Deck Of Many Things

I wrote out some four or so new deck lists and managed to get around to pulling together cards for two of them, while also looking back at some of my other possible tournament plays.

Reasons I love CCGs:

One:  Infinite Ideas

While looking over a deck I’ve never pulled the cards for, I was wondering why I hadn’t put Repo Man into it as it ran 4x Sport Bike.  That got me thinking about Repo Man.  That got me to search vehicles.  That got me to thinking about yet other builds for Polaris Coach and deciding that Polaris Coach + Cryptic Mission is totally a deck that should exist.  Then, there’s immediate Helicopters in your PRE/Obf bleed/vote deck.

With every CCG, I think of new decks or card combinations even with a game with as small a card pool as Ultimate Combat! or as focused a card pool (due to allegiances) as Wheel of Time.  Certainly easier with a game with a vast card pool like V:TES, but there are just so many things people don’t do.  Sometimes it’s a clearly less effective strategy, but that may not be a bad thing in multiplayer play.  Sometimes it’s a build that only makes sense for a specific metagame.

There are dozens of decks I can see trying in a local tournament that have never seen the moonlight of night.

Two:  Metagaming

Metagaming isn’t just about trying to win, though that’s quite the driver.  My thinking for the upcoming tournaments goes somewhat along these lines:  the environment will be far more aggressive than our local environment; play will be quicker putting aside deck builds; player skill will be higher; no one will know my play style and I won’t be familiar with other people’s styles.  Doom … d-o-o-o-m …

Just in terms of trying to build to win, I would focus on how Animalism is the best combat, Parity Shift will be played often, Lutz will appear often with some sort of vote, bleeds of 4-6 or permableed of 3 will be common, winnies will probably not be that common but neither will the countermeasures, Imbued will probably show, event decks might appear, tons of fatties, Celerity guns will also likely be notable.

Flesh of Marble plus some sort of hit back should wreck combat decks.  Combat ends should pretty much stop everything if you run enough to get by Psyche!.  Voting may be messy at times with Velvet Tongue, though the chances of much in the way of Daughters screwing around with incentives is low.  The fear with voting, though, is more that tables unprepared for vote should just get run over.  In Stockholm, there was virtually no voting and a vote bloat deck that got going fast enough could have easily won my tables.

Bleed is the easiest thing to defend against, but I find that Auspex bounce is somewhat less valuable due to the commonality of The unnamed decks.

Does what works well versus what works poorly in this crossregional, totally not like my home metagame matter to me?  Of course.  I want to enjoy my games.  If I just get run over then I’m going to find the events boring.  I have plenty of decks that only work locally because I can bank on surviving long enough for them to play out.  My decks show how slow they are in other regions much of the time.  The one deck that did a decent job of getting going, though, even then, it didn’t play in a true crossregional meta, just a different meta, was Living Lolita Loca.  Small vampires allow you to do stuff.  Or, run lots of Zillah’s Valleys and Banishment Santaleous when he appears.

But, there’s more to metagaming than winning, at least for me.  I want to enjoy games.  Maybe an all forward deck would be the best play, but I don’t enjoy those sorts of decks.  I went through several passes on possible decks to play, and I added a fun factor rating that was subtlely different from my usual pros/cons comments on whether to take a deck to an event.

Fun was interesting because it highlighted the difference between fun results and fun play.  In local play, I can believe I can win with anything better than Gargoyles with Presence (which had a chance in that finals).  There are many game features I can build decks around to unlock an achievement.  I’ve never won with Serpentis in a deck.  Or Quietus.  Or Abombwe.  I keep building decks that don’t achieve the minimum threshold of viability with these disciplines because I want to avoid boring stuff.  So, I also build some real decks with Serpentis.  And, I can’t imagine enjoying playing them in a tournament even if I unlock another achievement.

So, yes, I have to adjust to a metagame, but I also have to metagame myself to strike the right balance where I can play something that interests me that will interest me in events I’m not likely to make the finals for.

Three:  Not Every Deck Is Gargoyles With Presence

I started pulling cards for decks, then realized my builds didn’t make sense.  I overlooked vampire specials.  I forgot to put in a hoser.  I overestimated how many vampires I could have in play.  In some cases, it’s annoying to have to change geniusness.  But, in some cases, like realizing Inbase Discotek is h-u-u-u-g-e tech for a deck I want to play, fun can be had by actually trying to construct a well crafted deck.

Now, building for two-player CCGs is usually more interesting for this sort of thing as, again, deck construction is typically much more of a thing in two-player play.  But, maybe I do have room for Force of Will in my Fortitudeless deck.

Four:  Weird Stuff Happens

More so with multiplayer play, where opponents will mess with other opponents, but the nature of vast possibilities of card interactions is that sometimes you aren’t psychic.  Sometimes, you just find the situation amusing.

We played two games of Shadowfist last Thursday.  In the second game, I ended the game with 13+ power realizing my 7 No Masters deck had not that many characters in general – my smoked pile at the end of the game consisted of something like 10, maybe 12, events.  The first game, I proved that multiplayer CCGs are lunacy.  My three Betrayers of the Crane went for a Dockyard and through the power of Butterfly Swords achieved victory.  Yes, three, 1-cost foundation characters seized control of the world.  In both games, I only ended up with one character in a smoked pile and that was the turn I won the first game.

I can only hope some weird stuff happens at these tournaments.  After all, why bother playing games that are chesslike … uh, doh, some people like those sorts of games.  Hey, CCGs are better!

Speaking of CCGs, we are going to check out the L5R LCG and see if it’s more enjoyable than the VCG was.

Cardflopping Like It’s 1999

I was going through a box of my stuff in a pathetic attempt to get the house more organized.  Besides some ornamental mementos, there was quite a bit of gaming related stuff from when I was a Precedence Publishing volunteer.

In other words, from 1998 to 2000, the heyday of Babylon 5, Wheel of Time, and Tomb Raider CCGs.

There are so many miscellaneous things in that pile.

gencon ’99 and origins ’99 duty roster [sic]

I’ve only ever been to one Origins in Columbus.  It was because I was so deep in the volunteering thing that I had as my volunteer blocks:  Open Demos, Friday, July 2nd, 12AM-6AM; Open Demos, Saturday, July 3rd, 12AM-6AM; Open Demos, Sunday, July 4th, 12AM-6AM!!

I occasionally need to remind myself just how absurd my life has been, at times.  I worked in San Francisco for a while.  On Van Ness.  Where we had parking!?!  I was doing currency speculation in the ForEx market for a company long gone from that site.  I didn’t have much of a commute when I was getting in at midnight and leaving at 6AM.

Apparently, at some point, the idea of being up in the middle of the night didn’t really bother me.  Oh, how times change.

It doesn’t get any less weird for Gen Con:  Friday, August 6th, 12AM-6AM; Saturday, August 7th, 12AM-6AM; Sunday, August 8th, 12AM-6AM.

While I recognize a bunch of names on the duty roster, there are also a lot of names I don’t recognize.

An email I sent after Origins ’99:

Disgraceful. Sam wins the West Regionals. Mike Calhoon wins the Midwest Regionals. Where were you all at the East and Southeast Regionals?

Origins: the other con. Attendance was probably light due to Dragon Con being the same weekend. I only played in the social tournament. Someone was actually surprised that Adira got up to 11 intrigue. Don’t know much about the constructed. The sealed deck final was one of the longest finals ever. It sounded incredibly amusing with We Can’t Allow Thats flying around. Eventually, the Minbari won?! Just shows you can’t expect everyone to be an expert. Lots more starters given away. Jeff Conaway and Walter Koenig were at the con. Walter was his usual cool self about autographs. The lines were very short because he wasn’t in the booklet. Psi Corps uncut sheets were available for viewing. Nice looking art.

Non-B5, Precedence, Origins stuff: Tomb Raider was on hand for demos. Wheel of Time is still being worked on. The 2nd edition Immortal booklet had suitably eyecatching art on the cover.

Gen Con preview: Walter will be back. He will be joined by Robin Atkin Downes (Byron) and Julie Caitlan Brown (who was born in SF and has been very cool). There will also be the official Lara Croft model. All the Precedence games will get a push, except Gridiron.

Question: Of the B5 stars, who would be most desirable as a Precedence guest at events?

Oh, not much from Gen Con ’99, except one of our local players won US Nationals to qualify to play Worlds in Germany.  I might not crossregionally achieve at my CCGs, but there’s an argument I can make others better.

I found articles written by a couple of Babylon 5 players.  Mike was local.  I have his “The Fine Art of Murder:  Winning With the Narn Seizing Advantage Deck” article.  I have Merric’s “Understanding the Vorlons”, “Delenn Transformed and Ambassador Kosh”, “Winning with Diplomacy”, and other articles.

Why?

Well, at some point, I was an editor for a B5 CCG site.  I didn’t try to edit Merric’s content too much, as one of the things with niche CCGs is that metagames are very different, plus he was writing to the beginner player, not for someone like me.  A virtual pro, briefly ranked in the top 10 in the world before being crushed by serious players at the first Worlds.  (Of the three CCGs I have been ranked in the top 10 in the world, … ah, nobody cares.)

Anyway, the main criticism I’d have of Merric’s articles is that his starting hands are so not what the metagame was like at that point.  His starting hand choices were the sort of thing you’d see before Shadows only using cards printed long after.  They would have been like 3 turns too slow, lacking starting agenda and influence gainers (Corporate Connections, Airlock Mishap) to accelerate to “let’s actually play the game” time around turn 5.  What is the point of my bringing this up?  Maybe I should do a post on B5 deck construction that is pretty useless to pritnear everyone.

I have draft versions of the Tomb Raider and Wheel of Time Rulebooks.  I could go into this in more depth some other time, though why anyone would care is a good question.  But, the single most memorable thing to me about the WoT Rulebook is what a total pain in the ass it is to put into writing how damage works at reducing abilities.  It’s just so ambiguous in the English language unless you word it right, yet it’s the easiest thing to show someone.  I could see how Shadowfist words damage and attributes, as it works like that.

I had a bunch of printouts for playtesting B5, TR, WoT.  Was starting to toss them into recycle when I came across some for WoT and realized that they were for the unreleased Aes Sedai set.  I don’t know where the files are for these playtest sheets, but I gots to reveal to the world the ancient mystery foretold by the prophecy and suppressed by the Illuminites.  I mean, has anyone else who knew anything about the unpublished WoT CCG set ever provided any info on it?  I don’t even recall much, as I think we were very early in playtesting for it and/or were playtesting other things at the same time such that it wasn’t as much of a priority.  Well, and I was designing for B5 at that point.

I have a shocking number of tournament forms from B5 tournaments between 1998-2000.  Again, the game wasn’t actually around that long.  The intensity of my engagement made up for the brevity of it all.

I have Zeta Squadron/Legends membership newsletters.  Looks like I only ever was ranked in B5 in one of them.

I tossed some checklists where I noted how many copies of cards I got.  I have promotional brochures.

Just a very different experience than my current one, yet, it’s entirely possible that someone else is currently in that kind of world.

I certainly miss things from those days, though I could be so involved because I wasn’t as employed, so I certainly don’t want to go back to that sort of thing.  Even if CCGs make money, that doesn’t translate into big bucks for people.

Should I rummage through and find my signed, embossed B5 cards and stare wistfully at the stars?  Probably not.  But, maybe, I’ll go hunt down some emails from those days and look to post more antediluvian mysteries.

However, next up in my plans is to talk about NPCs, maybe get into some !Nosferatu decks.  Who knows?  Some day, I might even get back to posting something about the L5R RPG, since that’s mostly what people read about on my blog.  Actually, I tried finding out some info about the Saturday campaign and it doesn’t look like I’ll get anything more, so I have something I’ve been thinking of posting from that campaign, even though it won’t help anyone to build better characters, murder enemies faster, et al.  Does tie into talking about NPCs, though …

[Tournament Report] No Trophy

There are so many people that come to mind as possible players in a V:TES tournament, even now.  Sure, many have family responsibilities or otherwise moved on, but, then, there are others who can forego funds, sleep, or elsewise to drag themselves out to bolster the ranks.

But, you know what?  People should do what they want to do.  We still had 12 players for both tournaments, so all was good.  Back in the day, having that many for two events would have been a cause to rejoice.

We start before 11AM

Tournament 1

Round 1:

Eric H. (Lasombra SB w/ Under Siege fighting) -> Eric S. (Tunnel Runner) -> Ian (Madmen Hold Quills) -> Kenneth (Nakhthorheb)

I get a hand full of Madman’s Quills.  Fortunately, I get enough other cards to be able to fend off being bled for a couple of turns.  I keep putting a Quill on one of Kenneth’s dudes just to get some out of my hand.  My Santaleous is ready to massively cancel … until Eric H. plays Giant’s Blood when I’m sitting on my own.  I cancel his crosstable because Eric S. is in deep trouble, not having enough defense to deal with being bled by Dominate at stealth.

I keep taking Powerbase: Luanda from people, starting with the person who played it, as it gives me something to do to buy time and I thought it was going to be important not to get rushed.

I was concerned that Kenneth was playing Chameleon, so I sat on The Diamond Thunderbolt for a while, eventually tossing it as I couldn’t maintain multiple Quills and nonproductive cards.  Kenneth bloated a fair amount, but I bled him to keep him in ousting range.  While he had Catherine du Bois out, he only bounced me with Lost in Translation.  Kenneth was able to significantly decrease Eric’s pool.  I bled for 3, got bounced, bounced back, DI, bounced back.  The DI brought Kenneth down to 6.  So, I bled twice more.

There wasn’t much of an endgame race.  Eric was low enough that I From a Sinking Shipped his Ermenegildo with Abbot, which didn’t matter as I had three stealth to get by his Under Siege.

A different table split, so I was guaranteed the finals.

Round 2:

Ian -> Rick (Shatter the Gate w/ PJ block) -> Brandon (AUS/OBF 1-2) -> Mark (Mata Hari The Eldest Are Kholo)

Mark clowned around sufficiently that the lack of Scourge of the Enochians or the like meant I couldn’t hold out.  Brandon didn’t have a lot to do effectively.

Rick played a Shatter the Gate that we couldn’t remove.  He got Unmada to defend.  Before I could lunge, Mark ousted me with Paul Forrest enhanced bleeds.  I did Elder Michaelis’s Hold for Freak Drive.  Did I make a mistake not talking to Rick about giving me pool with Parity Shift before I topdecked Confusion of the Eye to kill one I had no love for?  I just tire of the idea of “clear threat, go kill that guy” play.

Rick was low on pool, but he defended well, Eyes of Argus and Second Tradition keeping him alive long enough to bring out Benjamin Rose and, eventually, take the game.

Finals:

I get in as fifth seed on a roll off with Rick.  Fifth seed in a 12 player tournament with 1&3 is just bizarre.  The table splitters didn’t make it.  Eric and Mark rolled off for 2nd/3rd, Eric won that.

Mark places to my left.  Eric places between Mark and Rick.  David A. places as my prey.  I go first.  I love my seating position, figuring Rick can be murdered reasonably quick to where I don’t get Parity Shifted much.  I didn’t realize how much I would factor into that murder …

Ian -> David A. (DoC Crescendo and bleed) -> Mark -> Eric H. -> Rick

What cost me the game?  Was it Nightstick?  Was it not talking to Mark about Con Boon for Malks?  Was it trying to break Pentex on Eric’s dude?  Was it the fact that you don’t always have complete control over winning?

I Santaleoused Rick’s Zillah’s Valley.  I tried breaking his Pentex and Annazir blocked Santaleous!  David tried to Crescendo backwards, and I DIed that.  He tried Vampiric Disease on Santaleous and I Santaleoused that.

Mark lost three ready minions in one turn, one to Society of Leopold, the other two got Crescendoed (one being Mata Hari).  That took so much pressure off of Eric that he broke Pentex and evaporated Rick’s pool.  Rick never got a second dude in play.  I Touch of Clarityed a Bonding, but that was both weak and may have been yet another mistake.  I thought he had played Conditioning – too far away for me to see his cards clearly, though I should have focused on who he had in play.

David got down to 2 pool because he didn’t bother burning my first Madman’s Quill until after I used it a few times.  I ousted him, but I had to discard two Elder Michaelis’s Holds and a Chiram’s Hold beforehand to get into more defensive cards.  I wanted to My Enemy’s Enemy a bleed to Mark, but I used it with Sean Ryscek to try to block an action that I failed to block.  That might have cycled me, however, into surviving later for a bit longer.  What it didn’t cycle me into was one more Madman’s Quill to finish off Mark.

So, Eric bled me out, which guaranteed his win.  We had kind of overlooked that that was going to be the case.  Mark and I should have coordinated better given how that would have worked.

Tournament 2

Round 1:

Eric S. (Osebo flung junk) -> Alex (FoS vote) -> Ian (Akunanse Trophy) -> Rick (Lasombra Clergy Amaranthers)

Eric got a .44, then proceeded to play Thrown Sewer Lid and Thrown Gate with that minion in combats.  I got a lot of masters and sketchy combat, plus I sat on two Red Lists for a long time.  I also had three Nkule Galadima in my uncontrolled, Wider Viewed two away only to have Rick Honor the Elders.  Alex brought out Sarrasine Adv. and Kephamos.

Do you see a possible flaw in this game for me?  Oh, I did bring out Uchenna and Nkule.  I didn’t ever play a Red List … even though I thought about it quite a bit on Eric’s *legal* targets.

Alex recovered.  Rick became all powerful.  Eric tried blocking tons of things early that amounted to little, made limited use of my Powerbase: Luanda.  Uchenna got Amaranthed because I can’t fit enough combat defense in my 90 card deck to actually deal with opposing combat.  I transfer out another to go to 1 pool to put more votes in play to try to limit Rick’s vote lockage, Alex decides to bleed me out.

Rick wins.

Note that besides not being able to Red List predator or prey, Eric’s deck will rip through my combat like adamantium claws through titanium steel.

Round 2:

David A. (DoC vote/bleed) -> Ian -> Mark (Thetmes Contract) -> Alex

I didn’t even play a Trophy.  Sure, I searched one out after murdering one of David’s Daughters.  Not Trophy: Diablerie.  Alex burned my newly minted three bleeder, so I did what I always do and petulantly self-ousted.

Because David lost Angela Preston to Red List, Thetmes, Graverobbing and Gael to my Amaranth, he didn’t have enough left to continue his annoying Madrigaling and Alex ousted him.  Mark, of course, took the endgame.

I used to like Daughters vote, note how I was the first person to ever win a big enough tournament with DoC playing vote, with the ability to Dramatic Upheaval three or more times in a game.  Lily Prelude and all of the “if you vote my way, you get blood” crap just makes it incredibly obnoxious.  People should just shut it down rather than being blood whores.

Of course, bloodhunting one of my two minions wasn’t the only thing that put me in a lost position.  Mark not letting Alex steal Paris Opera House as well as Pentexing one of my guys made me not remotely interested in what happened.

Finals:

I think I’m fairly happy not to have made that finals.  As predicted, Rick won.  See, there were two major themes in this tournament.  Voting with vote manipulation cards that made things incredibly complex between the two Velvet Tongue decks and David’s deck and harsh combat.

David A. -> David CK (Potence flung junk) -> Mark -> Brett (Velvet Tongue) -> Rick

Yup, two rush decks next to each other.  Given that DA’s DoC decks can’t really survive and this one couldn’t even Crescendo backwards, I figured DCK would tire of him and he would pop.  Mark would go forward.  He should go forward, but, given DCK’s and Mark’s play styles, there was likely to be fighting even though the natural thing is to meet back later after nuking the table.  This would contain Brett.  Plus, Rick would just have too much voting power such that the manipulators would have to do a lot work to manipulate votes through.

Not that I watched.  I was in a casual game.

Somehow, I owned a V:TES messenger bag.  A prize, I think, but I don’t remember.  Since I have no use for messenger bags, needing a man bag to carry around 6000 cards or whatever, I provided it as prize support for a modest fee.  Rick seemed happy to get it, which is great, as otherwise it would have sat around without me even having any memories or feelings towards it, unlike various other prizes.

Casual Game:

Kenneth (Trujah w/ Auspex) -> Eric S. (Tunnel Runner) -> Alex (Qawiyya) -> Ian (Ani/Nec) -> Brandon (Bay and Howl)

Kenneth contained Brandon’s swarming.  He also played Scourge of the Enochians.  Brandon played The Uncoiling.  With FBI Special Affairs and The Unmasking(!!) in play, Brandon randomly nailed Scourge, Eric nuked The Uncoiling.

The Uncoiling is just so horrible at its job.  It should be way f*ing harder for it to go away as events are a pox upon the game.  Of course, ban The Unmasking and you only have rarely played events and The Rising that need to go.  I despise Scourge and think it’s terrible design, but, like Archon Investigation, it’s a dumb hoser that serves an important function in the game.

Alex went backwards early, so I ignored him.  Then, he started trying to burn my Army of Rats?!?  So, I blocked him.  I often had multiple wakes in hand.  Tammy’s maneuver meant nobody could hurt her.  Marino’s Spectral Divination based intercept meant I blocked stuff.  I also got Carmine.  Yes, Tammy Walenski, Marino Reymundo Vasquez, and Carmine Giovanni were out at the same time and Aid from Batsing like there was some sort of tomorrow.

More than an hour passed when we checked time I was amazed how little of consequence happened in the game.  Kenneth eventually got Eric.  Nobody else had the firepower to take anyone out before time.

Good times.  I even enjoyed elements of playing my Trophy deck, like having a personal goal of trying to put six trophies in play that I would never receive.  I didn’t know enough to know how Trophy: Diablerie works, but that wasn’t why my dude got bloodhunted.  I put my fate in other people’s hands, and they lost, as they typically do when I have to rely on them.  Maybe, I need to get back to decks that just choose players to die and kills them, like that Daughters deck.  Nah, it’s funny to give people the option of taking me out of games.  It’s like some grand psychology experiment that I’ve been running for a decade or more.

Thanks to Eric and Andy for hosting and for Eric not letting a more boring deck win the first tournament.  Thanks to Brandon for organizing and judging.  Thanks to everyone who showed up and gave me a chance to actually get some V:TES in.  Congratulations to Rick on his first tournament win and to Eric for his third.

Now, we just got to do this more often with more people.

How To: Win 20+

I haven’t written much about V:TES recently.  I missed out on the recent excursion to get some tournaments in down South, so missed out on some fodder for posts.  But, I got to thinking about something while looking over deck lists.  I have a theory that I want to “test”.

Since there is no such thing as rigorous testing with this game, I thought I’d take a look at what decks won 20+ player tournaments, going back about 20 tournaments.  As it happens, by going back 19 tournaments, capture October 2012, which includes three 100+ player tournaments from the European Championships.

What am I looking for?

Three things.  Wakes, intercept, and bounce.  In particular, the reaction card kind.

Start with the 100+ player decks and move down.

EC 2012 FCQ: Goratrix/Omaya Wall

Wall deck using Auspex – lots of all three.

EC 2012 Day 1: Unmada and Lutz

Small amounts of each – max output for any one is four slots, with cards overlapping in functions.

EC 2012 LCQ: Toreador Triple-A

Three Deflection, two On the Qui Vive, two Second Tradition.  Amusingly, no Auspex reactions.

If the Toreador had only been doing Auspex, all three 100+ player tournament winning decks would have been using it.

EC 2012 Day 2: Girls Will Find Inner Sleaze

Couple bleed wakes, couple Lost in Translation, and Aksinya.

Porque esto es África

No real reactions.

EC 2012 Silence of Death: Toreador Aching Beauty

Two Eyes of Argus, five Second Tradition, five Telepathic Misdirection.

the nephandus experimental v3.0

No reactions.  The Unmasking for permacept, of course.

Arika’s raping team

Five Deflection.

rambo shambo

Wake, bounce, Delaying Tactics, can use Spectral Divination for intercept, The Unmasking.

Speed Kills

Two Lost in Translation, two Second Tradition.

Extremely Silent and Incredibly Far Away

While not heavy on reaction cards, this is a wall deck that uses permacept and Atonement.  Only two bounce cards, though.

Cara Roja

Wake, bounce, even a touch of Auspex bounce.

Anarch_Goratrix v1.1

Wall deck.

Heavy duty

Twelve wakes, 13 Murmur of the False Will.

Pascek’s Hounds

Permacept, four Cats’ Guidance, four wakes.

Inner Circle

None.

Ventrue Anti 1.1

Grinder deck has lots of these things … shocking.

Cute Little Stone Babies

Two Deflection.

Shane Grimald Deck #4

Wake, bounce, Delaying Tactics.

So, what was the point of all this?

Actually, before getting to that, comment upon the potential metagame biases in just looking 19 decks back.  Lot of decks are from Europe.  But, Europe isn’t one big metagame.  Add in some decks from elsewhere and I’m not going to worry much about metagame biases when I’m looking at so few decks, anyway.

The point of all of this is not one-fold.

First, I keep thinking about how many fat vampire decks along the lines of Girls or Lutz or whatever that have paltry levels of intercept or defense against actions besides permavotes to mess with voting.  I wanted to see if there was a pattern in tournament winning decks from larger events of just ignoring the possibility of being messed with by non-bleed/non-vote actions (and inability to stop tool up actions).

Second, I was curious to see if there was a pattern of having far more bounce cards than wake cards in these decks.  I’m constantly amazed by the decks that run 5+ bounce cards and don’t seem to care about waking.  Not only is that negative actions by keeping someone untapped who didn’t need to be, but it means vulnerability to tap plays – Anarch Troublemaker, Mind Numb, etc.

Within this tiny sample size of 19 decks, there really is no pattern.  Some decks are wall decks.  Some have moderate amounts of wake + bounce.  Some have little to no reaction plan.  Only one does the “I bounce but I don’t care about waking” thing that *doesn’t* involve Aksinya.

Given a lack of pattern, I don’t see an obvious way to take advantage of the metagame.  Now, it could very well be that the decks that didn’t win provided much clearer information.  A breakdown of just the 100+ tournaments of every deck would be far more useful data than what I’m working with.

For some, the threshold of credible stealth is to get to three, to bypass Second Tradition.  Against a lot of my decks and based on inconsistent observation, it still seems like two stealth is far and away mightier than one stealth.  For instance, the Nephandi and Shamblers above are not going to be blocking much in the way of two stealth actions (no intercept locations).

Well, the one thing I take away from this exercise is that there is a decent amount of diversity in what wins, and that wall decks do just fine.  Wait, that’s two things.

2012 V:TES Qualifier

Because people from outside the area need to get home, we don’t have a Qualifier Weekend, really.  We did have some Friday night play, though, for early arrivals and the South Bayers.

Weak Sauce 1:

Aaron (Kurt Densch blocks it all) -> Andy (Tumnimos) -> Ian (Kiev Circle) -> David (winnie vote/bleed w/ Obf) -> Brandon (winnie Pre vote)

David and Brandon did much raaahhhrrr.  Andy and I did much hhhar-har-har.  Aaron had to defend all day.  I rushed some with Oppugnant Night not being as effective as I was intending due to the power of Fake Out and Dodge against my largely Desert Eagleless Blood Brothers.

Ultimately, the game was not much to write about, with Brandon dying, David having something like 10 vampires in torpor at some point between intercept combat in front and rush combat behind, and my realizing after the game that I forgot to put in any strategy for ousting my prey.  Time out with just the one oust.

Weak Sauce 2:

Ian (Art Scam/Flamethrower w/ Obf) -> David (Great Beast) -> Aaron (Dom/Pot/Tha) -> James (Millicent Smith combo) -> Brandon (fat FoS)

I put one on Gabriel de Cambrai.  Turn two, Brandon has Pentweret.   James has Apache Jones, adds Sayshila.  Aaron has Cameron, then Marianna to be all punchy.  David Soul Gems Huitz into Beast, losing Huitz to combat and Brandon’s diablerie.

Gabriel learns the all important master Obfuscate rather than the irrelevant master Auspex and largely fails to stop FoS bleeds for 3-5.  James does pull off his combo of Lunatic Eruption, Millicent Smith, plus lending me intercept with Tourette’s Voice and Babble, but it’s all for naught as Malabranca only steals one pool a turn from my prey and I only play two Art Scams – the turn two one and the same card I pull back with turn three Ashur Tablets (the only card I recurse).  Having forgotten how I built the deck, I realized after looking through it why I didn’t see anything other than Quicken Sight for Auspex cards – there weren’t any.  Top card of Quicken Sight, though, might have saved me and may have not in the crucial “stop Nakhthorheb from gaining Blithe Acceptance when Brandon has Millicent” turn.

Since it was late and the next day was the tourneys, I packed up and went home and found out the next day what happened.  Oddly, I was maybe two turns from ousting my prey as I had Palla Grande in hand and there was a lack of defense against bleeds at stealth to my left.  Of course, it’s often the case that I’m finally ready to inflict grievous injury upon my prey right around when I get ousted, since it usually takes me an hour and a half or so to get around to being ready for the inflict grievous injury phase of the game.

Saturday 1, 20 players:

Round 1:

Ian (ABO Magaji Highlander) -> Alex (Saulot & allies) -> David (Jar of Skin Eaters) -> Adam (Giovanni bleed/allies) -> Andy (Tumnimos)

Having not learned his lesson about playing Brandon’s Tumnimos deck, Andy played it again and somehow failed to get a VP with Week of Nightmares in play.  Alex did a lot of Conviction stuff early, so it looked like it might be Imbued even after Beatrice came up – just turned out to be the usual off-Imbued use of Beatrice, with Ossian joining Saulot.  Ossian was an annoyance because I had to play around him, plus I kept an Invoke Poison Glands in hand from beginning to last turn of the game to randomly annihilate Beatrice.  But, Beatrice, even with Crusader Sword, never fought with me.

Adam did stuff and received Jar-age to the Famed Isabel.  His The Unmasking made a real mess of things between my prey, his Akhenaten(!), and my Tunnel Runner.  I had to keep Tunnel Runner on “D” for most of the game (up until Adam got ousted) because I had only two vampires and TR was my best defender.  The game ground on, with David’s Muaziz getting Sensory Depped, though Rutor’s Hand meant she was functional.  David’s lack of blood and getting beaten down by Ossian made it hard for him to get a pool depleted Andy.  I did mistakenly block Andy’s Raven Spy while Adam was still bouncing/bleeding Andy to death because I just figured he could play a stealth card.  Having tooled up forever with Shaman, Murder, Akunanse Remains, Ancestor Spirit, I finally realized how little time was left in the game and pushed impotently forward.  Alex was very close to the oust, theoretically with Saulot Camera Phone, Uriel, and Ossian Fame rushing crosstable on Andy.  Beatrice had been punked and efforts were made to go after her in convalescent care, but even Sprinkles, the Underbridge Stray, couldn’t feast upon her soul.

Time out for the … eh.

Round 2:

David -> Ian -> Rick (3/4 big Tremere) -> Aaron (Malk intercept) -> Kenneth (high cap Malks)

Like I don’t see the Jar deck all of the frickin’ time.  Kaahh.  By the way, I was quite unimpressed with how many decks people were playing that I had seen before, from within the area and without.  I just can’t understand how people don’t get bored playing the same deck over and over, but that’s me.

This was kind of amusing, though Kenneth was quickly dispatched and Aaron found my lack of prey containment not so enthralling.  David doesn’t get Muaziz right away, so weenie Dom guys bleed me, with whoever 3 cap and his skill card getting Archon Investigated to slow the beats.  Rick puts out Mistress Fanchion.  Aaron blocks many with Zoe the master (Ivory Bow) archer, including Kenneth’s Lutz.  Kenneth is at 4 pool after Lutz, Brandywine, and Helicopter, but is around long enough for David to try to Graverob, Eagle Sight blocked by Aaron, followed by Raw Recruit, not followed by Muaziz chomping as Raw Recruit succeeded.

My Ugadja was offended by active Skin Eaters and decided to Deep Song rush Muaziz, which led to Muaziz’s hands and a Horde of Canine burying the Skin Eaters somewhere safe.  Later Jars were delayed by Aaron’s intercept.

With Uchenna, Ugadja, Bamba, and little pool because of constant bleeds from my predator, I did little to my prey except burn his Mob Connections.  My prey, on the other hand, bled Aaron some and contested Ivory Bow, depriving Aaron of combat threat value.  Aaron’s game went from hefty to shifty after Kenneth was gone due to Pulsed Aleph being consumed by Skin Eaters and the lack of Ivory.  I had a way to survive Fame on Uchenna, bleed, and a Skin Eater rush, but I was so low in pool that I had to block a stupid Gargoyle bleed after being bled to one by Muaziz’s 5 bleed, meaning I couldn’t wake, intercept Muaziz rush, Skin of Night in combat the Skin Eaters.

Shame for Aaron and my reputation as an effectual player.  I had been sitting on Fear of Mekhet almost all game, not being sure of what to do with Kenneth still in the game, then having to wait for Fanchion to get below 5 blood.  I also just drew The Kiss of Ra, so possibly on Rick’s next turn, Fanchion would have been gone.  Then, a turn later, some Tremere fattie, like Oliver Thrace takes a nap over some pathetic action of mine.

Game times out.  Then, things get cra-a-a-zy.  Twenty person tournament.  Only two of the finalists had game wins.  Three finalists had 1.5 VPs each round, including Aaron and David.  Dennis Lien won with a Tariq deck.

I played two casual games with mostly Davis players.  First was quick with a bunch of Anarch Revolts.  The second was slow and we cleaned up when it was apparent that no one was going to be ousted before the qualifier.  I did get amused by my Lucian, The Perfect not being threatened by !Toreador to the right or Blood Brothers(!) to the left (both group 2 circles were being played in the game, neither was all that threatening in combat, playing lots of Shell Games and whatnot).  I had a hand of Make an Example, Eyes of Argus, Telepathic Misdirection, and four Tastes of Vitae at one point.  Sadly, this deck’s highpoint over the weekend was this game.

Qualifier, 21 players:

Round 1:

Ian (Ass intercept combat) -> Kenneth (Obeah/Tha) -> James (Iron Glare) -> Jeff (Nos Royalty) -> Chris (big Tzimisce War Ghoul?)

I don’t know what James’s deck was trying to do as he brought out Shemti and Nana, but I know he voted.  Kenneth brought out Saulot and Elena made an Infernal Pact to learn the evil that is Obeah.  He Spirit Marionetted some but took so long bringing out Saulot, I bled him a couple of times with Loss and then ignored him as I dealt with the menace.  Chris was not a menace, simply a speed bump as I blocked Dragos bleeding with Evan Rogers because, seriously, a 3 cap with Cel/Qui does not fear anything, and then, I ignored him as Jeff rolled through him with the power of voting and Selma, the Legendary Vampire, bleeding.

When Jeff got to me, I not only was Blood Awakening low due to having discarded a couple thinking Chris would survive longer but really didn’t have an answer to more than two stealth anyway.  I could have reduced bleeds, but Jeff cheated by playing a vote deck when no one bothered with vote defense.  Jeff may have swept, it hardly mattered.

Round 2:

Steve (Aus/Dem/Obf bleed/vote) -> Joel (Pot/For/Dom rush) -> Ian -> Brett (The Eternal Mask)

Ah, four players, such a different experience.  To my benefit in this case.  Joel got hammered by bounced bleeds and Alicia Barrows and Stavros bleeding.  Steve didn’t vote before Stavros between Joel’s Lazverinus and Amenophobis.  Both were not so good for him for obvious reasons.  Laz rushed a lot but couldn’t finish off Alicia or Stavros when needed, leaving Joel to be a non-existent predator.  Brett worried me as he could easily sweep if he got Steve.  I happened to have Bakr pop up, and, much to my surprise, Bakr went on a killing spree, napping Amenophobis to prevent bounce, napping Alicia, waving his Weighted Walking Stick angrily when not Tasting of the Death.  Who would have guessed that rush would be so useful?

Meanwhile, with no predator, I got out other dudes, so I ended up with Evan with Quietus skill card, Monty Coven, and two Webs.  I had four Blood Awakening in hand at one point and untapped three guys with Eluding and two Sunrises when Brett hunted to annoy Steve in a turn after he finally got Joel.  With Brett largely bloodless and just Renenet and Waters doing Eternal bleeds, I wasn’t worried he would get Steve.  Nor was I that offended by his Suddening my Agent of Power on a Web.  I bled them both out in the same turn, two Loss bleeds for Steve.

GW and 3 VPs was only enough in this event to tie for seventh with Ben Peal of all folks.  David lost a coin flip to Dennis for fifth with a bunch of folks at 4 VPs.  Jeff Kuta won the finals fairly quickly while I was running home to look for cards to trade people, including Shorb who was going to leave early the next morning.

Played a casual after doing some trading, and had to face Brandon’s weenie Presence vote deck and David’s Great Beast deck and Brandon’s fat FoS deck for the umpteenth times.

Chris (Lutz and Herbert) -> Ben (fat FoS) -> David (Great Beast) -> Ian (The Perfect friend for Osebo) -> Brandon (winnie Pre vote)

Lucian, The Perfect got Heroic in his Might, Marked Well, and put on the Leather.  But, I basically did nothing all game as I kept getting bled and didn’t draw any bounce, unlike the casual earlier where I drew something like five TMs.  Brandon did oddly Pentex Lucian and burn him with Justicar Retribution, the only effect of the latter being to deprive me of bleed reduction with Ancestor’s Insight and the former being irrelevant to my inability to block FoS after David dies.  At least I was able to keep Lucian perfect and never bleed with him in either game.

Lutz didn’t slow Brandon’s voting down much, only accelerating pool damage to Brandon’s second prey.  Brandon got vote lock, a bunch of dudes, and I didn’t interact with him all game as my deck didn’t have that much intercept and Osebo Kholo didn’t end up mattering.  Ben got me without too much trouble – see lack of bleed bounce.  Then, the endgame was an interesting match of Brandon’s winnie swarm with no library and FoS big bleed.  I figured Ben had it due to pool counts, only Ben Daring the Dawned Porphyrion to be able to play Redeem the Lost Soul, only to have Nakhthorheb Pentexed for lockdown.

Thank yous, of course, to Andrew and Eric Haas for hosting, Brandon and Andrew Haas for organizing and running and getting food and drink (though I didn’t partake of either), players showing up, especially those who traveled far, such as the SoCal players.

Was there a lesson to be learned from the events?

First, I’m done with Experiment #2.  Still have sample size issues with saying whether my Ass deck was viable, since it performed in only a single game, a game in which I had no predator.  It was amusing, though, to have Bakr run around killing folks.  It was amusing to put a hunting ground in play with a deck with no master pool gain and not feel bad.  Sadly, I can’t say I was playing a rush deck as Bakr is just in there for disciplines.

I may do some more experiments, but the Lords of the Night one was so discouraging with how many things don’t exist in the set to make diverse decks that I don’t know if I can stomach playing more boring decks that can’t play staples of the game, like Blood Doll.  I might do something like a precon and open up some boosters every once in a while just because I have so many loose boosters from so many different sets lying around.

Second, is there anything to be drawn from how I sucked at these tournaments where I played decks I built specifically for tournament play and won 50% of the tournaments when we trekked down to SoCal playing decks only built for casual play as I was too lazy to build some dedicated tournament decks?

Tournament Report – June 30th

“Blessed Resilience”

Get to the card in two thousand words or so.  It’s maybe a theme given that we achieved a new high water mark for tournament attendance in the region.  Again, multiplayer CCGs are far more resilient to lack of new cards than two-player CCGs due to the social and political elements.  But, enough philosophizing, on to le action.

Tournament 1 – 29 players

We actually had 30 people around but someone bowed out for reasons I’m not sure about.  Could have had more, but what was so interesting was seeing people I rarely see or people who moved into the area.  I hadn’t seen Oscar (Garza) since he moved out here, for instance.

Round 1:

Robert (FoS anarch vote) -> Kenneth (LMC, Reanimated Corpse) -> Ian L. (!Brujah vote) -> Oliver (Malk anarch vote w/ Lutz) -> Ky (Kiasyd?)

As anyone who reads much of what I write knows, I may jump around in my narratives rather than go in an attempted chronological order.  Ky brought out two Lasombra.  He brought out no Kiasyd.  Ky’s game was not very interesting, so I will say no more about it.

My game was a mixed bag.  Kenneth put out The Unmasking right away, which wasn’t good for my normally stealthless !Brujah, however I brought out DeSalle first and rarely was concerned with blocks.  Robert and Oliver both got Fee Stakes.  I did not get a Crusade off for the longest time, so my vote oriented vote deck was rather impotent while I had DeSalle and Axel Von Anders out and only got somewhat better when Hektor hit the table.  Though, there was one vote I called to do pool damage to the two other vote decks and none (besides Lutz) to the two non-vote decks which passed with Robert’s help without any lobbying upon my part, as I amusedly expected.  Having no defenses, except against combat, which was not something I was able to get into much, Kenneth could drop RCs and bleed at stealth and I had to look at my hand and wish I had more imPotence.  I did blow up Kenneth’s first RC with punch, press (Flash), punch, figuring losing four blood was better than two pool a turn for several turns.

Robert built up his voting some.  Oliver brought out Lutz after two other Malks.  I’m sure there were more key plays that others thought compelling enough to mention, but the game just seemed to grind on to where I have only a few notable recollections.  Oliver’s dudes got Temptationed by Robert and Ky Pentexed Lutz, slowing Oliver down.  Okay, Ky did keep losing pool, including from Robert’s and my votes due to Lutz.  Robert contested a Barony with Oliver, which Oliver gave up, switching from LA to Boston.  Kenneth would lose pool but gained it back with Little Mountain Cemetery.  Oliver brought out a fourth dude to help with being able to take actions while Ky was virtually toast, and, as I hoped and expected, Robert finally got around to Reckless Agitationing Oliver out of the game on his next turn, which also ousted Ky.  Kenneth brought out George Frederick late in the game, which I thought was a horrible mistake, and Robert ousted him.  Time was short, so the meaning to my remaining actions was not being ousted by Robert before time as he had a dominant position.

We spent nearly nine minutes trying to find out how Prisci subreferendum interacts with Fee Stake burning, as I really should have tried to remove all of the Fee Stakes in play, time that was added on to the end of our round.  And, for those who hate timeouts, I can sort of see that camp’s view, but I’m so used to them that I consider them a crucial part of the game.

Robert 1.5 / Ian 1.5 / Oliver 1

Round 2:

James (HoS) -> Ian L.  -> Brandon (high cap +bleed Dom/Obf vote) -> Eric S. (Tremere) -> A.J. (Nakhthorheb)

My uncontrolled is Alessandro Garcia, Marcel de Breau, Hektor, … and Aksinya Daclau.  To do stuff, I bring out Alessandro, even though that messes up Grooming the Protege and Enchant Kindred at superior.  I plan on Marcel for votes, followed by Aksinya so that I can eventually Gang Territory to Hektor, if I draw it.

Meanwhile, Brandon puts out Mistress Fanchion.  Well, guess I won’t vote.  James brings up Egothha, who repeatedly hits master cards while I draw hardly any.  When I do have plans to put Black Forest Base in play, James Revelations me and discards it.  A.J. gets Nakhthorheb action going with Venenation to make it impossible for Egothha to block.  On the other hand, James’s Matthias proves wallriffic.

So, how did this game start looking far better for me?  Brandon got greedy and Fanchion got Archoned.  Nakhthorheb got Golcondaed three times, finally providing 10 pool.  James was never an ousting threat to me as he was just hanging on against bleeds that were often three even with Matthias in play.  A.J. brought out Neferu, which messed up our vote calculations.  Brandon was still getting bleeds and votes through with Laszlo Mirac and Orlando Oriundus.  Though, I still only had Alessandro and Marcel in play, which meant limited vote ability and lack of “swarm” bleed.

Brandon bleeds for four to oust Eric.  I Major Boon.  I try to bleed Brandon for two with Marcel when Brandon is at two, after Brandon had bounced numerous bleeds of mine with Murmur of the False Will, and Eric Eagle Sight blocks.  A.J. goes down to one pool, James goes down to one pool.  I can’t even pass a vote with only Orlando, Carna, and Neferu in play.  Of course, I sat on way too many vote cards I finally started tossing as Brandon’s voting ability kept shifting, so I drew into limited vote push.  Eric ousts A.J. who tapped out at one pool to do more damage to James.  Brandon is at two pool and likely dead to Marcel, but I Golconda Orlando to see if I can still engineer four VPs.  I knew we were short on time, but I didn’t factor in how short, so this was rather goofy.  Just before time, I oust minionless Brandon.  James survives.  I never bring up Hektor, though I could have right at time between Gang Territory and Information Highway.

Eric 1.5 / Ian 1.5 / James .5

I made a number of important mistakes in the two rounds.  In the first round, I should have aggressively been burning Fee Stakes, for instance.  I also kept holding on to a Wash because I kept forgetting to play it, even after noticing that I had forgotten to play it, though it did eventually stop a Villein on Lutz.  The second round, though, was the biggest error, methinks.  Right after Fanchion exploded, I could have called a Crusade on Alessandro and vote pushed it to pass, giving me two more permanent votes for the rest of the game, yet I did something dumb, like bleed, with him, instead.  Really poor concentration.  Then, I didn’t need four VPs from the second game.  Oddly, the top in our 29 player tournament was 1 GW and 5.5 VPs while fifth was around 1 and 4.  A three VP table would have put me in at 1 and 4.5.  Robert won in a timeout with 1.5 vs. Matt’s 1.5, with Nick, Oscar, and Jeff P. being the other finalists.

But, whatever.  I enjoyed my games.  I played mediocre.  And, my “collection” deck has still always ousted at least one player while never being ousted – testament to how little deck composition matters.  Here’s the !Brujah deck I put together with my ~750 card “collection”:

Deck Name:   I won’t concur
Created By:  Armin Brenner
Description:  Experiment #1 – !Brujah Vote

Crypt: (12 cards, Min: 18, Max: 39, Avg: 7.33)
———————————————-
1  Aksinya Daclau                     cel tha ANI FOR PRE PRO9  Gangrel Antitribu
1  Alessandro Garcia                  pot pre pro    4  Brujah Antitribu
2  Armin Brenner                      ani obf CEL FOR POT PRE10 Brujah Antitribu
1  Axel Von Anders                    cel obf pot PRE5  Brujah Antitribu
1  Bela Kardoza                       ani dom CEL POT PRE VIC10 Brujah Antitribu
1  DeSalle                            CEL POT PRE    7  Brujah Antitribu
1  Father Juan Carlos                 aus cel pot tha PRE6  Brujah Antitribu
1  Hektor                             for CEL POT PRE QUI9  Brujah Antitribu
1  Marcel de Breau                    ani pro CEL POT PRE9  Brujah Antitribu
1  Shawnda Dorrit                     obt pot pre CEL6  Brujah Antitribu
1  Smash                              pot pre        3  Brujah Antitribu

Library: (70 cards)
——————-
Master (18 cards)
2  Black Forest Base
5  Blood Doll
1  Creepshow Casino
1  Dummy Corporation
1  Gang Territory
1  Golconda: Inner Peace
2  Grooming the Protege
1  Information Highway
1  Major Boon
2  Protected Resources
1  Wash

Action (3 cards)
3  Enchant Kindred

Action Modifier (17 cards)
2  Alacrity
1  Aura of Invincibility
5  Bewitching Oration
3  Bribes
3  Iron Glare
1  Private Audience
2  Voter Captivation

Political Action (17 cards)
1  Anarchist Uprising
1  Consanguineous Boon
2  Conservative Agitation
1  Crusade: Detroit
1  Crusade: New York
1  Crusade: Rome
1  Crusade: Toronto
1  Deploy the Hand
1  Disputed Territory
6  Kine Resources Contested
1  Reinforcements

Combat (13 cards)
1  Catatonic Fear
5  Flash
2  Pursuit
1  Staredown
4  Stunt Cycle

Combo (2 cards)
2  Scalpel Tongue

I played a pickup game while the finals went on.  I played my “collection” !Toreador deck.  This too was entertaining.

Ky (Trujah w/ Aus/For) -> Ian T. (Dom/Pot weenieish) -> Ian L. (!Toreador intercept/combat) -> Rick (Isanwayen & Bruce de Guy) -> Alex CH (Group 4 Ahrimanes)

Alex brings out Kill-ian at a table with two Ians.  It did not save him.  Rick tooled Isanwayen up to hunt unblockably for a lot.  Ky bled and stuff.

I bring out Loonar.  Ian T. Fames her and Rumbles her.  Oscar, er, Paulo de Castille goes to long, Throws Gate, Targets Vitals.  I discard a couple of combat cards.  On my turn, Loonar gets a Sawed-Off Shotgun.  At no point in the game does Loonar go to torpor.  She does additional strike shoot merged Dr. Julius Sutphen and, in the endgame, torps some Ahrimanes, at which point Alex concedes (actually, he doesn’t until I untap and put another counter on Smiling Jack).

Yup, even with rushes and blocks, I have enough Glancing Blows and, uh, Celerity to not be seriously threatened by Ian T.’s combat while I have intercept, reduction, and a touch of bounce to survive the constant bleeds.  Alex and Ky inflict damage on each other with Outside the Hourglass vs. Murders of Crows.  I put Smiling Jack in play that nobody seems to care all that much about and it ends the game with six counters.  Ky does get Ian T. before Smiling Jack pretty much murders Ky.

Deck Name:   Experiment 1 – !Toreador
Created By:  Loonar
Description:  Experiment #1 – !Toreador intercept combat

Crypt: (12 cards, Min: 15, Max: 32, Avg: 5.83)
———————————————-
1  Dominique Santo Paulo              pot pre AUS CEL6  Toreador Antitribu
1  Father Juan Carlos                 aus cel pot tha PRE6  Brujah Antitribu
1  Gabriel de Cambrai                 aus cel dem obf pre5  Toreador Antitribu
1  Jonathan Gursel                    aus pre        3  Toreador Antitribu
1  Loonar                             cel PRE        4  Toreador Antitribu
1  Malabranca                         obf AUS CEL PRE PRO9  Toreador Antitribu
1  Melinda Galbraith                  obt AUS CEL DOM POT PRE10 Lasombra
1  Monique Kim                        aus cel        3  Toreador Antitribu
1  Neighbor John                      dom for AUS    5  Ventrue Antitribu
1  Rain                               cel chi dem pot pre AUS7  Toreador Antitribu
1  Redbone McCray                     cel pro AUS PRE6  Toreador Antitribu
1  Tears                              cel AUS DEM PRE6  Toreador Antitribu

Library: (90 cards)
——————-
Master (17 cards)
1  Auspex
3  Blood Doll
1  Celerity
1  Depravity
1  Direct Intervention
1  Effective Management
1  Fame
1  Frenzy
1  Guardian Angel
1  King`s Rising
1  Pentex Subversion
1  Powerbase: Barranquilla
1  Slave Auction
1  Smiling Jack, The Anarch
1  Vast Wealth

Action (9 cards)
1  Abbot
1  Intimidation
3  Media Influence
1  Pulse of the Canaille
3  Zillah`s Tears

Reaction (34 cards)
2  Delaying Tactics
2  Eagle`s Sight
4  Enhanced Senses
2  Forced Awakening
1  Melange
1  Minor Irritation
1  My Enemy`s Enemy
7  On the Qui Vive
4  Precognition
4  Spirit`s Touch
4  Telepathic Counter
2  Telepathic Misdirection

Combat (17 cards)
4  Acrobatics
1  Blur
1  Disengage
1  Fast Hands
4  Glancing Blow
3  Nimble Feet
1  Read Intentions
2  Taste of Vitae

Equipment (12 cards)
1  Brass Knuckles
2  Leather Jacket
1  Palatial Estate
1  Pier 13, Port of Baltimore
3  Saturday-Night Special
2  Sawed-Off Shotgun
1  Sengir Dagger
1  Starshell Grenade Launcher

Event (1 cards)
1  NRA PAC

At this point on Saturday, Experiment #1 is over.  There are still a variety of changes I could make, mostly in masters, to decks, and I never did build a Tzimisce deck even though that would be one of the easier ones to build.  I wouldn’t say I feel a lot of variety as I got bored very quickly with !Malks and !Trem; on the other hand, !Brujah was always interesting and !Toreador played very funny with Loonar rather consistently getting a Sawed-Off Shotgun.  In one play of the !Malk deck, I got 5 VPs.  In one or two plays of the !Trem deck, it didn’t do much.  In three plays of the !Brujah deck, two in a tournament, I had one GW (admittedly, three-player game) and twice 1.5 VPs.  In two plays of the !Toreador deck, I had a table split, a GW, and Loonar beating the crap out of people in combat.

Tournament competitive?  I think so, and I don’t see getting a sample size large enough to prove it.

Enjoyable level of variety?  To a degree, mostly in terms of what masters to run.  Of course, I’ve played hundreds of decks in thousands of games, so variety is a lot harder for me than someone who would have a collection like Experiment #1’s.

I’m not sure what to do for Experiment #2.  I can see building on #1.  I don’t see doing something else with Third Edition, so building on #1 is a major way to go to make use of my vast Third Edition resources that mostly don’t get played.  I can see using my copious amount of precons and unopened boosters for various sets to do something similar to #1 without using a base set.

For tournament #2, why didn’t I continue the experiment?  Just felt played out.  And, we have tournaments so rarely that there were some other decks that were important to play under tournament conditions that I either had built or put together Saturday morning.

Tournament 2 – 20 players

Interesting how many people left.  We do seem to get more for the first tournament in a day, whether because it’s draining to do two in a day or because late starts are less desirable.

Round 1:

Ian L. (Blessed Resilience) -> A.J. (Tzimisce 2/3 high cap) -> Rick (Daughters pool loss) -> David (Daughters beatdown) -> Eric S. (Tunnel Runner)

This was horrid in setup and how things looked.  I’m actually getting tired of writing, so I’m going to be short on detail.  The two Daughters decks were different groups, so no issues there, but they both were very forward looking.  That meant I had to try to contain A.J., which looked implausible for most of the game.

Stravinsky comes out and gets The Rack … and Blood Dolls.  Stravinsky is followed by Meshenka, John Paleologus, and Sascha Vykos adv.  And, my prey has plenty of pool and tons of blood!!

For, you see, Rick’s deck plays a bunch of Benefit Performances and Madrigals, so A.J. just kept getting blood, which turned into pool.  Rick did do a bunch of pool damage to David who barely hung on, only really because A.J. Eagle Sight blocked a couple of bleeds.  David’s deck was not hardcore Shattering Crescendo but a mix of things with Catatonic Fear+Target Vitals.  Eric was under pressure for much of the game, so even though he beat me up a bit, I actually wished he had been bleeding more often at certain times in the game.

Meanwhile, I was left to burn A.J.’s superior Revelations, to go after his Army of Rats, to go after Smiling Jack, to steal The Rack once, only David’s taking it another time helped contain the monster that was my prey.  Oh, and I started bleeding for 4-7 every turn with Forces of Will.

If Rick had called a Lily Prelude backwards, I might have been able to get A.J. before he got Rick.  Instead, A.J. got Rick and David before bleeding repeatedly for 7 and Smiling Jack ousted my prey.  I did a non-Force of Will bleed with Trochomancy, Daring the Dawn to get by Eric’s vamps and Call of the Hungry Dead to get by Tunnel Runner to finish off Eric.  Yes, I played Blessed Resilience at times and did the other stuff the deck does, like discard useless Villeins.

Ian 3 / A.J. 2

Meanwhile, at the nearby table, there were four Tremere decks and a Summon History deck that, of course, ran Ankara Citadel.

Round 2:

Rick -> Ian L. -> Jeff K. (Loss + vote) -> Brett (Tzimisce vote w/ Pre) -> Robert (Summon History Obt)

Four vote decks at the table, with Robert having Giangaleazzo, Brett having Velya and Lambach, Jeff Kuta predictably having Olugbenga and Alamut, later Amaravati.

This game was my one uninteresting game of the day.  I was happy not to have to talk to people when votes came up, as it was rather tedious.  Jeff didn’t want to burn Alamut counters, which others kept wanting him to burn.

I brought out one dude – Mordechai.  I did little, though I did Force of Will, Rapid Healing early to move some cards.  When I finally decided to bring out Morlock, I got killed because Brett didn’t like my lack of pressure and voted for Rick’s killing vote and Robert had not ousted Rick to this point and Jeff didn’t care enough to save me, since I was about as great a threat with my two dudes as Rick’s four Daughters.  Maybe Brett had other reasons.  I thought the move was correct not so much because I hadn’t pressured Jeff, who I could have theoretically ousted in two turns, but because Rick needed pool to not get ousted by Robert.

Voting happened, Loss bleeding happened.  Jeff ousted Brett.  Robert ousted Rick.  Game times out as both players were able to bloat a bunch.  Robert did finally get his Summon History engine going to bring out high cap vampires.

Jeff 1.5 / Robert 1.5 / Rick 1

Jeff’s failure to get a GW, means I’m ahead of him.  Brandon got two GWs, so I get into the finals fine with 1 GW and 3 VPs.  Fourth seed.

Finals:

Brandon (weenie Dementation) -> Matt (Stanislava but it hardly mattered) -> Ian L. -> Brett -> Garet (Tremere)

Matt discarded three Antediluvian Awakenings, finally brought out Stanislava, and got ousted on Brandon’s next turn.

Brandon bled and didn’t get ousted until it was too late for me.

Garet did stuff but didn’t put a lot of pressure on Brandon even with Brett’s help and my encouraging an alliance against madness.

Brett could have been ousted, but I asked Garet whether he could get Brandon, and he said no, so I needed Brett’s votes and Legendary Lambach’s bounced bleeds in the game.

I started the game with six masters.  Wider View, Heidelberg (largely irrelevant).  Wider View, Storage Annex.  Villein, Storage Annex?  I don’t know, I drew more masters.  I quickly had three Wider Views and ended up with three Storage Annexes.  I also got Carlton.  I did not ever try a third vampire because I needed pool.  Between occasional hand moving Force of Will bleeds, taking Fragment of the Book of Nod from Garet, Mordechai’s permacept, Carlton, and some bounce, I did stuff and fended off Brandon for quite a while, which almost worked.  Brandon was down to 2 pool and 1 pool at times.

I made a subtle but major mistake.  I am really, really bad at remembering to burn Wider View for pool when I have multiple out.  I’m kind of bad at remembering when I have one out.  In this game, I needed that one extra turn’s worth of two pool and I might have survived one more turn.

I did do quite a bit to burn through Brandon’s deck, so Brett decided Garet was no longer useful and took him out (I don’t know the details, just assuming), and got Brandon before time.  Of course, those who already saw the tournament report on vekn.net already know Brett won this event.

It occurred to me while playing that Brandon was probably best off killing Brett (with Kindred Spirits, of course) rather than focusing on me.  Just as I needed Brett in the game to kill Brandon, Brandon’s greatest threat was Brett.  I talked to Brandon about this.  Always interesting to wonder about the correct play.

I really am losing steam at this point, so I likely forgot some amusing tidbits.  Thanks for Brandon for organizing.  Thanks to Andy and Eric for the use of their place and arranging food, tables, and chairs for what was a ridiculous number of people.

Blessed Resilience deck that I’m probably done with, though I might consider a combat Blessed Resilience deck because doing stuff with no minions in play and a strong desire to burn my own dudes is highly entertaining:

Deck Name:   Blessed Crypt, Willful Resilience
Created By:  Macoute
Description:  In which the designer does indeed design a deck that you don’t want to be the prey of.

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

Library: (90 cards)
——————-
Master (25 cards)
4  Blessed Resilience
1  Coven, The
1  Heidelberg Castle, Germany
2  Life in the City
1  Lilith’s Blessing
1  Parthenon, The
6  Storage Annex
6  Villein
3  Wider View

Action (15 cards)
9  Force of Will
1  Possession
3  Rapid Healing
2  Restoration

Action Modifier (30 cards)
4  Call of the Hungry Dead
8  Daring the Dawn
14 Freak Drive
4  Trochomancy

Reaction (14 cards)
4  On the Qui Vive
7  Telepathic Misdirection
3  Wake with Evening’s Freshness

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

Combo (4 cards)
4  Spectral Divination

I played a pickup game after the tournament in which I played Merely A Trifle.  Haqim’s Law: Judgment did not achieve much.  Suffice to say that this deck is not ready for real play even though it’s one of my most inspired deck builds.  Since it’s so dumb and it’s funnier to figure out how the deck works on one’s own, I will deprive you all from its precise contents.

I suppose there’s one final comment that needs to be made (that I can remember).  I said recently that I don’t try as I used to in terms of table politics.  I did make much more of an effort to shape games Saturday.  In particular, it didn’t seem like Brett and Garet would cooperate sufficiently to slay Brandon until I badgered them.  It’s just sometimes really hard to keep quiet.

Qualifier – 2011

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

Event 1 (whatever it was called)

Round 1:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Round 2:

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

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

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

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

Pickup Interlude:

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

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

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

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

Qualifier:

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

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

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

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

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

Round 2:

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

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

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

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

Sunday

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Deck Name:   111127  Newcromancy
Created By:  Baldesar

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ally (1 cards)
1  Leonardo, Mortician

Retainer (2 cards)
2  Masquer (Wraith)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Action (2 cards)
2  Restoration

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Retainer (1 cards)
1  Mr. Winthrop

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Action Modifier (5 cards)
3  Conditioning
2  Mirror Walk

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

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

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

Retainer (1 cards)
1  Charnas the Imp

Equipment (1 cards)
1  Bowl of Convergence

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

Deck Name:   110918  Blessed Resilience
Created By:  Macoute

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

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

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

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

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

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

Combo (4 cards)
4  Spectral Divination

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Combat (8 cards)
4  Dodge
4  No Trace

Ally (1 cards)
1  Mylan Horseed (Goblin)

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

Equipment (1 cards)
1  Camera Phone

Event (1 cards)
1  Scourge of the Enochians

Combo (4 cards)
4  Swallowed by the Night

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

Tournament Triumph

Not for me, of course.  The triumph was that we had more players for a V:EKN sanctioned event than we have ever had.

I’m still trying to get caught up gamingwise with Gen Con follow up, so I made some changes to the deck I was building for Jeff and came up with a couple of deck ideas Friday night, then had to figure out what I was playing in Saturday’s two tournaments Saturday morning.  Unfortunately, I frequently forget the decks I most want to play in tournaments because they are so infrequent and so many ideas have accumulated.

So, I started looking through old ideas.  There are actually quite a few decklists I have for decks I’ve never pulled the cards for.  I should think about notating that in their file names.  Eventually, I found one of the ideas that I had been saving for tournament play that I was sufficiently interested in to put together.

Angel Rush is not a deck, so much as an archetype.  The idea is to minimize card slots for combat by playing Beast, Pariah, and Guardian Angels.  Not that combat necessarily matters, depending upon which version of the archetype we are talking about.  One version is a serious combat deck.  Another, a … disorganized mess.  I only made things worse by inflating the latter from 80 to 90 cards and putting in such cards as No Trace, which proved to be useless.

The other deck I settled on was yet another Laecanus deck.  Not that the deck needed or, even, wanted Laecanus, but he wasn’t useless, in theory.  Superior Celerity, Toreador anarchs with Presence bleed and bounce.  So far, I could have said “Toreador deck” and been about as descriptive.  The deck was supposed to play a ton of Resist Earth’s Grasp for stealth, supplementing with Suppressing Fire, for the kill card – The Portrait.  Of course, there’s no controlling whether The Portrait becomes a bleed card or not, so this wasn’t the most robust of strategies.  Another deck I left at 90 cards, showing just how little I care about competing anymore.

First Tournament

Round 1:  Jeff (Enkidu’s Car Dealership) -> Andy H. (Tryphosa) -> Ian (Flying Portrait) -> Aaron (weenie Cel guns)

Weenie Cel guns?  Ick.  Though, it turned out the ick was mostly for Aaron, who had Enkidu appear quickly and Andy not bring out dudes for a long time, allowing me free rein to do stuff.  I’m not sure Jeff actually went first, which shows how much less I’m into these games.

Ransam appeared.  I got Parmenides for a turn who only bled for 1.  Aaron started rushing right away, which led to Unholy Penance on Parmenides which never got removed.  Because Aaron just kept rushing me, I decided not to play my usual game of passivity and tried to kill him as fast as possible.  Fortunately, for me, he never Psyche!d while I combat endsed fairly often and he only ever got one gun.  I couldn’t muster quite enough bleed to take him out before two of my three vamps got punked.  Andy had to make a decision when I was low on pool and Aaron was at 2 pool with my Famed guy in torpor.  He ate Ransam rather than bleed me out, figuring I’d just bounce some more and that having to do 2 pool damage with one minion was harder than 1 damage and Fame killing Aaron off.

I got Aaron to stay alive and tried to figure out how to rebuild my board.  Jeff was in decent shape.  Andy was still likely to take me out.  Until, Jeff nuked Tryphosa and Lutz.  Even with just Gem left, Andy might have been able to get me.  I rebuilt my position slightly.  I had The Rack on Philippe de Marseilles.  Jeff stole it.  I twice forgot to take it back, bleeding (when I had the Edge) instead.  That might have been game as Jeff took out Andy to put him out of range of one turn of my bleeds and the combats between Enkidu and my Celerity vampires went slightly in Enkidu’s favor.  I did Portrait, only to see Enkidu’s visage … I discarded the other The Portraits.  I decked.  I finally lost a critical combat to Enkidu and, then, lost another fight with my remaining vampire.

A table win would have been interesting.  As terrible an idea trying to throw Well-Aimed Cars is, I actually really like the Enkidu deck, with its strong Black Hand theme and solid crypt for all of the nonsense it tries to do.  So, I was highly amused that Jeff started off so well.

Round 2:  Joel (HoS Shamblers) -> Brandyn (Highlander) -> James (Corrupt Construction) -> Ian

Joel drops KRCG News Radio, making me sad as I have a hard time with permacept.  James keeps burning D’habi Revenants, which tells me what deck he’s playing since I played against it in our qualifier weekend.  Brandyn is very screwed since his numerous discipline deck is so unreliable and he’s surrounded by rushing allies and intercept.  I’m in a strange situation of being largely unable to do things but also being able to handle the ally combat since my deck has tons of maneuvers and combat ends for defense and can shoot the allies (Shamblers, Escaped Mental Patients) dead much of the time.

We settle in.  Eventually, James Fames and Havens one of my guys and I am way too cocky about my ability to defend forever in combat.  I Catatonic Fear, Target: Vitals one Corrupt Construction.  I Zip Gun, kill an Escaped Mental Patient.  I get punked by a second Corrupt Construction, which I totally could have blocked, when it plays Trap and I can’t draw a Resist Earth’s Grasp to press to end.  I let my Famed guy get rescued and get punked again for the kill.  Funny.  Eventually, Joel wins.

I go for food rather than play pickups.  I do end up playing a pickup when I get back, but it’s against local players, which makes it kind of pointless.  Speaking of local players, the first tournament had six from the South Bay group, five from the East Bay, and six from SoCal.  An Imbued deck gets thrashed.  I land with some Blood Sweats.  The Trem deck dies by bleeding with Govern when at 1 pool when his prey has two torped vampires, his only ready vampire Pentexed, and a Major Boon … on his predator.  I eventually win an uneven endgame, including having my dude with Fame (from the beginning of the game), while doing a forced hunt at 0 blood, torp a Guruhi with Taste of Death (reduced by Path), and take no damage.

Second Tournament

Just ridiculous that this was the first time we have ever had 20+ for a V:EKN sanctioned tournament in the area.  We got one more from SoCal, one more from the East Bay, and one more that falls under the South Bay group.

Round 1:  Ian (Angel Rush) -> Robert (Vote w/ Faerie Wards) -> Sean (!Toreador anarch) -> Michael (weenie Hack w/ Obf) -> Eric (War Ghouls)

I bring out Beast, I spend my whole game rushing, mainly Michael’s dudes with Obfuscate since I know how his deck works.  Eric doesn’t, not that he could have survived, but he could have forced a couple more actions on Michael’s part if he knew about the Obfuscate splash.  Eric does bring out a War Ghoul, who gets Pentexed, and Eric is ousted.  I also rush with Pariah when I have masters to feed him.  I almost get to blow Failsafe.  I also almost die before Sean gets Michael.  With Michael gone, I’m in no better shape, worse in a lot of ways against Sean and fall quickly.  With a lot of pool, Sean seems to have a huge edge in the endgame, but Robert bloats enough to weather the storm.

I should have discarded more aggressively, but I didn’t want to show much of my deck.  I doubt it would have mattered much since my built-in rushers with Potence had no way of dealing with disciplineless Dodge or Staredown.

Round 2:  AJ W. (!Malk) -> Joel (EuroBrujah) -> Robert -> Chris (Serpentis FSR) -> Ian

While I did Beast rush Allonzo Montoya and Disarm him, I actually did very little backwards even though Chris Tempationed Beast and put Form of Corruption in play.  I figured any significant backwards action would just give Robert the game.  The irony of my being annoyed by Temptation, Form of Corruption, and Free States Rants being called is that Chris never stole one of my vampires as only Anarch Convert was ever low enough to be taken by Form of Corruption.  I died to being bled at stealth.

Before that happened, Joel hammered AJ when AJ blocked a Parity Shift and threw a Pentex on AJ’s other vamp.  To break Pentex, Chris cut a deal with AJ to bleed me with Kindred Spirits, which is what put me in ousting range.  Chris’s votes should have been nullified by Robert, but a KRC got through because Ventrue Headquarters had been tapped on Robert’s turn to pass something I could have caused to succeed.  I bled much more in this game since I lost any particular interest in trying to survive and AJ was fairly weak.  AJ did get Joel, which took all pressure off of Robert while depriving Chris of an easy three VPs.  Robert won.

Having RPG stuff today, I headed out at midnight rather than play pickup games.  Not great timing having all of this gaming the weekend after Gen Con.  It would have been even more ridiculous if my regular Friday night RPG hadn’t gotten cancelled.

The interesting thing about the tournaments for me was how uninteresting I found the games.  My decks should have been more interesting than they were.  I think they both were too vague in their goofiness, so I ended up with far too many ordinary situations even if I had strange plays available to me.

Speaking of decks, I fell into the same trap of blaming my decks, even if it was intended to be in jest, for performance failures.  The Portrait deck was good enough, maybe the Angel Rush deck, in all of its bloated 90 card glory, didn’t achieve the minimum threshold of viability.  But, it’s just so easy to talk about deck failures when it’s really player failures, even when joking.  People might have taken my comments about my decks not being serious because they were 90 cards … well, seriously.  Really, I didn’t play well, and I’ve stopped trying to use table politics to determine results, which is a form of playing badly.

I could have had more fun – I think I just wasn’t mentally prepared for tournament play this weekend.  But, the far more important thing was the exceptional attendance for events, attendance at a peak without even the draw of it being a qualifier weekend.  Kudos to Brandon for making it happen and nagging people from outside the region.  Big ups to Andy H. for hosting and providing food and drink.  Shame I didn’t get to play any with much of the SoCal crew – never played with Andy F., Dennis, Matt.

Fly No More

I’m kind of out of touch with V:TES discussion.  It’s hard to embrace the new go to place of vekn.net because the scheme is really hard on the eyes (changing it is more painful) and because I just don’t have the same level of interest.  I did look around lately, so I saw the question about expectations at the NAC, not a lot of posts.  I did try to find some blog about Week of Nightmares but couldn’t find anything.

So, I can still make predictions in the absence of any sort of results.  There’s definitely a sense that Girls variants and Stickmen are overrepresented as winners in the last year or so.  In the past, I might have done the deck by deck analysis to really see what has been winning recently, but in lieu of going to that much effort, I’d note that Giovanni have done well in 2011 in larger tournaments and I feel like Dementation and Imbued decks are threatening.

As to what I’d expect, I wouldn’t expect much in the way of these various archetypes, except maybe Dementation, at the NAC.  While I’m hesitant to say that there is greater diversity of deck archetypes at major US events, I do think that there’s evidence that suggests that frequent winners in Europe will play the same archetypes repeatedly, embracing what is considered the strongest archetypes rather than eschewing them.

What I would expect is Animalism.  If asked maybe a year ago, maybe two or three, what I’d feel was the most troublesome archetype, I would probably have said weenie Animalism.  It was already a go to metagame choice before Deep Song was printed, and Deep Song only made it vastly more efficient.  While hardly perfect and while there are a number of matchups the archetype isn’t fond of, it wrecked enough decks while having a good enough game against enough of the field, that it seemed a prime choice.

I wouldn’t say the same about weenie Animalism today, but I would say Animalism is even stronger.  Why?  Decks like this one:

V:tES ECQ @ GothCon 2011
Gothenburg, Sweden
April 23, 2011
37 players

Erik Torstensson’s Tournament Winning Deck

Deck Name : girls will find aids (68-rörelsen)
Author : Isak Bjärmark Esbjörnsson and Erik Torstensson
Description : Five minutes with Enkidu.

Crypt [12 vampires] Capacity min: 7 max: 11 average: 8.91667
————————————————————
4x Aksinya Daclau     9 ANI FOR PRE PRO cel tha     !Gangrel:4
2x Cybele            10 ANI DAI OBF PRE SER THA     Baali:4
2x Nana Buruku         8 ANI POT PRE             Guruhi:4
1x Enkidu, The Noah    11 ANI CEL OBF POT PRO for     !Gangrel:4
1x Nangila Were     9 ANI POT PRE obf ser         Guruhi:4
1x Gustaphe Brunnelle     8 ANI DOM POT obf         Nosferatu:4 primogen
1x Talbot         7 ANI NEC PRO for         Gangrel:5

Library [68 cards]
——————————
Action [1]
2x Deep Song
1x Entrancement

Combat [20]
9x Aid from Bats
7x Carrion Crows
1x Target Vitals
2x Taste of Vitae
1x Terror Frenzy
1x Canine Horde

Event [2]
1x Anthelios, The Red Star
1x Dragonbound

Master [31]
9x Ashur Tablets
2x Dreams of the Sphinx
1x Fame
1x Giant’s Blood
2x Haven Uncovered
2x Information Highway
5x Liquidation
1x Lilith’s Blessing
7x Villein
5x Zillah’s Valley
1x Pentex Subversion
1x Jake Washington
1x Golconda: Inner Peace

Reactions [4]
1x Guard Dogs
1x Rat’s Warning
2x Lost in Translation

The evolution of Girls decks is interesting.  Compare with this deck:

Swedish National Championship 2010
Örebro, Sweden
September 11, 2010
44 Players
3R + F

Erik Torstensson’s Tournament Winning Deck with 1,5 VPs in the Finals

Deck Name : Girls will find…
Author : Erik Torstensson
Description :

Crypt [12 vampires] Capacity min: 9 max: 11 average: 10
————————————————————
4x Cybele                 10 ANI DAI OBF PRE SER THA          Baali:4
4x Aksinya Daclau         9  ANI FOR PRE PRO cel tha          !Gangrel:4
1x Adana de Sforza        11 CEL OBF POT PRE PRO aus inner circle Brujah:4
1x Lutz von Hohenzollern 11 AUS DEM OBF PRE pot     inner circle Malkavian:4
1x Mistress Fanchon       11 AUS CEL DOM OBF THA VIC inner circle Tremere:4
1x Rafael de Corazon      11 AUS CEL DOM OBF PRE     inner circle Toreador:4

Library [82 cards]
————————————————————
Action [4]
1x Entrancement
2x Intimidation
1x Unleash Hell’s Fury

Action Modifier [16]
2x Aire of Elation
1x Approximation of Loyalty
1x Cloak the Gathering
2x Elder Impersonation
1x Enkil Cog
2x Faceless Night
1x Into Thin Air
2x Lost in Crowds
2x Mirror Walk
2x Perfect Paragon

Combat [4]
4x Majesty

Event [2]
2x Anthelios, The Red Star

Master [48]
9x Ashur Tablets
1x Blind Spot
1x Coven, The
1x Direct Intervention
2x Dreams of the Sphinx
1x Fortschritt Library
1x Giant’s Blood
2x Golconda: Inner Peace
2x Information Highway
2x Jake Washington (Hunter)
8x Liquidation
1x Metro Underground
1x Misdirection
1x Monastery of Shadows
1x Parthenon, The
1x Pentex(TM) Subversion
7x Villein
1x Wash
5x Zillah’s Valley

Political Action [4]
1x Ancient Influence
1x Banishment
1x Political Stranglehold
1x Reins of Power

Reaction [4]
1x Guard Dogs
2x Lost in Translation
1x Rat’s Warning

Same player, same region, same sort of broken core strategy that abuses masters, very different support module.

Nana Buruku should have settled in everyone’s minds (but I’m sure didn’t) that multiple master phase actions is broken.  Here’s a vampire without a number of the benefits that Anson has provided lo these many years who still has shown up in a variety of winning archetypes as the key vampire at the higher levels of play.  Add to Aksinya and Cybele a third ANI vampire, and one sees how easy it is to bolt a combat module on to crazy bloat and recursion.

And, what a combat module it is.  Anything can win.  We see that.  But, would anyone want to run weenie Potence or Celerity guns into Aid From Bats + Carrion Crows?  So, it doesn’t beat combat ends.  It doesn’t need to.  Eventually combat ends runs out (ignoring Henry Taylor or whatever).  The massive power that Majesty has always brought to the table is that whatever the deck was doing that wasn’t getting out of combat was harsh to one’s pool.  Girls decks are kind of decent at pool gain.  Bloat enough to play a game of attrition and 1+2+press+1+2 is enough damage to tear up minions.

I’ve thought about how to counteract Animalism decks and the answers come up wanting far too often.  Sure, against weenie Animalism, stealth vote is nice but how well does it do against “oh, my deck also has Lutz”?  Combat ends has the problem I mentioned of only being good enough if the deck can be ousted fast enough.  Opposing combat can be a big annoyance, especially ranged agg, but then, what does your combat do for you against stealth bleed, stealth vote, etc.?  Can’t really avoid getting into combat when Deep Song is around.

To abuse masters or to try to stop master abuse?  While I might not expect much in the way of Girlie decks at the NAC, I’m sure people will still try to abuse Ashur Tablets, Liquidation, the two together, and whatever else.  Join the club?  Or, try to Monkey Wrench (grossly underplayed card) the club?  I just don’t have any confidence that a deck can run enough Suddens and/or Washes to ensure winning the metagame.  Answers aren’t as good as threats and the threats in a deck with 6+ Ashur Tablets feel pretty much infinite.  Even if the Tablets never go, the amount of effort put into stopping that likely means everything else happens which is not a “win”.

Though, there are deck archetypes that are fearsome enough without having to stop a lot that I can see decks such as Dementation bleed with 4+ Suddens try to be anti-club.  Not really anything new, I was suggesting just such a build back when Gen Con still had major V:TES tournaments and played such in 2001.

V:TES is a multiplayer game.  So, sometimes, it’s a matter of playing something that with a bit of help, the problem decks go away.  There’s this deck http://thelasombra.com/decks/twd.htm#2011iecqbi that doesn’t stop masters (other than with Le Dinh Tho) or much of anything else.  It basically bleeds … a lot, with LDT possibly being an annoyance.  Girls and Stickmen are anywhere from reasonably resilient to big bleed to absurdly happy to see it, and there’s a lack of tech in here to tap Aksinya, nor is there Trochomancy tech, but think about an actual game where this sits as a predator to a Girls deck or a Stickmen deck.  In addition to being relentless in attack, what if this deck’s predator doesn’t want Girls or Men around?  There’s enough bounce to create a two predator situation and that should be enough, everything else being equal.

What I run into when I play in crossregional metagames is a lot more intercept than I’m used to.  Interestingly, Girls, Giovanni, Dementation, and other successful archetypes aren’t terribly blocky.  I’d expect to run into enough intercept, especially weenie Auspex (awful against Animalism but just horrid to deal with) or fat Toreador, at the NAC that I’d need to adjust my thinking away from my normal deckbuilding style, which often fails miserably against significant intercept.

Likely, even if I had gone, I wouldn’t have made much of an effort to metagame my decks.  While I could have looked for tech, like when I ran Mercy for Seth in my Harbingers vote deck years ago or Ambulance and merged Sebastian Goulet last year, I need a certain level of amusement in my decks.  I don’t know what I would have built, since I pretty much ignored the NAC when I realized I wasn’t going, but I think I would have spent less time on trying to kill Parity Shift (my most recent goal) than trying to figure out how to survive winged animals and get through outrageous bloat.

Probably just means some lame Parity Shift deck will win.  … sigh.

Bay Area Qualifier

It was like a V:TES convention for me.  Now, three tournaments or whatever is kind of conventionlike in the first place, but as I played until 1:30AM or whatever in Pleasanton before the qualifier weekend, it was very conventiony.

Friday

So, I get into Pleasanton about 8PM, start playing about 8:30PM.  Played two games, both times with the same predator.  First game, I play my awesome Jyhad-only (library), Toreador, Victoria Ash makes an appearance, Business Pressure-Disarming Presence 4cl deck.  It’s all good when I have so many masters to play that I have to wait to play the broken Elysium: The Arboretum – not so much broken because the group plays it as written but because the combat deck I play against all of the time is Camarilla.  My prey is playing the deck and punking his prey, who is playing Celerity/Fortitude; my grandpredator is playing Nos vote, and my predator is playing some Gangrel/! thing.  I call Rumors of Gehenna at some point which my grandpredator doesn’t like as I choose myself and my prey and I play Business Pressure and Disarming Presence, nobody cares about tapping, so everyone votes, but my prey and my grandpredator spend a bunch of pool to counter each other and it fails, though I could have played Telepathic Vote Counting to take it back into my hand.  Eventually, my grandprey and my predator die.  I die.  Nos win in an untimed game.  Discarding a Minion Tap was probably not a good idea on my part as my guys were pretty much always fullish.

Instead of playing my other Pleasanton-oriented deck, which was another Presence vote deck, I play a cut down version of my Elisabetta deck, 67 cards after making it 4cl.  I bring out Mylan, my prey takes it and that’s kind of game as he gets 6 minions in play.  I sit at 1 pool for 4-5 turns but don’t really feel that threatened by my predator who is playing the same or similar Gangrel/! deck.  Across the table, the Aus/Cel/Pre?/Obf? deck keeps getting blocked equipping and doesn’t use Greta’s ability enough.  I don’t really remember doing much cool, though I did rush some with Steely Tenacity with Forestal.  I draw Failsafe a turn too late.

Saturday

My alarm wakes me up.  I have a great internal clock for waking up, so this almost never happens.  Not only does it wake me up, but I don’t realize it’s my alarm for a while.  I felt like crap.  So, off to play two tournaments.

Tournamet #1, Round 1:

Ian (Nagaraja w/Obt) -> Dan (Trem w/ Talbot’s Chainsaw) -> Mike (Malk 1/2 Prank Parity Shift) -> Sean (Miller Time) -> James (Corrupt Construction)

James puts Fame on my Kanimana right away, it never triggers, going away when he’s eventually ousted.  I have nothing but Nagaraja in my uncontrolled, so even though I get Obtenebration from Lilith’s Blessing, I keep not bringing out a second vampire.  I do block Talbot’s.  Mike keeps playing Pranks which only cost James pool and guarantee Sean getting a VP as he chooses a single number for everyone every time and hits James every single time rather than just giving him 4 pool.  Dan is tooling.  I have Anarch Troublemaker in play from turn 1, The Erciyes Fragments in play, give up on Descenting into Darkness and pay 3 extra for Raful.  James’s Corrupt Constructions never come my way.  Dan doesn’t draw a wake, so I oust him with Troublemaker plus bleed for 6.

This brings up a rather important point, something I just don’t get about how people build decks.  If you have enough wakes in your decks, I will never oust you.  Yet, I oust people reasonably often.

Game times out as Mike bloats off of Pranks, Sean is only a halfway threat to me, and I choose not to get ousted.

Round 2:

Sean -> Matt (Multitaskmites) -> Ian -> Ira (Akunanse vote)

I don’t believe in hitting one’s prey hard early.  It engenders table hate, causes one’s prey to wall up (and often whine), and uses cards that could have been used to lunge.  I hit Ira early.  I know his deck, I know how his decks work, I know that I have to give Sean some room both because this is 4 player and because Ira and Matt are far better players.  I hope that Sean recognizes what I’m doing, but as I expected, I neither topdeck some bleed to take Ira below 4 pool nor do I get any help containing Ira.  Sean pounds Matt’s pool down.  Ur-Shulgi tries to bleed me some but isn’t achieving much even with Pentex on my Raful.  My Bartholomew gets Banished, which is kind of annoying, so I only have Pentexed Raful and Forestal (completely different draw).  Speaking of completely different draws, Sean gets out Anneke and starts blocking meaningless actions, like Thetmes getting Retain the Quick Blood and my going anarch with Forestal … across table.  Matt, with like no pool, tries a bleed of 7 and I don’t bounce with Auspex, don’t bounce with Dominate, don’t bleed reduce with Friend of Mine a *second* time … I just Archon him.  Sean doesn’t oust Matt when he has plenty of chances to finish him off.  Anneke gets a Pulse only to immediately burn from Matt’s Fear of Mekhet (Ira discards his).  I had given up on trying to oust Ira once he got back up to 8 pool, so Ira kills Sean who doesn’t have wakes since he blocked those other actions earlier, has no problem with Matt, I can’t last the 5 minutes I need to time out and either get into the finals with 2 VPs or do a rolloff for the finals with 2 VPs.  I did first turn discard Shadowed Eyes, so who is the real winner?

Finals:

Pretty sure Ira was top seed.  I know the order of play was Mike, Brandon (THA), Ira, Robert (Ahrimanes vote, I think), A.J. (Tzimisce wall).  Brandon gets ousted, game times.

I played my only pickup game of the weekend.  I play the Jyhad 4cl deck from above.  I first turn Info Highway, Victoria Ash, call Rumors for only myself, bring out Anson becomes that’s funny, Minion Tap Anson for 8 and Giant’s Blood because that’s the way I roll, put Elysium in play with my prey playing a Cam deck because that’s the way I role, tap my prey’s Tara with Consanguineous Condemnation + Disarming Presence combo because that’s the way I successfully bleed at no stealth with Legal Manipulations.  My predator and grandpredator fight a lot as my predator is Baali intercept and my grandpredator is some sort of Lasombra fight deck.  My prey’s Ventrue Law Firm deck with two non-Ventrue in play doesn’t put any meaningful pressure on his prey’s Salubri deck until late.  Salubri get a couple VP, and I clean up.

Point #2.  People worry way too much about how good their decks are.  I was in a dominant position at all times with a 4cl Jyhad library deck that has only 4 votes that can do pool damage and 8 bleed cards (with obviously zero Aires of Elation).

Point #3.  Don’t need new cards to compete.

Qualifier, Round 1:

Joel (Laz & Friends) -> Ira (Ira … Rivers & Alexandra) -> Andy (Dem stealth bleed) -> Gerrentt (Cock Robin & Friends) -> Ian (Anarch OBF antivote)

Joel kept punking Ira … Rivers, containing Ira.  Andy kept getting punked between Cock and Ira, being contained.  I actually thought about helping him, but I knew his deck too well to do that.  Gerrentt did a bit to me, mostly with annoying Tiers of Souls, which slowed down my tooling up.  But, I was mostly free to do what I wanted, Joel not rushing me that much and not hurting me when he did.  I got out a lot of guys.  Joel ousts Ira without expending too many resources in what is a crushing beatdown.  Andy is at risk, but I oust Joel with Monkey Wrench and stuff.  Andy ousts.  I arrange my turn so that Mylan can Computer Hack oust Andy with my last action.

Round 2:

Ian -> Dan (!Trem Gargoyle) -> A.J. (Pre/Vic) -> Ira -> Ian T. (Valerius)

This was awesome.  I kind of ruined it in the end, but it now goes down as one of the *those* games.  After an hour, I had played two cards.  I had three cards in my ash heap:  Old Friends (discarded even though I had it in hand when I bled before my prey got up a vampire), J.S. Simmons, Delaying Tactics (discarded).  Wait, J.S. Simmons hadn’t been discarded?  Ira tried playing J.S. and he got blocked.  I tried playing J.S. and I got blocked … playing mono Obfuscate … by my predator!!!  I had also played a Villein in that first hour as my second card played, I think.  Averaging a card played every 30 minutes or so …

Why?  My prey had rush with Tupdogs.  My predator blocked my actions that he never should have tried to block, so I was content to only take actions nobody cared about, like hunting.  So, and this does make some sense, I think like only one of my actions got blocked after J.S. for about an hour, again, by my predator, who had Alexandra behind him.  I got a Camera Phone and bled for 1 without it a couple of times – nobody blocked.

The pivotal moments in the game were oddly in the midgame.  My prey had Famed Velya and punked it repeatedly.  Matteus calls Banishment, not targeting Velya, not targeting his prey, not targeting his predator, not targeting me (what did I care?), but targeting Ian T.’s second vampire.  It passes, leaving Ian fairly helpless to do anything.  On another turn, my grandprey had Velya and Matteus up and decided to play Festivo dello Estinto with Velya empty and Famous.  That was not wise as it guaranteed that either his prey or his predator would block.  Ira was actually low on pool after bringing out Alexandra, like 5 pool.  Then, Matteus calls KRC, which a torped Velya can’t help pass.  If Velya had somehow hunted or Change of Targeted and A.J. had something more brutal than KRC, Ira might have been in a world of hurt.  Dan gets A.J., Ira gets Ian, I start playing some cards bringing my card per minute average (well, minute per card) way down to 27 minutes a card and, then, to under 10 minutes a card as I die.  Ira wins easily.

There was much discussion after this game about my building a deck that tries to win off of playing no cards.  Not to be confused with my building decks that try to make zero decisions in the game – 20 Ascendance, 50 Earth Meld, 20 The Embrace is the prevailing idea.  Of course, it was the finals which contributed to this line of thinking.

Finals:

Ian -> Sean (fat Toreador) -> Robert (Ahrimanes vote) -> Ira -> Joel

Joel was top seed.  Ira tried to talk Sean out of bringing out Alexandra.  Ira wrecked Robert and ignored the Haven Uncovereds Joel threw backwards because Joel didn’t use them.  Joel beat my guys down sometimes, often enough for me to track how many cards in my ash heap were played.

I don’t know how much time into the game it was, maybe between 45-60 minutes, but I think I had around 5 cards in my ash heap and none of them had been played.  Maybe.  I played two cards that give stealth the entire game, neither to give stealth.  I played superior Spying Mission and Swallowed by the Night to make a rush meaningless.  I had zero actions blocked.  If Joel didn’t punk and then oust me on his turn, I might have ousted my prey with a topdeckable Monkey Wrench.  Robert was Sean’s bitch, going down to 1 pool, playing a DI on Ira and asking Sean whether he wanted him to tap Tshwane or not to continue being his bitch.  Ira contested Alexandra!  Sean ousted Robert.  Joel didn’t die, so Joel won on a time out.

The lesson with my deck?  I think an obvious lesson is that even playing mono-Obfuscate bleed where I don’t defend (except against votes) and have nothing better to do than stealth bleed my prey out of the game rapidly, I can find a way to play any deck passively.  I got annoyed by my predators doing things to my minions when all they had to do was bleed me, which I had pretty much zero defense against.  Of course, it worked.  Both times my predators messed with my minions significantly, I got ousted, though one of the times wasn’t by my predator.  Furthermore, my predators in both cases never ousted my preys, so my spite arguably worked.  It was highly amusing to do nothing with a deck that can only go forward since I didn’t have any bloat, either.  And, the deck did do what it was supposed to – the only opponent with no vote cards won.

Hung around a bit to talk, no late night pickup game for me though, so I go home.

Sunday

Don’t feel as crappy but more just exhausted, so I get a late start on the day, have to lie down for a while after I get up, and proceed to hit every frickin’ red light on the 15 minute-ish drive to Andy’s.

Draft.  I try to joke about it to seem less arrogant, but I’m a way better draft player than constructed player.  I don’t screw around in draft.  I know how to draft.  And, yes, I was the second ranked limited player in the world for nearly a year and had won 5 straight limited events, including one in the DC area, playing with Josh Duffin and Matt Morgan.  Might have even won the next event I played with them if someone hadn’t passed Matt a Mbare Market, giving him two(!!!), and if my grandprey in the finals had trusted me a bit better so that I could oust Josh (my prey, his predator), which I almost did anyway before Matt’s horde of minions rose up.  Not that I’m as good as I was, as I don’t really enjoy draft anymore.

Nevertheless, even though I got zero Monkey Wrenches, zero Anarch Converts, passed most bleed cards and almost all Zip Lines, didn’t draft Assamites even though that was my preferred KMW strategy, and banked my deck on my two Mata Haris, I played 33 cards in my deck rather than the minimum 30 (with 1 recursion) because there was nothing to cut.  For one thing, it helped that people didn’t realize how import An Anarch Manifesto is when drafting Twilight Rebellion.  Second, I wisely didn’t try to draft a deck that Laecanus would fit into since he hates me and causes me to always lose.  Third, people rare draft.  Fourth, people often don’t know how to draft.  Sure, I passed Garibaldi, which is insanely good.  But, I got passed Failsafe(!), which made me incredibly happy as I now play Failsafe in most of my decks*.  I got passed King’s Rising.  I’m pretty sure I got passed Club Illusion.  I got passed My Enemy’s Enemy.  My first library pick?  Tumnimos.  By the way, we drafted vampires first.

*  Friday night, after the game in which I sat at 1 pool for a bunch of turns, I commented that it’s really hard to play the game at 1 pool … but, at 2 pool, there’s a lot of things you can do.  Failsafe is my way to get off of 1 pool, which happens far too often.

Of course, the real strength of my deck, besides pool gain, was Aksinya Daclau.  Mata Hari really wasn’t that important, the only cards I needed her for were Waters of Duat, Black Sunrise, rushing with Steely Tenacity.

Round 1:

Andy -> Ian T. -> Eric -> Ian (I think Andy is the starting player)

In my opening hand, I have Failsafe and King’s Rising.  It would have been hilarious to end my game on turn one with bodacity, but I only play the Failsafe.  Mata Hari comes out, gets Tumnimos and Waters quickly.  Andy and I keep up in minions.  Eric threatens my pool with Steely Tenacity and stuff.  I let Eric know that if I’m still at 6 pool, I’ll bring out another vampire.  I stay at 6.  I bring out Aksinya to go to 2.  I defend well.  I pop Failsafe, later play King’s Rising.  Andy’s Anima Gatheringed Joe Boot Hill, btw, also encourages me not to go forward.  Eric plays Constant Revolution, which actually ends up being his death both because he taps a guy to do it when he’s low on pool and Ian has obvious offensive potential and because it causes me to randomly lose Con Boon which I was thinking of using to give him pool.  Eric goes for the 5 bleed, which I bounce, of course, but I stupidly didn’t try to block first as he had a Zip Line, so I actually have to tap a few more guys to oust Andy, Eric dies.  I outminion Ian and had dropped Club Illusion for extra beats.

Round 2:

Gerrentt -> Eric -> Dan -> Ian

It doesn’t make sense that I’d go last twice, so in the previous game, maybe Andy wasn’t first.  Anyway, Gerrentt brings out Convert, bleeds, gains like 5 pool from the Edge.  Dan doesn’t bleed me forever, though his deck is full of bleed.  I get Aksinya much earlier but don’t have my pool gain.  Gerrentt amasses a ridiculous number of dudes.  I bounce a 2 bleed at stealth.  Dan tries a real bleed of Force of Will Monkey Wrench 6 at 1 stealth which I, of course, bounce, putting Gerrentt into kill range.  I keep hoping Eric will oust Dan as I’m not nearly as scared of Eric’s deck; he doesn’t do that, but he kills Mylan with Keystone Kine, which I was all happy about.  I sweep.

Finals:

Mike -> Sean -> Ian -> Gerrentt -> Matt

I’m top seed, winning a flip against Matt.  I’m fine with being behind Gerrentt.  I’m fine with having the only player without a brutal aggro deck (I don’t count) being behind me.

The game was actually quite interesting, involved, strange, and surprising.  Let’s see.  My predator brings out Lorrie Dunsirn!  Wow, what a terrible choice.  I transfer 1 to each of my three 5 caps rather than Mata Hari and know Aksinya is on top of my crypt since she’s upside down.  If my predator, who I knew had Aksinya in his crypt didn’t bring her out, I would have decrypted, but he brought her out.  Matt lent Gerrentt The Rumor Mill to stop my getting An Anarch Manifesto, which he regretted when Gerrentt got Heart of Nizchetus, which Matt was far more concerned about than I was.  In fact, Matt was incredibly worried about me all of the time, which I think was mostly due to my being top seed and because he knew I had cards like Failsafe and King’s Rising, rather than knowing my true power.  He lent Rumor Mill to Gerrentt later to stop me from getting a Sport Bike, and Gerrentt proceeded to get a Pulse of Canaille.  Gerrentt put out Twilight Camp and Crypt’s Sons – damn, what hot rares!

Meanwhile, back in my world, it was pain.  Mike conned Sean into rushing Mata Hari, which really didn’t affect me since I had no plans to go forward for the first 1.5 hours of the game, anyway.  Sean also kept tapping Aksinya to do things, which was nonsensical as everyone knew Mike had two Monkey Wrenches.  Mike contested Louis Fortier with me, which was probably accidental, so he spent all of the rest of the game trying to kill me as his grandprey, well, at least, put me down to where he could take Sean and me right away.  So, I tried to kill him back.  Mike cut deals with Matt to contest Crypt’s Sons with Gerrentt, so he was contesting 2 cards for a while.

It was hilarious.  Sean kept hurting me with rushes or bleed of 4 or Perpetual Care for 4, but all I did the entire time was try to figure out how to keep him alive and keep his predator under control.  As I expected, Matt finally lunged and took Mike out, something anybody should have expected given that Matt and I were tied with 7 (out of 8) VPs.  Gerrentt was free, though, to Pulse bleed on Matt.  I Power of Alled a Patsy that would have killed Sean.  Fortunately, Matt had called a Peace Treaty when I was at 3 pool, so I kept my Baseball Bat and gained 4 pool from Failsafe, making me unkillable.  I played King’s Rising, which was when two of the observing Haases knew I was going to win.  Sean died.  I ousted Gerrentt.  When I contested Toby with Matt with about a minute left, Matt conceded in a very sportsmanlike move since he was dead on my turn.

Spend half the game contesting a 5 cap in limited?  Have a grandpredator trying to kill me?  Have a predator unwisely use his actions to maximize damage to me?  Explain to my predator that keeping Aksinya untapped would do more pool damage to me than he could do by taking actions with her?  Not ever bring out my Aksinya who pretty much gave me two table wins?  Wait about 100 minutes to bleed my prey for the first time?  Of course, my prey would concede in the endgame with 1 minute left.  What other choice did he have?  What other choice did any of my opponents have?  Oh, right, they could have done less pool damage to me – that would have screwed me …

Thank yous for:

Brandon – Running everything, getting phat loots for the events.

Matt – Not stalling to win even though I would have been cool with it as Mike’s plays annoyed me and Matt would have been a worthy victor.  I think it’s great that players like Matt, Jeff Thompson, etc. display such sportsmanship.  I try to live up to those examples.

Out of town players – Mike, Matt, Robert, James – great to have people from other regions.

Mid-East Bay players – Dan, Sean, A.J., Joel – great to have players still playing in that area and willing to make the trek.  Sure, Ian came from further, but one would think a lot more Berkeley and SF players would have made it out.

The rest of the players – games don’t work unless you have opponents.

Haas household – Andy, Eric, their dad – for hosting, having food and drink available, putting up with a bunch of gamers, especially crazy people like Robert.

Forgetting anyone?  Hope not.

Well, that was exhausting.  It was great, though.  Now, off to see if I own 20 Jyhad The Embraces, so that the deck can be Jyhad-only, as well.

Draft deck:

x1  Toby
x1  Louis Fortier
x1  Paul Forrest
x2  Mata Hari
x1  Aksinya Daclau

x1  Club Illusion
x1  Failsafe
x1  King’s Rising
x1  Libertas
x1  Sermon of Caine
x1  Svadharma
x1  Trophy: Safe Passage
x1  Warning Sirens
x1  Chameleon
x1  Fee Stake: Corte (all players were allowed to add these three)
x1  Fee Stake: Los Angeles
x1  Fee Stake: Perth
x1  Shattering
x1  Tumnimos
x1  Undue Influence
x1  Waters of Duat
x1  Zip Line
x1  Changeling
x1  Command of the Beast
x1  CrimethInc.
x1  Burst of Sunlight
x1  Song of Serenity
x2  An Anarch Manifesto (thought I had 3)
x1  Baseball Bat
x1  Sport Bike
x1  Consanguineous Boon
x1  Conservative Agitation
x1  Exclusion Principle
x1  Black Sunrise
x1  My Enemy’s Enemy
x1  Power of All
x1  Steely Tenacity