VAMPIRES

:This section was adapted from a post by Lasher Mayfair in the BoardGameGeek forums.https://boardgamegeek.com/article/18778785#18778785 Vampires are sadly one of the weaker factions out there. Aside from what was already said, they seriously lack a way to protect their minions. As it stands, you can farm power counters on or on the minion with on it, only to have them be destroyed or otherwise disposed of by the enemy. Most of the time, I see The Count only used for the burst, and not for its ability, because it simply takes too long for the ability to compensate not having used your strength 5 minion for breaking a base. is a nice card, but takes too long to be really strong. It is good to play it on a base everyone is ignoring due to a more pressing concern, so you have some power already built up when you do get there. is rarely ever used, but when it is, it can be truly overwhelming. I've seen the vampires played 6 times so far, of which they only won one game. The one time they won, I had enough minions on the board to use Buffet to win two bases on my last turn. In that game, I played a minion and to give +1 power counter on all my minions that did not already have one, broke a base, played Buffet, broke another base. Using Buffet to win two bases at once is the best ideal usage of that card, unfortunately you rarely have enough minions on other bases when you win a base, so this requires some planning ahead to pull off. Otherwise, this is a card that is often used rather underwhelmingly for only a couple tokens, or else not used at all, and even discarded due to hand size limit. Talking about , I think it is a shame it only works on minions that do not already have power counters (unlike the much stronger Mad Scientists Jolt), since your vampire minions often gain a single power counter when played (or in case of , soon after that). This also means that if one wants to combo it with , Mad Monster Party needs to come first. Overall, all but 2 of your actions give power counters to your minions, so having many minions with no power counters is rare. Mad Monster Party is best used with your other faction's minions (that do not gain power counters except through your Vampire actions) and can ideally provide a nice burst for taking down a base. is a very nice action, it will give you at least +3 on a base, +4 if used well in conjunction with . It is at its best when paired up with a faction with strong power 2 minions. is amazing, but only if kept for your last turn. You do not really want to discard many minions in your hand as that would seriously hurt your next few turns. However, when the game is almost over, you don't really care and you can use it to give yourself a very good boost. When coupled with Zombies or Ghosts, you can make use of it at other times as well. Obviously, it gets better with factions that give you card draws. As stated by others, the vampire ability to destroy other players' minions of power 2 is not that amazing, but it is something they are good at and their can even destroy a minion of strength 4, nice for getting rid of that Mole or Archmage that is being just a little too useful. The benefit of , that most people are not seeing is that you can destroy your minion that is on another base. Destroying a minion on another base for plus one power counter on the Heavy Drinker could actually make the difference when breaking a base, or you could use this ability to make some use of a minion that has been moved to some useless base like the Ninja Dojo. The bases where Vampires really shine are Cave of Shinies and Field of Honor, for obvious reasons. If either of them shows up, farm them as much as possible, unless your other faction allows you to have even better things to do. Other good bases are Faceless City (card draws that you do not normally get), Egg Chamber (protecting your minions from being destroyed is nice, and especially useful if you have or in play), Crypt (more benefits from your destructions), Golem Schloß (if you can combo its effect with and/or to break another base with it) and R’lyeh (since you can replay your weak minions from discard and easily kill other players weak minions, you are likely to benefit from it more than others). Overall, Vampires have a solid burst when using , or , though their burst is definitely not one of the best. They are good at killing their own minions and other players' minions of power 2 or less. They can make a truly amazing finale to the game, with Cull the Weak and being excellent end game cards, thus breaking two bases on their last turn is a real possibility. They combo well with factions that have strong low power minions for replaying from discard, who have a good card draw to complement vampires not having any or who are very good at using power counters. They have no card draw and virtually no ability to play extra cards, so pairing up with a support faction is necessary, although there are some exceptions to this due to strong card synergy. Oddly enough, I find that the best synergies come from other non-support factions, but in the absence of the below combinations, complementing Vampires with a support faction is strongly preferred.