Egalitarian Experiment #1 – First Plays

Got a good group of five for some V to the TES earlier today.  First chance for me to bust out the new collection – see this month’s post on May 6th for more info on the experiment.

Game 1:

Ian (!Trem BB) -> Eric (AAA) -> Brandon (borrowed Kiasyd SB) -> Andy (Cavalier Malks) -> Gerentt (Shattering Crescendo/Tourette’s)

I drop Tension turn one.  Eric moves 2 blood to Alexandra.  Kiasyd pop up.  Sean Rycek is joined by Lutz.  Daughters appear.  Daughters get Ossian, which I let go as I find it interesting to see whether it will come back to burn me later.

I block Muse and put out Weather Control and Theft, intimidating Ossian for much of the game.  I block Muse later, who is only a Minor Irritation to Janine(!!), hunting because I could.  What I don’t do is find much in the way of bleed cards, only getting a Threatsed bleed from Frondator through before Alexandra appears.  Very slowly, Anson also appears and ends up being the bane of my existence with his silly Second Tradition nonsense.

Meanwhile, Andy is under the fearsome shadow of Dame, Isanwayen, and Omme.  Gerentt has to worry about either Lutz getting offensive or the Kiasyd ripping through.  Tourette’s Voices get played or threatened.

Eric puts Toreador Grand Ball out to make Alexandra less blockable.  But, Anson is not so free to act.  I do Walk of Flame Alexandra at some point, but she doesn’t suffer much and comes back right away.  Gerentt does finally do actions forward, torping my Frondator and depleting my Paul Cordwood with Crescendoes.  Andy’s fortunes improve dramatically as the Kiasyd keep failing to kill him and Eric’s Ancient Influence succeeds.  Tryphosa makes an appearance, taking Andy to 4 pool.  Gerentt taps out to play Carlton, going to 2 pool.  Andy kills him after one of Eric’s votes takes him to 1 and Andy Restructures away Carlton.  I bounce Lutz bleeding who unhelpfully runs into Anson’s domain.

I lunge at Eric, but it becomes a mess as he has Second Tradition, Eyes of Argus, Telepathic Misdirection to screw up my math.  Actually, it was kind of annoying to draw two Governs in the middle of my lunge as they didn’t help at that point and I would have maybe done better if I knew I would be able to Govern four times in the turn.  Probably wouldn’t have mattered.  Eric got Brandon, somehow finishing things off with a bleed of 2 at one stealth right as 2 hours was up.  I was at 1 pool when we stopped.

My timing was just off.  I kept expecting Majesty from my prey and only recall one, though how that mattered isn’t so clear.  Never drawing a Harass was kind of annoying but would have not been good if Eric did play more Majestys.  I didn’t use Paul’s ability much, which was not a good sign since it’s so good, but then, people didn’t want to fight me.  I did end up taking as much damage from Tension as my prey did.  In many ways, a very normal game.

Game 2:

Eric (fast War Ghoul) -> Gerentt (Lasombra w/ Pre) -> Andy (Cybele Great Beast) -> Ian (!Malk SB) -> Brandon (!Salubri Brothers)

As I had two Blood Dolls in my opening hand, I put Fabrizia in play on turn one, figuring there was a good chance I could hunt farm for a while.  In fact, she spent almost the entire game hunting back to 4 blood.  Persephone was my second vampire only because she was the only one with Auspex.

Brandon was a threat to rush, so I tried to ignore him, which led to amassing a horde of dorks.  Eric got a War Ghoul out but struggled in a lot of other ways, though he did get to Camera Phone bleed a decent number of times.  Gerentt went crazy with voting and Governing early to achieve Moncada, Polonia, and Gratiano with tons of pool.  Even when Brandon crosstable rushed Gratiano and ate him, another just came up and there was still much pool.  Andy bloated lots but didn’t draw The Great Beast.  He did try Entrancement on the War Ghoul and I sadly had to use my Great Beast stopping DI on Entrancement.

Due to a lack of bounce, I got bled a bunch by Cybele but usually had 15+ pool due to Blood Doll farming.  Starting in on using Kindred Spirits didn’t hurt.  Though Isabel de Leon and Adonai both had the power of the big eye in front of me, there was quite the lack of bouncing.  When Brandon went to 4 pool for another guy, I ousted him.  War Ghoul came for Persephone and ran into White Lilly’s Saturday Night Special + Deny(al) of Trap.  I oust Eric with Persephone, Fabrizia, White Lilly, Bloodfeud, and General Perfidio out.    Persephone gets Banished.  I Pentex Polonia because I didn’t expect to get Gerentt and Andy was low on pool and end up ousting Gerentt.  I bleed Andy out.

Does getting 5 VPs in every game I’ve ever played with my experiment’s !Malk SB deck say anything about this experiment?  Nah, I’m always an advocate for questioning results based on insufficient sample sizes; in this case, I had a good seating and things played out well for how I wanted to play the game.  Of course, I did already think this deck, of the three I’ve built out of this card pool of about 750 cards, was the best.  Far more useful to see what can be done with a less efficient archetype to try to get at the issue of whether decks of sufficient viability are possible with such a small card pool to work with.

While this experiment is hardly vigorous in the scientific method, I do feel that it’s unnecessary to take into account how much better I am at playing stealth bleed than other archetypes and how much experience I have with decks like the second deck.  It’s not a question as to whether a newb will be competitive and interested with this card pool but whether a newb could be competitive and interested with this card pool.

Mostly addressed being competitive to this point, talk a bit about being interested.  I have three decks.  The third, which I haven’t played yet, may not be viable.  Still, the decks do largely different things, which should satisfy some desire for variety.  The !Trem deck was more interesting (of course) than the !Malk deck; I will probably get bored with it quickly, but, then, I get bored with almost all of my decks after one or two plays; it doesn’t seem too boring at this point.  What I should try is to see whether I can cobble together most of a fourth deck that isn’t some well known archetype or, at least, doesn’t use the crutch of relying heavily upon one of the Third Edition precons.  This will help give me a better idea on what variety is really possible at this level of cards.

Cardinality

Occasionally, I wander into less philosophical areas to speak about.  I was doing some V:TES deckbuilding searching on Cardinals and got kind of interested in the data.

Clan	Group	Total
Lasombra	2	2
	4	1
Malkavian Antitribu	2	1
	4	1
Nosferatu Antitribu	2	1
	4	1
Toreador Antitribu	2	1
	4	1
Tremere Antitribu	2	1
	4	1
Tzimisce	2	2
	3	1
	4	1
Ventrue Antitribu	2	1
	4	1
Grand Total		17

If we take a look at a table of Cardinals in the game by Clan and group, certain features readily pop out.  Of course, there are two advanced version Cardinals not included in the totals and I did include Sascha Vykos even though it would need to be merged to achieve Cardinaldom.  If that seems wrong, I can understand.

The absence of three clans – !Brujah, !Gangrel, and Pander – means what?  Does it matter?  Pander reasonably don’t have any on thematic grounds.  The other two also have some thematic sense with being either rebels or being flavorfully apolitical.  On the other hand, if we pull in Archbishops and Prisci, there are some interesting numbers as well, like how few (6) !Toreador and !Ventrue have any of these three titles while !Brujah jump ahead in total numbers (7) and !Gangrel don’t (5).

Getting off topic as I wanted to focus on Cardinals.  Why?  Just kind of interesting to examine one minor slice of a CCG and see where it leads.

There are five library cards a Cardinal can play that an Archbishop can’t.  I’m less interested in the ones a Priscus can’t play, but the list is longer for them.  In general, I’ve found that Titled Sabbat cards are a pain to get much use out of.  There’s not nearly as much of a concentration of titles within a given clan and the payoffs are lower to where mixed clan is less interesting.  Sure, Cardinal Benediction is always a way to Cardinal-up!  But, eh.

Auto-da-fé

I’ve put this card in decks.  I may have even passed one.  I just don’t recall all that clearly.  I just can’t get that excited by it, even in theory.  Which is good, since Protect Thine Own was one of the dumbest cards ever.

Chalice of Kinship

Seems simple enough:  put a bunch of Creation Rites in play or otherwise create a horde of dudes, invigorate them.  In practice, even when I put this card in a deck, possibly even when I equip it, I don’t recall ever using it.  With The Hungry Coyote, stimulating a horde is rather easy.  The hoops here are tiresome hoops to jump through for payoff.  Probably need stealth, which you don’t with The Hungry Coyote due to there being no single key action.  Need to get it into play.  Need to have nothing better to do with your Priscus/Cardinal.  Blah.

Gurchon Hall

I do recall having this in play.  It’s far more complicated than it seemed at first.  The lack of control is really annoying.  The unhappy face when having only one ready minion is … unhappy.  It has all of the disadvantages of being a hunting ground:  targetable by anti-HG plays as rare as those may be; not stackable with other HGs.  I probably should try it in a more wallish build – Tzimisce would be obvious.  I see it being a cut above the two cards above.

Harzomatuili

Now, we are talking.  This is one of the most efficient ways to self oust in the game.  Wait …  Doh!  I have actually seen Hazmat in play, if memory serves correctly, though it was out of an Ahrimanes deck.  I may have hired him, right before being ousted, or may not have.

Investiture

I’ve also put this card in one or more decks.  And, I never considered playing it.  What the-?!?  Why are Cardinalistic cards so awful?  Does point out why people aren’t so bothered by the distribution of Cardinals in the game.  Far more want to have Cardinals for their votes than for specific card plays.

Thanks to secretlibrary.info, by the way, for card text.

I didn’t actually intend to get sidetracked on Card-inals (my super awesome, totally not pretentious way to define cards that require Cardinals).  Getting back to the vampires.

Only one group 3 Cardinal.  Well, group 2 kind of made a mess of things since the grouping rule wasn’t foreseen when group 2 was being published.  Lasombra and Tzimisce do relatively well for Cardinality out of group 2/3 – “well” being kind of a stretch, but oh well.  Makes sense – helps define them as leaders of the Sabbat.

If we look at discipline crossover to get “Friendly Clans”, Ayalea is Lasombra friendly, making for a coherent strategy of putting out fat dudes with titles that aren’t that important.  At least DOM/OBT mitigates the lack of necessity in being a Cardinal (can upgrade fairly easily, could just live life as an Archbishop/Priscus).  There are a few other friendlies.  I’ve certainly seen Velya’s PRE used and I have a tournament winning deck with Melinda, but I never really thought about a group 3/4 AUS/PRE Cardinal deck running all three.  Did have something like that that was Third Edition only, so obviously sans Velya.

Then, there’s unfriendliness (to one own’s clan).  Radu, Radu, Radu.  I can’t say you are the worst of the bunch, but you sure try hard.  I can squint and see some sort of AUS/DOM deck use maybe with !Ventrue if it were a !Ventrue vote deck and not a grinder.  Except, !Ventrue vote seemed to die as a played archetype ages ago, even the stealthy kind.

The worst?  !Nosferatu for the lose!  It’s just such a pain to play these gigantosaurs lacking AUS or Dom.

I don’t know that a lot can be said about the capacity distribution of Cardinals.  For instance, how !Toreador seem to get young-uns just doesn’t seem to really matter, certainly not as much as the general lack of (meaningful Sabbat) titles.

Does any of this matter much?  Wouldn’t say so.  I hardly notice given how much less important Sabbat title breakdowns are to Camarilla title breakdowns.  Nor do I feel much of a thematic sense of how the Sabbat is put together.  I’m still far more likely to build a clan focused deck that has a mishmash of titles when I’m running some Cardinal or another.  Even Radu kind of ends up getting used for reasons that are highly questionable, though when you build Third Edition only decks where you want to run cards you never see, like Gurchon Hall, you kind of lack more exciting choices.

Egalitarian Experiment #1 – First Thoughts

Following up from my last post, I have pulled the cards (or opened unopened precons) for one of each Third Edition precon and my first box of Third Edition boosters.

I suppose I need to clarify the point of these exercises in collection limitation.  Here are the questions I’m looking at:

1. What level of buy-in would a player need to compete at the tournament level?
2. What level of buy-in would a player need to have a reasonable diversity of decks to enjoy the diversity that the game has to offer?
3. What does the game feel like when you have a modest collection?

A goal is to not focus on what is missing but to focus on what is possible.  The CCG model is such that people aren’t supposed to have everything, though I would tend to believe that this isn’t the case when it comes to being able to build top level tournament decks for people deeply invested in CCGs.

That third question is unlikely to be answerable for me, given that I can’t just forget the last 16 years, though I can try to get some insight into what it must be like for others at times.

The obvious starting point on building a deck suitable for tournament play with this level of investment is !Malk stealth bleed.  I have claimed on a number of occasions that a bad stealth bleed deck is still a more formidable deck than the norm – an argument, by the way, for the power level of stealth bleed when debating the best decks in the game.  I continue to claim such.  I think the deck I put together is perfectly functional at winning.  It might not be as forgiving of mistakes in play as other builds, but then, it’s far more forgiving than most all of the decks I have been playing in recent years.  Regardless, success is going to depend primarily on quality play, including table politics, and certain factors that are difficult to control – card draws, seating, player personalities.

After building the first deck, I became discouraged.  Three of the four precons are for clans with Auspex as a clan discipline, yet between them they only have x2 Telepathic Misdirection – the only Auspex card truly needed to compete.  TM is a common in the set, which is far far better than the many years in which the only TMs available were from Jyhad/V:TES.  Still, want a minimum of 12 for two decks.  Yes, this gets into looking at what’s missing rather than what’s available, but again, this is a necessary card – on the level of Blood Doll, WWEF/On the Qui Vive, Deflection, and a few others being an essential part of the game.

Adding to my discouragement was that my sum total of Obtenebration cards consists of …

x1 Oubliette
x1 Shadow Play
x1 Shadow Strike

I was looking forward to some old school Lasombra stealth bleed.  By the way, this points out two rather significant problems with Third Edition:  the precons are moronic not only in their contents but in Lasombra not being one of them; the distribution of cards is insane, which I’ve complained about before, but which rears its head so eloquently in these experiments.  Once I add box #2 into the pool, three more Shadow Plays and two Shrouds of Night will be “unlocked”, but I’m inclined to believe that, when you are trying to support with one set 10 clans and 13 disciplines, that you can cut some terrible cards to make more decks viable.

Good time to talk about the business of CCGs.  There are those who will argue that all this makes sense.  That giving a player a completely functional preconstructed starter deck will undermine additional sales.  I’m not completely dismissive of the point, but the way I view it is that there are plenty of other ways people can spend money, including spending it on CCGs that are more newbie friendly such as … wait for it … Magic.  Magic may be far less friendly when it comes to constructed play, but Magic became more about limited play a long time ago.  Anyway, I believe the amount of effort someone has to go to to get up to a competitive level correlates to the size of the resulting playerbase (though not nearly so much as popularity of the genre/licensed property).  I’d rather have a higher volume of players with less investment than a smaller group with vast collections.  Give people a solid foundation out of the gate, get them playing often, then they will chase the rarest cards because so many CCGers are collectors or do want to do different things or do want to build esoteric decks that rely on obscure rares.

Or, if you are like Bandai (from what I hear) from years ago, think entirely short term and care only about the first few sets before pulling the plug on a game, while hyping the next anime CCG in the works.  Sucker born every minute and whatnot.

I came back to “my” collection, finally opened the !Brujah precon to see if handling the physical cards would get me more inspired for a second functional deck.  While full of all of the usual problems with a deck with no bleed bounce, I wasn’t unhappy with what I goldfished.  It may not rise to the level of viable for competitive play, but it seems nonridiculous given how much !Brujah suck even when you have tens of thousands of cards to work with.

With that, I became a bit more inspired and went to work on the !Tremere deck.  The advantage of the !Tremere deck, especially over a Tzimisce deck, is that Dominate replaces the need for more Telepathic Misdirections.  There are actually quite a few Thaumaturgy cards in the deck and I got some Thefts of Vitae from my box, so it wasn’t hard to fill things out.  The primary weakness is masters.  In fact, the master selections for each of the decks suck.  On the other hand, I got six On the Qui Vives from box #1 (zero will be in box#2), so I’m okay on wakes … for two decks.

I’m not enthralled by the idea of trying to scrape together a Tzimisce deck.  Besides the dearth of TMs, the Third Edition Tzimisce just suck so bad.  Jane Sims is worthless, as evidenced by how I’ve never put her in a deck e-e-ever (accuracy of this statement subject to my memory not failing).  Where, Lolita Houston is one of my original fly girls.  Duality is perfectly positively presentable and completely failed in support, as well as showing up 50% less than he/it should in the precon.  I do have a good number of Sha-Ennus for some superstarish deck or Tzimisce w/ Obfuscate, but as one can see in the Deck Clinic subforum on vekn.net, going the path of Tzimisce with Obfuscate is a sad panda path while superstaring is likely to be quite the challenge with my < 800 card collection.

Then, we get to clans not supported by precons.  Just not looking so viable at this point.  On the other hand, there might be just enough discipline crossover to do some mixed clan decks around disciplines I have enough decent cards for.  As for low discipline decks, the quality of the generic cards is, of course, low.  The weakness in master options is the biggest challenge, with lack of On the Qui Vives being important if I decide not to share cards between decks.

Which brings up some facets of these experiments.  In truth, it would be fair to share cards as I’ve done that for plenty a CCG even when I had sizable collections.  That relieves pressure in the key problem areas of lacking Telepathic Misdirections, Redirections, On the Qui Vives, and Blood Dolls.  Also, a real player would likely look to focus some, not expecting to play everything, and trade or otherwise supplement sealed purchases.  For instance, if I had this collection and truly loved Lasombra, I could just trade for Obtenebration and trade away, say, Protean cards.  So, these experiments may be quite artificial.  Nevertheless, I’m trying to change my perceptions of the game.  I want to run cards I never currently bother with in decks because I can just play something better and feel no shame.

I’m not sure when I should end this first experiment.  It would be nice to have some tournaments handy to play decks from such a modest collection before expanding to a larger card pool.  On the other hand, one box of boosters and half a box of starters is rather skimpy for anyone who actually likes the game and I’m artifically restricting trading and buying singles, so moving to experiment #2, the full box of starters and two boxes of boosters, might be more reasonable.

I am finding this amusing already, however one looks at it.  I’m definitely putting in questionable cards with metagame thinking in mind.

Less Is More

Apparently, continuing a series of … Is …

The subject of availability of V:TES cards came up recently.  Yes, it’s harder to get various packs/boxes/precons then it was.  That has actually been true for ages.  No, I can’t put myself in the shoes of someone trying to get into the game or expand what is possible for them to build.  But, I’d be curious to try.

I enjoy owning all of the cards for a CCG.  I enjoy having tons of chase cards others don’t.  I don’t think it’s a good idea when people can’t compete because it’s prohibitively expensive to get tournament necessary cards.  Of course, what is prohibitively expensive is open to question.

I can’t compete in constructed Magic formats with my current collection, with a few specific deck exceptions.  For instance, I could probably get a couple of sideboard cards and compete in Legacy with a Red Deck Wins deck.  I do own x4 Force of Will, though I read that Force is becoming less useful.

Staying on the subject of older formats, I’m missing largely two key things – modern creatures which are much more powerful and aggressively costed on average, multilands.  I have hardly any original dual lands and I’ve never tried to acquire sets of more modern multilands.  To me, fixing the land problem, by itself, seems prohibitively expensive.

In terms of more modern formats, though not so much Modern, I could run out and acquire a bunch of Standard legal cards, trade, pick up key singles, and become competitive only sinking a thousand* dollars into the game.  Again, that strikes me as prohibitive.

*  Based on typical value of singles of modern Magic decks adding up to $300-400 a deck, discounting because I’d buy boxes of cards rather than all singles.  Of course, this is a suboptimal way to compete in Magic from a cost standpoint.  Far better to draft against inferior players for rares, buy what is needed for a single tournament and turn around and sell cards that won’t get reprinted, and so forth – these strategies for cost containment, however, don’t sound appealing to me.

Getting back to V:TES, what is a prohibitive level of expenditure in effort and/or $$?

My recommendation to a new player (to an existing group) is to borrow decks until the player is sure that they want to play it for the long haul, then go find someone getting out of the game or putting a collection up on eBay.  That should give somewhere between 5,000 and 50,000 cards to work with at a cost of something along the lines of $50-$300.  Then, can hunt for harder to get cards to build weirder decks.

That’s not how I got into the game.  I did borrow decks before investing.  I decided I was interested in creating my own decks from my collection.  I started buying Jyhad boxes.  Then, I bought some Sabbat.  Then, I bought some Dark Sovereigns and Ancient Hearts.  At some point, I had a case or more of Jyhad – it being so cheap at various points that we played a single game of sealed box Jyhad.  I stupidly didn’t buy a ton of Sabbat when it was cheap.  I bought lots of every White Wolf published expansion.  I virtually never traded in the 16 years I’ve been playing.  I have bought singles on eBay at times but not for years and, obviously, not before eBay was a thing.

On a tangent, speaking of playing for 16 years, it’s kind of interesting to realize that.  I still enjoy the game quite a bit, testament to the value of CCGs I would say.  Why only 16 years?  I was introduced to the game in 1995 and started playing the following year.

I had an epiphany at some point with the Babylon 5 CCG.  I know I’m rambling, but I’m finally getting to the point.  I had all of the cards, for all intents and purposes.  My collection was defined more by how many autographed rares or chase promos I had.  One day, I thought about how much more fun it was to build decks when I had only a couple of boxes of starters and a couple of boxes of boosters, roughly my initial purchases.

Ever since then, I’ve always kept in mind that there are disadvantages to being a Mr. Suitcase.  Mark Rosewater goes on about restrictions breeding creativity, and I can see that with collection sizes.  I felt much more creative and passionate about decks I designed when I had to struggle to figure out how to compete.  I put this down to thinking way more about each card when:  I had less of them to think about; I couldn’t just play a better card all of the time.  Then, the more thought put into a deck, the more I care about a deck, so the more I’m likely to enjoy a deck.

I frequently restrict myself when it comes to deck construction.  It’s not just because of house rules for play groups I might play with or even laziness.  Nor is it something I do just for V:TES.  I built rareless decks for B5.  I wrote a Scrye article on a rareless, promoless deck for Wheel of Time, a game chock full of power rares/promos.  Likely, it has something to do with Ultimate Combat! being my first CCG and how that CCG restricts deck construction by rarity.  I built iceless corp decks for Netrunner.  Minionless V:TES tournament deck … that got the edge twice in one round.  An all ax kick deck for UC!.  And, so on and so forth.

There’s just something stimulating about limitations.  When I look at V:TES, B5, WoT, or UC!, I can almost build any deck possible.  That tends to inflict me with an ennui.  Why?  Too many options.  Lack of focus.  I can easily put together 20 decks; how am I ever going to be as emotionally invested in 20 decks as I would have been for the 1-2 I had to put real effort into?

Anyway, it’s all great to talk about my own interests, but how does this relate to someone trying to compete in V:TES?

Unlike most CCGs, I don’t see where someone needs much to compete with a reasonable variety of decks in V:TES.  This isn’t Magic, where multilands are essential to multicolor decks.  This isn’t WoT, where even Light decks wanted ultrarare recruitable Forsaken cards for their discard effects.  This isn’t Dragonball Z, Star Wars, or a multitude of other CCGs with similar ultrarare issues.

The more cards you have, obviously, the more options you have.  But, not having every option is supposed to be a feature of CCGs.  It would suck if the only deck someone with under 5,000 cards could build for V:TES that could compete is Malk SB.  But, that’s also not the case.

What is the case?  Again, I can’t really put myself into other people’s shoes.  This most commonly comes up when trying to think of how to recruit new players to games that I’ve been invested in for years.  But, that’s another topic.

If I were limited to around a thousand cards, which is like some starters and two booster boxes, what could I do?  I’d imagine there would be a lot of problems with V:TES at that level, mostly because of the need for wake effects, pool gain (blood conversion if you are reading Darby’s latest offerings over at Inferior Babble), and certain staples that might not come in the particular precons I started with (or I was using starters from the pre-precon sets).

By the way, the starter box + x2 booster box level is the level of investment that I think of when I think of the concept of when I enjoy a CCG most.

V:TES is hard on new players due to no card limits – a primary reason why I would always have card limits, in fact prefer 3cl in my CCGs.  At the same time, it’s a game where a lot of decks can win.

How many?

I’m curious.  There’s probably a tool out there to do simulated booster packs for this game, but I don’t have it.  Precons are easy, I even have a bunch unopened, nevermind how easy it is to rebuild them.  However, precons have largely been missing far too many essential cards, being light on the most important things of quality masters and wakes, while also often having bizarrely unplayable crypts.

In reality, I have enough unopened product or unorganized product (never sorted boosters I opened) that I can run a number of experiments on what it’s like to have a modest collection.

So, I guess I should.

Mind of Chaos

I got to thinking about what disciplines I’ve won tournament wins and which I haven’t, again.  But, that’s really a better topic for after some more tournaments since it wasn’t that long ago (in “tournament time”) … well, actually, it was over three years ago I posted this.  The main problem with doing another look is that I don’t think anything has changed.

So, as unexciting as that is as a topic, I got to thinking about Dementation.  I feel bad about not doing more things with Dementation.  Unfortunately, the game doesn’t want people to do interesting things with Dementation.  Where Dominate’s “other” cards include things like Graverobbing (free), Obedience (free), Mind Rape (not free but not bad), Chain of Command (possibly free), Hall of Hades’ Court (kind of silly), Mesmerize (free), Dementation’s “other” cards include the likes of:  Mind of a Child (3 blood), Mind of a Killer (incredibly confusing), Prison of the Mind (3 blood), Sleep of Reason (2 blood), and some pretty weak effects.

Some like Blessing of Chaos, so I’ll give it a pass, even though every time I’ve tried to run it in a deck, I just ended up discarding it or getting ousted before I could discard it.  Lunatic Eruption is something I’ve had success with.  And, Dementation has far fewer cards than Dominate, as well as being a far less common discipline.

Still, Dementation is a perfect example of the tyranny of good great cards.  Kindred Spirits, Madman’s Quill, cardless bleed with mods, or, to a lesser extent, The Call all drive out inferior plays.  Being of an economics background, where you get Gresham’s Law, the “bad money drives out good” theory, I always enjoyed using the phrase “good cards squeeze out bad” to explain why so many CCG cards never see play or only see play in the most limited (and often poorly conceived) cases.

I do have some tech I want to try at some point, but we have such a limited tournament schedule that getting around to everything takes so darn long.  In the meantime, there are ideas that should be pursued just in the name of variety and discovery, no matter how discouraging they seem in the face of “Why don’t I just bleed?”

For one thing Dive into Madness is a bleed play, for another, the sort of decks I can think of where I’d want to try something effective are not the sort of decks I’m all that enthralled with playing, so while I’ve not done much with Dive, I doubt I’ll try very hard.

With more ways to untap, such as Danse Macabre, The Haunting and Total Insanity might suck less, but I tried multiple times to do something with these, and they … sucked.  Even worse, they sucked in a really tedious, let’s all hate this game, kind of way.

How many Tremere have Dementation?

I see.  I see.  I see nothing.

This is important.  For most, I figure they will realize why, but who knows what others think?  Obviously, paying 3 blood for a card is rather exorbitant.  Sometimes, like The Kiss of Ra, you understand the cost.  Sometimes, like Burning Wrath, you are probably playing a bad card that seems worth it.  Sometimes, you can easily recoup the cost, like Awe for 3 into Voter Cap.  Dementators are not a bunch known for great blood gain, though if you try hard enough and make your deck suck enough at winning, any deck can gain copious amounts of blood.

A common fix to costly cards is to play a Tremere.  Only need one to Magic of the Smith out The Ankara Citadel.  I did have a rather ridiculous Dragos deck that ran Dementation and Ankara.  It had nutpuncheritis.

Now, we do have Winchester Mansion to Magic out to prevent some really sketchy plays, like skill cards or Clan Impersonation.  Anyway, why so much focus on Ankara?  Mind of a Child and Prison of the Mind are two cards that beg to be played for half, rounded down, cost.

Mind of a Child has been around forever.  It’s awful.  It’s annoying, but what does it have to do with winning?  Again, there are more ways to untap in the game, even if we just look at more vampires with Fortitude.  Cardano has been around forever, but Gerald Windham is way cooler.  Either way, could also do things like run Restoration or Aaron’s Feeding Razor to recoup blood, nevermind Perfectionist.  Una is, of course, a natural untapping machine, so the focus here would be to gain blood to avoid the dreaded Clan Impersonation plan.  Then, Zillah’s Tears, Danse Macabre, Black Hand, etc. can all help !Malks with untapping to not waste actions on losing plays, with The Hungry Coyote helping with costs.

Same could be said for any expensive card, like the next one I’ll talk about, so why care about Mind of a Child?  Because if you can get enough of them out fast enough, you can murder decks.  What sort of decks?  Not really sure, but I’d be inclined to believe that high cap decks would be the best victims since you can only turn so many vampires into children.  Even then, is this worthwhile?  Isn’t this still a make someone lose but not win play?  Probably.  A lot of setup to justify the cost with a matchup based result that may just mess up a table, where Dementation already has plays to counter other decks, like Touch of Clarity and Wrong and Crosswise.

Prison of the Mind has not been around forever.  Besides being a way to nuke Imbued, if an unreliable one as React with Conviction kills it, the superior is never going away, unlike Mind of a Child being something that also requires defending.  At 1 blood, the inferior is hot.  The superior is always mean, if also not something that helps with winning the same way Kindred Spirits helps with winning, maybe not helping at all.  Even at 2 blood (Perfectionist?), the inferior is akin to Set’s Curse, which I think is entirely playable, though Serpentis is was actually far more of a control discipline than Dementation.

Giving -Stealth and -Intercept isn’t what we would call synergistic, but it does mean that it’s likely to annoy every victim.  But, to what end?  Why play defensive Dementation?  Minus intercept is an offensive play against Bowl-ers and whoever, but so is another stealth card.  Many a Dementation deck is happy to have stealth bleed at the table, so the -Stealth is more of an … antiannoying play?  Not like vote decks are necessarily going to be stopped that hard – stealth vote won’t care much unless you are a wall and nonstealth vote should have enough dudes without the card to do their thing.  Stops casual hunting, which is so totally worth an action and 3 blood that isn’t “bleed for 2 and gain a pool”.  Just not sure how much it will matter, but allies are annoying enough to run some odd plays.

Mind of a Killer may be confusing, but confusing cards have been known to be far better than people think.  This is, at least, free, so why not?  I wouldn’t be inclined to play it on my own guys, even though that’s an option, but like Lunatic Eruption, it might just be a nice disruptive effect that actually helps with winning, if not as much as bleeding would.  The two could be combined, but that’s not actually a combo, since the way the card reads, the burn clause from combat would not trigger the damage.  Sure, that makes it more of an “I play on my dudes” play, but how often do I want to go to so much effort just to get +1 Strength for an action?  Better seemingly is just to Lunatic one dude and Killer a different dude to encourage excessive amounts of combat, though that can also be achieved with just more Lunatic Eruptions.  Though(!), I’ve found that casual Eruptions are better than dedicated Eruptions.

Sleep of Reason is one of those things that I think sounds far better than it is at first blush.  Sleep of Reason is also one of those things that I think takes far too much effort to build around.  Yet, it’s really not that hard a card to play and has a powerful effect.  It’s one of those toolbox plays I can see, even in a nontoolboxy deck, just because it will be more likely to be relevant than casual Graverobbing is.  Play a couple of Storage Annexes and a couple of these and randomly torp people out of nowhere.  Gee, that sounds a lot like Coma.  Except, everyone knows about Coma, Coma costs more, Coma often means you are sending yourself to torpor, Coma is far less likely to land (dodge, combat ends, Immortal Grapple, maneuver), and I’ve just explained why Coma sucks (outside of Dragos, The Eye of Hazimel decks, yeah).

While the play of Sleep can be critical, the threat of it, like say ditching The Kiss of Ra or Walk of Flame or Hidden Lurker early, might be worth enough to justify it when it is a dead draw.  Discard Sleep, bleed like a Dementator, watch someone not Villein/Blood Doll down to 1.

Of course, when playing questionable tactics/strategies, one must be disciplined.  A deck full of Killers, Eruptions, Sleeps, et al is going to cripple someone in all likelihood and lose like crazy.  I’ve seen a Mind of a Child deck, and it performed vastly better when all it did was discard them and bleed.  Four to six slots is more along the lines of what I can see for a deck even built with some of these cards in mind.  Otherwise, sacrificing too many slots on good stuff plays and plays that do something VPwise.

Hosers Or Poseurs

Why don’t people play Scourge of the Enochians?

Is that the sum of my thinking?  No, but it is the most frequent question I have when I see Embrace decks win.

To be fair, I have seen winnie decks run Not to Be in addition to The Uncoiling more recently.  Still, I see people run 1 or 2 cap support vampires like it’s not a thing.  Let’s take a look at some winning decks.

2012

http://thelasombra.com/decks/twd.htm#2012secqggs

38 players.  Five 1 or 2 caps with no ability to olden.  No counter for Scourge.  Does the deck need the dorks to function?  Hardly.  However, in a world full of Enochians, that same lack of need for the support staff means a reasonable decision to go to 3.  That slows the deck some.  Maybe enough that it doesn’t win, in Enoch World.  In “oh, right Scourge exists” world, picking off the chumps might also have led to defeatitis.

http://thelasombra.com/decks/twd.htm#2012eotdhf

20 players.  Only five 1 caps, but five crypt slots were spent on Shalmath, so a deck much more dependent upon dork support.  Even an Inceptor.

http://thelasombra.com/decks/twd.htm#2012ecqfcqlf

23 players.  Three 2 caps and 19 babies.  Does run The Uncoiling but not Not to Be.

Don’t feel inclined to pull out the decks from smaller tournaments.  Yes, limiting to 20+ tournaments runs into sample size issues, but it also focuses on results of tournaments of significant size.

Of course, since we don’t know the lists of every deck or the results of every game, it’s entirely possible that Scourge did see meaningful play in these events.  Much of my surprise is from local play, including when the LA players make it up.  Sure, The Barrenness deck running around uses it, but that’s a special case.  I’m more wondering why I don’t see it in 75% of the decks people play.

Besides people hating winnies and besides crimping babymaker decks, who doesn’t want to grief Tupdogs?  Who doesn’t want to pick off first turn Anarch Converts?  Who doesn’t despise Chandler Hungerford playing Dual Form … uh, yeah, who?

Do I always play it?  Nah.  Ignoring decks that actually put out dorks, I may make a judgment call that my deck already griefs Tupdogs or whatever.  Then, hardly any of my decks get played in tournaments – I’m willing to not try to win in casual play to preserve slots for funner plays.  Actually, this philosophy applies to tournament play just as much.

Does it hit often?  Nah.  I rarely see Scourge impact.  This is one of the primary reasons hoser cards are insipid.  They rarely hose anything.  Yet, the reason one plays it is that when it does hose something, it obliterates the deck.  (Another problem with hosers is that most hosers don’t obliterate hard enough, so might as well play good cards.)

As much as I love me casual Tupdogs, Tupdog decks must be hosed out of existence.  It’s just righteous and pure.  Speaking of Tupdogs, Tension in the Ranks and Gran Madre, people?  Gran Madre is offensive in how annoying it is in any deck, and it was relatively scarce for a long time in these parts, but now that folks have them, it’s an odd choice that people don’t play such an annoying card that does more than devastate Tupdogs.  Tension is a more limited play, but where Fame drops all of the time, Tension should be dropping out of more decks, obviously especially combat decks, for the “I hate Tupdogs” and “I hate Nocturns” impact.

What is a hoser?

This comes up often, but I made a comment recently about my changing argument on the subject.  Defining a hoser is a pain.  Isn’t a Blood Doll a hoser against pool loss?  Isn’t Life in the City a hoser against blood denial?

The first thing, which I think all right-thinking people can agree on, is that a hoser is an answer.  Though, even that’s a bit of a problem.  Let’s say card ABC wins you the game if your opponent (assume two-player for simplicity) plays deck MNO.  That seems kind of hoserish in that the card is narrow and is dependent upon the play of something else, but if you win just by playing it, it’s kind of a threat more than an answer.  For instance, Magic has Karma.  Karma does damage based on number of Swamps you control.  That doesn’t stop the player playing Black, that just causes him to lose (eventually, normally).

In the above paragraph, we do get more that a hoser is a card that depends upon the opponent(s) playing some card or type of card.  What about some type of strategy?  Well, conveniently, this helps differentiate hosers from other effects.  Bringing out lots of 1 caps and Computer Hacking is based on specific cards, so Ancilla Empowerment or Scourge of the Enochians are hosers.  Bleeding is not dependent upon particular card play, so Deflection, Telepathic Counter, pool gain are not hosers.  Rather, they are defenses.

There is some spectrum of defense to hoser or, if you buy the argument that hosers can also be threats and not just answers like Karma or Anarchist Uprising, offense to hoser.  Protected Resources is more of a defense to Archon Investigation’s hoserness.  Telepathic Counter may get slotted into a deck because you hate Night Moves/Spying Mission decks or Night Moves/Enticement decks, in which case it’s acting more like a hoser, but it’s so general in its defensive properties, I don’t know how it would be claimed a hoser.  Archon Investigation, meanwhile, ends up serving a metagame role as a defense against the fact that bleeding for a lot is way too easy in the game, but it’s function is hoserish as decks can normally avoid it, making it a poor defense outside of Anu decks.

Those, Too

The point wasn’t just to talk about Scourge.  Scourge was just the most blatant example of people not running the tools available to mess with decks they hate.  Another startling example is how little Imbued hate people run.

After Imbued came out and dominated the tournament scene until cards got banned, a ridiculous number of Imbued/ally hosers got made.  My list for most relevant in the close aftermath, obviously, more got made later, like Invoke Poison Glands:

Autonomic Mastery
Chair of Hades
Cobra Fangs
Hard Case [how many non-Imbued allies would lose stuff?]
Liquefy the Mortal Coil
Permanent Vacation
Prison of the Mind
Set’s Curse

How often do these see play?  Maybe in your metagame, you expect them.  I don’t expect any, though I’m quite fond of Set’s Curse as it also hoses winnies.  I’m more inclined to run Chair of Hades these days, requirements permitting, and I think about Cobra Fangs, maybe even slot them for decks I haven’t gotten around to pulling the cards for.

Then, during the Summer of Imbued dominance, in the first tournament I played at Week of Nightmares, I ran Mercy for Seth in my Harbinger vote deck.  And, yes, I’ve played in a tournament game where it went “Play Break the Code.  Discard Break the Code.  Discard Break the Code.” with three players in succession.  And, Theft of Vitae was all the rage before Memories of Mortality got banned.

On the other hand, what about Tenebrous Form and Entombment?  I’m not surprised by Entombment out of a deck that can play it.  I’m surprised by how rare it is.  Obtenebration just owns Imbued, even if Veil of Darkness is a counterownage for the Imbued.  Not that I see that anymore.

People whine about Imbued constantly, but if they aren’t playing the cards to hose them, why whine about it?  It’s like hating being bled for 5 at stealth and not running any bleed bounce or Archon Investigations.  Who’s to blame?

Sure, Prison of the Mind is a pretty ridiculous choice just to hate on Imbued.  It’s not like Dementation decks don’t already have an answer in the form of the “I bleed you with Kindred Spirits at a bunch of stealth and you can only Champion one of these bleeds before you die” strategy.  But, if your deck is screwed by Imbued, maybe try playing cards that eviscerate them.

Yet, I sympathize with the idea that loading a deck full of hosers to counter every annoying thing possible is not only counterproductive but unfun.  I don’t want to run Tranquility just to not get ‘schrecked and run The Diamond Thunderbolt to deal with Form of Corruption.  Nor do I have any appreciation of the Event war involving The Uncoiling and The Fourth Cycle versus all of the annoying Events in the game.

And, it’s also possible to metagame without hosers.  Carna + Theft was a common answer to Imbued and somehow doesn’t suck otherwise.  Anarchist Uprising, Ancilla Empowerment, and sort of Domain Challenge are ways to take counters out of the game in bunches, which is not just an anti-winnie play.

But, some things are a pain without a sweet, sweet hoser.  Like being inundated with 1 caps, even worse when the 1 caps have two superior disciplines, built in rush, replace themselves, and effortlessly hit for 3 agg that can’t be dodged or combat ended.

Scourge, my friends.  It’s not just a stain remover.  It’s a way of life.

Weak 2 – Ghoul Retainer

 

One would think Card of the Weak posts would be easy.  Pick a card, talk about it.  After all, when I build decks, I frequently pick a card and then think about all of the different things I can do with the card.

In practice, I find choosing a good card to talk about challenging for several reasons.  Before listing them, what is the point of highlighting these cards?  The point is to examine uses for rarely seen cards.  That’s not the same as identifying underrated cards, which is what I’ve said at least once was kind of what I was going for.  I don’t consider Laecanus underrated, for instance.  He’s bad.  But …

1. The card can’t be generally considered to be good.
2. The card has to have interesting features.  Eyes of the Dead may be weak, and you might come up with some convoluted idea for why to put it in a deck, e.g. it stacks with The Deadliest Sin for your Faithful Servant deck or crosstable stop diablerie deck, but I want something I can drone on and on about.
3. I have to be interested in droning on … em … talking about the card.

I justify #1 with Ghoul Retainer only having appeared in six tournament winning decks:  three Tariq decks; Tsunda No Secrets; weenie Auspex; Una.  As for #2 and #3, well, I did choose this for only the second entry in this “series”.

Here’s something I did with this card:

Deck Name:   Stuttering Bangs
Created By:  Samantha
Description: Burn opposing vampires with environmental Bombs and aggpoke.

Crypt: (12 cards, Min: 21, Max: 34, Avg: 7.08)
———————————————-
1  Steve Booth             CEL pot pre pro      5,  Brujah:3
2  Darrel Boyce            CEL OBF PRO          6,  Gangrel antitribu:2
2  Ellen Fence             aus CEL OBF PRO      8,  Gangrel antitribu:2, Bishop
1  Samantha                ani CEL OBF PRO tha  10, Gangrel antitribu:2, Bishop
1  Scarlet Carson O’Toole  pro CEL              4,  Gangrel antitribu:3
2  Zachary                 CEL for OBF PRO pre  7,  Gangrel antitribu:2
2  Miller Delmardigan      aus CEL PRE pro      8,  Toreador antitribu:2, Bishop
1  Marcellus               AUS CEL pro          8,  Toreador:2, Prince

Library: (90 cards)
——————-
Master (13 cards)
2  Blood Doll
1  Campground Hunting Ground
2  Fame
2  Gangrel Conspiracy
1  Hungry Coyote, The
5  Minion Tap

Action (9 cards)
7  Bum’s Rush
2  Sacrificial Lamb

Action Modifier (4 cards)
4  Cloak the Gathering

Combat (48 cards)
2  Amaranth
3  Bone Spur
3  Claws of the Dead
6  Disguised Weapon
6  Flash
9  Flesh of Marble
6  Pursuit
10 Stutter-Step
3  Wolf Claws

Retainer (4 cards)
4  Ghoul Retainer

Equipment (12 cards)
10 Bomb
2  Improvised Flamethrower

This deck is so old I had to find it in ELDB 3.1.  This deck is so old it doesn’t use my naming convention of beginning with the date …

This deck is so awful it’s, well, awful.  Not as awful as other decks.  More awful than many.  As an example, it’s kind of interesting in that it wasn’t Ghoul Retainer that was the reason for the deck.  The impetus for building the deck was trying to find a reason to play with Stutter-Step.  May wonder why that’s so hard.  Another possible Card of the Weak entry.  Way back in the long, long ago, before Bats and Crows came to rule the magic land of The Kingdom of Kombat, there were decks that played a card known as Immortal Grapple.  Immortal Grapple, by unnecessary rule, stopped Stutter-Step.

But, but.  Stutter-Step is so aggpokey or Torn Signposty and acts as defense when IG isn’t played.  Well, yes, it is just that amazing, amazing enough to show up in eight decks in the TWDA.  The greater issue is how many close substitutes we get, nevermind that the Torn Signposty deck may like playing IG itself.  Sideslip for defense against pokeyness.  Additional strikes that came with maneuver, press, dodge, another additional strike.

I seem to have gotten completely off track in talking about Ghoul Retainer.  So, there I was, less than an hour ago or so, looking at retainers.  I started looking at vampires with retainer cost reduction.  I did a search for Jibade decks.  I found one.  And, it was a Ghoul Retainer deck.

There are many, many cards in CCGs that are “only good in play” cards.  What does that mean?  It means that the card seems perfectly respectable, perhaps even strong, when someone has gotten it into play, but the card is actually quite bad because the likelihood of seeing it in play (or seeing it in play without the player getting ousted because of it) is so low.  Cards in this camp tend to be ones with high costs.  If the high cost doesn’t cripple you or the game goes long past the point you played the card or whatever, you’re gold.

Ghoul Retainer has a high cost, a very high cost.  Would the card be too good at 1 pool?  Can’t see how.  Why the card even costs pool is less than clear.  At 2 blood, would it be costed better?  Probably.  It is interesting that a pool cost on a retainer means that an ally can employ it.

Then, there are the other costs.  The action to get a retainer may not be all that great a cost, otherwise people would never bother with retainers at all outside of plays like Pack Alpha.  Still, 2 pool and an action.  Then, what does the card really do for you?  Somewhat better in combat by itself, only shining when you have weapons to hand off to it.  Weapons tend to cost more pool, making the combo quite expensive, though each of the cards, at least, is probably playable on its own, so it isn’t combo-dependent.  However, we are still talking about a combat support play.  There’s a reason I play J.S. and Tasha a lot and combat support plays not so much.

Yet, the point is to find uses.  I see a decent amount of deck design space with Ghoul Retainer in mind.  While I have little interest in Tariq decks or Una decks, we can see a couple of other uses that people have gone with.  In some cases, I see Ghoul Retainer being tech.  Environmental damage, especially environmental aggro, may be very hard to deal with, though given the prevalence of Carrion Crows these days, one assumes a certain level of metagaming against environmental damage.  Outside the Hourglass annoyance would be another reason.

Note that Ghoul Retainers can be smited.  In fact, Aid from Bats, Aid from Bats is a real threat for removing the overcosted retainer.  This is why we meta against Animalism or wish we could meta against Animalism with DIs and Botched Moves and not having room for such.

Take this deck:

Deck Name:   120310  Jibade Retainer
Created By:  Jibade
Description:

Crypt: (12 cards, Min: 29, Max: 36, Avg: 8.08)
———————————————-
2  Eugene                             AUS CEL FOR PRE8  Toreador
4  Jibade el-Bahrawi                  aus PRE FOR DEM CEL9  Ishtarri
2  Joshua Tarnopolski                 CEL obf pot PRE7  Brujah
1  Kateline Nadasdy                   AUS CEL PRE    7  Toreador
2  Klaus Konrecht                     for pot AUS CEL PRE8  Toreador Antitribu
1  Muhandis                           for qui AUS CEL PRE8  Toreador

Library: (80 cards)
——————-
Master (15 cards)
2  Dreams of the Sphinx
1  Giant`s Blood
1  Heidelberg Castle, Germany
2  Life in the City
1  Lilith`s Blessing
1  Rack, The
7  Villein

Action (6 cards)
5  Enchant Kindred
1  Entrancement

Action Modifier (10 cards)
3  Aire of Elation
3  Forced March
3  Freak Drive
1  Perfect Paragon

Reaction (16 cards)
4  Eyes of Argus
6  On the Qui Vive
6  Telepathic Misdirection

Combat (13 cards)
3  Concealed Weapon
8  Sideslip
2  Taste of Vitae

Ally (2 cards)
1  Carlton Van Wyk (Hunter)
1  Mylan Horseed (Goblin)

Retainer (7 cards)
4  Ghoul Retainer
1  Malajit Chandramouli
1  Mr. Winthrop
1  Robert Carter

Equipment (7 cards)
1  Bowl of Convergence
4  Desert Eagle
1  Ivory Bow
1  Spike-Thrower

Combo (4 cards)
4  Resist Earth`s Grasp

I put this together while writing this post.  It was not fun to cut it down to 80 cards.  What I like a lot about this deck is that there are plenty of card choice changes I could make, even changing the basic nature of the deck by, say, ripping out Auspex.  (Auspex was not an original plan for a Jibade and Joshua retainer deck.)

Is anything about this deck reliable?  Not so much.  I chose not to be a slave to my theme by ensuring the Ghoul Retainer beatdown.  Nor did I run a bunch of other random retainers or, since they both discount on allies as well, a bunch of random allies for support as the deck would get too far afield from its plan.  I could cut good stuff to make room for theme, but there is always the idea of trying to build a serious deck, if not a powerful one.  Direct Intervention to mess with Carrion Crows … the idea that the game has gone to the point where this would be the primary reason to run DI is amusing I suppose … and other plays would require some annoying cut.  I’d rather the deck were 75 cards, but then, I might be getting too focused.  Though, switching fatties with disciplines for smaller minions could see freeing up slots used on discipline-requiring cards, while also likely killing my defensive abilities.

This is derivative of the deck I found while searching for Jibade decks.  Certainly, there are plenty of other possibilities with Ghoul Retainers, if not trying to recreate Stuttering Bangs.  A range control deck could easily see Gas-Powered Chainsaw for close range beatings without a big cost.  Improvised Flamethrower is a favorite as environmental agg is kind of a pain to deal with and burning vampires becomes so much easier.  Ivory Bow, by itself, becomes much more of a threat with Ghoul Retainer.  Decks with substantial pool gain or defenses can ignore trying to use cost reducing plays like the vampires I went with.

I went with my vampires dodging, but a perfectly reasonable way to go is with agghandsors with the Ghoul Retainer acting much like Carrion Crows.  Now, Carrion Crows is so much better, but Ghoul Retainer can be a smaller card slot investment and can support all of those useless vampires that lack ANI.

3/4 Berkeley Tourney

Brandon and I drive up, get to Berkeley before 10AM, find a good parking place, and are left wondering what to do about food.  We wander around a bit and settle on a breakfast/lunch coffee/tea place.  Run into Ian and his friend while eating, then head over to Games of Berkeley.

I repeatedly made the comment about how I was amazed that more people weren’t familiar with Games of Berkeley’s basement.  We used to run Babylon 5 tournaments down there over a decade ago.  A lot about the store was the same, but the downstairs was a lot better.  It was better lit, there were more gaming areas, so it felt less like a dungeon with many employee only exits, it might have smelled better than back in the day.  Still little air flow, so it got warm and stuffy.

Anyway, folks tried to contact everyone under the Sun to get to a tenth player since, as everyone knows, the only prize that actually matters in V:TES tournaments is the TWDA.  Didn’t work.  I blame East Bay people.  I used to care more about this sort of thing.  Another sign of how much less gravitas I put on the game is that it didn’t really bother me.

Round 1

Eric (Ayo Igoli & Ishtarri) -> Kenneth (Shamblers) -> Ian L. (Ezmerelda 1st Tradition) -> Alex CH (Tzimisce wall)

This was horrid seating for me, knowing very well that Alex’s not new deck was just going to be an endless succession of combat cards supported by easily being able to block my actions.  Meanwhile, if Kenneth went forward with Shamblers, the two combat cards in my deck weren’t going to stop me from being minionless.

What was funny was that my Pushing the Limit was in my opening hand.  Combined with no one yet having seen the deck, it was unclear what the deck did.  I Info Highway first turn, put 5 on Ezmerelda.  Turn two, Rake.  I couldn’t really decide who I wanted out first.  Rake was the best disguise but less useful than either Gilbert Duane who was the only crypt option for my primary discipline – Obfuscate – or Ezmerelda who could be Villeined early.

Alex and I had virtually no interaction in the game.  I didn’t want to take easily blocked actions, so usually acted only when Gilbert could stealth me.  What little bleeding I did was bounced.  My votes kept getting discarded, though I did Banish Le Dinh Tho.  His first two discards were On the Qui Vive and Pushing the Limit.  Eric didn’t have a whole lot of impact in the game, getting largely beaten up by Alex and losing a Famous Ayo Igoli to Breath of the Dragon, which made no sense to me.

If I had to say why I’ve had more success than a lot of other locals, it would mostly be due to my interest in playing until the game is over.  Another sign of fewer gravitasons in my sphere of influence is that I really stopped caring about this game.  Kenneth Famed me and rather than tap Dreams before entering combat with a Shambler, I let the Shambler come for Gilbert and drop him.  Not that it really mattered.  The game was inevitably between Alex and Kenneth and it was all a matter of how the combats went between them.

Round 2

Ian T. (Armin Brenner Coalition) -> Lev (Barrenness) -> Alex O. (Nahum PRE anarch) -> Ian L.

Much chagrin by Ian T. over Lev’s deck as Barrenness shuts down his deck’s babymaking and nukes the weenies.  Funny thing was that Scourge of the Enochians came down early and it only ever blew up one of Ian’s dorks.

More screwed was Alex.  He tried Pentex Subversion on The unnamed, but I burned it as it was way too early.  The unnamed quickly got Enkil Cog and double bled a lot, which Alex had limited defense against, relying more on Scobax for bleed reduction than Auspex for good bleed defense.

Armin did Banish The unnamed, which helped a little.  Some of my cool plays got killed with Evil Eye.  But, I essentially had no predator, so I amassed Princes and blew up Ezmerelda a few times.  I played a fairly early First Tradition, which mostly hurt Alex, but it still seemed okay.  I later dropped multiple First Traditions to lock Ian and Lev out of the game and had enough offense to finish Lev off, though it was disturbingly close.

The five player timed out as the first round five player timed out.

Finals

Ian T. and Kenneth were fourth and fifth.  Brandon chose to sit downstream of Kenneth.  I didn’t want anything to do with either Kenneth or Brandon, but I’d rather be upstream of Kenneth and didn’t fear being downstream of Ian, so I inserted between Ian and Kenneth.  Alex liked how impotent my deck was offensively and wanted to be away from Brandon and sat between Kenneth and me, though I would have also considered being between the two Ians as he would have been away from both other combat decks and didn’t really have anything to fear from either of us.

Ian T. -> Ian L. -> Alex CH -> Kenneth -> Brandon (ANI rush)

My first two turns I discard Fear of Mekhet.  Therefore, I cannot lose if you define losing as not discarding two Fear of Mekhet on one’s first two turns.

Ian T. did not have a good game.  His first vampire was a !Gangrel with inferior Presence, so no superior Enchant Kindred, no Unexpected Coalition, only one vote.  All of my vampires have 2 votes.  I brought out Volker on turn 2 and Greger on turn 4, not having any acceleration to bring out Ezmerelda for a few turns after.

While the best of the games, if not the best for me, there still wasn’t a whole lot going on.  Brandon couldn’t care less about Shamblers, which he could nuke at will.  Ian had little to do that mattered as I didn’t feel much threatened.  Alex had the most meaningful interaction for much of the game.

Alex managed to get low on pool as most of his masters got Washed away by Kenneth and me.  I was doing okay with Papillon to restore my guys who got emptied, such as Ezmerelda who got hit for nine in one combat by Velya and Rotschrecked another time.  I untapped with an empty Ezmerelda and considered whether to pop her or whether to lunge.  I figured lunging made more sense since there was so little chance of my deck getting through Alex’s normally.

I fail.  I fail a couple of other times as well, having bleeds of three from Greger, his Camera Phone, and his Old Friends getting bounced.  Meanwhile, Brandon takes out Ian with Fame and bleeds, which tends to happen when you have no predator.  I suppose I should mention that I couldn’t pass votes much of the time as I allowed Ian to get Cardinal Benediction off and Alex had Meshenka and Velya, so Ian going out was interesting to me.  Brandon going out would have been better, in theory, removing Narrow Minds from play and giving Kenneth the ability to do stuff forward.

Instead, time limit drew near and Brandon finally destroyed my board and bled me out.

Oh well.  I do have a few things to say about my deck.

Deck Name:   110626  Ezmerelda Tradition
Created By:  Ezmerelda

Crypt: (12 cards, Min: 23, Max: 44, Avg: 8.25)
———————————————-
1  Calebros                           ANI obf pot    5  Nosferatu
5  Ezmerelda                          ANI CHI dom FOR PRE tha11 Ravnos
1  Gilbert Duane                      AUS DOM OBF    7  Malkavian
1  Greger Anderssen                   AUS dom OBF pro7  Malkavian
1  Murat                              OBF POT ser    7  Nosferatu
1  Nikolaus Vermeulen                 ani for obf POT7  Nosferatu
1  Rake                               aus cel pot PRE6  Brujah
1  Volker                             CEL pot        5  Brujah

Library: (75 cards)
——————-
Master (21 cards)
3  Dreams of the Sphinx
2  Fear of Mekhet
1  Giant`s Blood
1  Heidelberg Castle, Germany
2  Information Highway
1  Papillon
7  Villein
4  Wash

Action Modifier (16 cards)
3  Change of Target
6  Cloak the Gathering
1  Forgotten Labyrinth
3  Old Friends
3  Veil the Legions

Political Action (15 cards)
3  Banishment
1  Domain Challenge
7  First Tradition: The Masquerade, The
3  Kine Resources Contested
1  Neonate Breach

Reaction (13 cards)
6  Deflection
2  On the Qui Vive
5  Second Tradition: Domain, The

Combat (2 cards)
1  Dodge
1  Pushing the Limit

Ally (2 cards)
1  Carlton Van Wyk (Hunter)
1  Mylan Horseed (Goblin)

Equipment (2 cards)
2  Camera Phone

Combo (4 cards)
4  Swallowed by the Night

First, I never played a KRC all day.  The deck is probably offense shy, anyway, since I need to violate people while First Tradition is in play, but it’s no wonder that I felt like I couldn’t really hurt folks (ignoring the whole wall deck as prey two rounds thing).

Second, I still don’t have a great idea how to use First Tradition in this deck.  In two games, I didn’t even try putting it into play, fearing that it only helped others more than me.  Yet, those two games were the two games I lost.  And, the deck chokes horribly if it just discards them.

Third, there was a third thing, but I forgot.  I guess I could say that the crypt could be less silly as the Brujahs’ main value seemed to be in confusing people rather than causing pool loss.

Lack of Parity Shifts?  That was intentional.  I considered at the last minute putting some into this deck I designed in June, but then, I remembered how boring Parity Shift is.

Deck does need changing.  If it doesn’t play First Tradition, it fails conceptually/strategically, and it’s not very good at playing First Tradition.  Not that I’m much of a fan of First Tradition since the whole point of the card is to limit interaction – that may be good, but it’s antifun.

Alternatives To Fun

My original intent was to focus on an aspect of V:TES – you know, that game I theoretically play and haven’t said much of anything about for weeks – with this post.

But, I read tomorrow’s Magic article by lead developer Zac Hill and started thinking about something else, then started thinking about rolling everything together since it all ties into pondering what makes games fun.

The V:TES part has to do with a common problem I run into when building decks on paper.  I create a lot of concept decks that are more akin, sometimes, to others’ tournament decks and, in other cases, try to prove a point about the game.  More specifically, the decks I’m talking about are very focused, unlike a lot of the decks I prefer to play.

And, that’s the problem.  There are some ideas I very much am curious about in terms of how well they would work, but the point of playing games is to have fun, and I don’t project that a lot of these decks will be fun to play in the setting – tournament play – that they are intended to be played in.  I suppose if I played a lot of tournaments, it would be fine to try more of these experiments, but tournament play is sufficiently scarce that I want to play something that will interest me throughout a day and not decrease the enjoyment of others.

Examples?  Combo.  I actually want to see how a Turbo Baron deck plays out, for instance.  I’m no great fan of combo in the first place, but it’s counterproductive not to examine such things.  Vicious or metagamey stealth bleed.  While I actually like stealth bleed, I don’t see how I can make the game fun for others by playing good stealth bleed decks, including ones that would be good because they abuse the metagame, such as masterkiller decks.

Meanwhile, crafting the fun deck for tournament play requires some thought.  The first part being what I’d actually enjoy playing, which is not a constant.  The second part is making sure that it achieves the low threshold of viability that I talk about often.  Probably not all that surprising that when you aren’t trying for good, it’s not superhard to achieve bad.  The third part is being memorable, more so to my opponents than to myself.  That memorability may be achievable with a modicum of cards or may require a more developed angle.

As an example of a deck that probably hit #1 and #2 and intended to hit #3 but likely failed, I had my Sea Pirates deck.  There were two primary elements to the deck:  I have never won a tournament playing Protean; Restoration should be better than I have long thought it is.  But, neither Protean nor Restoration nor the combination is distinctive enough to gain the all important “cool points” that any real deckbuilder is looking for.

Meanwhile, in our December qualifier, I played a !Nos deck that actually *gasp* rushed.  It arguably hit #2 and might have hit #3 only because people don’t expect me to play serious combat, but it utterly failed at #1.  Sure, it wasn’t a pure rush deck, a deck archetype I tend to despise, but any sort of rush requires way too many decisions I don’t enjoy making in tournament play.

So, to wrap up a bit about my V:TES decks so that I can move on to addressing some elements of Zac’s article, I have a bunch of decks across many years that I have never put together because, while they may be interesting scientifically, they strike me as unfun.

While I’m writing this, I haven’t actually finished his article.  But, there are so many things that could be commented upon, I’ll go through the ones I want to, in order.

Feeling

A central point to the article is explaining why people game.  People game to feel something.  Now, if you know about Timmy, Johnny, and Spike, you know that words like experiencing something are used to differentiate the psychographic profiles.  Still, it seems intuitively obvious that the reason to play games is for fun and that fun is a feeling.

It’s this feeling that ties the article into what I talk about above with decks.  Sure, I can play a really good stealth bleed deck.  But, that’s boring.  Where’s the challenge?  Winning a tournament?  Been there, done that … and with some really sketchy decks.  Win a major?  A continental championship?  Besides how rare it is for me to play those, the feeling of achievement in the game wouldn’t be nearly as high playing a boring deck as playing a non-boring deck.

Every once in a while, I play FreeCell.  I also play a lot of solitaire with an actual deck of cards while I watch TV, but FreeCell is a good example, here.  There’s a reason that when I play FreeCell I think in terms of 100 or 200 game sets.  Winning any single game of FreeCell is so pathetically easy that it provides no feeling of achievement.  It’s the ability to concentrate over the course of hundreds of individually trivial games, to grind, that is being tested.  Overcoming that lapse in concentration is the achievement and seeing the 100% win rate over hundreds of games is the payoff that a 100% win rate over a few dozen doesn’t provide.  I’d imagine that poker is like this for professionals – the achievement isn’t one big hand which might have been luck or bad play by an opponent but grinding other players out due to superior play.

Flow

I’m one of those people who despises Madness of the Bard.  That may seem a bit odd when you consider how many joke decks I build for CCGs.  But, maybe we can sort out this paradox by looking at the three elements of the flow experience:  clear goals, rigidly defined rules of engagement, and the potential for measured improvement in the context of those goals and rules.

I have learned, at least to some degree, that playing contrary to the goals of a game ruins the play experience for everyone.  Madness of the Bard does actually relate to the goal in the game of eliminating opponents’ pool, so why do I find it so offensive?  Because it’s a separate game.  I don’t actually care a whole lot about what it does to pool totals.  Anyone trying to play to the card, for whatever reason, is engaging in a poetry contest, not playing a card game.

Meanwhile, many of my joke decks are jokes in that they play around with people’s expectations, not jokes in that they are opposed to a plan of winning.  My Minbari Intrigue deck in the pre-Shadows days was trying to win, it was just trying to win with an awful strategy and with awful cards.  My Dance, Dance Revolution deck, currently built, can win … as substandard as Wind Dance is as a combat play.  I don’t think I make a lot of joke decks that make no effort to be viable.  I do, however, end up with a fair number of decks intended for humor that tried to be viable and failed.  The result ends up being the same, and it’s not a good thing to screw up games for others with such decks.  I could see someone arguing that the Minbari Intrigue deck was non-viable; I certainly don’t remember it doing anything productive.  But, sometimes, you can’t tell until you go to play the deck.  I’ve built decks that I thought would be competitive, that were built to try something productive, and that failed miserably.

Fiero

Fiero addresses more precisely why I hate easy wins.  I’m not terribly clear on why anyone else is in favor of easy wins, and fiero would suggest that they shouldn’t be, but it’s entirely possible that what I think is an easy win is perceived as more challenging by someone else.

Anyway.  When I talk about not enjoying winning in and of itself, it’s very possibly due to the level of fiero that is provided.  I take pride in all of the V:TES tournament wins I can think of off the top of my head because I felt challenged in every event.  In truth, I can’t really think of any CCG tournament win where I didn’t feel challenged.  On the other hand, there have been tons and tons of individual games, whether CCG or boardgame or whatever competitive game, where I felt no satisfaction from winning.  Any game where I get handed victory feels hollow.

Oh, I think I may have thought of an example of something that was competitive, if not a tournament:  the Prophecies League that V:TES did, now many years ago.  I won the first two games.  Won the next two games.  Nine weeks later or whatever, when it ended, nobody else had more than three wins.  I vaguely recall individual games where I might have gotten the game handed to me, but, more importantly, the overall experience wasn’t all that satisfying.  I even would skip playing for a week hoping someone would make some progress catching up, only to eventually end up winning on my efforts through week two.  A huge reason the other participants didn’t make it a challenge was that they didn’t make any real effort to metagame.  The league rules were utterly brutal to the unprepared and, since I got to choose one of the rules every week for the entire event, I kept choosing rules I thought made for interesting deckbuilding decisions, rules that lent themselves to building very odd decks.  That proved unfierotastic when people didn’t take the rules into account.

The End

Zac mentions how Magic is flowriffic because there’s always a correct decision.  Um, I won’t try arguing with that because I grief on Magic enough and it’s essentially right, anyway.  The important bit is that games fail when you don’t know whether your decision mattered.

I don’t like El Grande.  I’m a strategist, of what level I don’t really know, but I do know that I’m a bad tactician.  El Grande is far too tactical for me.  I have no idea whether my early game decisions to forego short term points will pay off because hammering leaders is expected.  This lack of understanding the payoff deprives me of any joy in making decisions earlier, then, later, the game may be so out of hand that there’s no joy in the later game decisions, either.

By the way, if anyone was curious as to why I suck so bad at jobhunting, some of it has to do with not knowing the payoff of my decisions.  Probably goes even further than that.  From a flow perspective, I don’t clearly understand the goal, since I don’t know specifically what job I want, I don’t have any sense of rigidly defined rules of engagement, but, on the other hand, I do have a sense of improvement in terms of more interviews, better interviews, and offers.

Qualifier – 2011

Weekend ended up being too busy to put thoughts down on the qualifier and other V:TES games.  Reading some other tournament reports, I don’t know if it’s that I never went into the same level of detail that others do or that I’ve lost interest in going into as much detail.  Oh well.  Highlights, then.

Event 1 (whatever it was called)

Round 1:

Andy (Cavalier Malk SB) -> Joel E. (EuroBrujah) -> Ian T. (Samedi RC) -> Joel M. (Week of Nightmares) -> Ian L. (Newcromancy)

24 players!!  Really?!?  So bizarre that we are setting attendance records.  Guess mid-December is a pretty good time for tournaments.

The Ian and Joel show was okay.  An interesting mix of somewhat notable with completely non-notable.  On turn two, I play cards, including Govern (bleed) and Spectral Div.  I never bleed like this early, but I wanted to cycle out of Summon Soul and burning the two blood seemed okay.  My overwhelming aggression was only likely to confuse my opponents.

Didn’t last long.  I played one card in the next hour.

I chose to be handjammed with two wakes and two bounce and a complete lack of masters.  In fact, I didn’t draw a master until the turn that my predator ousted me.  But, before that happened, I was in pretty good shape.  My grandprey did a good job of defending with Second Traditions, though we weren’t entirely sure why he didn’t rush backwards with Theo Bell.  Beast joined the ready region eventually.  Andy got beaten up a bit.  While I didn’t bounce much as JM tooled up with Tumnimos and whatnot, I didn’t get bounced much either, so Andy goes down to one pool and it looks like two easy VP for me, while having down little to nothing in the game.

Then, JM decides to oust me.  Andy bouncing a bleed back to me creates the kill situation, which was reasonable as I would have killed him on my turn.  It wasn’t terribly disappointing to fail to get VPs, it wasn’t like I deserved any.  The deck had a lot of masters and I didn’t bother digging, for instance.

No, what was disappointing was that I didn’t play anything interesting in the game, except, maybe, one Transfusion, which without a Path in play, wasn’t terribly meaningful.  An interesting strategic and tactical game but boring from a card interaction standpoint.

JM went on to easily get other VPs.  IT had an interesting lack of stealth in his Samedi (best stealth clan in the game) deck.  Looked like he could get JM into a non-playing position, but a Sensory Dep on The Baron was limiting and JM gained a bunch of pool off of blood farming.

Round 2:

Ian -> Matt (Pre/Obf w/ Events) -> Dan (Gargoyle bleed) -> Joel M. -> Joe (Toreador B&B)

Much more interesting for me.  I had complete control over my predator’s Toreador guns bruise and bleed deck with my early draw of two Promise of 1528s.  I played masters.  The Path of Bone never got burnt.  I wondered if my prey had Parity Shift for the longest time.  I expected his early Fortschritt Library into Break the Code to lead to The Rising, but it never hit the table.  I didn’t get the point of the event cards.

After Chair of Hades-ing Carlton, I stealth bleed Matt out by drawing into a second Govern to enable me to bleed for 12 when he had 11 pool.  While I didn’t have bounce in my hand, it was funny how the table correctly decided that my predator bleeding me when my prey was tapped out with 11 pool was a terrible thing to do.

Dan fell quickly as his deck wasn’t holding up well under the pressure of bleeds for 3 at stealth and votes for 3.  With only three bleed cards left in my library, which was maybe 25 cards tall, I couldn’t get Joel.  TW and 2.5 VPs was .5 VPs short of a tie for fifth place, so not getting one more VP was huge, potentially large.  I did consider letting Dan try to oust Joel, but I didn’t think I could ever get Joe.

Pickup Interlude:

Yeah, I really don’t have as much interest in explaining more details about games, in particular what was going on with others.

I played Ani/Cel/For, 4-cl, Jyhad/DS/AH-only.  We realized halfway in the game that my Quinton McDonnell had the only vote on the table.  My Ass, long range combat predator couldn’t really do anything to me due to my deck being full of combat cards.  On the other hand, my lack of ousting power and inability to get more permacept in play meant my Week of Nightmares prey could do whatever he wanted.

Actually, the Rom Gypsy gave him two VPs.  I had a Raven Spy early, but I couldn’t deal with two permanent stealth between RG and Fortune Teller Shop.  What was weird about this game, besides Andrei Puxon and Quinton McDonnell being combat beasts, was my prey playing Week of Nightmares when I had Andrei and Kostantin.  Kostantin got Sensory Depped, stole a Camera Phone, Freaked.  Andrei took the Camera Phone to become a three bleeder.  How to allocate Week counters was oddly wonderful with people moving them to my Andrei as well as my prey.  I kept getting SensDepped.

Long after we should have called the game and long after the Week ended, my prey conceded the last two VPs as I was gaining three pool a turn and only losing two, while doing things to me was costing my prey.  My plan was to bloat enough to bring out Lucretia, since everyone knows that’s full of win, and have two vamps not SensDepped.

Qualifier:

Ian (!Nos w/ Dominate) -> Matt (Imbued Beretta rush) -> Mike Z. (Giovanni Embraces) -> Alex (Ass w/ Dominate)

Only 21 players, heh.  Four player tables, for the most part, not as enthralling.

My game got warped horribly by the Imbued.  Because I knew that Dragon’s Breath Rounds were coming, I had to play around being tooled by Berettas.  There’s actually a lot of details I could mention about this game, but one can fill in the backwards beatdowns to stop Badr and Ur-Shulgi from bleeding me too much and whatnot.

I use Dreams at one point and my end of turn discards are Preternatural Strength, Torn Signpost, and Villein.  I had to hold on to every Swallowed by the Night for the maneuvers to make sure I could land against the Imbued and, then, started drawing Immortal Grapples, which I choked on as I couldn’t discard those either.  By playing virtually the whole game with just Julio Martinez and Mateusz, I had little ousting energy.  I kept being reluctant to bring up Gustaphe Brunnelle as I kept getting bounced to and my 4-cl deck didn’t have a whole lot of bounce.  Or, more importantly, it didn’t have a lot of wakes.  I knew my deck was wake poor, especially given the crypt size.

So, after Alex got ousted, we settled into a painful three-way of Mike not wanting to do anything into the face of my combat and my Underbridge Stray who had intercept from The Unmasking, Matt getting nowhere against Mike, and my punking an Imbued once in a while only to have it pop back up.  I actually hoped Matt would oust Mike, as I figured I could do more in a heads up game with my combat.  We timed out.  I’m mostly surprised Matt didn’t use the Imbued with built in rush to rush Mike more, but whatever.  My inability to oust a rush Imbued deck was just sad.

Round 2:

Brad (Ventrue grinder) -> Ian -> Brandon (Trem) -> Dennis (Diversion rush) -> A.J. (fat Tzimisce)

I’d say the main takeaway for me from this game is that I played it impatiently.  I played it like I see a lot of other people play.  Brad played “my game” – doing nothing until his inevitable victory.  A.J. was just impotent in the face of damage prevent.  I did bring out Gustaphe who promptly got Preternatural Strength, so at one point, Dennis and I had reduced Brandon to one ready minion, which became three ready minions, two of which were empty.  I took a low percentage shot at ousting Brandon only to have Conditioning bounced.  I was stuck on actions as I was spending so much time trying to contain Brandon, so I discarded Seal of Veddartha at one point and kept not putting Mylan into play.

Just impatient.  Though, I wasn’t at all clear how to prevent Brandon from getting 2 VPs as A.J. never got strong.  In fact, what hurt me a lot was that A.J. kept having bleeds of two bounced to me that I had to eat, which let Brad exactly oust me with a Govern when Brandon was on the ropes.

Just evidence that I suck at playing with combat decks.  First time I haven’t qualified in our local qualifier in my memory.  Really going downhill as a player – the way it should be.

Sunday

Sunday was all about pickup games with the guys up from Los Angeles.

Matt (!Gangrel vote) -> Mike Z. (Giovanni w/ Embraces) -> Ian (Dance, Dance, Revolution) -> Dennis (Journal of Hrorsh) -> Brandon (New Nos)

I am constantly amazed at how much pool damage I can do with Constant Revolution.  My opening game sucked as I had four Anarch Converts in my crypt draw.  Dennis did his Mr. Noir gains 25 pool or whatever thing when Brandon hadn’t even brought out a dude yet.

Eventually, Dennis Hostile Takeovers my Kurt Strauss and Matt gives up on the game by ousting himself with a bid of nine.  The numerous global effects of Judgment: Camarilla Segregation (Brandon), Constant Revolution (me), Anarch Revolt (me, again), even Smiling Jack (yup, me) just didn’t make the game comfortable for folks.  I’m fairly sure I could have stopped Dennis’s second round of gaining massive pool with Power of All on Freak Drive, but I was spending too much time thinking about Filchware’s and whether to stop Journal or not to actually play Power of All.

James (Corrupt Construction) -> Robert (!Toreador w/ War Ghouls) -> Ian (Blessed Resilience) -> Dennis (Eternal Mask IC) -> Matt (Trochomancy)

Matt has two Trochomancys DIed in the same turn (prey and predator).  I manage three intercept to block Ancient Influence and Matt bouncing backwards finishes off Dennis.  Robert has to go through nine crypt cards to get to a Tzimisce to play a War Ghoul.  James withdraws after sucking down a number of Trochomancys with his Corrupt Construction deck … still gets out an 18-life CC at one point.

With four possible Force of Will bleeds, I only need two to oust Matt.  Robert screws around in the endgame by bleeding for zero with a War Ghoul, so with four vampires in my ash heap, zero controlled, and zero uncontrolled, I The Parthenon, Blessed Resilience, hunt, bleed for three with Force of Will, and Call of the Hungry Dead past Robert’s second War Ghoul.  While tainted by the nonsensical War Ghoul bleed, I find ousting someone with five vampires and two War Ghouls while having no controlled or uncontrolled vampires to be highly amusing.

Dennis (Sylvie Helgon) -> James (Selma & Trap/UP) -> Ian (Nos anarch bleed) -> Brandon (Ariadne Garou) -> Mike C. (Ur-Shulgi Contract)

I figure that James’s deck is Trap/UP when March is his first dork.  Selma Anathema-ing Sylvie is just horrendous.  Even more worser is James not playing Blood Hunt on her but on my Anarch Convert, which lets Mike gain tons of pool.  Brandon offends Dennis by looking to rush Sylvie with a Garou to prevent Mike from gaining, not being aware that you have to reduce to zero in combat.  What would have been funny is Dennis’s comment about rushing my Blood Hunted Convert with Sylvie to give me pool, but alas.

Brandon knows my deck, so he rushes backwards with Garou.  I finally play a Kindred Intelligence with this deck.  I finally bring out Josef von Bauren, the only vamp above 5-cap.  I don’t do much to impact the game and get ousted.

Decks (any Path of Lilith is really Lilith’s Blessing):

Deck Name:   111127  Newcromancy
Created By:  Baldesar

Crypt: (12 cards, Min: 4, Max: 32, Avg: 4.66)
———————————————
2  Baldesar Rossellini                aus for nec DOM POT8  Giovanni
1  Don Michael Antonio Giovanni       DOM NEC POT    7  Giovanni
1  Gualtiero Ghiberti                 cel pot tha DOM NEC7  Giovanni
1  Guillaume Giovanni                 CEL DOM NEC POT obt9  Giovanni
1  Lia Milliner                       dom nec        3  Giovanni
1  Primo Giovanni                     domnec pot     4  Giovanni
1  Raphaela Giovanni                  DOM NEC pot pre6  Giovanni
4  Tupdog                             POT VIS        1  Gargoyle

Library: (80 cards)
——————-
Master (20 cards)
1  Barrens, The
2  Blood Doll
1  Dis Pater
1  Heidelberg Castle, Germany
1  Necromancy
3  Path of Bone, The
1  Path of Lilith, The
1  Powerbase: Cape Verde
1  Rack, The
4  Vessel
2  Villein
1  WMRH Talk Radio
1  Wall Street Night, Financial Newspaper

Action (11 cards)
2  Chair of Hades
6  Govern the Unaligned
1  Haunt
1  Pandora`s Whisper
1  Summon Soul

Action Modifier (14 cards)
5  Call of the Hungry Dead
2  Conditioning
1  Foreshadowing Destruction
5  Transfusion
1  Trochomancy

Reaction (13 cards)
6  Deflection
1  Fillip
6  On the Qui Vive

Combat (8 cards)
2  Mercy for Seth
6  Spiritual Intervention

Ally (1 cards)
1  Leonardo, Mortician

Retainer (2 cards)
2  Masquer (Wraith)

Equipment (2 cards)
1  Gran Madre di Dio, Italy
1  Sargon Fragment, The

Combo (9 cards)
3  Promise of 1528
6  Spectral Divination

Not hugely interesting.  Metagamed for Imbued.  Really only delivered on the Promise of 1528 (I’ve already done the Transfusion thing often enough to know how tasty it is).

Deck Name:   110903  AniCelFor  4cl
Created By:  Andrei Puxon

Crypt: (12 cards, Min: 23, Max: 39, Avg: 8)
——————————————-
3  Andrei Puxon                       ani cel chi for5  Ravnos
3  Kostantin                          ANI cel CHI dom FOR9  Ravnos
3  Lucretia                           ANI aus cel for OBF pot10 Nosferatu
3  Quinton McDonnell                  ani cel FOR pro8  Gangrel

Library: (75 cards)
——————-
Master (15 cards)
1  Animalism
1  Barrens, The
4  Blood Doll
1  Celerity
1  Fortitude
1  Giant`s Blood
1  Information Highway
3  Minion Tap
1  Park Hunting Ground
1  Rack, The

Action (2 cards)
2  Restoration

Action Modifier (5 cards)
4  Freak Drive
1  Kiss of Ra, The

Reaction (12 cards)
4  Cats` Guidance
4  Rat`s Warning
4  Wake with Evening`s Freshness

Combat (27 cards)
2  Canine Horde
4  Flash
2  Hidden Strength
2  Indomitability
2  Psyche!
4  Sideslip
2  Skin of Rock
3  Skin of Steel
4  Taste of Vitae
2  Unflinching Persistence

Retainer (9 cards)
1  J. S. Simmons, Esq.
1  Mr. Winthrop
2  Murder of Crows
4  Raven Spy
1  Tasha Morgan

Equipment (5 cards)
4  .44 Magnum
1  Ivory Bow

The J/DS/AH restriction is to fit in better with the Pleasanton crowd that I haven’t played with in ages.  This deck has been entertaining, if really, really slow.

Deck Name:   111210  antiNos Qualifier Perfect
Created By:  Lucian, The Perfect

Crypt: (12 cards, Min: 14, Max: 37, Avg: 6.91)
———————————————-
2  Gustaphe Brunnelle                 obf ANI DOM POT8  Nosferatu
1  Harold Tanner                      ani dom obf POT6  Nosferatu
1  Joseph Cambridge                   ani dom obf POT6  Nosferatu Antitribu
2  Julio Martinez                     ANI DOM nec OBF POT9  Nosferatu Antitribu
1  Lucian                             ANI AUS DOM OBF POT PRE 11 Guruhi
1  Mateusz Gryzbowsky                 ANI OBF POT    8  Nosferatu Antitribu
2  Tarbaby Jack                       dom ser ANI OBF POT8  Nosferatu Antitribu
2  Tupdog                             POT VIS        1  Gargoyle

Library: (80 cards)
——————-
Master (13 cards)
1  Archon Investigation
1  Barrens, The
1  Direct Intervention
1  Dreams of the Sphinx
1  Information Highway
3  Life in the City
1  Nosferatu Kingdom
4  Villein

Action (12 cards)
1  Bum`s Rush
4  Deep Song
4  Govern the Unaligned
1  Harass
1  Preternatural Strength
1  Sense Death

Action Modifier (4 cards)
2  Conditioning
1  Into Thin Air
1  Spying Mission

Reaction (14 cards)
3  Cats` Guidance
1  Confusion of the Eye
4  Deflection
4  On the Qui Vive
1  Redirection
1  Sense the Savage Way

Combat (24 cards)
1  Canine Horde
4  Carrion Crows
1  Drawing Out the Beast
4  Immortal Grapple
2  Slam
4  Taste of Vitae
1  Terror Frenzy
2  Thrown Gate
4  Torn Signpost
1  Vanish from the Mind`s Eye

Ally (3 cards)
1  Carlton Van Wyk (Hunter)
1  Mylan Horseed (Goblin)
1  Underbridge Stray

Retainer (1 cards)
1  Mr. Winthrop

Equipment (2 cards)
1  Ivory Bow
1  Seal of Veddartha

Combo (7 cards)
1  Hide the Mind
2  Murmur of the False Will
4  Swallowed by the Night

More wakes.  Made me sad Lucian never tabled.  I’ll have to build more Lucian focused decks.

Deck Name:   110709  Dance, Dance, Revolution
Created By:  Sarah Cobbler

Crypt: (12 cards, Min: 4, Max: 21, Avg: 3.25)
———————————————
4  Anarch Convert                     none           1  Caitiff
1  Brooke                             dom tha        3  Tremere Antitribu
1  Hannigan                           AUS dom THA    5  Tremere Antitribu
1  Ignatius                           aus dom tha    4  Tremere
1  Jing Wei                           dom tha        3  Tremere
1  Kurt Strauss                       aus DOM tha    5  Tremere Antitribu
1  Merrill Molitor                    aus dom THA    5  Tremere
1  Reverend Blackwood                 DOM obf THA    6  Tremere Antitribu
1  Sarah Cobbler                      dom THA        4  Tremere

Library: (75 cards)
——————-
Master (20 cards)
2  Anarch Revolt
1  Barrens, The
4  Blood Doll
1  Dominate
2  Dreams of the Sphinx
1  Path of Lilith, The
1  Powerbase: Montreal
1  Rack, The
1  Rotschreck
5  Smiling Jack, The Anarch
1  Thaumaturgy

Action (7 cards)
5  Constant Revolution
2  Govern the Unaligned

Action Modifier (5 cards)
3  Conditioning
2  Mirror Walk

Reaction (22 cards)
9  Deflection
8  On the Qui Vive
2  Power of All
1  Redirection
2  Scry the Hearthstone

Combat (15 cards)
2  Burst of Sunlight
1  Diversion
1  Walk of Flame
1  Weather Control
10 Wind Dance

Ally (4 cards)
2  Carlton Van Wyk (Hunter)
1  Mylan Horseed (Goblin)
1  Nephandus (Mage)

Retainer (1 cards)
1  Charnas the Imp

Equipment (1 cards)
1  Bowl of Convergence

Will have to change this deck as I want to play it again.  So many things I didn’t see in that game.

Deck Name:   110918  Blessed Resilience
Created By:  Macoute

Crypt: (12 cards, Min: 25, Max: 32, Avg: 7.25)
———————————————-
3  Babalawo Alafin                    ani AUS FOR NEC7  Harbingers of Skulls
3  Macoute                            FOR obf NEC thn6  Samedi
3  Mordechai Ben-Nun                  ANI AUS FOR NEC8  Harbingers of Skulls
3  Morlock                            FOR NEC THN obf8  Samedi

Library: (90 cards)
——————-
Master (26 cards)
4  Blessed Resilience
1  Heidelberg Castle, Germany
4  Life in the City
1  Parthenon, The
1  Path of Lilith, The
6  Storage Annex
6  Villein
3  Wider View

Action (18 cards)
9  Force of Will
1  Possession
5  Rapid Healing
3  Restoration

Action Modifier (27 cards)
4  Call of the Hungry Dead
8  Daring the Dawn
14 Freak Drive
1  Trochomancy

Reaction (14 cards)
7  On the Qui Vive
7  Telepathic Misdirection

Ally (1 cards)
1  Carlton Van Wyk (Hunter)

Combo (4 cards)
4  Spectral Divination

Man, I love the crypt for this deck – got the perfect draw of one of each, by the way, in that game.  Dennis strongly suggested adding about three Trochomancy.  There’s actually a lot of tweaks I could make now that I realize it’s not quite as kamikaze as I expected.  Still have won every game I’ve ever played playing HoS Force of Will …

Deck Name:   111119  Josef`s Army
Created By:  Toby

Crypt: (15 cards, Min: 4, Max: 32, Avg: 4.46)
———————————————
4  Anarch Convert                     none           1  Caitiff
1  Beetleman                          obf ANI        4  Nosferatu
1  Foureyes                           obf pot        3  Nosferatu
2  Jeremy Wix Wyzchovsky              ani obf pot    5  Nosferatu
2  Josef von Bauren                   cel ANI DEM OBF POT11 Nosferatu
1  Petra                              aus ANI OBF    5  Nosferatu
1  Ruxandra                           ani aus OBF    5  Nosferatu
1  Slag                               ani obf pot    4  Nosferatu
2  Toby                               ani obf pre    5  Nosferatu

Library: (75 cards)
——————-
Master (20 cards)
1  Barrens, The
4  Blood Doll
1  Dreams of the Sphinx
1  Heidelberg Castle, Germany
1  Labyrinth, The
2  Obfuscate
1  Path of Lilith, The
3  Perfectionist
4  Villein
2  Wider View

Action (9 cards)
4  Computer Hacking
1  Conceal
4  Kindred Intelligence

Action Modifier (16 cards)
4  Cloak the Gathering
2  Elder Impersonation
2  Faceless Night
1  Leverage
1  Monkey Wrench
4  Spying Mission
2  Veil the Legions

Reaction (12 cards)
4  Confusion of the Eye
2  Delaying Tactics
4  On the Qui Vive
2  Wake with Evening`s Freshness

Combat (8 cards)
4  Dodge
4  No Trace

Ally (1 cards)
1  Mylan Horseed (Goblin)

Retainer (3 cards)
1  J. S. Simmons, Esq.
1  Robert Carter
1  Tasha Morgan

Equipment (1 cards)
1  Camera Phone

Event (1 cards)
1  Scourge of the Enochians

Combo (4 cards)
4  Swallowed by the Night

Have already decided to cut two of the crypt.  I never gain advantage from playing 15.  I also identified the need for Fragment of the Book of Nod after the first time I played it, but I haven’t cared enough to make the change.  After all, I never get blocked, so I discard stealth constantly.