Vampire the Masquerade Rivals: The Wolf and The Rat Expansion Review

boardgamequest.com:

We review the Vampire the Masquerade Rivals : The Wolf and The Rat Expansion from Renegade Games. This expansion adds two new playable factions to Vampire the Masquerade games.

Some Vampires have close associations or attachments to animals. The Wolf and The Rat expansion for Vampire the Masquerade Rivals add this aspect with two brand new decks: The Nosferatu and the Gangrel. While you can play the two decks included in the box against each other I would highly suggest picking up the core game as well so you can integrate them into your collection. In this review, I want to focus on the unique mechanics and cards that can be found in the expansion decks, so if you want a rundown on the core game mechanics you should check out my original review first.

As expected with this expansion most of the new mechanics for the game revolve around animals. New abilities allow you to attach animal cards to your vampires and even allow your vampires to transform into beasts. This allows for powerful abilities to be triggered from detaching animal companions during games. Particularly in this expansion, the included animals are alley cat, mongrel, murder of crows, sewer rats, and the swarm.

While both decks focus on animals and animal based attacks/abilities, they do have their own unique mechanics and victory conditions.

The Gangrel clan focuses on direct animal control and usage as well as transforming to become more aggressive. Their victory condition directly revolves around attaching animal cards while they are in the streets. Some of the support cards included in their deck become empowered the more animal companions you have. Most of the vampires in the Gangrel deck have direct synergy with animal cards which helps achieve the