventrue and !Brujah were fun too in our Starter-only battles in that times.
Baron of Frankfurt
IIRC either a V:TES starter (which was not fixed back then, just a "bigger" booster pack) or one of the SW starters, probably Tzimisce, since this was the clan that got me hooked on the game (along with Assamites) back in the V:TES / Sabbat era.
My friend gave me a jyhad starter during the times when Sabbat was the last set, and there was no new stuff being started. I never got to play really until Sabbat War in which i bought a Tzimisce starter.
a Jyhad starter. I got into VtES after AH (and boy did it sell out fast) and the start of Sabbat set. So the earliest starter I got was Jyhad. Well, that's if you don't count the time I bought a Jyhad starter before I really got into VtES, which was in my MtG days... that was when the game came out. But that sorta doesn't count in my mind.
It took me type 2 and phasing out blocks to boot me from MtG and L5R wholly. Looking back, in the wise words of Martha Stewart, "it's a good thing."
It all started with a Camarilla Edition Nosferatu starter. I remember feeling that the deck was so fragile since everyone else was packing GoodCombat(TM) (agg-poke, flung junk and 2nd-round ). I got CamEd boosters then eventually a Nosferatu Antitribu Black Hand starter with an occasional Sabbat War boosters. My first real viable deck was a nasty rush deck ... that was still thwarted by the same GoodCombat(TM) decks.
To this day, V:tES is still the only CCG I play.
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If you want to call the Jyhad starter (more like a mega-booser) a starter, then you have your answer. Very proud owner of an Ivory Bow back then, and I remember being envious of the other players having a Sengir Dagger and a Pulled Fangs.
After having played for like 7-8 years, the Nosferatu antitribu starter was the "firat" real starter I bought after my hiatus. Although I wasn't really overwhelmed by contents of the starter. I remember distinctively of contesting accidentally with my crosstable buddy (Dieter!), even though he had repeatedly named the vampires he wanted to influence.
My first starter is a jyhad starter.
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My first was two merged Sabbat War iBrujah deck, at the time I remember thinking the "the Sword of Judgment" was the most awesome card in the the world of darkness
Camarilla Edition Toreador. Oh joy, those were the days... I had misplaced all my blood dolls and other good cards for half-a-year, and wondered why I never won any games. Also I was obsessed with getting Alexandra up every time I could, so you can guess the outcome - and taste my frustration.
Afterwards I bought a Toreador Antitribu starter from Black Hand, and played that for a longer while (since I didn't think my princes could really do anything), and always thought that G2-3 sabbat vampires have vastly superior Discipline variety to the Camarilla guys.
I still remember how badly we all lost to my mate's Tremere... There was 'nothing we could do about it'.
Eventually I got G1 Torries from a friend who had bought the 10th anniversary boxes, and decided to give another go with the Princes. Never strayed from that path, to be honest. And drawing an Aching Beauty from a random booster I bought (but can't remember doing that. I had Ritual of the Bitter Rose at that time, and remember trading that off for stuff, even though I really liked the card. Was a hard time, it seems... ), and that was in the very beginning, it seems, I really had a chance sometimes. People really hated Aching Beauty.
But yeah, Camarilla Toreador Starter all the way. It was wonderful.
"Oh, to the Hades with the manners! He's a complete bastard, and calling him that insults bastards everywhere!"
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I begun the game in 1999-2000, with some vtes cards a friend gave me. I made 2 decks from that. A tremere toolbox with the amazing ulug and some governs-sawed off shotgun....and a malk s&b. Then came the day I played my first game, sold the tremere deck to a friend, and won a 3 players table with the malk. Incidentally I fell in love for ventrue, and the "knight" concept (bleed, if you block I play dawn operation + punch for 1, defense second trad + deflection). So had to buy the closest thing to that concept. At that time ventrue antitribu was in stores, and lazverinus was my god. This must be the why and how I bought my first starter.