Hello,
I wrote this newsletter almost a year ago but for some reason I forgot about it (oops). But even though it might be almost a year old I still feel I should give the newsletter a try and hopefully continue the series. Being almost a year old leads to some timing errors but shouldn't be to much of a problem. Please keep in mind that this newsletter will focus mainly on beginning players and that this particular newsletter is intended as an introduction to the series which led to a fairly short letter.
Feel free to comment.

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1. Introduction

Lords of Night has hit the shelves some time ago and gave us some new goodies for the independents. A lot of newsletters focus on the advanced side of the game, adding out of clan disciplines and trying new and funky tricks. Not this one. This newsletter series will focus primarily on the new players out there. Players who have just started the game and who don’t own a big pile of cards. I have the feeling that the Followers of Set are able to bring new players into the game and giving them a challenge later on when they are becoming experts themselves. So here it goes, the first in a line of new Followers of Set newsletters. I hope you enjoy it.

2. Getting started

The best place to get started with the Followers of Set is to get two Lords of Night starter decks. I choose these starters since they have just been released and should be easily available from the local reseller.
In this edition we will construct a deck from the two starters only. No boosters or other cards are added. In the following newsletters I will report on how the deck did in our meta game (I might even take it to a tournament) and make some adjustments to the deck as required. This allows us to create a competitive deck with limited resources.
But first things first. The content of the Followers of Set starter deck:

Crypt (12) All vampires are group 4
2x Nakhthorheb 10 OBF, PRE, SER
2x Sundervere, The Devil Brahim 8 AUS, PRE, SER, THA, obf
2x Halim Bey6 DOM, SER, obf, tha
2x Renenet 5 OBF, PRE, ser
2x Marla Kenyon 4 PRE ser
2x Bello Equitone 2 ser

Library (77)
Master (11)
1x Crocodile Temple, The
1x Dummy Corporation
1x Khobar Towers, Al-Khubar
1x Opium Den
1x Secure Haven
1x Serpentis
1x Temple Hunting Ground
2x Vessel
1x WMRH Talk Radio
1x Wash

Action (20)
2x Blithe Acceptance
4x Dream World
2x Enticement
1x Form of Corruption
1x Mesu Bedshet
2x Public Trust
4x Revelation of Ecstasy
1x Summoning, The
3x Temptation

Action Modifier (20)
3x Approximation of Loyalty
2x Cloak the Gathering
2x Into Thin Air
3x Revelation of Desire
2x Spying Mission
4x True Love’s Face
2x Truth of a Thousand Lies
2x Veil the Legions

Reaction (13)
3x Confusion of the Eye
3x Ecstacy
2x Eluding the Arms of Morpheus
2x Mental Maze
3x Revelations of Despair

Political Action (1)
1x Hierophant

Ally (1)
1x Tutu the Doubly Evil One

Combat (11)
3x Jones, The
4x Majesty
1x Revelation of Wrath
3x Unholy Penance

The first thing that we can see here is that the deck contains a good amount of bleed. Since this is probably the easiest way to start we shall continue on that path. So first thing we need to do is to get rid of those cards that have nothing to do with bleeding. So out are the WMRH, The Summoning, 1x Confusion of the eye, Mental Maze, Hierophant, Tutu the Double Evil One, The Jones and Revelation of Wrath. We keep two Confusion of the Eye as vote defense. Since we have a limited amount of pool gain we need to watch the cost of some cards. Khobar Towers is great, but not in this deck, same goes for Secure Haven so we scrap those cards as well.
This leaves us with some room to add cards from the second starter. Looking at what we have so far we are going to need more stealth and more combat survivability. After some scrapping and adding I came up with this deck:

Crypt (12) All vampires are group 4
3x Nakhthorheb 10 OBF, PRE, SER
1x Sundervere, The Devil Brahim 8 AUS, PRE, SER, THA, obf
2x Halim Bey 6 DOM, SER, obf, tha
2x Renenet 5 OBF, PRE, ser
2x Marla Kenyon 4 PRE ser
2x Bello Equitone 2 ser

Library (90)
Master (12)
1x Crocodile Temple, The
1x Dummy Corporation
1x Opium Den
2x Serpentis
1x Temple Hunting Ground
4x Vessel
2x Wash

Action (24)
2x Dream World
4x Enticement
2x Form of Corruption
2x Mesu Bedshet
4x Public Trust
6x Revelation of Ecstasy
4x Temptation

Action Modifier (26)
4x Cloak the Gathering
4x Into Thin Air
6x Revelation of Desire
4x Spying Mission
4x True Love’s Face
4x Veil the Legions

Reaction (17)
2x Confusion of the Eye
5x Ecstasy
4x Eluding the Arms of Morpheus
3x Revelations of Despair

Combat (11)
8x Majesty
3x Unholy Penance

I have played it during our meta game and although I died horribly to two combat heavy decks, it did fairly well. Off course the deck still has some major issues but that is material for the next newsletter. You will totally destroy single vampire wall decks. Just put a corruption counter on it fast and let Nakh do the killing. Send in some bleed, untap and throw an enticement. Very easy but oh so effective. Against other decks you can use the same tactic, you just have to use more corruption counters ;-)

3. Now what?
Like I said the deck still has major issues and it still needs some drastic changes. I will continue with this deck in the next few issues of the newsletter. For now I just let you play with the above deck and let you make some changes of your own. See how you fare when instead of bleeding you go for the temptation route. Maybe try out the new spell of life card, use allies etc etc.
Till next time,
Paul Wiggers