I am looking at the description of the cards and it states that we need to tackle and injure players in order to gain a bloodlust token. I am just wondering how we do that when the vampires only have one tackle? Can anyone tell me how to trigger bloodlust?

If you tackle someone standing then you are downing them. If you tackle someone downed you are injuring them. Either way, you are tackling in both cases.

So the short answer to your question is: Tackle people who are already downed.

That part gets a little tricky. I have only played the Vampires once, and I did it in all the wrong ways. Then one of my friends took a crack at it, and he won big time.

1) Send in your linemen first and save your vampires for last. Hope for your linemen to be downed, and then injure them. This is easiest when fighting Orcs, Dwarves, Chaos, and Undead, I think.

2) Hope for the Janglin' Jack Star Player. With three tackle attempts, he is likely to be able to knock over a few weak players (friendly or opposing). Then sweep in and injure them with your Vampire.

3) Hope for a Tackle Coach for obvious reasons.

4) Go for Team Upgrades as they pretty much all help with your drinking problem. Force of Will doubles the value of your Blood Tokens, and there is another one that allows you to bite again etc.

They are a difficult team to play for sure (and you have to hope for the right upgrades), but if done right they are very powerful.

I am afraid your strategies are not really helping very much. The description for bloodlust says "each time a player tackles and injures another player assign a blood token" But I am trying to figure out how I get the vampire to tackle and injure another player when they only have one tackle. How can I tackle and injure another player in one turn so I can get one bloodlust token?

Actually, his strategies are very sound. The only way to trigger bloodlust is to tackle a downed player, so have to player you vampires later, play thralls first to get players down, then play a vamp card to tackle the downed player and hopefully injure them. Vamps need a little more strategy to play than the other teams but that's the way it is in the TT version of BB as well (vamps are challenging to play).

cawboy84 said:

Did you see this?

Jutlander said:

Tackling is tackling regardless of whether your opponent is standing up or not.

Other tactics include:

5) Hope for the "Soggy Pitch" and "Violence at an All-Time High" headlines. They will allow you to injure a standing player with just one tackle roll.

6) Use a Passing Coach and an Enchanted Ball with the Tackle symbol. Thrall picks up Enchanted Ball, Thrall gains the Tackle skill, Thrall tackles and downs an opposing player, Thrall uses the Passing Coach to pass the Enchanted Ball to a Vampire, Vampire gains the Tackle skill from the Enchanted Ball, Vampire tackles and injures the downed opposing player.

Oh, and thank you, Kong-lin .

That's very optimistic.

I´m also worried about the overall performance of this Vampires team. I get the advices given along this discussion thread, but are you really putting that much faith in your Thralls tackling down opposite players, especially since you mention about aiming at commiting players in matchups where strong tackling teams like Undead, Orcs and Chaos are? Come on boys, these Thralls are just too small to do any damage, you need star players to lay the smackdown if your startegy relies on landing your Vampires in the end to injure opponents' players. Going for Star players is number 1 priority for whoever is playing Vampires in our group because they just don't have the sheer power. Or can't get access to that sheer power through the aqcuisition of Blood Lust tokens, because you need to tackle down somebody first and that's what this team has problems with. Only the vampire can achieve that (on a good day, he´s only a 3 star player) so it means you dedicate them to tackling, so effectively not using the team's ability to gather these Blood Lust tokens. There you go.

These thralls are definitely lackluster in my experience. Also, when would you ever injure your own players (Always Hungry)? Even a downed player is board presence to ensure you get rewards. Three of us have had experience with this team and we could never justify tackling our own players for the sole addition of a Blood Lust token. The ability of the Vampire is strongly pushing the player to use this tackling skill on the ball carrier so he can drop it when tackled, and then have the Vampire grab the ball. I would only injure one of my own if I knew the +1 star player would make me win the matchup AND my opponent at that matchup has no more card to play this round, which implies that I cannot rely on a tackling success against any of the other players.

And yeah, any team can be good if you draw the right highlights, the right upgrades or the right star players. Sure, Luthor, Emil and the 3-tackling star player which I forgot the name) makes this team great. But most teams are good on paper from the very start and only require the "missing chain" in order to make them awesome, whereas vampires (and Dwarves probably) seem to require a lot more work to become competitive enough. Then sure, if you play a sneaky strategy trying to pull as many rewards as possible (as opposed to stacking your cards on only a few matchups) then you may get access to what you need. But don't tell me Thralls achieve anything in this game.

I´m not saying they suck (well, Vampires do suck after all, lol), and I enjoy playing them for flavor mainly, but I don't see how you can win with them when you look at the other teams. Of the three new teams, they are the weakest by far. That's after we played 10-ish games with the expansion.

EDIT: Enchanted balls, with Sprint essentially, do a lot of good for this team, as you really need to dig into your deck to find these Vampires and star players.

Indalecio said:

Read my post again. The Thrall linemen only have to do damage unto themselves.

Jutlander said:

You send in your Thralls, your opponent tackles and downs your Thralls, you tackle and injure your own Thralls.

They are not easy to play, but I have seen some really big wins from the Vampire team.

No, the point I was trying to make is that we´ve never found productive ever to commit players to matchups only for the purpose to get them tackled down (and what if your opponent doesn't want to tackle your Thrall?). Your vampire would get a +1 star power at the price of one player at the matchup (so if your Vampire goes down you´ve got nothing left, and quite frankly the odds for a team to be able to bring him down are quite decent) and a tackling attempt that could have been used on any of your opponent's players at this matchup. I don't know, how relevant is the +1 power compared to tackling the ball carrier for instance?

Had the Vampire's base power been 4 then I would have been more inclined to believe this strategy as being more reliable because it becomes much harder to tackle down a 4+1=5 star power Vampire. But 4 is a piece of cake for most teams.

So what I´m saying is that your opposition remains intact and you just "merged" your vampire with the injured thrall in terms of star power, e.g. putting all eggs in the same basket. The pros are the +1 power, but that's it, and it's not stellar is it? Let's say your "standard opposition" is a 2-power player grabbing the ball (ball being at midfield after you commited your vampire) and a 3-power tackler/blitzer who brought down your thrall, that means 2+3=5 versus your 4 power. And that's the best situation, so unless you "do" something else you´re plain losing. What you should be doing in my mind is tackling down the ball carrier and grab the ball from midfield using your Vampire. Use the Thrall to guard your vampire or whatever.

Most teams have base players (from their respective rosters) with power 4 or 3+frenzy. I think only the Dwarves and the Vampires don't, from what I can recall. Benefits from commiting such player compared to the standard "vampire play" is that you apply your tackle attempt on your opponent (so most likely gaining something from the ability), adding +4 power on your side for winning the matchup (possibly more if you tackle the ball carrier) and keeping all your players in play. All teams can do this on round 1 except the Vampires.

I get what you are saying is that this is how Vampires are intended to be played. All I´m saying is that this strategy has proven to be totally unreliable especially in the first rounds, and only slightly better later on assuming you get the correct star players (vampires) and a couple of upgrades. Good luck with that when all you have to win matchups is a +1 buffed vampire against 2-3 opponents players which are totally untouched due to your vampire injuring your own players.

Mind you, we have another session next week and just because there was so much discussion generated around this I will take the Vampires again and follow your strategy as best as I can. I'll try to be as honest as possible in my report

Vampires don't have much opportunity to sprint so if you pull a thrall linemen, you gotta play him eventually. As a standard linemen, he only has Guard so most teams will eventually take the bait and down him. Now he's useless at 0 star power.

This is where the Vampires shine, as they can remove the useless linemen from play and get +1 star power out of the deal. Against teams that reward injuries, this is even more attractive since you remove that option.

It's a much different mechanic, since it gives linemen another use; so it will take a different strategy to win matchups, and its also possible they really shine in multiplayer games (more than 2 plyrs) where they can let opponents pummel each other at tournaments and then feast on the downed.

Ok so we had two games with the Vampires, I personally played them in one and then the player who has won the most games by a fairly good margin since we started with this game had the privilege to run them as well, so I think the test is representative at least for our playgroup. Our conclusion remains the same. I´m sorry for insisting but something is missing for this team to make it in-par with the other teams.

I´m not going to re-iterate my previous argumentation but we still don't know what to do to make this team work. In both games we were lucky to pull the right team upgrades (additional tackle upon succesful tackle, and the one when you can stand up a player after succesfull tackle). We bothy had at least one Vampire star players in the roster at some point. I got my first 2 blood lust tokens on a Vampire tonight, and it was lucky, and I still didn't win the matchup anyway (my point being that the bonus is absolutely not stellar).

Then yeah, I mean, we got this highlight when 2 dices had to be used for every tackle and both results apply, and it screwed up a few things. But even without this round event, we were both struggling to make anything happen really. It seemed like every other player bar the Dwarf team were able to "do things" without too much struggle while we tried to achieve something with these Thralls. ******* Thralls, really. They´re both boring and useless.

Thralls just do nothing and are barely worth tackling, effectively negating your strategy to injure them to obtain the "precious" blood lust token. Again, we both went for Star Players in order to increase our chances to tackle down players so that the Vampires could land and smack them for Blood tokens. But as stated earlier, you NEED to win a matchup with the correct payout for this, and this is where things get ugly. Most teams compete for star players in the first rounds, because they pump up your team's power so much and also because they´re fun. And frankly, if Skavens, Humans, Dark Elves, Wood Elves, Orcs etc are going for it then getting there gets really really tough.

It's the game in hard mode, and I have no problem with that, BUT there is no reward in the end anyway. So I wonder, what's the point?

So guys, I appreciate the views but I haven't changed my mind one bit, to me Vampires are underwhelming and the strategy to make them work just doesn't cut it compared to the other teams.

I'd also observe that Vampires are pretty solid in tournaments, where there'll usually be a player downed one way or the other.

But lets not forget that Vampire is a *** player with Block, Pass and Regeneration. Thats already extremely solid. Bloodlust is just a bonus on top of that. And there's four of them in the starting line up. Sure, you're not likely to see all four in one turn, and Vampires don't sprint well, but I don't think the Vampire team can be written off too easily.

In our group's experience they're proving the strongest of the new teams.

Just registered to post in this thread. I have to agree with Indalecio, this team just doesn't seem to work.

I've played quite a few games with the vampires trying different tactics (focusing on team upgrades, star players, blood lust etc…) and can't get these off the ground, nor can any of my group. Thralls are too weak and so are vampires really. The problem Indalecio mentioned earlier is what I've faced most, if you're taking off one of your own players for a +1 SP the cost of that is not tackling an opposition player, losing a reward player (more players, even downed, can ensure you get a reward). The idea of a boosted vampire just passively providing a large amount of SP doesn't really seem to work for me because against most teams they have a way to put you on the floor still, or block off any supporting players that it doesn't really matter if you've a 4 or 5 spp vampire stood there they still win.

The main problems for me are:

- Lack of a strong player: I think this team really needed a 2nd type of Vampire. Either a Vampire Lord that started at 4 or 5 SP or a Vampire with Frenzy so at least you have something to take out 3SP players reliably. Maybe even just a 3SP guy with Frenzy and 2 block icons.

- Thrall Blockers: These are just worthless cards. I know Thralls aren't very good in the tabletop game but this card is almost as pointless as the basic linemen. Again they could have done with some more SP early on, maybe if these were replaced with Thrall Brute or something, SP2 Frenzy/Dauntless plus Block to again give a chance to block the opposition a bit.

- Large card requirement to "work": As you can see by the advice posted in this thread, the team realistically needs to draw a lot of Team and Staff upgrades to even get off the ground, not to mention enough Star Players so they don't have to play too many Thralls. It's just unrealistic in a normal game, especailly if your opposition is fighting hard for one (normally Star Players or Team Upgrades).

I think the Undead Deck is a good example of how bad the Vampires are. The Undead are more durable, have better star power pretty much across the board, have more pass, blocks, cheats and sprints. There is literally northing the Undead do worse than Vampires. Not only that, they aren't dependant on drawing any particular Team upgrades so can play the field better and get some earlier Star Players into their deck.

I don't know if it was intended for Vampires to be a lower tier team like in the minatures game, but it certainly feels like that's how they play. Maybe I'm missing a strategy but we're all pretty experienced with the base game and are racking up a lot of games of Sudden Death, and no one has managed anything but 3rd with the Vamps yet (in 3-4 player games).

We've been playing 2 and 3 player games in about 50:50 ratio, very rarely will there be a 4 player game. We've only played Sudden Death a little, but so far Vampires have won a couple of times out of five 3-player games we've seen them picked.

One of these wins seemed to see a preponderance of Sprint balls, and the vamp player says this helped him a lot. He was also up against humans (me) and skaven, and both of struggled to bring down vampires when they were boosted to 4* with a blood token, short of using Star Players. I think there was a broad perception that the vamp player had a run of good luck, in that his first turn gained team upgrade was the one that allows a double block, and the 3-4 one dice blocks against his 4* vampires never once downed him, or he just got back up again.

In the other game the Vampires won, we were playing with Dark Elves, Vampires and Orcs. In this game, the Vampires struggled a bit harder, but by focusing the majority of their resources on tournaments (which (save Bloodbowl) all flipped early in the game, ahead of headlines) the Vampires did quite well.

Playing against Vampires, I feel its sometimes discouraging to "waste" a block on a thrall lineman compared to a normal lineman, so it seems like a player would often commit to a different matchup and blitz someone more worthwhile. Likewise, the face that Vampires regenerate often psychologically discouraged blocking resources being put towards them when there was better odds of taking down (and keeping down) another player.

Still, I suppose that 2/5 isn't really strong for 3 player games, and in 2 player games we've yet to see them win.

On the other hand, we've struggled even harder with the other new teams. I don't think we've seen Undead win once yet, nor Dark Elves. Dark Elves look like they should work on paper, but somehow their fan total always seems to lag behind in our games.

hi, I gotta tell ya I just got the expansion a few days ago and ive played five rounds with four of my best friends. that being said ive won all of them playing as none other than yours truly the Black Fangs. they easily became one of my favorite teams next to the scaverns and wood elves. since I can use the guard ability from my line men to block any tackle and then use my blood lust to tackle em gaining one star power I just lost and using a tackle coach to tackle their four star player at that match up with ease when I get the taste of blood team upgrade (giving him frenzy as a response"not a match up action") gaining a star power of five. and making it fairly difficult to tackle himself after placing the permanent star power addition of the blood token. just sayin the best strategy is going for those team upgrades asap and really give your opponents something to cry about while your teams teeth are sunk into their necks by the end of the game lol. and of course it never hurts to have a few good star players to initialize the offense and down a few players before you start sending your vamps into play.

oh and when using the team (black fangs) the self tackle(rolling x x) that happens on occasion when your opponent really, really doesn't need that to happen right now lol becomes your best friend.