Gulf Coast Roast – Dallas

So, I can summarize how this trip compared to Lafayette.

I did much worse in results.  It wasn’t as enjoyable.  But, do those two things relate?  Perhaps.

It was still fun.

The travel logistics with Lafayette were involved.  The travel logistics here straightforward.  Chris, tournament organizer, picked me up from the airport.  The Uber back to the airport on Monday was l-o-o-o-ng.  I got to wondering if the chatty driver was messing with me.  But, my flight ended up delayed 1.5 hours, so spending a lot of time talking to a guy in the sign business was better spent than the time falling asleep waiting for plane to arrive.  In between, just walked from ABnB to J Gilligan’s and back, managing to miss any of the significant rain (and the hail).

I had Texas BBQ twice.  The burnt ends weren’t real burnt ends, which isn’t shocking when real burnt ends are from a fraction of the brisket.  They were also overcooked, but I liked them.  Sausage was good.  When I went back, I got ribs and brisket.  I got too much, it all started to eat the same as being rather soft.  They only had one BBQ sauce, and it was pretty boring after a while.  One of the reasons I don’t rate places on Yelp is that there’s nuance to reviews.  The food was done well.  It turned out to be twice as expensive as their website, which annoyed me.  Twice.  I would have been happier only going the one time.  Rest of food I got on trip was food, just not very notable other than the Cajun restaurant’s boudin link being really boring.

The main problem with this trip was lack of any break.  With Lafayette trip, after Norm picked me up from transit center, we had time to kill, so I got something like a nap.  Then, the pace was just kind of slower.  With this trip, I get up at 3:50AM Thursday morning and we are playing pick up games until like 1:50AM Friday morning with no break.  I can’t sleep in, and trying to go back to sleep in the mornings before heading out didn’t work, so I was horribly sleep deprived, jet lagged, and trying to control my allergies which get triggered by lack of sleep every day.  Day I got back, I just kept nodding off after I got home when I had work to do.  Tuesday was still recovering.

Why take so long to get to games?  Well, I kind of sucked.

In many pick up games and eight rounds of tournament play, I got one table win … playing someone else’s deck.  In fact, every time I borrowed a deck, I got at least one VP.

This just further reinforced the idea that I’m playing a different game from the people who are winning tournaments.  I’m still playing as if the past seven years of cards didn’t exist and I am playing in my state.  It’s like how at EC Berlin in 2017 I was a pitiful minnow (or whatever, I don’t know anything about nature) getting feasted upon by not-minnows.

I made significant mistakes.  Only one was obvious, but I feel like I played the last tournament pretty badly even though my deck played way differently than I expected, though maybe that’s because I was playing it wrong.

First tournament:

Rd1

Ian (nuToreador wallish) -> Dean (!Ventrue disciplines) -> Darby (Ravnos all forward) -> Norm (Banu Haqim) -> Joey (Banu Haqim)

So, my one clear obvious mistake, in that my prey also decided not to take the action and my predator didn’t and my grandpredator didn’t try with his one minion that could, was not removing Pentex from half of Norm’s minions.  Darby’s situation didn’t actually bother me a huge amount until the infamous, “not remove Pentex” round the table.

Given that he ripped through the prelim rounds, taking three Second Tradition decks in succession with Anathemas from two different players on his dudes, why wasn’t I more concerned?  Well, lack of experience with the build was some of it.  Then, there was how Dean’s ash heap was Governs, Conditioning, etc. with like one card that wasn’t plus bleed.  But, Dean didn’t go forward for a couple of turns before Darby started feasting upon Banu Haqim souls.

As Darby’s grandpredator, I got to play some cards.  For instance, to get my predator to show some respect, I burned his eight cap with Dragon’s Breath Rounds off of his rushing my prince with my not having a gun in play.  It’s almost like I don’t like being rushed or having to deal with obnoxious combat.

I Parity Shifted to give Norm and Joey each 1 pool, but it didn’t make any difference.  I wasn’t sure if it would.  I could have gotten more pool off of Voter Cap if the table was more inclined to appreciate my largesse.

Well, anyway, I had no ability to deal with Ravnos.  My only prince didn’t even have CEL for Psyche!.

Rd2

Devin (Lasombra blood denial) -> Clint (something that votes) -> Sidney (nuTzimisce) -> Darby!! -> Ian

Okay, I forgot that I made some other obvious mistakes.  I brought out a 4-cap.  That 4-cap lacked AUS and wasn’t a P/J.  So, I just reduced my pool by 4 to help Darby get 4 VPs.  I discarded a couple cards, but I only played one card before I was ousted.

Second tournament:

Rd1

Ian (Lasombra Pot Creation Rites) -> Dean (Aus/Dem/Obf) -> Joey (nuSalubri) -> Jon (Brandywine)

I thought this was going to go fast, at first, with Salubri being pretty good against Brandywine.  But, Dean’s deck was more toolboxy, and he kept things like Delaying Tactics when all my votes do is bloat.

Once the Brandywine Death Star was formed, I got ousted by Madness Network.  I had no ability to hurt her because I … chose poorly.  I was running close combat with only a splash of answers for ranged, and Brandywine had Shadow of the Beast.

Joey crumbled.  This game timed out.

Rd2

Oscar (Vlad Chameleon) -> Chris (Matasuntha) -> Clint (nuTzimisce) -> Sagan (Valkyrie) -> Ian

This was my sort of game.  Game.  Not tournament game.  This would have been an insanely fun casual game.

Oscar Chameleoned Clint crosstable.  Then, he did it again.  Oscar seemed strong, like pineapple.  Oscar Banished my first dude.  Clint played Scourge of the Enochians.  That I didn’t draw any Creation Rites until the game was destined to time out was little solace.  I also got agged by my predator, never bringing out more than two minions.

Then, the tidal action reversed.  Clint Graverobbed … BOTH … of his stolen minions.  Clint’s position actually seemed reasonable at a certain point.  I had virtually no sense of Chris’s game as we didn’t use the end of the tables so it was hard to see what was going on at the other end.

With one minion in torpor, I bled Oscar for 1 at 1 stealth and ousted him with 40 seconds left.

If this was a finals, this would have been like my perfect game.  Do nothing until my inevitable victory … without even playing the point of the deck.

Rd3

Preston (Sabbat? vote) -> Justin (Banu Haqim) -> Ian -> Mark J. (Banu Haqim) -> Adrian (midTzimisce)

Adrian got a VP after I rescued one of his two minions and one of Preston’s two minions.  Mark got Adrian, running out of time before I could rescue Justin’s minions for a third time.

I kept asking for time around the 1 hour mark as I wanted to unlock a personal achievement.  Yeah.  This is a problem.  Other people are doing winning.  I’m just trying to come up with amusing stories to share that aren’t amusing to people who care about results.

If I had won this game, that in the first hour of play, sandwiched by two Banu Haqim decks, I only got into one combat and, in that combat, the BH vampire did not steal any of my Lasombra’s blood, but my Lasombra stole two of the Banu Haqim’s blood, this run on sentence would be full of awesome.

If I had won this game, that in two hours of play, sandwiched by two Banu Haqim decks, where I don’t recall a single instance of having blood stolen from any of my vampires, whether Creation rites or any of my three titled Lasombra, this would make for an epic story.

My playing Shadow Step to set range, Dark Steel, IG, Roundhouse, and still coming up one damage short because of Rego Motum was not encouraging.  Mark did essentially run out of cards where I could have won the endgame with more time even with his .44, but it was too pathetic too late.  I did successfully diablerize one of his vampires to get a .44 and Heart, but my Graverobbing was blocked.

So, I really need to put in the cards that make rescuing cheaper as it seems like the only thing I really do to affect games …

Third tournament:

Rd1

Sidney (Matasuntha w/ nuGangrel) -> Ian (Samedi Ashur Tablets) -> Norm (sortanuGangrel) -> Kelly (Brandywine) -> Andi (Barons w/ Cel)

This was a cluster.  Kelly transferred for two turns, then Norm played Kaymakli Nightmares, so Kelly blocked some stuff before he died.  Andi and I both lacked predators.  Sidney just got a slow start, got his Convert Famed, and was more concerned about Norm than me.

I twice beat Sidney on Ashur Tablets.  Not so hard when the point of my deck is to play one any turn I want to play one and slowly edit my deck throughout the game while gaining pool off of the new Ascendance.  Another obvious mistake, I managed to screw up my transfers.  I think twice.  However, my deck gave me Camera Phone and stealth, so Reg just kept bleeding Norm for 3, while Norm didn’t bother blocking my Reanimated Corpse, so he was eating 5 a turn for a couple of turns.  All that early stealth was useful for ignoring my predator, as well.

So, I have a bunch of dudes with a bunch of blood and tons of pool, and the game collapses to the two-player as Andi calls three Reckless Agitations with two landing to take out Sidney.  I get Andi down to 3 pool …  Then, all my guys get torped as Andi’s deck finally draws into his intercept, and my Ivory Bow isn’t as good as his Celerity with .44.  He takes equipment from me.  I hang on until time runs out.  He might have gotten me if he could finish his turn.  I was just utterly crippled.

Ah, VTES.  Not Shadowfist swingy, but it’s a CCG.

Rd2

Sagan (nuNos) -> Clint (nuTzimisce) -> Andi -> Ian

Not unexpected.  I knew I was dead as I have no meaningful defense to Reckless Agitation.

Well, the theory is that I bloat off of Ashur Tablets.  I didn’t draw Ashur Tablets.  Nor did I draw a Villein.  I got a Sengir Dagger.  Later Gran Madre.  In this entire game, I never once got into combat being sandwiched by combat decks with my deck with more combat cards than stealth cards.  It’s my superpower.

I rescued Clint’s minions three times.  Well, he did get a VP after I was ousted as he and Sagan conspired to get Andi out of the game.

Yup, put cards in that reduce cost of rescuing (in terms of actions and/or blood).

Rd3

Ian -> Joey (nuSalubri) -> Preston (Beast Under Siege) -> Mark J. (Unmada Dabbler)

This was frustrating in that my prey and axe were doing things that set me up well for two VPs, but it didn’t help me.  I got a different draw, which is not surprising when my deck has lots of one-ofs and two-ofs.  Mark Revelationsed the only Deflection in my deck, which turned out fine for him, though I think the safer play was to just do anything to get Preston out of the game as Joey’s deck and my deck didn’t really hurt Mark’s.

I couldn’t burn a Madman’s Quill, so I got bled for a lot.  I think a mistake here was thinking that the deck plays differently than how it was conceived.  I thought my deck was only likely to get two dudes in play and hope I can oust people somehow that way.  I got four dudes in play, but I didn’t need the fourth one.  That was seven less pool that could have kept me in the game one more round, where maybe I get a VP.

Joey did yeoman’s work of getting the crap beat out of him over and over and still got Preston.  Mark cleaned up.

I played three decks that did the fight thing.  I chose badly to have two of those be close combat oriented.  Pretty much everyone’s opinion is that I need to stop playing jank, myself included.  The NAC last year was a data point for how my preferred deckbuilding style is overly self-punishing as I give myself very little opportunity to succeed and I’m just not better enough in play skill than my opponents to get away with that.

Lafayette was an illusion [sic] in that two of the finals I made I really didn’t belong.  Tables fell in ways that didn’t make much sense.  In six Gulf Coast Roast tournaments, the only finals I made where I felt like I deserved to be there was when playing new cards in a mostly serious deck (that did get off Machine Blitz).

What will I play at Origins?  Well, only about two months to find out.

As for pick up games, I brought two decks specifically to play against people who didn’t know me well and kept playing against people who didn’t need to see the decks.  I actually only took five pictures of games on the trip.  Took three of food to send to coworker.

I did play my Trophy deck in all of one game.  I played it badly, not clipping my prey’s wings when 75% of his minions were in torpor.  I held off on getting a couple of trophies early because there are 12 in the deck, and I had an easy mark.  Another dumb play.  I finally broke down and got my two trophies, though my Clan Respect choice wasn’t optimal.

I did have a Secure Haven. It got burned.

Here’s standard Guillaume deck I borrowed after first VP where just needed to draw one stealth for second VP.  If only there was a way to draw cards in a Guillaume deck.

Late Saturday night – Oscar left Sunday morning and Mark J. was borrowing his Ivan deck, I put Ivan down with Toreador w/ Obtenebration.  This was the casual deck I played by far the most as it was weirdly not useless.  Had no real oust plan, but it could wreck Mark’s Inside Dirt deck with all of the reduce, intercept.

Devin played my “autopilot” Baali of the Name 1.1 deck at the end of a night.  That was probably not wise.   I never got to play Baali of the Name 1.1 in a casual game.

Thanks to Chris for running and helping me get away from the airport and lending me his power decks.  Thanks to everyone who listened to this crackpot.  Thanks to Mark for arranging ABnB, Devin for shuttling folks and stuff and food.

I need to stop with the early morning flights.  They are harsh on me.  And, maybe, I’ll relearn how to build a normal deck that can oust people.

Gulf Coast Roast – Lafayette

Why didn’t I write this a week ago?

I was exhausted at the end of the trip.  As is typical when I get back from a vacation, besides needing a vacation, I needed to get caught up on things going on here.  I had the time but not the will.

So, I was working up until I took an Uber to the airport Wednesday.  Got into New Orleans Airport around 11:30PM.  I had chosen to stay at an airport hotel Wednesday and Monday under the theory that I’d use the airport shuttle and it be less “involved” than staying downtown.  Sure, I knew that meant Ubering between the hotel and New Orleans proper, but I don’t know what I don’t know.

Like, I didn’t know until close to my trip that the airport shuttle stopped running at 11PM.

I get into room at midnight.  I get up at 5AM to head out to downtown New Orleans around 6AM as people are wont to do.

To get my 7:40AM bus to Lafayette.  So, I get my first experience of the city – I had never been to Louisiana before – by sitting in the bus/train station for over an hour.

Manage to get to Lafayette and Norm picks me up.  We get food, where as a first timer at the chain, they gave me free stuff, which I found curious as to how much they endeavor to find out whether someone has never been to their chain.  I make the mistake of getting a burger, but I wanted something easy to eat.  I’ve got to stop getting burgers when I travel even if the best meal I’ve ever had in London was getting a burger and fries (yes, fries, this was an American style restaurant).  He does some miscellaneous tasks, and I get something of a short nap, then we are off to Vidor, Texas.

Casual play!!

Because we get in early, we go check out the ABnB.  It’s a shack, with storage units on the property and nothing else.  It was beautiful inside.  Modern, straight, I found out the towels were really soft.

We get to Kelly’s store.  Time for six games of VTES.  Of which, I played in five, as I needed some dinner.  Standard thing for me to do in the South and Midwest is to go get some Chinese/Asian food.  I asked them if I could change the protein on one of their dishes, and they did that.  Also, it was actually spicy.  There are Thai places in my hood, you know, the San Francisco Bay Area, where the food isn’t spicy.  Not nearly as spicy as the Thai food got on the Big Island, of course, but not like the “Thai” food I’ve gotten in Northwest Arkansas.

First game, I play Blood Brothers w/ Vic deck.  I only took seven decks as I knew I’d have to carry all my luggage around with me a significant amount.  Logistically, this reminded me in ways of my trip to Stockholm.  I had to figure out how to get from Arlanda to where Henrik was, had time to kill until he got off work so walked around Stockholm’s islands with all my stuff, learned how to ride the bus, learned how to take train to get closer to Arlanda then bus when I left.  Certainly not precisely the same.  But, you learn from doing.

Only two of my decks were new, and one was modified from an existing deck.  Something about having work to do but also leaving things to last minute.

Procrastination for the w- … finals!

I think Clint, my prey, was playing Brujah.  I weathered some fighting.  Chance, my predator, was playing something that also fought, I think, kind of hard to remember as many details more than a week later after playing something like 17 games and drinking lots of sugar.  Then, there was the usual play of Deep Ecology by …

I was an ineffectual predator.  For one thing, I couldn’t get the right combat cards in hand at the right time to threaten prey in combat.  Not even with this geniusy setup.

Block those D actions with the power of Fortitude.  Hey, quiet, there’s actually a Blood Brother in the picture.

Stuff happened, I got ousted.  I was shaking my head when Clint was doing something, and it wasn’t for the reason he thought.  I was just shaking my head at the power of new cards.

I think it was game two I sat out for spicy Chinese food, maybe it was game three.  Game two/three, played Transfusion.  Table was set up well for me, so I got … two VPs.

Yup, set up well.  Good ole Dracon as predator.  Fortunately, I was there to support my good buddy and rescued … it from torpor and put a blood on him with Transfusion.  Then, after he got Animalismed back into torpor again, rescued good ole Dracon again and put a blood on him.  Good thing Transfusion has some use to it, right?

After ousting prey, moved around corner of table.

Fame was on my guy in endgame, with Kelly having 1 pool.  But, he had Edge, and I couldn’t get through and he could.

I, then, borrowed a deck from Norm.  I had his Vampiric Disease deck mostly working.  Norm was my prey, of course.  Chance my predator with Lord Tremere and others.  I would try to get into combat with Lord Tremere, but so did his predator, so Chance’s game kind of sucked.  I lost control of my position as I wasn’t really doing things efficiently and Norm gained pool.  We talked about changes to the deck.  I found the rush combat angle clunky.  Something else seemed off to me, but I don’t remember.

Norm made the deck more blocky and played it in later game.  I borrowed Chance’s Arika deck in one of these games.  Got down to three players, and I kept putting 3 pool damage on my predator, playing Dementation bleed to preserve the three player, ousting Norm with bounce, having double Banishment to buy me enough time to take a game.  Ha ha!  Victory!  With someone else’s deck …

You know, I thought we played six games, with my playing five.  But, I also borrowed Kelly’s Trujah deck and played it badly.  This was the game of infinite (or at least five) Golcondas, including my Golcondaing myself and my prey’s Cock Robin.  I didn’t do well.  So, that’s five games of my playing.

But, I’m pretty sure it was in Vidor that I played Tzimisce SB.  I know I was on the end of the table and just kept bleeding.  I think this was last game as I was trying to play something quick so that we could get some sleep.  I stopped taking pictures … of any of my games, only have food pictures left from my trip as I send those to coworker.

I know I got at least one VP.  That deck just peters out.  It lacks control elements.  The original version – Living Lolita Loca – is still probably better even with the stuff that was relevant when it won and not so much now just because it can swarm and it’s faster.  But, any version of this at this point leaves me wanting more bloat and more control.

We use the shack.  I had leftover Chinese food that I put in fridge and even remembered to get when we left.  Norm and I drive back to Lafayette.  We go to daiquiri place and meet up with Brad and Chance.  I get a burger.  Well, in my defense, this is their main entree.  I was not thrilled.  I also asked for fries crunchy, like I asked at other place for country potatoes crunchy.  I know why I bother – I hate making french fries.  I want some place to exist that does french fries correctly, like the Foster City Red Robin did in the long, long ago.  Of course they weren’t crunchy.  Keep in mind, I don’t drink alcohol (outside of special occasion stuff), so I’m just drinking Dr. Pepper.  Also, the dark environment may be vampire conducive, but I kind of like natural light during the day.  Not direct sunlight – my Fortitude dots are low – but side light.

We get to Sanctuary early enough for some set up and to play a pickup game.  I play Transfusion again as some different players.  Chance is in this game.  I oust Oscar and don’t remember much else from this game.  Was there another pickup game?  I don’t know.  I know there was a smoothie coupon at stake in a game, and Kelly won it, though he passed it to me.

Smoothie time.  So, I go Mocha Madness.  Good.  I spend so much time talking, thinking, and researching food these days.  I don’t really care that much about what I eat.  I care way more about what I drink.  What form of flavored sugar, anyway.

There’s a tournament.

Rd1

Norm (Barons) -> Brad (Brujah) -> Oscar (Nos) -> Ian (Ravnos w/ PRE) -> James (Gangrel)

So, this was a cluster.  Norm and Brad contend all game that they survive.  They contest.  James puts nominal pressure.  Oscar brings out Sheldon, Nikolaus, later Selma.  He keeps dropping Army of Rats, Creeping Sabotage, and … far more importantly … Judgment: Camarilla Segregation.

I bring out Delizbieta.  I feel like I had someone else who got beat up and I sacced to a JCS, but I don’t remember.  I brought out Ezmerelda, who never acted, having to blow up to keep me alive on my unlock.  So, I bring out another Ezmerelda … who never acts, having to blow up to keep me alive on my unlock.  Time’s a wastin’.  Norm is contesting with both predator and prey.  I put Week of Nightmares in play and bleed for what I think was first time in game at around 1.5 hour mark.  James doesn’t block, and I bleed for four.

Judgment: Camarilla Segregation proceeds to oust James.  Then, Norm.  Eventually, Brad goes under from multiple.  Oscar and I play out endgame even though I can’t really do anything to him as I don’t have enough free stealth and I just keep losing pool every turn.  Now, admittedly, the techy play would have been to blow up Delizbieta so that I had no non-Camarilla vampires in play, but I don’t know if that makes any difference.  Oscar can just Creeping Sabotage more or whatever.

Yup, “do nothing until my inevitable victory” kicks in, again.  This also begins the meme of the weekend (for me).  Best card ever – J:CS does nothing but give me game wins.

Rd2

Devin (Beast rush) -> Ian -> Dean (Nocturns) -> [blanking, had same name as someone else, James?] (Banu Haqim) -> Oscar

Devin was busy removing Oscar’s offense.  Banu Haqim had predator and prey both under control.  This was an easy game for me.  Minimum 1 VP.  Pretty much just waiting to get two.  So, of course, I wait too long and Devin gets unleashed and prevents my inevitable victory.

Finals

No decisions for me.

Sidney (Malks) -> Ian -> Kelly (Brujah) -> Devin -> Chance (Ministry)

And, so begins the rushfest.  Kelly placed himself last to give himself time against the stealth bleeders.  We think other positions would have worked, too, but he won, so it was the right decision.  I got Ezmerelda out.  She kept me alive.  Delizbieta learned Dominate.  Maybe I got out Gabrin, maybe I only thought about it.  I wasn’t ever really a threat, though I did bounce to Kelly, which concerned him.  I just weathered the stealth bleed as Kelly and Devin killed Sidney, so I survived two SB decks as team rush eventually made Chance irrelevant.  Obviously, my Sensory Overload on one of Sidney’s Malks was … irrelevant as it just got beat up by rush.

As is usually the case, you don’t want to be my predator with bleed.  Sure, I can’t deal with a lot of decks forever.  Just long enough that you will either die to someone else or burn so many resources can’t finish off a table.  Well, okay, this is just in general.  Next tournament we see me not impacting my SB predator in any way.

I didn’t get bled out.  Kelly backousted me with Reckless Agitation.  Yup, yet again being backousted by vote or crosstabled by vote.  Prevents those inevitable victories.

Kelly wins.

Friday night, I stay at ABnB with Chance, Sidney, and James.  It’s not as nice inside as other place.  Creaky floors.  Well, whatever.  I was comfortable enough.

Saturday morning, I go with Sidney to Waffle House.  First time ever for me.  I do have a picture, but this is a gaming blog (in theory).

I liked my patty melt and hash browns better than the daiquiri place’s burger and fries.  End up at Sanctuary and I get Pomegranate Plunge.  It’s decent.

Were there pickup games?  I assume so.  I remember one other pickup game I played in and it was later.  I don’t remember borrowing any more decks.

Grand Prix

Rd1

Ian (8-cap vote) -> ?? (Toreador gun) -> Clay (Arika & friends) -> Devin (DoC Crescendo) -> Clint (Malks)

I didn’t last long.  Oh, I got to play a number of things, including masters that cost me pool.  My prey did something quite odd.  Discarded Concealed Weapon.  Discarded .44.  Put Haven Uncovered on one of my guys and … didn’t use it.  He did pretty much nothing in the game.  Might have helped me to get rushed to cycle out of combat ends.

Anyway, I could have done 4 pool damage to my predator early on.  It just seemed too early to go that route.  Well, since Clint swept, guess it wasn’t too early.  I could have reduced him to like 4 pool with votes, and Devin may have been able to finish him off.  Because what Devin didn’t have was Shattering Crescendoes to blow up Clint’s board.

Rd2

Felipe (Imbued) -> Chance (Banu Haqim) -> Ian -> Matt (Gangrel)

I so easily could have killed Felipe at any time.  I did hit him for 5 with one vote.  It was argued that I should have backousted Chance late in the game, and that would have worked better than my not being able to get Matt.  Even with the power of three stealth Zip Lines, too much intercept around me, plus I lost vote control to the Banu Haqim.

Game timed out with my demise being the “oh, well” demise.  I tried to collapse the table for one VP, but the table didn’t go for it.

Rd3

Norm (Gangrel) -> James (Gangrel) -> Seth (J:CS) -> [blanking] (Kiasyd) -> Ian

Norm Thinged a lot.  Seth perturbed my predator.  I still ended up getting bled for a lot eventually, though there was hardly any for a long time as I was too busy to block early and lost interest in blocking later.  May have been a bunch of combat in the Kiasyd deck.

I do the usual thing in this meta, I bring out Sarrasine Advanced and Katarina Kornfeld to be utterly immune to best card ever.  As is apparently always the case in the Gulf Coast, someone else’s J:CS ousts my prey and grandprey, and I make sure to have the right pool splashes to sweep, only bringing out Sobayifa when my pool is sufficient.

Finals

I had a choice of seating.  I probably made the wrong choice.  Impact of that choice affected Justin.  Justin wasn’t in a bad position.

Clint -> Kelly (Gangrel) -> Sidney (Ravnos) -> Ian -> Justin (Ghede)

Well, I did virtually nothing.  I called two votes.  Didn’t help that I played masters costing pool rather than just ones giving pool.  Sidney decided to blow up the table.  Dropped Club Illusion.  Kelly won again.

So, unlike other games where I could have started backousting but didn’t.  I did look to begin the process, but it was too late.  My view was that my best chance was to salmon, as all “good” vote decks want to do.  I meet my rush predator in an endgame where I think I have the advantage.  Gives him plenty of time to rip up everyone else to stop problematic ousts, while I suck enough bleeds while salmoning that I can’t just build up.

But, then, other people could have played differently, too.  I think Justin could have started by crosstabling Sidney.  Let Clint do some damage to Kelly before blowing up Clint rather than first rush going after Clint.  Kelly still gets Sidney but may put some resources into defending versus Malks.  I’m hanging around.  Maybe that’s a hard thing for Justin to manage as it takes him time to get Clint off the table.

Last night at ABnB.

Sunday, Chance and I get brunch, where I make the mistake of getting another burger, then head over to daiquiri place.  I get homemade chips.  Now, being from California, I asked what the chips were made of.  While I suspected (and mentioned) potatoes, there’s tortilla and more esoteric stuff that seemed unlikely like plantains.

The potato chips were okay.  Unevenly cooked so some were too soft, some too crunchy.  Get to locale, get Blueberry Bliss.  It is ridiculously hard to drink compared to the Mocha Madness.  Had to drink some of it without straw.

Rd1

Clay (Ariadne Amaranth) -> Sidney (Tzimisce bleed) -> Ian (Banu Haqim) -> Chance (Tha/Vic) -> Norm (Banu Haqim)

And, so begins the day of no Judgment: Camarilla Segregation.  I must of have cursed us.  Us being Norm and me who were playing same crypts for most part.  His deck is much more Second Traditiony, with Anathemas.  My deck is much more Flamethrower.

I Magic of the Smith and get out Ivory Bow.  I don’t have a lot of pool, but I can survive all of Sidney’s stuff.  I DI his first .44.  He eventually gets a .44.  I Machine Blitz, additional strike him into torpor.  What makes me sad is that Clay collapses.  Norm gets Sidney pretty easily as Sidney was trying to play with two minions and doesn’t have much pool.  I get Chance through a lot of low bleeds.

The endgame is rough.  I have Flamethrower to beat Marduk.  Fame on Norm’s guy doesn’t help me much as I’m lower on pool.  We eventually time out.

Rd2

Norm -> Ian -> Jason(?) [yeah, my brain has smoothed over the years] (Choir) -> [sigh] (Tupdog/Nephandus) -> Dean (!Ventrue)

I got 3 VPs.  I maybe could have had more.  I possibly could have had less, where Dean’s game was awful.  My prey was not in a strong position, but he got 2 VPs.  Yet again, Flamethrower wins combats, where I could afford to contest late in the game, too.  Almost timed out.

Banu Haqim combat is really dumb.  My Kalinda with 1 blood tries to hunt and Norm blocks, leading to us both doing three strikes and stealing 1 blood each time.

Finals

I probably choose poorly again.  Being Brad’s prey usually works really badly for me.  I just wanted to be away from Norm, though my recent history of trying to be crosstable from like decks has turned out really poorly for me.

Brad (Anarch unnamed & friends) -> Ian -> Matt (Nos) -> Justin (Clown Car) -> Norm

So, Norm wrecked Justin with extreme prejudice.  I kept hoping to collapse to three-player with Matt and Norm.  Was not to be.  I couldn’t really defend against Brad’s deck.  Sometimes, Anathema and rush are better than Flamethrower.  In the three-player I wasn’t involved in, Brad ousted Matt, which meant he won regardless as to whether Norm got him or not.

At some point, I played my Black Hand deck in a pickup, with Oscar as my prey with boring old Samedi Bear-Baiting.  I don’t know how anyone puts up with the mindnumbing nature of BH decks.  Never again.  I do think I should play more decks with engines.  Just not my CCG style in any CCG.  At some point, I got an al pastor burrito from a nearby food truck.  With both salsas, that was quite decent.

I also got another Mocha Madness.  Was making me cold in the finals.

Sunday night, Dean takes me to my Lafayette hotel.  That hotel was better than the airport hotel in Kenner.  I got breakfast at the hotel that was tolerable.  I considered walking to transit center for my bus back to New Orleans, but I found a reasonable Uber.

My bus ride back wasn’t as nice as my bus ride over – a lot more people.

I walk from bus station to Turkey and the Wolf, which was suggested by card floppers.  I pass by some architecture, but I’m already beat up and need to eat.  I get the fried bologna sandwich, where you could barely tell there was bologna given the chips and Russian dressing and big bread.  It was okay.  My crinkle cut fries were crunchy.  Still undercooked but a marked improvement.

I Uber to Kenner hotel.  And, lie down.  Talk to my friend for like 1.5 hours while lying in bed with TV on.  Next morning, walk over to Daisy Dukes Diner for hot sausage po boy and red beans.  It was fine.  Too much sausage.  After taking half of it off, the sandwich was in a good balance.  Eating the other sausage was not terribly interesting.  Have a pic of this, too.  Never had red beans as a dish before.  I amount it to chili, so I cease to care as I eat chili all of the time, like last night.

I *did* actually consider getting the fish basket to have seafood in Louisiana, New Orleans adjacent.  But, nah.

So, my stages in New Orleans itself consisted of:  sit in bus station, walk from bus station to hipster sandwich shop, eat at sandwich shop.

I can check Louisiana off as another state where I’ve done something of significance.  Still haven’t hit the halfway mark.

Thanks Norm for organizing, for shuttling me around, getting the ABnB, and putting up with my harping on the Normkiller that is Judgment: Camarilla Segregation.  Thanks Kelly for having us at your store Thursday, putting me in contact with Texans to stay with two nights, smoothie coupons.  Thanks Brad for smoothie coupons.  Thanks Chance and Sidney for driving me around and ABnB.  Thanks to Dean for taking me to other hotel.  Thanks to everyone else for making it a really great gaming trip.  It had been so long since I saw Devin, I didn’t recognize him immediately.  I recognized Oscar, of course, and we talked quite a bit.  Really nice to be able to talk and hang out with other players.

My games were really fun.  Even the tournament games.  Even getting blown off tables and cowardly/iniquitously being backousted while at 1 pool.

That was a lot of travel logistics to deal with.  Norm suggested other possibilities, but I had in mind the possibility of actually touristing in New Orleans, so I thought my plans made sense.

What am I forgetting?  I don’t see a reason to post decklists in this post, anyway.  I do have casual play pictures, so I should do a casual play report for a couple different events sandwiching this trip.

Origins 2023

I just skimmed through Origins 2021 post.  Very relevant in at least some ways.

Anyway, I played 13 card tournaments, 11 VTES tournaments this year.  There’s no way I’m remembering all of the things that entertained me.  I won’t even write about The Grandest Trick that occurred as the payoff is really for someone else to deliver.

I stayed with True Dungeon teammates, as did two North Carolinian teammates.  This enabled my actually attending all of Week of Nightmares and led to the weirdness of flying into the con and not renting a car but driving at least some on four different days.  Was interesting at times, had to tell myself to calm down and drive slower a lot as I never had to rush anywhere when I drove.  Drove two different vehicles.

They were all focused on Starship Horizons (Adventures).  I was (obviously) not.

Prior to Saturday, I had a bunch of stuff to deal with.  Work, car not starting, mother’s health all distracted from getting VTES decks built.  Shadowfist decks were easy as I only had to build two decks, one for Modern tournament, one a theme deck.  I built another and had some old decks in my one Shadowfist box.  I had no plan to play in the Classic tournament, but I wanted some backup for whatever.

I wrote up various decks.  Friday, I pulled the cards for 10 VTES decks, including throwing together a deck based on what was lying around in piles surrounding me.

Saturday morning flight was 7:15AM, so I was a wreck getting from Bay Area to Columbus.  I am increasingly realizing I’m too decrepit to have these early morning flights as they involve way too much lost sleep.  A host picks me up from airport.  We end up ordering in food for dinner.  I find out that mashers are mashed potatoes.

Hosts have four dogs.  I spend much of my vacation ttentionating the canines.

Sunday #1

I arranged with Jay that I’d drive to his place, and he would drive us to and from comicbook store for tournament.  I didn’t think about how it was Father’s Day as my life has never involved celebrating Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, or whatever.  This, at least, made more sense than what happened Monday.

I had a sense of what order to play decks in.  Play something I might replay later with some modifications as I might discover something with my 10 new decks to where I’d want to actually play a deck more than twice in my life.

I played Daughters Polaris Coach/Zip Line bleed with Concert Tours to pay for Polaris Coaches and bleed pump.  First round, don’t draw bleed stuff so do little before being eliminated.  Second round, don’t draw bleed until later but actually be bleedy for a bit before being eliminated.  Not feeling much from this deck.  I could have done vote instead or Shattering Crescendo, but I was trying to keep it simple when conceiving an updated take on this.  Just kind of dull.

I did play Art’s Traumatic Essence on The unnamed.  Lack of familiarity with the card meant it didn’t get removed.  I had to relook through my deck to even remember that.  I guess I should just run Crescendo more often to do something interesting.

Monday

Jay agreed to drive me to and from events on Juneteenth.  After he discovers how far to the North I am from downtown, we go with a plan of my figuring out transportation for other days (ignoring travel between tournament venues).  Very kind to drive me at all.

Game store, I go with Thing deck.  First time ever playing Thing (unless my mind has gone and I played someone else’s Thing deck sometime).  I had to break open packs to get my Things for this deck.  Lot of dumb things I had to do to get cards for my decks like hunt through lots of unsleeved cards to find things like VTES versions of Jyhad vampires.

I guess I did stuff.  Oh, not Thing in first round, at least not until it was too late to matter.  I did get a Jackal in one round or both rounds.  In both cases, needed my prey out of the way to get my permastealth.  Somehow, I didn’t manage to oust anyone in either round.  Did survive a fair amount in second round when it wasn’t looking good … this sentence is meaningless.  I played VTES.  I enjoyed it.  I can’t recall doing anything all that cool.  Shape Mastery-ed something, which got me to thinking about Shape Mastery in the current meta.

Got a Barq’s and got BBQ from City BBQ.  BBQ was not great.  Maybe I oversauced it.  I would not get the sausage again, which wasn’t cut.

Jay drives us to Biergarten.  The tables are small.

Three straight nights (well, expected three) of Gemüt Biergarten with expecting to get back to sleep headquarters late at night meant playing all of the fast decks.  Fast to lose, anyway.

I went with less bad on Monday, so it was Madman’s Quill time.  First round bleed out my prey.  Whoa.  What’s going on here?  What’s going on is a joke that took much of the week to pay off due to how it was observed that my prey might have been the only one to ever be ousted by ole Ian (of course not technically true, but I’ve been playing since 1996 and more prey than not have been secure in their knowledge that at least their predator wasn’t going to oust them).

I got two VPs through the power of dropping Madman’s Quill on The unnamed and my grandprey not getting his star vampire until so late in the game that he was irrelevant.  Kelly S. was my grandpredator just recursing Banishments.  I mention this detail because it has some relevance to later in the week.  I did Sudden three of my prey’s masters to stop him from bringing out a second minion.  I did not Sudden any of Kelly’s plays.  I did Touch of Clarity some stuff.

Well, two VPs is more than zero by old math.

First round got fast start with The Call.  Second round played some chumps with Mark as my prey, Karl his, Brad his, Jay his.  Did not get The Calls to accelerate.  Put some pressure on Mark, but not enough.  Didn’t draw bunch of Suddens early.

Jay drove me to HQ not too late.

Tuesday

I’m a drivin’.  Park at library.  Play Transfusion.  In one round, I didn’t draw The Path of Bone early, so I played Transfusion to move blood around/cycle.  I was bleeding.

May have been same round that I misplayed by using Gear Up to get Spiritual Intervention when I should have gotten Delaying Tactics as my prey was Stanislava, my grandprey had no game with Giotto allies, my grandpredator !Salubri, and my predator something I don’t recall that kind of fights.  I blocked a Bowl of Convergence by !Salubri and Karl asked why I did that.  Gave my two reasons.  This had to be second round as I was thinking I needed table win, something I hadn’t achieved in three tournaments.

Matt C. beat up Francis Milliner depriving me of some bleed two ways due to my having Margaret Milliner as my major Stanislava threat.  Didn’t rush backwards.  Stanislava eventually won.

Oh, I remember first round, now.  My predator’s first turn, he puts out two 2-caps with Dominate.  My prey sweeps.  Prey did number of Con Boons Giovanni to delay my demise.  I don’t fear bleed.  Bleed predators hardly ever seem to oust me due to my deckbuilding and playing styles.  Fame or votes kill me way better.

This should have been easier to remember as Jamie and I talked about his deck between rounds while we walked around the topiary with others.  We (in the game) think Jamie shouldn’t have equipped Saturday Night Special with one of his many minion actions as it cost him a pool that made Marshall’s game easier.  I played a fair amount with Marshall.

I didn’t notice the concession in the library had smoothies.

I drive to Gemüt Biergarten early, which was unnecessary.  I was more comfortable at library.

I get lunch/breakfast at HangOverEasy across the street.  Chili burger cooked medium rare (I asked) with sweet potato tots.  I missed the drink menu until after I had ordered lemonade.  So, one takeaway of cuisine in Columbus is that lemonade is much more watery than I expect it to be, true here and at HQ.  Burger wasn’t open face chili burger like I’m used to and was okay.  I don’t like sweet potatoes, so my unbridled thrill at having a better than fries option was defeated and my life descended into unending misery yet again.

Since I’m driving, I can leave as soon as I fail.  I have to choose from one of two terrible decks, deciding to go with Ahrimanes stealth bleed for Tuesday leaving Nosferatu … um … Nosferatu for Wednesday night.

I only remember one of my rounds.  Eric A. (only Eric?) didn’t know what Spiritus does.  He ousted me with Bang Nakh deck, so let’s say he didn’t get much sense.  I did concern Mark, my prey, who was running NewToreador, when I did things like bleed for four with not my The Siamese with Heart of the City.  I Engling Furyed some to pay for stuff.  Discarded Vulture’s Buffets early.

Agent of Power was interesting to me in this deck.  I did AoP for Protean on like Cynthia at one point for the possibility of Donnybrook … yup, Ahrimanes Anarch SB.

It was okay tournament.  I wasn’t enjoying food at Gemüt Biergarten, though.  I did enjoy my fruit punch Monday, but neither currywurst nor paprika schnitzel were doing anything for me.

I drive to HQ.

Wednesday

NCers drop me off at library as they all go to con to do Starship Horizons install.

We are in different room, maybe better room.  I direct folks to new room for a while.

I try to play less bad deck, so I go with 8-cap (vote) bloat.

First game might have been four player as I remember Vinny was my prey with NewBrujah Debate, axe was Jamie with Ventrue with Obfuscate, predator was Kelly S. with Cybele Striga.  Vinny’s game was rough as he basically could only act with one minion, while I got Creepshow Casino to avoid not-Second Tradition.  I had a fine start and bloated a lot.  I’d get bled for three at times.

Kelly was more amused than I was when he declared a Nergal bleed, I try to block, he plays I Am Legion specifically stating that “You aren’t Auspex bouncing.” since we were late in the game, and I Auspex bounce with one of my two Telepathic Misdirections.  Bleed gets bounced back.  He was under pressure from Arika and friends.

I Golconda Nergal at one point, having to spend a lot of time thinking whether to Golconda one of my dudes, Marcus Vitel, or Nergal.  Kelly has to think, where I hope he takes the pool.  He doesn’t.

Kelly and I agree I blew this game as I recognized that Jamie was low on cards but didn’t process how much easier the endgame was likely to be for me than having Cybele and Nergal behind me.  I did Entrancement Veneficti at some point to reduce pressure.  I thought this was a good game with my making a bad tactical decision of not backousting but where I got to do a lot of stuff and be relevant.

In the second round, my predator is playing Imbued and my grandpredator (playing Nephandi) doesn’t know Imbued stuff.  He doesn’t get to learn a lot as I Entrancement with Force of Personality my predator’s second Imbued with a Living Wood Staff as always happens in games with Imbued.

The playmat, btw, was borrowed from HQ, as one of two things I forgot to bring with me.

Alex R. (only Alex?) is my prey with British Museum version of Recruitment Exercise.  Brad C. (only Brad?) his prey.  I steal a Nephandus with Force of Personality from Eric.

Time grows short.  Alex is looming threat to Brad.  Brad ousts Eric after Matt’s game was long over.  With little time left, I use all of these minions to oust Alex with Aire of Elation.

I play inefficiently with 2 minutes left and Brad has too much pool for me to oust.  I doubt I could have done anything to oust him in time, anyway, but it was sloppy of me to not have my actions planned.  I had very few votes to call late in this game.  Miller did get agged into torpor trying to oust Alex.  Imbued and Nephandus kept bleeding for 1, so those helped a lot as I only did exactly enough damage to get Alex.  Time running out affected a lot.

It was fun.  More importantly, I discovered that the library smoothies (well, the one type I got) were really good and very reasonably priced, so I was well chilled.

Still no table win.

Played only pickup game of WoN.  I played Blood Brothers agg stuff.  I bled for 4 early against prey unfamiliar with Sanguinus.  I rescued a vampire crosstable, first time playing against Shadowfist Matt ever, then used Haven Uncovered on his dude to rush him so that I could cycle a dodge.  I Breath of the Dragon predator’s Rafael de Corazon and eat him.  Jay, my grandprey, gets ousted by “Stanislava” prey when KRC passes while Jay is at 4 pool.  I screw up something that could have probably saved Jay’s Lasombra deck.  Votes were everywhere except on my board.

I don’t remember much else of the game.

Jay takes me over to Gemüt Biergarten, where we also use The Olde Oak as Biergarten wanted outdoor space for other folks.  I get food from Oak, and it’s okay.  Weird to get chips and salsa as side with my BBQ burger.  Chips are supersalty, so I rub off a bunch.  Burger was pleasant enough.

I play Nosferatu figuring I’ll get done quickly.

First round, predator does nothing much.  I try to block grandpredator with Tusk the Talebearer with 4, one more than three, intercept and fail.  I was amused.  Second round, I try to burn Pentex Subversion on grandpredator that was grandprey’s (Karl winnie Presence), get Tusk blocked, who proceeds to Song of Serenity, Immortal Grapple, Disarm.  Nobody really cares.  The unnamed … yawn … behind me puts pressure on.  I put no pressure forward on Brad’s Ministry, though I do fail one of his votes against Karl by accident.

I get ride to convention center with others.  We get badges after I finally can get to QR code.  I check in with HQites.  We return to HQ.

Thursday

Not-VTES day for ole Ian.

9AM Shadowfist cube draft.  I am always amazed at how people draft niche CCGs.  Sure, my deck was flawed with lack of reliable faction resources.  But, I had tons of power generation that never should have been passed to me.

Quanqiu Wishing Well should not have been passed to me.  Nor should the second.

Summoning Circle shouldn’t have been passed.  Xin’s Tome of Knowledge also passed to me.  Decklist:

2x  Blue Flower Society

1x  Confusion Stability

1x  Finding Your Balance

1x  Fu Lions

1x  Into the Light

1x  Li Po

1x  Shaolin Supplicants

1x  Sifu Beumer

1x  Warrior Poet

1x  Yung Chang

1x  Alfar

1x  Auramancer

1x  Chiu Bagong

1x  Fakhir-al-Din

1x  Fire Warriors

1x  Soul Fire

1x  Summoning Circle

1x  Wasteland Rangers

1x  William Franklin

1x  Abandoned Old Shop

1x  Beached Supertanker

1x  Medicinal Flower Garden

1x  Phlogiston Mine

2x  Quanqiu Wishing Well

1x  Rainforest Bridge

2x  Sulphurous Cenote

2x  Walled Enclave

1x  Xin’s Tome of Knowledge

1x  Discerning Fire

1x  Spirit in a Bottle

2x  Violet Meditation

1x  Chainsword

I had tons of Jammers hitters in card pool, so I looked for Jammers’ foundations late, but it was too late.  I hate drafted a lot.  I passed White Ninja!!

First game, I win at time after not having resources to play faction cards for much of the game and just keep playing Feng Shui Sites.  I played Summoning Circle early, so I also got to participate with that in addition to site abilities.  Sulphurous Cenote may have prevented Josh from winning earlier.  Second round, didn’t win.  Third round, played Chainsword on Paul’s superleaper to try to help contain Tim K.’s weenie horde, which only caused Paul to win when I didn’t attack his superleaper but his site that could move Chainsword with my Li Po and/or Yung Chang.

I have to get going to Starship Horizons Adventures as tournament is running an hour late, and I left an hour between events.  I find out later I got third place.

SHA just ends up being bewildering to me.  I do a run with three volunteers, two I’m staying with, in part four of a four part series when I’ve never played before, and they had played the first two parts …  Why we didn’t play part three wasn’t superclear, maybe they had it scheduled for later.

The 20 seconds of useful training on tactical meant I wasn’t clear how to load and fire Devastators (nukes) or the railgun.  Turned out that our ship specs weren’t loaded correctly, so I would have seen boxes for those.  We apparently succeeded in our mission even as badly as things seemed to go.  We playtested some the basic ship on mission 1 in our remaining time.  I learned a little of tactical and engineering.

Was it fun?  I guess.  I just didn’t know what was going on or how to do things, so I committed war crimes unintentionally rather than intentionally.  I have too little sense of what would want me to get seriously into the game.  Maybe I just tag along when my friends need another player.  I suggest that anyone who likes Star Trek try it out at least once, and it … much like True Dungeon or RPEX … is likely a much better example of play if you run with others who are newbs.  Of course, you can always just download SH and practice roles before trying SHA at a con.

Thursday night is Shadowfist Modern.  I suck.  One game, I might have had a chance if I attacked right not noticing Matt had two FSS in play early.  The game swung wildly between Troy and Matt due to Cat Stance.  I wasn’t that into this.  Draft was vastly more interesting to me.

Because the HQites can leave early Thursday night, I drive a car back to HQ.

Friday

In the morning, because I got little sleep any night and had plenty of time in the basement trying to avoid setting off dogs, I build a VTES deck.  As I had 11 tournaments and only 10 new decks, this meant I could run a different deck every event, however I had lost interest in my Recruitment Exercise deck after watching how tediously boring they were in other players’ hands.  So, my plan was to run Vic SB in first tourney, if I win, run precon mashup in second, then play I Love Cheap Thrills in the NAC.  If I continue to suck (zero table wins in 7 tournaments), run I Love Cheap Thrills Friday night and precon mashup in NAC.

Morning tournament, I suck.  I don’t remember much from first round.  I got Lolita Houston in play and bled some and eventually petered out against … whatever.  The second game was vastly more memorable … because it was a complete travesty and shall not be talked about, not even my amusement over something.

Evening tournament was vastly more fun, even if I sucked.  One round I didn’t do much.  Other round, Marshall, predator, plays Smiling Jack early and table doesn’t get rid of it.  I get 2 VPs from it as it builds up to eventually 9 counters.  Could have gone away if grandpredator ousts Marshall, but my prey Annekes the killing bleed.  In the two player endgame, I Inscription Marshall’s Anima Gathering Isabel de Leon and … eventually he Direct Interventions the Inscription.  I was trying to cycle, and I dug one less card because of that.  Nine counters on Smiling Jack kills me.

Having enjoyed I Love Cheap Thrills a lot, even in first game where I just played cards that weren’t Inscription, I decided to rerun it on Sunday Funday (with no changes after what happened on Saturday).

Failing to have gotten into finals for a ninth straight time, I check in with HQites, and they are busy.

So, I go to Local Cantina and get two Americano tacos.  I liked this food the best of any meal, though it wasn’t perfect – tacos would have been vastly better with hard shells as they just fell apart.  Ambience sucked, with weird cover songs, lots of noise, and my being by myself.  My talking about weezy tacos causes the crew to want Taco Bell as we head back to HQ.

Saturday

NAC.  Time to play a real deck.

First round, Pete is my prey with group 5/6 Ventrue, Mark is Nocturning, other two didn’t much matter.  Mark Nocturns them.  I comment that Pete will crush me in endgame, so my game sucks.  Pete Daring the Dawns for kill bleed on Mark as I spend time trying to figure out how to survive, The Uncoiling The Unmasking (coin flip as FBI came down early) after sitting on The Uncoiling in my hand for ages waiting for The Unmasking.  That bleed is great … especially for me.  Not only do I lose Nocturn pressure, but Mary Anne Blaire being in torpor for a round buys me time to pass votes and contest with Pete, who contests with me, so it’s my two Ventrue to his one.  I win the endgame.  2/2/1 split was amazing for how game looked.

Second round, more people join tournament, so our 40 player tournament with all fives now has me play a four player with prey playing The unnamed, axe playing !Salubri, and my predator is … Mark.  I make the comment that expect him to run over me.

That might have happened if Matt (!Salubri) didn’t drop Tension in the Ranks on turn one and hadn’t started rushing forward right away.  Mark’s game completely changed as he kept Dreamsing to get to point of blowing up Tension.  With lack of pressure, The Uncoiling coming down to blow up The Unmasking again, no interference from prey that I cared about, I built up.  Prey ousted !Salubri.  I get 3 VPs.

So, great tournament points, first TW in 10 tournaments and 5 VPs after two rounds means I’m doing amusingly well.

Third round is the easy game.  Some chump named Darby is my prey.  Three of the decks at the table just stealth bleed, including my predator’s … Nocturn deck.  Grandprey has no game as Huitzilopochtli to my left just bleeds him out.  I have no vote competition, no meaningful intercept, and only some pool pressure.  I get rid of Unleash Hell’s Furys repeatedly as I can just Freak and rescue.  I bloat a ton.  I hit John, grandpredator with Platinum Protocol action with KRCs as I know he will get my predator eventually.  I Daring the Dawn past an UHF for the Darby kill.  In the endgame, I have too much pool to get ousted.  I grind through John’s pool for another 3 VPs.

I commented to Darby that I didn’t think I made a single mistake in this game, where I notice mistakes all of the time normally.  Sure, the game was easy due to the matchups, but I still made good decisions on every turn.

As top seed, my placement decision is painful.  I didn’t want to be in front of Malk22 (or whatever it’s called).  I didn’t want to be next to The unnamed gets The Great Beast.  But, mostly, I just wanted to be across the table from the other Ventrue deck as it was 5/6.  I thought a bunch of times later about maybe being Bill’s predator, but Kelly S.’s deck just made mine bad.  Kelly L.’s prey might have been interesting as Kelly on Kelly crime would have happened sooner with Banishments likely coming Malk way.

Kelly S., whom I had spouted nonsense to for much of the week, commented that I didn’t seem happy.  I wasn’t.  For various reasons.

Consider that the only tournament of the first 10 where I got even a TW, let alone got to the finals was the one tournament where I didn’t really build the deck, where I played a deck that was just good stuff cards that get played all of the time and that didn’t do anything interesting strategically or tactically.  While Bill’s deck was interesting in the finals, I just didn’t have anyone to root for in the finals outside of myself, and I did very little all game.  Also, I didn’t expect to live the dream and win the NAC as a bottom quartile player.  My response to Kelly S. was “Let’s see how this game goes.”  I did start to feel better after I was ousted.  I was somewhat disappointed in the Kelly on Kelly endgame that Lyons didn’t try to play to time for the win, but it was an honorable seppuku.

I was late for the Shadowfist casual event, not that that mattered as it was play however much you wanted to play.  I was horribly not in the mood to play SF at this point or possibly anything.  But, this was when people were supposed to play their theme decks, so I toughed it out while waiting for people’s games to end.

It was not a good game as one of the theme decks did winning things, and the other three did not.  I did get to go at a reasonable time …

… only to discover that the SHAfolks were doing tear down early, rather than waiting for Sunday to do everything.

I did some minimal help, and we all headed back to HQ, well, with a stop at Wendy’s as they wanted food.  I did end up finishing some leftover nuggets, so it got me food to.

I got like one hour of sleep Saturday night.

Sunday #2

Pain around my left eye until I have a soft drink and some nuts.

To the con!

There are at least four things I’m supposed to remember from round one.  I got Information Highway on my first turn, so I bring out 6-caps on round one, round two, round three, a Tupdog on round four, 6-cap on round five.

My Tupdog gets Dominate, and I eventually just rush Pete’s Blood Brother and torp it with hands of 1.  I debated bleeding for 2 with it.  I had an easy game, with Mark as my grandpredator with Recruitment Exercise.  Easy in that I played for the time out table win by leaving Marshall alone as much as possible with his Garrote deck.  Vinny was my predator and defended well with punching for 4+ with NewBrujah Debate deck.

I Illegal Search and Seizure Marshall’s Ivan’s Ivory Bow.  I play Ecstatic Agony and Vinny comments not knowing what the card does, then Marshall makes a comment, then I comment “I’m not sure I know what the card does.”  So, as is usual in VTES, prey has first opportunity to read the card followed by predator then Eagle Sight/Falcon’s Eye players, then the person who played the card.  Marshall reads it out loud.  Couple times later, I have to read the card to make sure I can abuse Mark with it.

I torp Mark’s vampire with a .44 off of the press punch for 3 from Ecstatic Agony.  I oust Marshall for second VP with no more than 10 minutes left, though not with Melange because I’m bottom quartile.  I chose to discard The Name Forgotten.  I torp one of Mark’s minions with Machine Blitz …

2.5 VPs.  Second round, Kelly L. is my prey and Inside Dirts + Thuggees one of my two 6-caps into torpor.  Tom is his prey.  Tom and I played in the Bay Area a long time ago, and it was good to talk some.  Pete was my grandpredator and didn’t do anything to Norm, whose NewBrujah “do it all” (as opposed to toolbox, which I was explaining to Brett, whom I never played with but talked to for extended stretches) deck ripped me apart, even with Ecstatic Agony on one of my two minions.

I waited quite awhile while needing sleep badly as 1 TW 2.5 VPs almost made the finals.  I just needed Mark to not get more than 1 VP in his second round, but some folks are like top quartile.

Because the SHAfolks only needed like an hour to load up vehicles, NCers headed home, and I drove a SUV full of electronic equipment back to HQ.  I tried napping and got some rest but not a lot.  We went for pizza final meal.  I think if I went there again, I’d get Sicilian style as thin crust really isn’t my thing.

Watched some YouTube.

I got up before my 2:45AM alarm, so total about four hours of sleep in two nights before my 6:15AM flight.  I got home without any issues, too tired to read a book on my long flight, where I just conked out shortly into flight.

Had work to do Monday.  Kept falling asleep throughout the day.

Great experience.

I just enjoy playing VTES.  I’m discouraged by how boring decks are, including my own, as I’ve built (as in pulled the cards, I write a lot of decks I never play) maybe 500 decks in my life at this point, and it’s all so similar.

Shadowfist could have been better, but it may have been how much I was focused on VTES that made it harder to care what happened outside of the draft.

SHA was just an incomplete as a game to me.

Hanging out with my True Dungeon team and the hosts’ dogs was … the sort of thing I would be happy to do a lot.  Both at HQ and in the SHA area.

Jay was very kind to drive me around … when I wasn’t learning the freeway system around Columbus.

I got to hang out with VTES players, try to help some with deck change ideas.  I got to amuse myself by giving rather than taking.  I got to hang out with ‘Fisters, even one in my hood that I don’t spend a lot of time normally talking to.  I got inspired with VTES deck ideas on the flights home, serious ideas in some cases.

Nothing really went wrong other than being top seed going into the finals of the NAC.  Well, I was horribly sleep deprived a lot of the time, but that’s to be expected.  Maybe I don’t do Sunday Funday in future and just sleep all day.  Hopefully, I don’t have 6:15AM flight on Monday after con.

Origins 2021

A few years ago, I noticed something weird.  As time was passing, I was getting older.  Just bizarre.

Anyway, due to declining mental faculties, my recollection of events will be haphazard.

Nope, I didn’t cancel at the last minute.

Tuesday

Get virtually no sleep, even though I didn’t have a ton I needed to do.  Sure, I didn’t build much in the way of VTES decks and so could spend time on that, but I know how long it takes to pull cards, so I gave up before too late.

Nothing real special about getting to hotel.

Get this over with – staying at Hampton was extremely convenient.  I didn’t really take advantage of how easy it would be to go back and forth to hotel for stuff swaps, but it wasn’t just far better than walking six blocks to a hotel on mostly deserted streets after midnight, it was just easy.  Breakfast buffet wasn’t Embassy Suites Indy level, but it was free breakfast better than a motel.  I never used the pool even though pool hours were like 5AM-10PM (11PM?) and I keep taking swim trunks to these hotels.  I don’t actually like swimming pools – they are boring.  Nothing to explore.  No current to fight against.  No sense of changing location.  My room was on 5th floor, so, other than checking in and checking out with my luggage, took stairs every trek.  Helped burn some of the far too many calories I was consuming and/or requires some actual physical exertion for underused musclelike body parts.  With no roommates, it was relaxing to use the room, though I got virtually no sleep because my body hates me.

I drop my stuff off and head over to The Happy Greek to socialize [gasp!] with VTESfolk.  I order the Keftedes Kebob.  It suffers from the general issue I have with Greek food – it’s too bland.  Greek food, IME, is like less flavorful Persian food.  I also consider yogurt as only for smoothies.  Could have been juicier or more tender.  Overall, it was okay and not hard on the system after not having any other meal all day.  I get water to drink.

Everyone else is wrapping up as they close at 10PM, where the finals will be held at an Air BnB.  Doesn’t take me long to eat, so I join some others going to UDF for malts.  This is, of course, a perfect example of my low life wisdom.  The food would have been fine.  Gorging, especially given that I’m lactose intolerant and have run out of Lactaid, late at night was suboptimal, I guess.  But, I didn’t know if I was going to have another shot at a malt.  It was okay, would have preferred thicker.  Marshall paid for it, so already the psychological warfare that all VTES players feed upon begins.

Wednesday

The change in Origins’ normal schedule meant I had zero reason to go to the convention center, so I changed my order of which shirts to wear on which days.  Back to The Happy Greek.

Beef Shawarma Pita and well done fries.  A few of the fries were cooked enough.  Insert french fry rant.  I am bewildered by why so many bad french fries get made.  Anyone who has had good french fries should know that french fries are supposed to be red and crunchy.  Anyway, the rest of the fries were better than most.  The pita sandwich, though, was a mess.  It was basically a way overstuffed taco with chewy meat.  Still didn’t have much flavor.  More than half the meat was eaten non-taco style.

I, on two separate occasions during the day, ask about grenadine and the mix they would use to make a Tom Collins.  I fail to actually order anything besides Coke/Mello Yello.

First event is draft.  Two rounds, no final.  We basically get a precon (except Jyhad clans?) and are in draft pods that use similar sets.  I get 3e Tzimisce so draft Third Edition.  Kind of a wasted opportunity to me.  I prefer to see greater variety of possibilities with draft.  The 3e boosters were incredibly redundant, which is a 3e problem for a set that has a ton of different cards.

As is typical with VTES drafting, one pack will have mediocre stuff and another will have four possible first picks.  I passed Tribute to the Master multiple times.  I think the only one I got was one that came back to me!  I debated drafting the Pentex Subversions, but I didn’t want someone playing them against me as I was a blocky deck.

Origins 2021 Draft – Tzimisce

Crypt (12)
2x Ilias cel Frumos
1x Guedado
1x Elizabeth Westcott
2x Yuri Kerezenski
1x Duality
1x Laika
1x Lady Zara Slatikov
2x Radu Bistri
1x Sha-Ennu

Master (16)
1x Auspex
2x Blood Doll
2x Danse Macabre
1x Fame
2x King’s Rising
2x Pentex(TM) Subversion
1x Powerbase: Barranquilla
1x Rötschreck
1x Smiling Jack, The Anarch
1x The Rack
1x Tribute to the Master
1x Vicissitude

Action (6)
1x Fiendish Tongue
1x Forgery
2x Scouting Mission*
2x Zillah’s Tears

Action Modifier (4)
4x Changeling

Combat (21)
2x Aid from Bats*
1x Amaranth
1x Aura Reading
1x Breath of the Dragon
2x Burst of Sunlight*
1x Canine Horde
2x Carrion Crows
1x Chiropteran Marauder
1x Claws of the Dead*
1x Dodge
2x Horrid Form
2x Inner Essence
1x Meld with the Land
1x Song of Serenity
1x Starvation of Marena
1x Weighted Walking Stick

Equipment (1)
1x Local 1111

Political Action (6)
1x Consanguineous Boon
1x Crusade: Pittsburgh
1x Finding the Path
2x Perpetual Care
1x Sabbat Priest

Reaction (24)
2x Eagle’s Sight
5x Enhanced Senses
3x Forced Awakening
5x Guard Dogs
1x Minor Irritation
1x My Enemy’s Enemy
1x Precognition
1x Read the Winds
1x Redirection*
2x Spirit’s Touch
2x Telepathic Misdirection

Combo (2)
2x Plasmic Form

From a deck construction standpoint, I think this was a mixed bag.  Sure, I might not have gotten ousted if I had permacept.  But, the play problems were more so the lack of VIC and how pointless Perpetual Care was after taking out a bunch of offensive combat.  I used Aid from Bats twice at draftferior, once to go to long against Hardestadt and burn Sport Bike with Canine Horde, but that was far too late.

First round, I don’t remember this game.  I think Vinny playing !Trem was in this game as my predator.  I just don’t remember what else was being played and by whom.  Wait, I’m remembering pressing against !Trem due to Weather Control to torp one of Vinny’s vamps.  Will this help me remember how I got less VPs than I could have?

Nope.  I do remember finding the lack of VIC annoying.  King’s Rising got played and got cleared.

It was the second game that was memorable for how frustrating it was.  Kelly was my prey with Ventrue, and I just couldn’t get by Hardestadt when I needed to even with Sha-Ennu in play (I had five vampires in play for a considerable amount of time) and even with getting Hardestadt taking Kelly down to 2 pool.  Vinny, as my axe, blocking my bounced bleed of 1 rather than blocking Kelly’s kill wrecked my easy table win.  Karl, playing Ministry, I mean, FoS was impotent early to where I even voted him pool, but, eventually, as I played bounce badly and wasted unlocks needlessly (one Zillah’s Tears use was awful), I stopped being able to block every single forward action.  Being flooded with Unholy Penances was an annoyance I didn’t have a great answer for as long as I was trying to get key actions through on my prey.

Historically, I’ve been a way, way, way better limited player than constructed player.  Now, one could argue that a key difference is that I eschew strong decks in constructed and embrace putting the best decks together in limited.  That has something to do with it, as I often feel I have one of the two best decks in sealed/draft VTES and can put together a reasonable Magic limited deck and maybe even knew what I was doing with B5 limited.  But, my preferred style of play is to minimize use of resources, to play opportunistically, to not expect to have multiple copies of key cards.  To only come in third in this event was … one might say … a harbinger of future mediocrity.

Wednesday Constructed

I play Vic/For.  Sure, that meant playing mostly Budapest, but I had two non-BB in my crypt, only one of which appeared in three rounds.

Round 1:

Darby was my predator with Serpentis annoyance.  Brad was his predator with FoS Free States Rant.  Kelly his predator with … I vaguely recall Dmitra and votes, but I could be wrong.  Mark was my prey with AUS/PRE/OBF.  Somehow, people keep expecting me to Walk of Caine bomb people into oblivion.  I mean, sure, that could happen.  It’s just not probable when running 2x WoC and would, somehow, have to get around bounce.  I did rush Darby’s ally but got blocked by a vampire.  Dorka got a lot of hate, getting stolen.  I brought out another one, later, but I had no real way to not get ousted.  I just didn’t accomplish much, even with four minions in play for a bit.

Round 2:

Late in the game, with my two minions, I bleed Marshall for 2 with inferior Sanguinus and Force of Will bleed with SAN for the WoC kill.  Alex doesn’t care if I get more VPs, so I oust him for a second VP.  Other people were at this table.  One of them ousts me.

Sometime, I get dinner at The Happy Greek.  Now, I didn’t need food, so my enjoyment of this meal was reduced.  However, my Spicy Gyro Over Hummus was actually flavorful, with tender meat.  Add some crunchy french fries (and a desire for a significant amount of food), and this would have been a strong meal.  I can see getting this dish and a side and splitting between two people.  Actually spicy, where one never knows whether spicy dishes will actually be spicy at various places.

Just to get this out of the way, once convention starts, mostly smoothies and root beers with miscellaneous North Market food.

Finals:

Darby is my prey.  Brad (or someone else I can’t remember) his prey, with something with PRE as he steals Darby’s Mylan and Impundulu, I guess?  Alex his prey with !Toreador w/ Protean.  Marshall my predator with stealth vote.  I remember blocking a bleed at one stealth with Steadfastness and playing Poison Pill on a Con Ag in quick succession, as I made the comment to Darby about just doing what Blood Brothers do – react.  My Dr. Morrow does give a Graft Counter to Impundulu.  I really didn’t have much to do before my inevitable demise.  Since this was at the Air BnB, which isn’t superclose to my hotel, I bail to try to get some work done.  I hear later that Darby’s Temptation on Adana(?) leads to ousting people.

Thursday

I had stuff I needed to do, which made playing in first tournament a problem.  Then, I had to stand in badge line for 1.5 hours to get my badge.  Then, I stood in customer service line to get 63/65 generic tickets.  So, pretty much just waiting until second tournament.

Thursday Constructed 2

I keep wanting to play Blessed Resilience builds, as it’s kind of interesting to play a deck that goes forward, and the possibilities for what can happen amuse me.

Round 1:

Robert is my prey with Brujah with weapons.  Mark axe with Kindred Spirits.  Alex my predator with Ass vote breed.  Alex doesn’t survive long.  Robert doesn’t do anything much which affects the game besides spend pool, so I oust him.  While Mark got me and would have likely always gotten me, I was calculating how much I could do to him if I survived one more turn.  I think I could have bled him for 18 on my next turn, which might have ousted him.  Again, if I wasn’t already gone.  I played Carlton late, and that might have done me in.  Carlton never blocked a bleed, so it was take an action to lose 2 pool.

Round 2:

Darby first with Khazar’s.  Kelly my prey with Trem.  Just blanking, maybe Marshall again, as predator.  Khazar’s didn’t go off for quite a while.  Kelly lacked bounce.  Sure, I could have killed him.  I should have tried to get 2 VPs in a smallish tournament, but I was so excited by how much pool damage I could do to Darby if the right sequence of events occurred.  I missed my window on both bounced to Darby for excitement and for ousting Kelly for excitement.

I get back to hotel and work on a deck for Friday night.  My plan is to go with vote in the morning, less thinking involved Friday night – +1 stealth AUS/PRE.

Friday

Friday Constructed 1

I took some cards to build decks with me to Origins.  Not a lot.  Took a lot of master cards, where the rest were new stuff to try out new stuff.  I went with modified Lasombra precon.  Obviously, I removed all of the Governs and Conditionings.  I put in some Murmurs for bleed since I can’t put Murmur of the False Will on my personal banned list due to the Kiasyd w/ Animalism tournament winning deck.

Round 1:

Further sign that my mind is gone.  I think Marshall was my predator with Kiasyd – wait, he definitely was as we talked about Priscus voting.  Matt was my prey with Ravnos bleed.  Darby was playing Legacy of Pander as my grandprey, Logan my grandpredator with Tzimisce.  New Lasombra are not weak.  I brought out Cardinal, Archbishop, and Priscus – all 8 caps.  Marshall keeps bleeding me with The Arcadian …  So, I had a bunch of Murmurs for his other guys.  Gabrin on my left was my only combat concern, so I ditched Obedience for the obvious reason.  Darby couldn’t pass votes on his own with any sort of consistency.  He did get out 7 Pander.  Logan’s game was not that exciting, trying to function off of Lambach and advanced Sascha.  I had an okay amount of pool much of the time.  I added Con Boons to the deck.  I did virtually nothing to my prey.  When I finally tried to bleed my prey, I forgot Illusory Resources was in play.  Darby and I negotiated him killing his prey and predator and he only killed his prey …

Darby had Bleeding the Vine in play and cancelled a Kiasyd Blood Doll.  Matt drops Week of Nightmares, which we all knew was coming after a bunch of Suspensions of Disbelief, and he got Darby.  I eventually bleed Matt for 1 at zero stealth and oust him.  I bleed Marshall for 2 at zero stealth, then 1 at zero stealth and oust him.

I get blamed for not ousting my prey before he got Darby.  Amazingly enough, illusory bleeding and having votes like Con Boon doesn’t put a lot of pressure on.

Round 2:

I got irritated in this game.  I guess having to play with Imbued can do that.  Alex was my prey with Brandywine.  Mark my grandprey with Carna.  Logan grandpredator.  Karl predator with Imbued.

This game was tedious.  I called an early Anarchist Uprising that did more to Mark than anyone else, and he gave me grief for that even though I knew that this table was set up for slowness.  Also, slowness is pro Imbued.  Now, I did bring out a certain 9-cap who couldn’t be damage by allies and an 8-cap who could steal 2 blood as a strike.  My being not a l33t player meant that when that second ability mattered, I totally forgot about it.  I think that might have prevented my getting ousted and losing the .5 VP I was playing for.  I did try to oust Alex, but Logan shot the vote down even while Imbued’s Talbot’s was already in play.  Maybe Logan thought I was a quality player and would remember to just steal 2 life from allies like a boss monster.

Veil of Darkness got put into play, cancelled my Oubliette, and my Famed life stealer went down, then I took lots of bleeds.

Finals:

Darby was my prey.  Alex his prey.  Karl his prey.  Mark my predator.  Imbued had intercept in front and behind and two vote decks across table.  So, of course, Imbued won.

Darby and I danced around a lot on how to carve the table as I got out the Cardinal on turn two, so he could never pass a vote on his own.  I figured I had no way to oust Alex, so I did want Darby to do that, but I was leery of him ousting both Alex and Karl, so I made this game suck.  Still, playing with two minions, with my predator being happy to block me to ‘schreck half my minions, where I couldn’t even draw much in the way of Murmurs for plus bleed and having little reason to give Alex 5 pool with Ancient Influence until Darby self-ousted, meant my not being into carving the table doomed us all to mortality.  I also ran out of stealth at the end to get off such things as Reins of Power (not called due to lack of stealth) or Ancient Influence, so I was locked out when the +1 (bleed, stealth, intercept, damage, …) mortals came.

The only final I deserved to be in, and I didn’t execute.  Made me want to not play vote again, though.  I keep forgetting how annoying playing vote is when someone else also votes.  I shouldn’t forget, except I don’t play vote that often, and I hadn’t played at all in more than 18 months, and those 18 months have been … taxing.  Well, and I’m not a l33t player.

Friday Constructed 2

Round 1:

Guy is my predator with Elimelech.  Marshall my prey with Ventrue.  Alex axe with werewolves.  This was painful.  Elimelech got Robert Carter to my chagrin.  I was forced to Archon him.  I kept forgetting to use Greta to reduce bleeds by Luc.  I thought about DIing Alex’s bounce early on, but I didn’t know how much kill Marshall was going to whip out.  Alex became unstoppable.  Multiple Garou, Double Deuce, Fermor, Inyanga.  I hung around a bit.  I did Jost bleed for 6 to cycle, but I had too little evasion to actually oust Marshall.  Just a werewolf rampage.

Round 2:

Darby axe with Ira wall.  Predator Logan with Memory Rift.  My prey Brad with Nehemiah (and Carolina).  I have a ton of bleed defense to use in this game, reducing more than bouncing, so I get Rebekka, Cornelius, Anarch Convert w/ Blood Doll, Sheila with intercept.  Memory Rift keeps preventing Sheila from blocking until we take a long pause to find out whether Martinelli’s Ring stops that.  Rebekka gets Heart of the City, gets bounced a lot, I finally get to play Tangle of Atropos’ Hand when bounced to Darby, then bleed out Brad.  I had Archoned one of Logan’s vamps, so he was crippled and eventually removed.  Darby just destroys my guys in combat.  I enjoyed this game.  I got to first turn discard Subdued by the Blood and could both defend well and threaten ludicrously.

I go back to hotel and give up on building Toreador deck with how tired I am.

Saturday

I build a Toreador deck.  I have to pull cards from my AUS/PRE deck because the two Toreador precons I brought with me are … in Latin.  I thought I only ordered one of each precon in Latin, but I can’t keep straight what stuff I get.  The whole point is to play Laecanus, who I thought hated me more than any other vampire, even more than Kill-ian.

Not seeing enough anarch stuff to do what he should do – anarch CEL rush either with guns or sticks.  I do a quasi-Obtenebration build.  By quasi, I mean I had two Obtenebration cards in my deck and never played them.  Can’t really call my recent creations toolbox decks as they are mostly unfocused messes that play individually good cards but in an incoherent whole.

Round 1:

I don’t get Laecanus.  I do get Rafael de Corazon.  And, Tyler McGill and Vasily.  Prey is Mark with Nocturns, Karl his prey with … … … a bad crypt draw.  Alex my grandpredator with !Toreador w/ Protean.  Matt !Salubri rush as my predator.  I block Bowl early.  I never burn Path of Night, but, then, nobody else does, either.  My Vesseling Karl’s New Blood maybe took one of Mark’s actions to end Karl.  Alex Archons after getting Matt.  Wonders why I do things like Con Boon – if Mark doesn’t get Alex when he does, I have zero wakes, so Palla Grande will end me.  I get Mark to 3 pool with Rafael still functional, but I don’t have what I need to get by Unmasked Nocturns and get finished off.

Round 2:

Marshall my predator with Primogen.  Vinny my prey with Shamblers.  Matt axe.

Vinny gets Matt down to 1 pool when Matt has his shields down.  Marshall sucks lots of rushes, preventing him from hurting me much.  I oust Vinny eventually.  The endgame is interesting where one more blood on Eugene would have led to an incredibly cool play in a fight with Matt’s main vamp that I think torps, but, instead, just remove some counters.  I can’t outmaneuver !Salubri weapons nor punch through damage prevent with Allanyan with Weighted Walking Stick, so Matt grinds me out.

Round 3:

John prey with Stanislava (mostly precon).  Marshall his prey.  Brad my grandpredator with Lord Tremere.  Guy playing Dracon as my predator.

This was just a game to play cards and not expect anything to happen.  Dracon kept fighting me and playing a bunch of Horrid Forms.  Sure, I had three vampires in torpor at one point, with Laecanus eaten when trying to leave torpor, but, most of the time, Celerity and Presence and Eugene’s dodge stopped beatings.  Meanwhile, my prey was concerned when I bled for 4 early, but I had nothing to go forward after that.  Stanislava kept bleeding crosstable, leading to Brad getting ousted.  Table timed out with a bunch of impotence as I got all three of my vampires rescued.

I still have never played Zephyr.  I’m not a believer in putting in cards that are designed for failure, well, failed actions.  I’m all about expecting failure with my masters choices.  But, I was on a play stuff I hadn’t played before kick, and I expected to get actions blocked playing no Aching Beautys and no real evasion.  I never thought I’d get ousted in third round, but, then, I never expected to oust my prey, either.

I do some work and stay up way too late listening to The Voice videos on Youtube, listening to Nico Traut’s blind audition multiple times, for instance.

Sunday

Of course, I can barely sleep.  I modify Sea Pirates Redux with some anarch stuff I hadn’t played before, like, um, er, em, hmmm, eh, Hackerspace.

I read my Origins reports for 2018 and 2019 after the con, and it’s funny to read how consistently mediocre I am in these tournamentfests and how I keep running the same deck archetypes – Sea Pirates, Blessed Resilience – rather than creating new stuff.

Round 1:

I go first.  Brad is prey with worst Alastor strategy ever.  Karl across with !Malk Creation Rites.  Mariya Kiasyd behind me.  I do not understand how I survive.  Mariya ran out of stealth at a terrible time.  Twice, I blocked Song of Pan and also blocked a Nocturn.  My Nadima and Carlton did a lot of work.  Brad didn’t put any weapons in his Alastor deck, so he had to beat Anathemaed !Malks the punchy way.  I took out one of the Anathemas with a Protection Racket block and a .44.  At one point, Mariya had three vampires in torpor.  Karl ousts, I oust, endgame is not completely uninteresting as I do have Heidelberg, Laptop, and Tasha(?).  I probably screw up trying to remove Pentex on Nadima with bleeding in the same turn.  Don’t have enough blood on guys to be cooler … ooh, Cooler would …

Round 2:

Brian is my prey with !Salubri rush.  Alex axe with Ass Breed Vote.  Marshall predator with Form of Mist bleed, Ariadne Abactor.  I can’t stop Marshall.  Marshall gets 1 VP.  Brian ends the tournament with 1 VP.  Someone else has 1 VP.

We start a learning game with one table not done, yet.  John borrows my Horseshoes deck and gets beaten up a lot.  We call the game when the other table is done because there’s a four-way tie for fifth place.  I improbably end up in the finals.  As I said, only one deserved finals, and that was a cluster with us not murdering mortals.

Finals:

After going to North Market due to the con closing to where we need to play finals at the house, I quickly get eliminated from the finals as my Anarch Convert with Sport Bike and Nadima can’t stop Ass breeding or Ass voting.  However, due to the improbable double Hackerspace early game with how Anarch Convert interacts with them, everyone got excited by free Assault Rifles or whatever.

I stuck around for much longer to hang out.  Eventually, Marshall and I went to UDF where I got tea and I didn’t pay for his malt.  I’m working the long game.  A couple decades from now, when I don’t remember that Ozmo has +1 bleed and stop putting Extremis Boon in decks, this ploy will totally cause me to win some casual game in the heads up after Subdued by the Blood in my Faithful Servant, Burnt Offerings deck.

Thanks to Ben and Darby for running stuff.  Congratulations to Alex for NAC championship.  Nice to meet folks.  Just one more year or so and a bunch of folks are going to surpass my tournament win total.  Though, I put down maybe one of those wins as a quality win, and I’ve never won a constructed tournament on the road – every single win is, weirdly**, in California.

**  Well, since I rarely play tournaments outside of California and some of the ones I have were either limited events or storyline events and because there’s little evidence I’m actually more than competent, maybe weird is the opposite of the right word.

Okay, and thanks to Marshall for getting my malt and putting up with *a lot* of my rambling.

The Best of … 2017

2017 was a peak year in this blog’s popularity.

January

Nordliga Riter

Just another gaming trek.  A lot like our drives over to Fresno, yet different.  So many pictures.  I have so many more from my camera and my phone.  The good old days, to be sure.

Of Sword Questions

More words = more gooder.

February

Riffing

This is not terribly useful to other people.  I doubt anyone who reads this will understand its importance.  Who would get value out of this is likely pretty limited and should involve those who don’t care about games.

March

April

Lost Opportunities

A jumbled mess.  In other words, my forte – wait, people don’t know how to pronounce forte correctly – specialty.

May

EC 2017: Veni. Vidi. Suxisti!

Can mark something off my bucket list.  That’s pretty rare.  It would help if I wrote up an extensive bucket list, then it would be easier.  On the one hand, a sign of how much better my life had gotten; on the other, a sign of doom a-coming.  Even got asked by extrala whether I took notes on play.  Bah – brain more gooder, enormical ability to recall … remember … something something something.

EC 2017 – Explicatio

A nice, long companion piece.

June

KublaCon 2017

Maybe some other year I might not find a local con report as compelling, but this year has brought to mind the loss of local gaming.  Note that there’s an important piece of info for all of my millions and … millions of Shadowfist opponents.

July

Fisticuffs – Time To Eat

Is this profound?  Maybe it is.  Guess you can just read it.  The inreferences even make it incomprehensible to people who play Shadowfist.

August

Gen Con 2017 – The $8 Story

Something about my Gen Con reports feels more important than it used to.  Perhaps it’s doing stuff with friends and navigating HoR and TD.  Of course, GC2020 going virtual was a harsh first world problem.  But, let’s try to worry about 2017, when all was right with the world, assuming you weren’t almost going to die at a game convention.

September

October

Living Legends

I really wanted to enjoy the L5R LCG.  I eventually decided I didn’t, but, until then, well, there’s this “hopeful” post.

November

Gamehole Con 2017

This was really useful for understanding more about serious TD play.  This also should give somewhat better idea what playing TD is like.

Crisis Of Blog Why

Looking forward to things.  Let’s all look forward to better things.

December

Oddyssey

So, this is not a useful post.  This is an example of self-indulgence.  But, other than reddit, quora, et al, where are you going to find this form of geniusness about something you want to avoid engaging with?

So, 2017 was a popular year, but it was also a year where I don’t know how many of my non-travel posts really matter.  Of course, all central-thinking people love hearing about my traveling the world and playing games, but I don’t know if they want to hear about my experiences with the L5R LCG, which was a more notable thing in 2017, or so much about Arrowverse or so much about TD.

It’s almost like there’s a reason the popularity of the blog dropped off after 2017.

Gen Con – Early Years

History.

Well, my history, anyway.

Well, a really bad recap of my history as my first Gen Con predated my oldest email that I have control of and it’s not like I took notes of Gen Con back in the 90s, and, well, one of the primary reasons for this blog is to not lose my gaming history.

There are other people who have gone to way more Gen Cons than I have, much longer unbroken streaks.  I don’t know that I can even prove an unbroken streak, though I did find emails that help fill in some of the later Milwaukee years.

I also have a four digit Gen Con ID#.

Possibly in 1996 or 1997, I went to my first Gen Con.  I think it was 96 because of when I met Andrew H., no, the other Andrew H., who I met through Ultimate Combat! and who got me into Jyhad.

What I remember of that first Gen Con was that I stayed at the cheapest option available as I didn’t have money and had no idea what I was doing as I was going by myself after, I think, Andrew had to cancel.  I wouldn’t have gone at all, I don’t think, unless someone else was planning on going as well.  I stayed at the University of Wisconsin, where I had to take a shuttle bus to and from the convention center.

So, you are craving food commentary?

In luck.  This was a classic moment of how my life works out.  I still use this story for … things.

I was staying in a dorm room.  Shared bathroom.  No refrigerator.  I had no idea about anything, so I decided to walk around one day when I had free time because free time was something I had back when I didn’t understand how to play games whenever I was awake at Gen Con.

I wandered in the hood of a pizza place.  Perfect – cheap food that I can eat throughout the weekend … as I don’t think I realized I didn’t have a refrigerator.  I get up to the counter and order two large pizzas with no cheese.  The guy asks where I’m from.  I say California(!!).  He asks me if that’s normal.

First time I’m ever in Wisconsin … and I order my first Wisconsin pizza(s) … and I order them without cheese … because everyone knows that Wisconsinites know nothing about cheese.  This is how my mind senses the perfect thing to do and unconsciously causes me to say/choose that “perfect” thing.

My real mistake was ordering onions on one or both of the pizzas.  I had to pick them off after a day or so.

I don’t remember any of my games, but I think I tried to get into an Immortal: The Invisible War game and may very well have done so.

The next year, I went with Andrew, Donna, and Magic’s first world’s champion.  We got a hotel by the airport and commuted in each day.  I had a better understanding of the cadence of the con and think this was the year that I tried to get into games in each of a day’s four RPG time slots – 8-12, 12-4, 4-8, 8-12.  I don’t remember being tired in the middle of my first game on Thursday; shocking, I know, how times change.

I remember that a bunch of RPGs were in one large room with curtains on temporary curtain rods dividing tables.  That actually worked pretty well.  This should have been the Gen Con that I played Wraith: The Oblivion with nine other players in a game meant for five.  We switched out playing our Shadows.  I just pulled my copy of the core book off the shelf behind me, a book I haven’t touched in years, maybe a decade or more.  It has a character sheet with my session notes on the back inside the cover.  I don’t know if it’s from this event.  Probably not, but I’ve played Wraith very few times as I didn’t like it much.

In 1999 and 2000, I stayed with Precedence Publishing.  First time I ever went to a Hooters was one of these years.  I think it’s the last time I’ve ever been to a Hooters.  I already blogged about my insane volunteering schedule from 1999.  When I didn’t stay with Precedence in 2001, it had a lot to do with learning a lesson about wanting to spend time gaming and not working.

I met Dave and Bernie through the Babylon 5 CCG, then met Bill.  In the early aughts, I went with some combination of them and stayed with Fred, a known VTES player one of those years.

What was most memorable?  I was doing a lot of B5 CCG stuff and some Wheel of Time stuff.  I wrote an article for Scrye Magazine, yes, I used to occasionally write for a game magazine, about the winning decks for a Wheel of Time championship.  I remember that clearly because the winner had played a Shadow Genocide deck that we had playtested against a lot, so we thought it sucked for winning, but, if you didn’t understand how to be cautious with your main character, you would get murdered easily.  I played in like one Wheel of Time major and managed to have a proxy in my deck that might have mattered a lot.  I only went 3-1 and was something like 5th or 6th.

My B5 experiences were modest and/or painful.  My fellow Californians did far better.  Bill got pissed when his infinite influence engine got ruled to not work a day before the North American Championships.

I did less RPGing, obviously.  I did Dragon Dice for years.  I got introduced to DD, of course, through Gen Con and was very interested for a while, though I hardly ever enjoyed actually playing.

I don’t see a lot of reason to get into the Indy years in this post.  The Milwaukee years have the least documentation and some of the more memorable events.

I went to SafeHouse one year.  I was bored out of my mind as I waited for my friends to finish drinking/socializing.  I watched people play poker.  I wandered around and around.  As I most recently told someone in Croatia, a bar is normally the least suitable place for me to be.

I liked Milwaukee.  Smallish city that was easily walkable without much in the way of awful neighborhoods in the middle of the night near the convention center.

This is a not very useful email I could find from 1999:

<< Also how was your trip back from Gencon?

Dead tired. Weird Midwest Express breakfast. Fairly smooth, though.

And are you planning to meet up with Illka and Harri, since they are
spending a week in Mountian View? >>

Unless they get ahold of me, it doesn’t look like it. I don’t think I’m going to try and e-mail Ilkka. OTOH, we seem to do well with visitors. We had someone from Minnesota play in one of our tournaments. We had someone from the UK do a bunch of stuff with us. If only we could get people in the Bay Area to show up …

I’ve sent some messages out to individuals with the hopes of having a comprehensive Gen Con report. We need to have some of the stories. I think you may know something about a couple of them (from the tournament).

Note that we were talking about two Finnish players, Finland being a burning inferno bed of B5 CCG play.  Now, I just need to get out to Finland … oh, right, I almost did this year.

I said there was little reason to talk about Indy this time around, but who knows what’s going to happen to my ability to quote myself from 15 years ago?  Here’s a Gen Con report from 2005:

I’ll try to break this up a bit so that people can read what they care anything about.

V:TES –

Played a couple of pickup games after the con. First was 6 player with, I think, The Lasombra going first with weenieish Lasombra Potence rush (not mono-Potence like my joke deck). I was second with Abominable (anarch Abominations who learn Quietus). Dave Sisson played my Pariah and friends Path of Death and the Soul deck. Shane played disciplineless weenies. Bernie played my Nagaraja Graverobbing deck. Ben Peal played my Enkidu deck. Shane got popped between the two “rush” decks. The Lasombra got annihilated by Enkidu, which was hilarious considering what the deck’s actually supposed to do. We gave Dave some bad advice at one point, not realizing what he had in hand, and rather than draw the game out some more, I didn’t try too hard to survive as Ben won 4 VPs to Dave’s 2.

Second game, I think Dave went first playing my Lasombra demon deck (you know, the deck that needs more Shades). Bernie played my Hierophant deck. Shane played Nos Archon. Ben played his Corporate Hit Squad deck as seen in the Player’s Guide !Ventrue section. I played Daughters Suppressing Fire bleed. Bernie had all sorts of problems being between Gratiano and the Archon deck and kept Temptationing Shane’s Nossies. Ben kept himself hale but didn’t put a lot of pressure on me. Dave struggled with his deck and I ousted him. Bernie was weak enough that I could get him without effort. Shane finally was able to punk Ben’s Famed Miriam to take Ben out after Ben went low bringing out more dudes. I bled for tons to take Shane out in one turn.

Picked up the new Player’s Guide as some of you all may have noticed already. Ran some demos for WW to get Retribution/Spontaneous Power swag from Oscar. Reminded me how much I like the idea of teaching players CCGs and how much I hate the practice, especially for games with steep learning curves. Otherwise, had almost no idea what was going on V:TESwise. I can’t even remember all that Josh told me about the finals of Nationals.

RPGs –

My ten RPGs were: Read or Drown (Big Eyes Small Mouth d20 with homage to the Read Or Die anime); Fireborn; Heroes of Rokugan (living campaign for d10 L5R); Immortal; Beyond the Supernatural; Obsidian; Four Colors Al Fresco; Everlasting; World of Darkness (mortals); Armageddon.

Read or Drown was weak as the players were too silly. Fireborn I’m underwhelmed by. The concept sounds fine to me of playing a reborn dragon in modern London but the mechanics are awkward and the source material didn’t answer the questions I wanted answered, like where did the dragons come from and why are there these other supernaturals. Funny thing about the game, though, was I was the party traitor and didn’t even realize it because I didn’t understand the GM’s handout at all.

HoR was amusing as usual in the sense that my character just doesn’t suit the modules/situations he ends up in. Of course, my Lion courtier is going to run off to the Shadowlands to fight an evil angel (didn’t know L5R had angels) with a Crab magistrate, desert Unicorn and another Unicorn. The only time I attacked anyone was one of our own ship’s crew when I went mad from fright. Hey, cut off his arm. Immortal 3rd Edition, now downloadable for free off of invisiblewar.com or something, might work and Rick Don might be an okay GM normally, but these demoish games have way too little going on to bother with.

Beyond the Supernatural is actually a pretty old Palladium “there are supernaturals among us” that predates a lot of other stuff. Second edition just came out or something. I don’t have much respect for the Palladium mechanics, but this was my best game of the con. I’m actually getting to really like 3 player, investigative con games as the ones I’ve been in recently have had players who were all on the same page such that the plot moved along well with the party doing smart stuff.

Obsidian is a post apocalyptic, multiple gates to hell dimensions have been opened on Earth game. Had a bit of a Star Wars (d6) mechanic thing going. I was the party healer and our main struggle was trying to escape the 35′ demon in plate armor before it killed anyone it could catch. Didn’t do a ton of healing as some of the bad stuff was too deadly. One character died when a cultist caused kitchenware to erupt *out* of the victim’s body.

Thought the Four Colors game was going to be trouble as I wasn’t thrilled with the GM at first and it looked player shy, but we got a full boat. Amusing to me at least, I had the party leader character. Actually got a pretty cool story eventually, though the players were generally too passive. For those that don’t know, this is a free downloadable game of superheroes in Renaissance Italy.

Our party for the Everlasting game: x2 vampires, x1 gargoyle (real gargoyle not vampire variant like WoD), x1 faerie, x1 dragon, x2 gods/demi-gods, x1 angel. We created characters in the first hour with the GM being the owner of the company putting the game out. I was one of the godlings, playing what has to be the wussiest god ever. I figured with that many players and all of the cheesiness, that others would make combat monsters, so I tried for knowledge/diplomacy/supernatural. I used random character creation and got low stats but high completely useless to this game numbers. Besides the basic god package where you can control emotions and regenerate, my awesome godlike power for being a/the Milesian god of magic – Levitation. Not flight, oh no, just levitation. Fortunately, none of the 100 werewolves or so ever attacked me as I was so pathetic in combat that the GM was shocked I had a speed of 1 (think Champions speed chart). I wasn’t even better than the other godling in supernatural knowledge, diplomacy, or the like. All I ended up being good at was not becoming excessively lusty in the presence of werewolves, admittedly something the rest of the party found challenging to various degrees. Most notable thing about this game was how the faerie helped us out in negotations by passing a most magnificent note to the GM involving copious amounts of under the table sex with a werewolf leader (*during* negotiations). We came up with a quite productive solution to the whole vampire/werewolf war by setting up a duel between the leaders. With larger con games of the sort I sign up for, generally two things happen; either the game sucks or the game’s highly amusing. This tended toward the latter.

WoD game didn’t seem like it was going to go well either as the GM was simultaneously eager to move forward and easily distracted into long, irrelevant conversations. We got a couple RPG newbies and actually had an okay game investigating who beat up a neighbor in our apartment complex. I “won” the Nomads book, which doesn’t look terribly fascinating.

I really liked last year’s Armageddon game. Bit of gratuitous sex and way over the top violence. Not a lot of games where the GM leaves the choice of grenade launcher or rocket launcher up to the player playing the magically inclined Knight Templar assassin with brutal antiangel powers. This game wasn’t nearly as interesting as it was way too simplistic. We got tired of debating whether to kill some guy who surrendered to us, so the party “leader” blew his brains out. I incinerated the body when everyone else bailed only to release the giant praying mantis thing. I mismanaged my mana and, though secretly an exiled angel, was knocked unconscious during that fight. Rest was anticlimactic. I still find the over the top power levels in the game terribly amusing where a bullet to the head, antitank rocket, being set on fire by a psychic, elementals and Nephilim beating on you, true immortal in Iron Man like armor blasting you doesn’t really do a whole lot to one of the Mad God corrupted angels/demons. If only we had better guidance from Michelle (archangel Michael as a woman), Odin, and the ghost of Benjamin Franklin in fighting the Dark Apostle’s minions.

Elsewise –

I guess the rest of the stuff I picked up the dealer’s room isn’t terribly interesting to you all. Still recommend Wok’n’Go for your Thai food needs when in Indianapolis. Had an interesting CCG discussion with Kevin Tewart, lead designer or developer or whatever for Yu-Gi-Oh! (I know him from Precedence, same with Vs.’s Mike Hummel), not entirely for public comment. But, it was interesting that the big three CCG companies are WotC, Upper Deck, and … Bandai.

Assuming nothing weird happens the rest of 2020, more Gen Con stuff as I dig up more emails … or, maybe, just more Precedence Publishing related stuff as I dig up more emails as I have way more emails about playtesting CCGs than I do about Gen Con.

Origins 2019

Summarizing first:

I did what I wanted to do.  It was decent.

It would have likely been better if I wasn’t sick much of the time.  On Saturday, when I finally had a break, after Day 2 of the NAC, I stopped off at the pharmacy for drugs and lay down.

Observation – traveling, in particular flying, is harder on me than it used to be.  I actually think it’s not just the travel as, for instance, every time I take off from work my more urgent stuff isn’t done.  I took a work laptop to the con and, predictably, did very little work.  Normally, I don’t take laptops to cons as I know I’ll be too busy to do anything beyond what I can do on my phone (which is nothing workwise besides talk on the phone).

Still, getting up at 2:30AM to pack, spending all day flying (maybe having so many connecting flights is part of the problem), not eating during the day only to gorge after I arrive, immediately not going to bed when I arrive, not having breaks during trips (unless family trips), etc. are doing me in rather regularly.  I’m still not fully well after getting back from Origins 11PM Sunday night and I’ve had no nighttime activities this week – no, the cheerleader orgies will have to wait.

Before I get to problem number two, let’s sidetrack into an esoteric diversion to speak of something gaming related.

I played six V:TES tournaments.  I made zero final tables.  I had one GW … playing someone else’s deck.  It’s almost like recounting my experiences aren’t going to be that interesting to the kajillions of VTESites who read this looking for how to tablesplit their way to groupies and gold stars.

I’ll make some comments, anyway, because I might as well try to pop out another 3000 word post.

Problem #2 with Origins 2019:  I continue to be incompetent when it comes to managing True Dungeon token weight.

Sure, I hand carried such light things as CCG cards and plastic poker chip sized disks with metal slugs inside of them and neoprene rolled up into nine plus two rolls to play/run my events.  Because I’m only an upper peasant level flyer on my main airline, like a craftsman or farmer or something, I weighed my suitcase and pulled out some token bags to get down to 49 pounds.  My carry on was significantly heavier (my game carry on, also had my laptop bag stuffed with crackers and … uh … laptop stuff).

My hotel was not close to the con, being like 2 blocks or less from my hotel last year.  I still managed to consistently carry 40-60 pounds of cards/tokens every day besides Saturday.  Saturn’s Day, the day of no Traveller and no TD after I finally transmuted a bunch of tokens Saturday morning, was the one day I wasn’t worried about my man bag ripping when I’d lift it off the ground.

Bag with wheels for TD because if there’s one thing heavier than tightly packed cards it’s tokens.  That’s one not so much takeaway as I didn’t think a lot about it but suggestion from a couple of folks.

Also, just stop thinking I’m going to dump extra tokens on folks who might want them.  Sure, it’s possible I run into someone who wants Blessed Pants of the Hare, like I did in the hall outside the transmute room, but why is that worth carrying an extra 10 pounds every day?  I’m inclined to believe it’s not worth it.  Just as my conclusion after last year’s Gen Con is no more trading or buying that requires me to hunt TDers on Wednesday when I should be sleeping at 8PM, no more dragging around sheets of “blues” thinking I’ll somehow be able to move what was a gross overtransmutingfest of transmutingness on my part last year.

Not exactly a problem as it’s not terribly controllable, but I think I would have had more fun if I didn’t fly solo.  Could have distributed weight better.  Could have used rideshare more cost effectively (in a sense, in another sense the cost doesn’t change).  Probably just feel more relaxing.

So, let’s go back in time.  To the long long ago that was the weekend before my Tuesday flight to Ohio.

I had an open weekend.  I had a weekend of deckbuilding and token organizing.  When I was but a tyke, a callow youth full of vim and vis, I would have pounded out five V:TES decks.  I made two.  I jammed some extra cards from a broken down deck in to have some possibility of adjusting my Day 2 tournament deck.

I packed one long box of V:TES, essentially five decks and some extra cards.  I packed my Traveller decks box, my promo card box, nine playmats to give out (given away), two starter set boxes (brought back), various ship decks and expansion packs for demo use or prizes or to exchange for cloth (one might say “mystic cotton/linen”).  I packed some crackers, pistachios, clothes, toiletries, drugs, my hamburger (many of you know what this means), etc.  Two binders of tokens, two tupperware things with tokens, miscellaneous token bags.  Left dice bag at home.

And, so, it commences …

Tuesday was the usual awful early morning flight that happens when I fly West to East.  I rush over to Fabian’s to play in the Tuesday night tournament.  This was arguably a mistake.  Another possibility would have been to save money, take the cheap airport bus instead of an Uber, check in to hotel, drop off 100 pounds of stuff, casually wander over to Fabian’s to hang out and eat a salad while players gotta play.

Actually, if I think through rest strategy for Origins, blowing off the Wednesday morning tournament might have made more sense as I’m still on Pacific time so getting up at 4AM to get ready for V:TES is maybe not as condign as staying up to 8PM playing V:TES the night before.

I played a rush deck that my opponents didn’t think was a rush deck.  Let’s just say the deck could be called Secret Rising and I never played a King’s Rising …

I told my fellow airport-bound VTESite on Sunday that I didn’t even play a pickup game.  That wasn’t true.  I blanked out that I played one Tuesday night before one of the players drove me to my hotel.  I played my Aus/Tha/Vic deck where I played cards, so it was not a bad game.

Wednesday

The only con thing I plan on doing is to get some transmutes in since the TD volunteers are awesome and make Origins transmuting uberpleasant.  No rush, here.  I’ll get ousted early some round and have plenty of time to pick up my badge and try to convert more tokens into fewer tokens.

I actually couldn’t remember which deck I played in which Wednesday tournament until I remembered my hamburger with tater tots.  I played casual stealth vote in the burger tournament and played Blessed Resilience (minus all of the disgusting Legionnaires, of course, need to update my personal banned list one of these days) in the stromboli tournament.

Keeping with the idea that my tournament results are so tres pathetique that nobody actually cares about who went first or what round I used two counters off of Polaris Coach, I’ll just mention some random events.

Round one, I play The Parthenon and Dreams on turn one.  I put out Pelletier the Justicar.  I play Info Highway on turn two and play Hardestadt pretty quick.  I end up with Breidenstein, Una, Ubende before I call Anarchist Uprising to do 14 pool damage to myself, killing my predator, and pretty much guaranteeing the GW to my axe.

Pretty sad when you have 42 pool worth (arguably 45 pool worth) of minions in play and are stymied by a Demdemeh deck that never got above two intercept.

Round two, Falhu learned Protean, but my game was less scare-inducing.  My burger got cold over the rounds.

I remember the second round of playing Blessed Resilience that day.  My ousting bleed mod got DIed by my predator.  Gee, that sounds like something I might do.  Of the three Harbinger decks at the table, I was the only noble and pure Emeraldless one.  So, I lost.

I can’t remember the first round.  I don’t remember opponents.  I don’t remember seating.  I don’t remember what I did.  I vaguely recall putting out Erlik and using the counters for Erebus.  I think Nicomedes was my first non-Tupdog minion, looking through my crypt and remembering that Nicomedes use was non-trivial.  Some massive block for this game.

Thursday

I thought about throwing something together from what I had, but I thought it made more sense to borrow a deck from Darby.  Since I don’t own all of the various promo 11 caps and don’t proxy, I borrowed Baba Yaga.

First round, my Jake gets J.S.  Since this isn’t Tasha, Jake gets contested immediately.  My prey is playing Darby’s War Ghoul deck.  My predator actually bothered to meta against allies and I see a hand full of Entrancements before I’m ousted.  Didn’t do a whole lot.

Second round, Darby is my grandpredator playing Tupdog.  I thought about rushing crosstable one turn when it wouldn’t have been too spite-inducing for Darby, but my predator was playing DOM/Obt and had a second minion the turn I thought about it.  My grandprey reduced my ousting bleed only to get ousted by my prey on his next turn.  I stealth bled Darby out for my one GW in 14 rounds of V:TES.

Well, you know what I always say, the only thing that matters when it comes to multiplayer CCGs is deck strength.  Next year, I’ll leave the Gargoyles with Daimoinon decks at home and play nothing but … er … well, when I figure out what the good decks are in the game, I’ll play one of those and I’ll eat the big tamale in the sky.  Maybe I’ll fly solo again next year, just knowing I’ll be swimming in groupies.

Finally, the TDForumite comes back to joining someone else’s Nightmare run.  We are six adventurers playing a dungeon we’ve played before.  I get asked what weapon I’m running as paladin and comment “Thor’s Hammer” to which the asker notes the entire party is running legendary weapons.  Truly, I have found my ilk and it is less than 1%.  Have I graduated to being a .5%er?  Is it even possible that since I was lending out three Charms of Avarice for us to ghost the other four players at max treasure that I’m *gasp* a .1%er.

It’s almost like games I invest in I get a lot of harder to get components.  Almost as if.

I took damage; I think I got down to 47 hit points and used Crown of Expertise on my Lay On Hands.  Honestly, my ilk really should be running Epic rather than Nightmare unless the party is really small or we don’t play maxed out builds.

My favorite way to play TD remains Hardcore with 12 token builds.  I realized how annoying it was to carry around a bunch of conditional crap when we just don’t need it, including such low yield tokens as healing potions.  Jumping ahead, I see Nightmare being too easy in a lot of cases at this point, so I’m likely to make more interesting builds.  Maybe actually run Boots of Might again and level up not through eldritch.

Then, had a 9PM run with some of same guys and Laz’s group.  Laz’s family iz gut at puzzles, and I didn’t really need to do anything ever, though I healed some playing druid in the boss fight.

I’m increasingly less interested in 10 player runs.  I’m thinking maybe our next evolution is to buy out runs and run double downs or something.  I’m already very hit or miss at puzzles, but when I can be miss, miss, miss at combat and it doesn’t make any difference, combat is kind of worthless.  This is a major factor in us getting away from PUGs in the first place, to set a difficulty level that isn’t pointless.

I keep doing a horrid job of explaining the irony of TD – the players think they want more and more powerful tokens and, yet, the more fun runs are the runs that are challenging, which more powerful builds defeat.  Was talking to a friend of mine about his runs and he mentioned all of the variant stuff where optimized builds were eschewed.  I don’t want to do greedy sealed at Nightmare.  I want to do ranged monk, 12 token at Hardcore.  But, since the rewards for NM are better, means doing something like maybe 15 token or doing thematic builds like damage reduction or retribution.  Or, double downs and see how they go at NM.

Friday

NAC Day 1.  My first round is set up fantastically for me with turbo Erlik to my left and stealth bleed to my right.  Well, my grandpredator’s bleeding was easy for me to handle.  My predator kept bleeding me with an 8-cap, which was a problem for my bounce.  I screwed up the three-way …  I only ended up with a table split.

My second round, my prey contested my first vampire and did everything possible to get me ousted.  I didn’t do much.  My third round, I had a promising game, but I took too long ousting my prey, sitting on wake bounce most of the time with my second predator not being cooperative even though all his deck did was bleed at stealth.  My grandprey turned the pool/minion count corner, my predator didn’t try backousting with Kindred Spirits, so we didn’t survive.

I qualified easily enough for Day 2, but I was just taking up space in these tournaments.

Last TD run, with Laz hosting again.  Played druid again.  Did actually deal damage with spells.  Did 80 with one spell in boss fight and elf wizard commented “only 80?”, further supporting the idea that trying to get the challenge level right in TD is actually really hard once people have token collections.  Don’t look down on starter pack level play at Normal.  Normal is a better technical game most of the time, IME.

Saturday

After forgetting key transmute components Friday leading to carrying an extra 25-30 pounds of tokens all day Friday for no reason, I put together the last two transmutes I was going to do at Origins and got to leave everything else in a highly secure black ops facility.  Well, and I had my V:TES decks.

Round one was a tedious game.  There was so much talking about nothing.  I should have probably done something about the table talk in a language besides English, but I didn’t really care and didn’t find the end result offensive.

Round two was fine from a table setup situation.  My prey got beaten down a lot by my grandprey.  Time ran out to complete the game, where I would have been in trouble against a wall deck.

Round three, I worried my predator, so he bled me for 9, then for 6 to oust me.

Nap time.  Well, eventually get back to room and turn on ESPN and hope to get over chills time while worrying about packing the next day and running Traveller demos the day I fly out.

I suppose I could mention that I’m such a “_” player that my first VP at Week of Nightmares was my prey transferring out to spite my predator and my second VP was from playing Golconda and my prey just no longer caring what happened.

Sunday

Traveller and traveling.  My demos went fine.  I got rid of playmats but very little of my decks.  I forgot to take pictures (predictably when I have lots of things on my mind).

My flights were much later than I thought, so I hung out briefly in V:TES zone.  Then, recycled air and tight seats for hours.

Oh, what decks did I play Day 1 and Day 2?  Loser decks.  Decks that can’t oust fast.

Thank you to the VTESites for doing WoN, NAC, for hanging out or chatting or whatever.  Thanks to Laz, Matt, et al, for transmuting and hosting my runs.  Thanks to those who talked to me about Traveller, John also helped me have enough playmats to give out to everyone who wanted one.

I did what I planned to do.  Did what I wanted to do.  Did what I was obligated to do.  I hope I enjoy Gen Con 2019 more, though, and Origins 2020.  Sadly, while it was my intention for more than a year to go to the EC this year, work makes that not a possibility.  Guess I won’t take up space in those events, either.

Not quite 3000 words.  Hmmm … my Columbus Airport food experience was vastly inferior to the year before.  I don’t know why I bothered getting anything before my flight.  In the next 200 words, I’ll get into the math of how many Polaris Coaches to run in a 75 card deck …

Oh, just had one last thought.  Hugh, maybe I would use a V:TES playmat if I could win one sometime, also might give me a reason to endeavor more vigorously at the whole winning a tournament thing, which just means ending up feeling disappointed by failure rather than reveling in it.

Origins 2018

I hadn’t been to Columbus in 20 years.  And, that trip to Origins was as a Precedence volunteer where much of my time was spent demoing the Babylon 5 CCG.  The RPG schedule was so boring I didn’t even try.

This year was for two things:  V:TES, True Dungeon.

Even the TD was limited, so let’s start … with Tuesday.

Tuesday, I go to sofa around midnight, not really sleep, and get up at my 2AM alarm.  Quarter to 4AM, Athena and Andy pick me up and we are off to Oakland.

Flights happen.  We arrive before 4PM in Columbus.  We wait a long time for the hotel shuttle, which is aggravating as I’m not sure I’ll make it to the 6PM V:TES tournament on time.  We check in.  We walk to Fabian’s, and we order a deep dish pizza.

V:TESing happens.  I may not have the starting players right in all of these rounds.  I knew some of the names when I was playing but have since forgotten.

Round 1:

Will (Sabbie 2 caps) -> ?? (Trem stuff) -> Mark (Summon History) -> Ian (HoS 3/4 toolbox) -> Jay (Nos prince/support)

As Mark said, I didn’t have much of a game.  I hung around for a while with potential answers to being rushed by Remnant of the Endless Storm, but it wasn’t like I was flowing cards.  Actually, I shouldn’t have gone in for the terrorism that is Outside the Hourglass and Domain of Evernight and just made some effort to block things, especially once I was never going to be a predator in the game.

Mark was not in a great position, but I got ousted and continued to eat pizza.

The pizza was not good.  I like Fabian’s well enough and they were good to us, but the crust was too dry, the cheese was overwhelming compared to the toppings, the toppings were very meh.  I’m willing to try thin crust, probably without cheese.  Then, Andy didn’t get a chance to eat any until it was coldish.

Round 2:

John (SB) -> Maria (Newjah) -> Ian -> Andy (borrowed FoS SB)

This was set up ludicrously well for me in that John kept continuous pressure on Maria, keeping her from dominating.  I got out a couple of Emerald Legionnaires, almost completely botched bleeding Andy for 3 with permanents on my HoS by playing Call of the Hungry Dead needlessly at superior rather than inferior emptying one of my dudes.  Drew a Blood Doll, pushed, killed Andy, ousted John after fending off attempts to keep him in the game, then raced Maria in the endgame where I played around Archon Investigation and could bleed for 11 or whatever on my turn with three HoS and Emeraldness.

Sometimes you sweep because it’s hard to mess up your position.

Finals:

Kelly (Pre/Obf vote) -> ?? (Mistress Fanchion doesn’t do it all) -> Ian -> Mark -> ??

I blanked on my predator’s name but should be obvious to anyone else being one of two women playing.  Grandprey was the same from round one, I read his name during the first round but forgot.

Kelly ran over the table as his prey didn’t have any game and his predator didn’t have enough intercept and Mark couldn’t get ally rush going fast enough.  I did survive longer than expected, but that just delaying tacticsed the inevitable.

Andy had already left since he wasn’t in the finals.

Wednesday

The day of more V:TESing.

Nobody expects …

Round 1:

Mark (Trem toolbox) -> Kelly (High cap Lasombra w/ Fort) -> Ian (Sea Pirates redux) -> Karl (Wolves Feed !Tor w/ Gerald FG)

Ambrosio takes an action, Mark blocks and ‘schrecks, I had an Anarch Convert out.  I debate what to do.  I mention the possibility of a deal, but I don’t know if Kelly was listening, so I eventually eat.  I play in the dark poorly by forgetting a way to reduce one of Mark’s bleeds and cycle a card and am ousted pretty easily and Mark eventually sweeps.

Just a not good game.

Round 2:

Ian -> Tom (Tunnel Runner) -> Jay (Samedi) -> John (THA close range combat)

I let Tom get a Tunnel Runner and Jay’s game sucks.  My Nadima does stuff but trying to police forwards and fight backwards and not be Pentexed does me in, eventually.

Next tournament, I decide to play the FoS SB deck with some slight changes because I was all about trying to simplify my tournaments.

Round 1:

?? (Una and DoC) -> Adam (!Brujah Undue Influence) -> Mark (5 discipline, including Dom, Nos-ish) -> Ian (FoS SB) -> Ben (borrowed Nos Anathema)

This was pure.  The sacred playing of numerous Delaying Tactics brought righteous glory to some involved.  Mark did hardly anything to me, Immortal Grapple twice in one fight and just hitting for one each time.  I kept getting vote damage aimed at me from other than my predator.

Adam and I dealt with the idea that Mark would go and I’d be unmolested until Ben was gone.  Ben was at 2 pool and had virtually no defense against my bleeding in his deck.  Angela Preston was Famed and in torpor.  Una tried to rescue, Anathemaed Una.  Ben gained 9 pool.  Adam and I talked about his going forward when he was near death and I was fine with it.  I did mention that I had enough bleed to reduce Ben to 1 in hand.  My top card would have been enough to remove Ben.  I played like two DT, Adam played like six.

Round 2:

Ian -> Karl (vote) -> Mark -> Ben -> Adam

My focus was on playing a table with four of the same players, so I didn’t care much about Karl’s deck.  More DTs.  More DTs.

I’m blanking on what happened besides more DTs, Ben calling KRC of 1 on himself and 3 on his predator and the only person displeased was his prey.  Seriously, I don’t remember how things shook out as I was just in DT nirvana.  I did DT, myself, to cycle.

Forgot my credit card at Fabian’s because I’ve never left my CC with restaurants before.  Ben helps me settle my “tab” (even though I got everything I wanted before tournament two) and holds my card for Thursday.  I should mention that my food was much better, in particular the tater tots from the sister restaurant were better than usual.

Thursday

Time to get serious … ly ousted.  While I had options for a tournament I couldn’t play the finals of due to True Dungeon scheduled for after the tournament is supposed to end (but won’t), I settled on HoS FoW as something fun that actually has any ousting power.

Then, I find out there’s going to be another hour taken up with a food break.  Burn.

Round 1:

John (Ass anarch vote) -> Kate (DoC vote) -> Karl (Art of Memory Dom/Obt) -> Darby (“fun” Bribes) -> Ian (Blessed Resilience pure HoS)

Darby kept referring to my bleed deck as an intercept deck.  Having no votes, I was not involved in the numerous discussions on whether to help Darby pass votes or not.  While Karl could theoretically bleed for 18 in one turn, his turns didn’t tend to be 18ish.  So, Darby often had lots of pool or gained back what he lost.  Kate is not all that experienced (we knew each other from NoCal) and probably overcomplicated playing Lily Preludes, as Darby didn’t get permavotes until late and John and Karl each had one (John’s one hurt him as his dude couldn’t anarch up).  John is low at some point, but a vote passes to give him lots of pool and that makes my game unlikely to proceed.

On turn two, Darby vote bled me for 7.  About 100 to 105 minutes into the game, John back ousts me with a vote as it also kills Kate and the game can properly time out at that point.

Round 2:

Ian -> Alex (IC stuff?) -> John (Trem stuff?) -> Alexandre (anarch) -> Karel (!Ventrue bleed)

I doubt my deck could ever play as smoothly as it did in this game.  I get out Erlik who gives me Mina on the same turn.  I bleed, I Rapid Heal, I Summon Soul, I Emerald, I … before the end, my prey brings out Rafael de Corazon, who becomes Legendary, calls Reins of Power, and votes 7 against … bring out Erebus to go to 2 pool.  Rafael gets by my two intercept with a vote and back ousts me to give a Dominate bleed deck a new prey.  Somehow, that worked for him.

Finally, we have True Dungeon happen.  I mean, sure, I had already done transmutes that morning and the transmute room folks were superhelpful for getting me out of the room.

Into the Shadowlands

So, I’m the one who used our patron code to sign up for this patron event.  No point in spoiling anything.  I did prove not useless with the first room puzzle.  I barbarianed to occasionally do damage, though not 60 at a shot like the rogue and there was one fight where I missed like every round with my +16 to hit.  Ah, high level play.

Respectfully, I didn’t find it that interesting.  One of the things that’s very clear is how really uninteresting TD combat is.  I want it to be challenging but also for there to be some context.  Challenging isn’t hard [foreshadowing alert, foreshadowing alert].  The problem I noticed more at Origins, maybe just because I hadn’t played in a while, is how you have no real concept of what’s going on in combat.  Did I contribute?  7% of the damage?  22% of the damage?  How do my choices matter?  At a certain point, if you win, the table just gets wiped clear of sliders and it feels oh so hollow most of the time.

I thought the event would feel more different.  Sure, there was metagamey stuff to rein in brokenness, but I couldn’t even tell whether that mattered.

Break time.

True Raid

While occasionally entertaining and probably much more so for those who 20ed their Death Dies, this became monotonous to me.  I liked what happened to spellcasters because it forced me to do something besides “Spellswap to Magic Missile, MEC, another 36 damage.”  I traitored and, thus, was the last to be slain.  I would have vastly preferred a different set up with more variety to the fights.  It just felt like an exercise after a certain point as victory was never going to happen.

I did something like 300 damage to Lorigorgon, 52 to PCs with my last two spells, 23 to all PCs with my last Burning Hands, had a bunch of spells rejected …, and it felt like it meant nothing.  Sure, I could have more efficiently used my Lightning Storms to do more damage, but it was more interesting filling out paperwork up until the point I was a traitor.  Actually, failing to hit in melee combat because my build was not built for anything besides casting and surviving was mildly amusing.

Andy had more to do as he didn’t have as many spells rejected and he survived a long time as a non-traitor.

We hit a pub near the hotel, which became the norm.  I had the stromboli, which was really a calzone, but I don’t terribly care.  Too cheesy for eating that late in the day, but it was good, otherwise.

Friday

Day one.  The proof is in the puddinghead plays.

Round 1:

Jay (ANI/THA) -> Ian (THA horde) -> Jesper (Nergal Beast) -> James (high cap Ventrue) -> ?? (POT/Dom)

I could have played this game really differently.  I could have played The Name Forgotten on Nergal before Unleash and Beast got out and could block it.  I let Jesper play his game.  He got the game win.  But, what confused me a lot was how little ability to survive James had.  I thought he would vote and fill up or bounce more or something so that he wasn’t taking constant bleeds from Nergal and Beast.

Jay was frustrated by my inability to go forward, but just because I brought out Hannigan and gave him DOM, then Muaziz and gave her DOM didn’t mean I could actually pressure my prey without Create Gargoyles, which Jay blocked.  Lot of bounce, not bounce, whatever at end.

Round 2:

Karl (!Tor anarch bleed) -> Will (AUS/Obf) -> Ian -> Martin (PRE bleed w/ AUS) -> Adam (ANI and …)

For a short time, this game was set up really well for me.  Martin had very little pool, Adam never got going.  But, as usual, I couldn’t finish and Martin got Adam, and Will got tapped out by Anarch Troublemaker and couldn’t use his bleed defense.  The endgame ground to a halt with Martin not wanting to go forward with my threat of bouncing, Karl somewhat spinning his wheels, and my being kind of impotent.  Karl contested Carlton and I should have bled for the edge rather than Blood Doll hunt.  Eventually, Karl double bounced and Archoned on the same action and I couldn’t deal with a load of minions.  Martin didn’t have any game by the time I was gone.

Round 3:

Elon (Baali vote) -> Pete (!Tor) -> ?? -> Ian -> Sam

This was odd.  I should have gotten 4 vps with how it played out as I could have saved Elon not once but twice, with the second time ousting Sam while Elon was at 1 pool with two tapped Baali.  My predator transferred low enough for Pete to oust him.  I had Carlton and Ponticulus right away and my predator’s first minion was … Stanislava.  But, I didn’t care.

Sam would bleed a lot for 1.  I bled a lot for 1.  Pete held on long enough for me to oust Sam but had little pool at that point and I had an impregnable wall with my ability to get to two intercept.

What made it odd?  Sam’s deck does like one thing.  Elon got into a position where he couldn’t do anything pretty quickly with just Nakhthorheb and Waters behind him.

N1 – Astral Bliss

Final TD event.  Even more important not to spoil this as many will be doing it for the first time at Gen Con.  There were good things about it.  I didn’t find it to be the best thing ever.  I preferred GC 2017’s Moongate combat.  A question, how interesting is up to the reader, is:  What do I actually enjoy about TD?  I enjoy other people being clever.  I enjoy the camaraderie.  I enjoy thinking about builds (but not so much writing them out as they tend to be very similar to each other).  I enjoy having certain tokens.

My build for this run, btw, was a ranged monk.  I went minimalist, even though my build was kind of more oriented to normal than hardcore.  My damage bonus was too low for hardcore.  I could fix that easily, but it would mess with the aesthetic of the build.  What wasn’t too low was my 39 hit points.  I liked feeling in danger and needing healing.  To play TD and be “Well, I’m down 40, but I’m okay.” is not enough tension.

I still had people use my melee stats, which were like +1/+1 vs. my ranged of +25/+2.  Part of the balance of playing at levels that aren’t that hard.  Fortunately, the six person group had a fighter who could consistently do 30+ to make up for my impotence and Andy’s druid was probably doing good damage.

Saturday

Day two.  Every cat has his day.

Round 1:

Kelly (Cybele and friends w/ Striga) -> Ian (my vampires have Obfuscate) -> Hugh (borrowed Summon History ally) -> Bob (!Ventrue Grinder?) -> Adam (Palla Grande)

The best thing about not having stealth in my first 31 cards is that I got to put out a bunch of permanents that nobody cared about and a couple of my Conceals got through due to the swarm factor.  I burned Ankara three times by the end.  One of those times was a horrible mistake, the kind of mistake that losers make, losers with blogs.  I burned a Renegade Garou with DBR.  I only really got beaten down by a Rock Cat after I failed to topdeck a third stealth card in the first 42 cards which would have ousted Hugh, though I could have swarm ousted Hugh with just my board if I didn’t trust in the heart of the cards.

Of course, my deck with all OBF vampires except one is barely running any stealth, only 22 stealth cards, so it’s understandable that I should have played smart and not like I just got embraced last week.  Not that I think I get Bob, but 1 VP is 1 VP more than 0 VPs.

Round 2:

Karl (FoS anarch vote) -> Jesper (Deep Song bleed) -> John (Trem toolbox) -> Ian -> Robert (Malgorzata and friends vote)

Karl survived longer than he should have, which got him a VP.  Jesper beat John down hard early to where John never had game.  John wasn’t expecting my deck to wake as much as it did, which meant he couldn’t lunge and I wasn’t terribly afraid of combat.  I got out lots of ranged weapons.  Anarch Troublemaker was rather important.

I Concealed Creepshow Casino in the endgame after Robert got 2 VPs, which Robert let through.  He also didn’t play around my weapons well.  Newer than most to the game, some better decisions and I wouldn’t have ousted him after I diablerized all of his guys right before time.  Also, earlier, probably could have played differently to get two easy VPs.  Learning experience.

Round 3:

Ian -> Alexandre (Vignes) -> Pete (Ventrue Grinder) -> Brad (FoS w/ Dom Corruption) -> Bill (PRO/Dom w/ intercept)

Even with my dispensing with cards that can provide stealth and with a Free States Rant crosstable, Vignes still took out Pete.  If not for that, I would have had two easy VPs as Alexandre wasn’t doing so great.  Meanwhile, I ignored Bill who tooled up with lots of intercept and Brad never felt confident going forward, so I eventually got worn down by bleeds in the endgame.

While I could be frustrated by how my Day One deck couldn’t lunge, what was different about these events is that I was actually capable of threatening my prey most of the time, with the one game of Nergal being a case where I think I just end my prey’s game on turn three if I choose to and end up ineffectual instead.  The plan of lowering crypt capacities and focusing on getting more minions in play seemed to work in general.  Now, the issue remains that with my banned list, there are a lot of ways to improve ousting power I don’t have access to, but that just means I embrace voting … because everyone loves voting.  Everyone.

For all intents and purposes, it’s pink lemonade time as I wasn’t going to play in the finals on Sunday and no more transmuting to do for TD.  To the pub for more lemonade.  I finally got the $4 double burger.  I was not surprised that it was a slider.  It was a very thick slider.  Certainly, I understand the price point.

Oh, speaking of food, didn’t mention my getting Tibetan dumplings (too chewy), brisket and rib tips (kind of overpriced for the quality in my mind), lamb curry with a lassi (lassi was quite good, rest was okay) from North Market, getting many smoothies from the convention center with my first Buckeye being really, really good and the other being kind of watered down, with the Strawberry Sunrise being just too pineappley.  Got food at the airport on the way back and it was pretty good and like $10 for a full size sandwich and a 20oz drink – I’m increasingly a fan of smaller airports.

Sunday

One more tournament I can’t win.

Round 1:

Ian (Indie Gargoyles) -> Mark (Nos Royalty Disarm) -> Peter (Baron something) -> Brad (Ani/Obt)

This was entertaining for how sad and pathetic we all were at ousting our prey.  Ferox rushed Sheldon.  Sheldon got torped.  Peter got Fee Stake: New York with Calebros in play.  Because of the recent forum post on vekn.net, I remembered the contestation penalty barons have, so Ferox had to empty Calebros in torpor.

While Mark and Peter got pool deprived to the point of it being laughable and more laughable, Brad just achieved infinite power.  I kept waiting for a crosstable Parity Shift, which got DTed.  Mark only ousted because Peter did a thing with a Famed vampire.  Mark and Brad stalled out in the endgame.

Round 2:

Darby (DoC vote) -> Robert (Malgorzata again) -> David (Summon History Inceptor) -> Alexandre (Malk anarch) -> Ian

“Darby, if I don’t oust you now, I don’t think I’ll ever oust you.  So, I’m done, go ahead.”  I, then, took a restroom break.  When I got back, Darby was ousted, so, as usual, I’m psychic … because I didn’t oust him.

David got a VP because somehow Alexandre just kept eating bleeds of four from Codex.  Robert got a VP because David’s game was impaired by Washes and Suddens.  I didn’t get ousted with four cards left and one untapped minion against Malgorzata, Oriandus, Polly.

Welp, that’s V:TES.  All things can be predicted at the beginning of every game and you’ll lose games because your grandprey tries to rescue a vampire from torpor.

On the way to the airport, Andy and I discussed my next deck construction method.  Let’s see how secret sauce works this weekend …

While no gaming event at Origins was great, I’d still say the overall experience was greatish.  The best part was hanging out with people better at winning V:TES than I am.  Better hotel next year would improve things.  Trying thin crust might be better, especially with no cheese.  Maybe I’ll even play a Dominate card besides Deflection in one of my decks, like, uh, Autonomic Mastery.

Andy really liked the size of the convention.  I really liked having a two minute walk between V:TES and TD, as opposed to rushing for a 15 minute hussle between hotels to make RPGs.  Still, Origins and Gen Con provide two very different opportunities for me, so I’d much rather have both be the norm.

Thanks to Black Chantry folks and Jay for V:TES events.  Thanks to Mongo for getting my transmutes done faster than they deserved to be.  Thanks to my fellow dungeonites for putting up with my dungeon demeanor.

EC 2017 – Explicatio

There are some details I missed in the last post.

I never saw Celerity guns or Celerity sticks.  In hindsight, I should have played winnie Celerity, maybe sign some 5-caps without Auspex for the adoring public (hey Sheila, want an autographed crypt card?).

I remembered my other opponent in the second storyline game.  I was in the bathroom, shaving I think, when I started thinking about how much I hate Powerbase: Montreal.  I was considering the obvious way to get rid of it and various other annoying cards, when I realized my grandprey was Kemal playing fat Tzimisce.

Yes, the only reason I remembered the one time I played against Kemal was because of hating Montreal.  For, you see, I had little to do in that game besides take Kemal’s Montreal, which he tried to block with one dude, where I Call of the Hungry Deaded a Tzimisce at inferior and he stopped caring.

Kemal brought out John Paleologus first and used his ability a couple of times.  Still don’t recall Kari’s deck all that well.

So, moving on to where I’m wrong.

Does deck strength matter more than I have suggested?

That’s the most interesting question to me.

Putting that aside, does my play ability and/or style work poorly in large events, crossregional events, or both?

I’m just going to rule out sample size with my games because I wasn’t just impuissant in 8 rounds but pretty useless.

Let’s get play out of the way first.

Play skill is not any one thing.  There’s knowledge:  I was surprised how many cards people weren’t particularly familiar with and do find it kind of odd when good players don’t know what burn-a-vampire-action, I mean, Soul Painting does.  Opponent deck archetype knowledge or possible plays by other decks, too.  There’s technical skill – remembering to take for the edge, ordering effects during untap and master, remembering transfers, not transferring up the wrong minion, understanding combat timing, understanding out of turn action timing, etc., etc., etc.  There’s threat assessment of decks and specific plays, e.g. counting up how much pool damage someone could reasonably do in a turn.  There’s manipulation, not just of a sinister sort but just getting people to recognize how much they can annihilate someone else if they feel it in their hearts.  There’s understanding your own deck in terms of when to cycle, what to expect to draw, what cards in the deck will change the game.  And, whatever else.

I think I do well in knowledge and decently in technical skill.  I think I’m good on threat assessment.  I’m not so good on manipulation, maybe was better before when I cared more whether other people let someone win by ignoring table threats and would talk more.  I don’t deal hardly at all.  I don’t even see the need to deal, but that’s some sort of ideal where everyone is equally awesome and sees the same things I see in a game.

What’s interesting is how poorly I understand how to play my own decks.  Now, one could make the argument that my penchant for playing decks in tournaments for the first and only time in a given tournament means I don’t achieve mastery over how my decks play as other people achieve mastery over their decks.  I often wonder if I don’t cycle enough based on what sort of threats other decks display.

There are certainly far better players and many, many better players than I.  But, I don’t feel overwhelmed by play skill in most of my games.

So, let’s talk about play style, which is different enough to break out separately from play ability.

I do think my play style fits poorly with playing with people who don’t know me and other people’s play styles suit better than mine when playing with the less familiar.  What is my play style?

I actually enjoy playing from a position of weakness.  It amuses me to have low pool, for instance.  I strive for the least threatening position at tables.  This works fine locally because even though people may still consider me to be some sort of threat there’s a lot of table balancing that occurs and there’s not a lot of crush the weak.

As I said in the last post, when I play in tournaments elsewhere, I find there’s a lot more not bothering to table balance the threat and, instead, taking out the weak for VPs even if it doesn’t help long run.  Of course, this is anecdotal.

I don’t talk much, though I will occasionally be so apoplectic at players ignoring that someone is going to run away with a game that I will still interject comments.  I don’t cripple players, generally being interested in players having a chance to lose to me after 1.5 hours of my hunting.

So, I depend heavily on my other opponents to properly punish the winful deck(s).  Given that many of my opponents’ decks have poor control elements, sometimes that’s not even possible.  I avoid decks that do nothing but go forward, but other people will play them.

Now, the rub is that this fondness for weakness carries over to deckbuilding.  My personal banned list is ultimately about avoiding boring plays, but many, many best plays are boring plays.  It’s a big deal when you don’t allow yourself to play Second Tradition, nevermind Govern/Conditioning.

So, there is an argument that I’m a chump, fish, a deserver of Darby’s scorn simply because I don’t work on my fierceness or on mind controlling the weak of will.

But, that’s less interesting to me than the question of deckbuilding.  Why?  I guess it’s because I bitch about how players blame their decks rather than blame their poor play skill on why they lose.  If I’m wrong about deck construction matters, then it undermines my ability to tell people “stop worrying about your deck and just play better”.

Though, anyone can build any deck.  Anyone can webdeck.  Anyone can borrow cards they don’t have.  So, it’s still a pretty easy argument that someone’s deckbuilding skills are pretty much irrelevant to their success.

However, my deckbuilding decisions may be relevant to my success.  I mean, I’m not supermotivated to try to run around and win continental championships.  I don’t have a competitive personality, so my value in playing games is in being amused by them far more than in winning them.

Oh, I would note that I’m the Shadowfist Classic Champion for the sixth largest economy in the world (if you include states).  Assassin Bug for the win!  And, I totally won last night’s Bohnanza game by beating a 10-year old on tiebreakers.

Minimum threshold of viability.  I talk about this a lot with multiplayer CCGs.  The concept took root with me from Babylon 5 play, but I also apply it to V:TES.  Another name for failing to meet the MToV is a nutpuncher deck.

I have previously talked about MToV as a single thing.  But, I can see the reasonable argument that what can win a 10-12 player, 2+F tournament by getting 2 VPs in prelim rounds and timing out with 1.5 in the finals is not the same as what will get you into the finals of a 156 player tournament.

MToV is a moving target?  Okay, sure.  My !Malks with Vicissitude build (I would note Zettler made one of the crypts of the finals of Day 1) might fall into victory in some local event just as my ridiculous Ravnos deck got into a finals on a roll off and then won because everyone wanted my prey dead.  But, it can’t fall into 2 GWs in three rounds.  Same with my vaguely Pre/Vic bruise bleed deck (sorry, Henrik, maybe it won’t work as well for you as I suggested it could).

Now, how you identify whether a deck hits MToV is interesting.  Danilo’s Day 2 winning deck is pretty cool, but it’s hardly a common archetype.

So, you hit MToV.  What’s the range above MToV?  Is it a wide range, where Grinder, Girls, winnie Animalism, winnie _, et al or so much better than, say, random PRE vote?  Is the range not so great where any MToV-satisfying deck is fine and you should just “play better” or metagame better or be at the whim of matchups and seating?

Since my perceptions on what is viable are so skewed by smaller tournaments, I don’t have a sense of that range.

Metagaming is also a thing.  I metagamed poorly for Day 1 in that I could have easily taken out some combat ends and added a bunch more bleed bounce and maybe been more relevant.  I’m not sure I metagamed poorly for Shadow Twin, as I did see a lot more combat like I expected and I laughed at combat [ha ha, ha] all the while I was being ousted.

My most obvious problem is speed.  I get run over a lot when I play outside this region.  I used to play winnies and midcaps far, far more than I do these days.

There’s a reason.  I crave variety.  I run fatties not for their sweet, sweet abilities or lots of votes or whatever but because they share out of clan disciplines.  I play fatties with cool names (I think) or maybe cool art (really?) – nah, I play fatties that other people don’t … because other people don’t, and that’s the fact Jack.

I’ve got to stop doing that or get serious about acceleration.  Yeah, I write up a lot of decks with Info plus Dreams plus Zillahs, but a lot of the decks I’ll play in tournaments will cut most or all of the Zillahs out to make room for Inner Essence and Zip Line.

So, really, I’ve got to stop playing fatties, since I don’t try to abuse their powers.  I need to get back to lots of cheapish minions who take lots of hunt actions.  Though, given my limitations on playing Dominate, there is a reason I go fat with DOM to be able to Murmur folks.  If I could Conditioning like the old days, any random 5 cap is functional.

In other words, I need to be building Ancilla Antics decks.  Or, bunch of 3 caps since I didn’t see Neonate Breach in Berlin.

Of course, I wandered back into play style when talking about building decks differently.  I actually like playing weenies, I just don’t like being punished for playing less good weenies because people Scourge or whatever.

Even with my rather extensive banned list, I think there are plenty of reasonable decks and ones that better suit getting moving faster and having some sort of impact on the game.  I just need to The Becoming those possibilities rather than expecting to need to play Extremis Boon every round.

So, what did I not talk about that I should have?  Most folks care less about my brainwandering egofests than in what the metagame was like, how to own Grinder/Kiasyd SB/winnie Animalism/unnamed/Matasuntha/blah, and, you know, something revelatory about this game.

Actually, I’ve gotten various deck ideas both to metagame against my predilections and to actually incorporate Anthology Set cards.  Maybe I’ll say something about building decks with Anthology Set stuff.  Still annoyed Spiritual Guidance got printed when there were so many other cards from e-sets I would find more regardable.

EC 2017: Veni. Vidi. Suxisti!

So, I went to the 2017 V:TES European Championships.  An obsession with Eyes of Argus (on my banned list), Enkil Cog (banned list), er …, Deep Song (banned list) …  Okay, it was cherry juice.  Cherry juice was the driving force behind going to Berlin.  That and Australian women.

Maybe I should start over.

Before V:TES ceased to be a thing, I wanted to hit a EC and a NAC in Columbus.  I had worked out in my spreadsheet how to have enough hours (stealing from my future accruals) to accomplish both.  Then, I used up more hours than I planned, so I let NAC drop for this year.  Still, with everyone under the Moon, even those who don’t actually play, wanting Anthology Sets and my mother figuring out whether she was going to vacation in Europe, Berlin was booked.

As was London because I didn’t see the point of going for less than two weeks and I didn’t see a point in spending two weeks in Berlin.  My mother had spent a few years going to school in London, so, in theory, we could visit places she knew.  Nigh 60 years absence kind of made that not part of the trip.

We arrive.  In the East End.  To the pub!

See the mustard. Too much mustard.

As is the norm among all middle thinking people, the pub is where you go to drink water and eat.  Yes, every single pub in England I’ve been to I’ve just had water to drink.

My hope was to have localish food in England, pub burger, pub fish and chips, kind of forgot about pub meat pie.  Meat pie.  It was good.  The mustard tray came with dijon, whole grain, and English.  Not liking either of the first two, I figure English would taste … whoa!  Okay, I guess it’s just Statespeople who like sweet mustard that isn’t remotely horseradishy or wasabii.

We only had four days fully open to tourist.  We did not effectively use them all, however I could say we reasonably touristed three days.  We did hit the Childhood Museum a block away from our room.  We did have ice cream at Harrods.  Before getting into other touristing, I should note that my breakfast lasagne at E Pellicci was some of my best food.  Thing about hole in the wall places there – crowded and loud.  I’ll comment more on food hither as I’m sure my insights will sea shanty your world.

Llort! Llort?!?

Yessim.  The key to going to London is to go to Cambridge and do what everyone does in Cambridge – get some Babylon 5 CCG in.  We played two very long games with some cafeteria food lunch and a bit of a crisis averted.

First Game [this is a gaming blog, wrong?]:

I played Ivanova Death Incarnate.  I completely mangled the opening.  I was supposed to Rapid Growth on turn one and sponsor Susan.  I forgot how Rapid Growth/Airlock Mishap openings work.  I set myself probably two turns behind.

Other decks played were home faction Narns, Minbari with intrigue, Non-Aligned.  Narns, for some reason, didn’t develop any infrastructure.  What was interesting was one of the last few groups to play doesn’t use standard openings that get you to 10 influence rapidement.  I didn’t seem terribly threatening, mostly because I couldn’t draw any conflicts and was mostly screwing around with putting things like Spin Doctors out while the Non-Aligned seemed out of control.  I finally started on conflicts.  The Narns Allianced us.  I attacked some with Ivanovas since I could just replace them all.  I brought out Diplomacy characters.  I Rally the People and have enough with A Rising Power to win.

Second Game:

I switch to Llort.  Not Chosen of Llort.  Llort Fast Learner Bodyguard and Non-Aligned Fanatic Llort.  Maybe the spiritual realm was trying to tell me something about playing ineffectual decks as I was ineffectual, actually going back to 10 influence from being above 10 influence.  Home Minbari, Home Centauri Shadows, Bester opposed the righteous Llort.  Centauri should have won.  Then, for some reason, he put Forced Evolution in play to make it harder for him to win and the game times out with a Minbari/Centauri tie.

Crusade cards suck.  I don’t care that they played The Fen constantly and even adapted their play to The Fen.  I care about undercosted or zero costed cards coming into play and dumb turns like making Probes be less huge and just general getting away from what the game was supposed to be about, like Llort.  Oops, argument fail … argument fail!

The highlight of London … em … England was punting on the Cam.  It was relaxing and touristy and our punter was entertaining.

Next day, Windsor Castle, Bath, and Stonehenge.  Interesting observation.  No effort to leave time for shopping.  It just felt odd to be rushed about.  Sure, you could shop, but, then, you didn’t spend much time castling or bathing or hengeing.  The guide also didn’t guide much.

Bath was the weakest part of the tour as it was far too museumy for me.  Windsor was wandering around a castle.  Stonehenge was a bright day in the countryside without any interdimensional portals opening up or whatever.  Oh, I should mention that while there was a decent amount of Sun in London, most days it was chilly due to wind.  Sunday, the day when we spent much of the time indoors and on a bus, was warm.  Now, I’m not a warm person, running rather hot [oh nevermind] [see enjoying Scandinavia in January], but we wanted to Thames at some point and warmth on water body not terrible.

As anyone can get pictures of Windsor, Bath, and Stonehenge, here’s (of course) a Bath picture.

Nicer looking than broken stone.

Monday, we did get on a ship cruising the Thames, hit Greenwich just before Royal Observatory closed but didn’t think to go to Average Time until time was annihilated into the past.

So, food.  Food was surprisingly cheap in London.  In that, we ended up eating very oddly and kept missing out on pubbing or tourist-fooding.  We had fast food.  It was bad.  Every single time I’ve had fish and chips in England it has been rather awful.  Speaking of chips.  Every single time I’ve had chips [sic] in England, they have been gross.  Soggy crap like you get from fast food places in the States.  Every single time I’ve been to Greenwich, I’ve gotten a burger and French Fries [sic] and it was good.  Now, I did ask them to crisp up my French Fries [sic], but they were better cooked to begin with (I didn’t notice any difference with my mother’s).  Plus, Peanut Butter Cup milkshake was good.  So, secret to eating in London is pay for the extra privilege (aka quid) of having Americanized food.  Or, seek out your breakfast lasagne, whatever.  To be fair, our only pub food was good.

I need to move on … to Berlin.

We get into Tegel, I stupidly have us use public transportation to get to our service apartment.  Not only did that fail when we got to Alexanderplatz because heaven forbid that you put information counters in major public transportation hubs where tourists can find them, but the trek to Alexanderplatz was pain.  Even the better, less stoppy bus, would have taken you through awful looking town in unenthralling weather.  I like overcast, but going from London’s bright and cheery and woodsyness to drab and boxy and congestedness of our bus trip made me hate having to spend so much time in Berlin.

Then, we settled in and wandered a bit and the city was much more pleasant.  We were a five minute walk from Museum Island.  We had the Magic Museum on our block (I eventually didn’t bother due to its reviews).  Walking to U-Bahn stations not so bad.

Speaking of bad.  I hated public transportation besides U-Bahn.  I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s underground subways and everything else is misery.  Tube – fine.  Metro – my hood.  U-Bahn – same old, same old.  Buses?  Nein!  Trams, S-Bahn, regional trains, trains to other cities?  Icksome.

Speaking of dumb.  I got us Welcome Cards for Berlin, figuring 8 days was enough to tourist.  I was wrong.  We only used the discounts once on the entire trip.  Either too busy, too tired, or the museum or tour we had to pay for didn’t give discounts.  The only good thing was that we never had to get transportation tickets due to the timing of when we validated the Welcome Cards and when we were leaving.

In the hood.

So, food.  London cheap.  Berlin expensive.  Of course, we did mostly sit down restaurants in Berlin in our hood.  Also, what killed the pocketbook wasn’t food.  It was cherry juice.  Every single time I’ve spent more than a week in Germany I’ve never had a beer.  Oh, I should mention that I had no tea in England, not even in the room.  Drinks aren’t just expensive – $4.50 Cokes, for instance – but the volume is weak sauce.  In the US, you pay $2.50 or possibly more these days in a sit down restaurant for a Coke, but you get free refills.  I had like $3.50 juices of .2 liters.  How can someone eat food with .2 liters of drink?

Now, KiBa was really good both times.  My Coconut Kiss was really good and not horrendously priced at the place near the EC.  But, tea, coffee, water outside of the local places near the EC were just incredibly expensive relative to the volume.

Then, there was the EC’s hood.  Pop out of the Birkenstraße Station and you get a coffee/pastry shop with decent sized cafe au lait.  You get döner kebap sandwiches that are huge, may have amazingly good bread, and cost like $4.  And, there’s markets around to get drinks from if you take your food to go.

Oh yeah, the EC.  I played 8 competitive rounds, a storyline pickup game, and three casual games.  This is my tale.

Because we have a limited tolerance for wandering around, we go by the EC on Thursday to see what’s going on.  I get into a pickup game with Rudolf as my predator, Ali as my prey, Dean as my grandprey, and I can almost remember my grandpredator – Peter, maybe.

I borrow Dean’s !Toreador Embrace deck because I was touristing and didn’t bring decks.  I didn’t draw Embraces until the game was essentially over.  I can try to search my mind for who started my games, but, since I didn’t post this when I got home last Wednesday, I’m just going to rush through by listing myself first in every game.

Pickup 1:

Ian (!Toreador horde) -> Ali (Pot/Pre/Cel vote) -> Dean (Pot/Pre/Cel vote) -> ?? (??) -> Rudolf (Tzimisce high caps)

General observation – Armin, Dmitra, Hektor, Tara, Jan, et al were extremely popular across all of the events.  What was somewhat different was how fighty the versions were I saw.

Dean brings out vampire.  Ali stops transferring to same vampire.  I bring out dorks, I Palla Grande a couple of times, Ali has no game.  Dean ousts his prey somehow, not entirely sure how.  I go ahead and oust Dean.  I concede after a couple of fights in endgame.  If I wanted to play a better game, I would have played differently, letting Dean work on Rudolf harder, but it was not a great game, so might as well end it.

Storyline:

I didn’t build specific storyline decks.  I happened to have a deck that could work for End of the Line, which a lot of people couldn’t play due to the low cap crypt requirement.  I did have leftover decks that were clanny, so I played Samedi, taking out some of the cards that didn’t work when I played my LMC/Groaning Corpse deck prior.

Samedi -> Ravnos Fatuus Mastery -> Ralf playing !Toreador with sticks -> Ben playing Matasuntha -> Tito playing Aabbt Kindred (storyline!)

I had no predator early on, as only Aabbt came out and started Camera Phoning.  My prey tried SensDep forward.  Tito had no predator.  I ended up with three Samedi SensDepped.  Yup, my two times in life having three minions SensDepped were the time I played a Regaining the Upper Hand deck and the time I played Samedi Groaning Corpse in a storyline event.

My prey did get two VPs, so it was the right play.  Tito, of course, won, once he could start bleeding and I had like three Deflections in my hand at the end of the game having played none all game.

Samedi -> Bart playing with an Archbishop of Berlin! -> blanked -> Kari still blanking -> NewJah

This was maybe my most irrelevant game, as NewJah just rolled over me with stealth bleed as is its wont.  This game timed out with only my being ousted.  It shows how weak my frail mind has become that I don’t recall what other people were playing, just that titles mattered across table and I’m pretty sure Kari was Governing.  I think she was playing !Trem because I expected Oriandus to pop, probably a Malgorzata deck, but I could be making things up.  It’s really bad that I can’t even picture anything of my grandprey’s deck anymore.  Tzimisce, I think, as it torped Bart’s dudes reasonably often, maybe advanced Sascha was in play.

I didn’t feel the storyline flavor of this event.  But, then, ever since the first one, I never understood why people play good clans in storylines.  That someone likes a clan is not an argument for seeing Malks, Ventrue, et al.  I like Tzimisce but don’t play them in an event designed to make the world more interesting.

I was surprised that it was just a 2+F event.  Not that I want to play 3+F events, but I was surprised.

Pickup 2:

I hung around to play a rather Americanized pickup game, where James played his Corrupt Construction deck, Kevin played some Ravnos deck that didn’t do much.  Some Swiss guy was my predator.  Phillip was my prey with Tremere.

Yes, I went to Europe and all I got to play against was a Los Angeles/Taiwan Corrupt Construction deck I’ve played like five times against.  What did I play?  Standard Matthias gets Temporis and Summons History.

I got 2 VPs just before time as I beat down Phillip’s board mostly due to Ivory Bow as Ponticulus was in play.  Pickup game 2 VPs – that was towering crescendo of effectiveness.

Day 1:

I thought about metagaming harder against hyperbleed, but I just wanted to play my deck.  I didn’t realize it was a sloppy 90 cards until I counted it up.

Ian (Aus/Dem/Obf/Vic) -> Gines (Giotto, Nos Princes) -> (Grinder) -> Peter (Thucimia) -> (Winnie Dementation)

I should know my predator’s name as I talked to him on Day 2 quite a bit, but I’m actually fading writing this post.

Gines was going to win unless my predator crosstabled him.  I thought about suggesting that and didn’t bother.  I did hang around a little bit longer so that I could play a Madman’s Quill on Giotto with only three Dementation bleed decks at the table.  Gines got rid of it, right away.  My predator ousted me because he didn’t want to be ousted.

Gines got too fast a start for his prey and I didn’t control Gines in any way, though I had the cards in the deck to kill Parity Shifts.  Gines 4.

Ian -> Frank (small cap Tzimisce wall) -> Dean (Gangrel Animalism) -> Michael (Carna and friends) -> Kari (Trem/!)

This was surprisingly NoCalish, in that Dean took three actions to burn the Pentex on my Gravitnir and they all got blocked by my prey.  Kari gave me some rope to push on the wall, but I was largely ineffectual.

How ineffectual?

I bring out Gravitnir.  My prey places The Erciyes Fragments.  I take an action to steal it.  We fight.  I don’t maneuver.  He uses Dean’s Aid from Bats to maneuver.  I Breath of the Dragon.  I continue to try to take Erciyes or play Madman’s Quills on my prey, and every single attempt gets blocked.  Did I do any pool damage?  After the game I thought naught.  But, maybe I did Changeling bleed once.

I played with two vampires (Luc).  I got Pentexed by my prey, my predator’s first Magic of the Smith was for Signet of King Saul when her predator was kind of already strong and the only 8+ cap that hit play was mine, I got ‘schrecked when playing a combat ends.

General observation backed up by some other people agreeing.  People would rather lose to Govern/Conditioning and Kindred/Confusion than face the unknown.  People expect Dementation bleed from Zettler and Gravitnir?  Why would anyone bother?

I pontificated about my lack of success and in what way my beliefs are wrong about the game.  Does deck construction matter more than I think?  Am I suckier than I think?  Is my play style all wrong?

Play style for the moment.  I rely heavily on other players realizing that I’m virtually never a threat and that someone else is.  I rely on people not crippling the weak.  General observation – a lot of players in crossregional metagames don’t go after the strong but cripple the weak and seemingly play for 1 or 2 VPs.  This is interesting because one thing I’m pretty sure about is that I don’t build decks oriented to multiple game wins and you need multiple game wins to win 156 player tournaments or even 88 player tournaments much of the time.

I had my Sanguine Instruction between two !Malks … for Vicissitude … blocked.  My prey feared my !Malky bleed possibilities – my prey had bounce.

Dean, Frank, and I just beating on each other meant Michael had an easy game.  Kari finished me off, I played Extremis Boon, Michael spent some time calculating the amount of pool to give me, Frank Suddened the Extremis Boon.

Ian -> Bart (Winnie Auspex Anarch) -> Jaakko (Kiasyd SB) -> Enrico (Malk94) -> Jan (!Brujah beats)

Jan Havened and IGed backwards but gave up on eviscerating his predator.  Enrico didn’t bounce early but just kept bleeding and being torped.  Jaakko had sporadic bleed.  I kept trying to Madman’s Quill Bart, but it didn’t work.  I tried Concealing his Bowl, that didn’t work.  I lost a variety of cards to Constant Revolution, which didn’t really hurt me, I wanted one more round to discard 3 cards at random.  I lost Extremis Boon and Personal Scourge.  I did Inner Essence/Coma one of Bart’s dudes, but we mostly just handsed each other.  Yet again, someone tried Pentexing me, though I did bring out three vampires for a change.

Enrico ousted Jan.  Jaakko took the rest.

Did two wall decks in front of me hinder my VPing?  I don’t think so.  Walls are to be expected.  You need a game plan for getting through them.

Actually, with The unnamed doing really well (foreshadowing), Auspex is just not as good as it once was.  I would have vastly preferred Deflection as my bounce of choice from a metagame standpoint.

End of the Line

We finally got a four player together for End of the Line.  Petri was my prey with !Gangrel.  My predator played Kiev Circle.  I played Hermana Mayor.  The other deck was Tupdog.  I actually had a plan for dealing with Tupdog.  Everyone failed me, including my predator who didn’t bother blocking a bleed that ousted him, leaving me tapped out with 4 pool and my new prey having a minion with Groundskeepers.

An awful game, and I think the format has some strong potential for awfulness, yet another game going on during ours was like five player and the Corruption deck won at time or something.

Sunday

Obviously not qualifying, I played in the side event, with its 88 players.

Ian (Pre/Vic BB?) -> (Pot/Pre/Cel vote) -> (Forestal anarch) -> (Kiasyd combat?) -> Luis (unnamed bleed focus)

I had no way to defend against my predator.  My bounce got cancelled as predicted.  His predator did nothing.  My grandprey didn’t realize Forestal can only fake one discipline at a time.  My prey was the only one who could stop the Baali but didn’t.  Luis swept.

Ian -> (Pot/Pre/Cel vote) -> (Kiasyd SB) -> (Lutz/Maris) -> (Aus/Tha/Vic)

This was the only talk game I had.  This was what I kind of expect in Day 2 of big tournaments.  There was like a 10 minute discussion that led to not playing a Parity Shift.  Malks Deranged backwards, ended up on Dmitra.  Never left Dmitra as afraid would end up on Hektor.  My prey had to deal constantly with Dmitra’s ability.  I had Velya in play, so I was vote relevant.  I Starvation of Marenaed my predator’s Malgorzata to torpor but didn’t interact much after that.  Kiasyd just kept trying to bleed.

Because Malks were in danger of death, kept dealing to get off Parity Shift.  One Parity Shift was possibly four different targets before eventually going backwards.  My prey asked me afterwards when the game went to my predator.  We agreed it was when he brought out Sha-Ennu after Malgorzata and Mistress Fanchon.  Malks called Reins of Power to bring me to 3 pool, first 3 bleed by predator killed me.  He deemed that his only clear mistake.

It was rough with how to deal the votes.  Yet, it didn’t time out.

Ian -> Kari (Aus/Chi bleed) -> (Shadow Court Satyr w/ Dominate) -> (Winnie Dom/For) -> (Winnie Dom/Pre)

I asked for the time twice.  The other players said something like “with two weenie Dom decks, I don’t think the game is going to time out”.  I considered giving my reason for asking about time.

My first action of the game was Creamy Jade rescues my predator’s Ingrid Russo.

In the first 50 minutes of the game, I played one card – Enchant Kindred (Matteus to Enid Blount).  My predator did 3 pool damage to me all game with his four minions, a bleed I let through hoping he would bleed for more.  I did not Entrancement my grandprey’s SCS.  Misdirection killed me as I was out of wakes for my second predator.

Competitive play was done.  I enjoyed my games, actually, parts of all of my games.  Well, maybe not the second round storyline, thinking about it.  But, I was useless.  I was going to get into why in this post, but I think I need to finish up with the reporting and get into analysis in another post.

Pickup 3:

Ian (!Toreador blocky) -> Peter (Samedi, Genina focus) -> Rudolf (Tupdog) -> ?? (Rudolf’s Montano) -> Ali (Rudolf’s Tzimisce)

Rudolf wasn’t as scary as one expects from Tupdog.  He didn’t draw any Raking Talons for a while.  He didn’t Graverob that much.  I did Soul Painting his Selena, which somehow didn’t instantly burn her, but maybe I’m wrong about Soul Painting as well as many other things.

Peter Nightmare Cursed at double superior my Greta late in the game.  That didn’t hurt too much, as I had Majestys.  Ali didn’t threaten me much.  Montano did one Baltimore Purge and ended up in torpor when it went off.

Rudolf ousted as his prey couldn’t keep minions ready.  Peter ousted.  I should have been able to oust Peter but couldn’t get the right combination of Unholy Penanced, Melanged, Aire of Elationed, Palla Grandeed bleeds lined up before we timed out.

Yes, I was that sad.  Multiple Unholy Penances, a Melange, Palla Grande, like four vampires with Presence, and I couldn’t do like 2 more pool to my prey’s Samedi with Auspex deck when I needed to.

We did talk about teaching English, as the EC was less an opportunity to get VPs and more an opportunity to speak with people who learn multiple languages about how a middle-aged American be less monolingual.  It was kind of funny that Peter mentioned that people count in their own languages, when I find numbers the easiest thing to remember in other languages, though I was in an elevator trying to remember how to count backwards from 100 in French.  Learning a little bit of Mandarin constantly screws up my remembering any French outside of memorized phrases.

My mother and I went out to eat with Hung-ary Peter (you know, it could be that some of these Peters spell their names Pieter or whatever, but I hope I’m getting their names right) and a bunch of Swedes.  Large contingent of Swedes.  They may think I’m a goofball, but I quite enjoy hanging out with them.

Only two people mentioned my blog.  Ralf.  Tomas (sp?).

Rudolf, Ali, my mother, and I arranged to meet Monday for touristing.  We did a hop on, hop off bus trip, finally using a Welcome Card discount (still kind of expensive compared to … foreshadowing).

Speaking of my mother, what was she doing while I was playing cards?  Fortunately, Martin’s mother also wanted to do some sightseeing.  So, his mother who doesn’t speak English and my mother who doesn’t speak German had a good day of sightseeing on the weekend, including a river jaunt.

Martin, his mother, Rudolf, Ali all really helped make the trip better.  As did Michael (B5), organizers, opponents, people I spent some time with outside of play – had lunch with a couple of Italians and Dean, lunch with Kevin who I had never met in the US (to our knowledge), etc.

 

Symbolic.

Tuesday, went to Potsdam on a guided tour.  Interesting thing about this tour.  Unlike the UK tour, where we were just sort of dumped into places to look around at stuff, this tour didn’t have much in the way of going in palaces or churches or whatever but had a lot of history.  Like our punter, the tour guide was entertaining.  We still didn’t have time to shop on the 6 hour tour.  We hit Sanssouci with various pauses along the way.

My phone doesn’t do wide shots all that well, so all of my palace photos show only parts of the palace.

Ironicful.  Best touristy thing in our trip to London was in Cambridge.  Best touristy thing in our trip to Berlin was in Potsdam.

Good size group – 12 + guide.  Guide was Australian.  No, he wasn’t a woman.  But, there were a coincidentally disproportionate number of Australian or Australian-connected women on the tour.  They hung out with cool Spanish/Portuguese guys rather than uncool Statesperson guy.  I can’t blame them.  Who wants to hang out with a guy who talks about logic puzzles and racist pidgin languages?

Foreshadowing1:  unnamed was in EC Day 2 finals, in Shadow Twin finals.

Foreshadowing2:  Tour to Potsdam was 15 euros apiece, 1 more euro than hop on/hop off bus.  Can’t say the latter was bad in any way, just seems like a bus ride with audio guide should be less demanding than live guiding.  Of course, compared to the W/B/S tour in the UK, which was over a 100 sterling apiece, maybe bus rides are superoverheadful.

Well, I think I failed to write in the way I wanted to write, but I have to get this published and get back to Traveller and work and getting on a normal sleep schedule.