I played my Masika+Toreador Fatties Block ‘n’ Cog deck at the tourney, not because it’s good, but because it tends to make finals and I wanted to qualify as much as anything else. I don’t know why, exactly, as I can’t make it to NOLA, but perhaps it’s just a matter of pride. . .
I really need to revise the deck. It didn't cycle well at all this tourney. It didn't help that my tablemates were either taking D actions away from me or playing the trumpiest "don't block" combat ever. I spent most of the first 6 or 7 turns looking at the same cards in my hand. It was not fun. I need to thin it out, i think. At no time was i in danager of even going through half of my deck.
Round 1:
John(Malk ’94-ish deck)>Sam(Assamite Heartblood Midcap bleed)>Dave>(Ivan Krenyenko supercycle)>Me>Ahmed(Imbued toolbox)
Sam had a decent opening, and Dave had a perfect one. Sam got Alu and Sajid early, dropped a Heartblood, and while he wasn’t bleeding with Loss at stealth he was gaining pool trhough Heartblood. He eventually got Hafsa and Vardar the Vardarian. Dave pulled Ivan, played Marakesh Codex, played an Ashur, searched the Karavalishna Vrana, KVed out Joquinna, Searched the Heart of the Cheater, etc. When Shilmulo Tarot hit the table, Dave was essentially playing with an 18 + card hand each turn.
I got the shaft. I pulled Francois Villon, but didn’t get Masika. This would not have been an issue, but Dave’s discard of Sensory Deprivation on turn 1 made me want Masika a lot. So after getting Francois I played pretty slow and paid to see a new crypt card, who was indeed Masika. It was turn 5 or 6 before I started moving forward.
This let Ahmed set up his Imbued well. He got an Inspire on that Imbued who gets a power when she comes into play (Nurse?) and then he got Travis to gain three influence per turn. That let him get out a bunch of guys: Carlton, Vagabond with Laptop Computer, Warden, SixofSwords. He bled John for 2-3 per turn, but John bounced most of it, with Lucian, Malkavian Justicar. John got a weird crypt draw, and wound up with Normal, Brazil, Ohanna, and Lucian in play. He bled with the two caps every single turn, so Sam was eating three bleed, but with Vessels and Heartblood Sam was able to ignore it most of the time.
Dave had gotten a Blood Doll on Ivan and Joquinna by this point (after Sam had played his Vessels, natch), and with Parthenon in play he was playing a lot of cards. Ivan and Joquinna finally started getting forward motion at around this time with Treasured Samadji and a Seal of Veddartha on Ivan. Heidelberg helped move the bleed around. Dave’s bloat would have been better, but Sam had Lossed the KV ASAP, and Dave was pretty unhappy about this.
Dave was also unhappy about me taking the Powerbase:Montreal with Francois early, in order to influence Masika into play in two turns rather than three. I assured him that this was all so that my forward motion could come into play early, but there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Dave tends to wail a lot, actually. Maybe that's to his advantage.
When I did get Masika and put a gun on him things went better for me and worse for Ahmed. I bled with an Aire for five and he took it. Then I blocked Travis’ bloating action and filled him with bullets. Ahmed still had a pile of forward-moving minions, but I’d slowed him down.
The game was dragging at this point. It had taken all of us a long time to set up, and John and I were having issues cycling cards. Dave’s cycling each untap actually took a decent amount of time, so we were starting to get worried about the game going to time.
Dave was on life support for a while after Sam unleashed a flurry of Loss bleeds, but Dave eventually got dom on Ivan through the Seal and bounced one into me. I’d gotten a Master Sculptor by now and had spent some on guns. Then he bled me for a bunch, leaving me on two pool. I stayed defensive while waiting for a Villein, and managed to draw it before he could oust me.
I still bled with Masika every turn, cause hey, he untaps a lot. Ahmed’s Flash Grenades proved largely ineffective against the big M. I also never let Travis take his action again to gain pool, and blocked an Imbued getting the Ivory Bow (because that would be bad for me).
Ahmed was looking bad, but so was his prey, and Sam, and Dave, and I. We all were on pretty low pool near the end. Sam Washing Dave’s third Ashur Tablets (“I can’t find the other three, and I’m cycling so many cards and reshuffling every turn!”) sealed his fate, as Dave’s lunge failed to get me. Sam got him next turn. I failed to oust Ahmed with my last turn, and Ahmed failed to oust John. Sam ousted me with his last turn, as time was called.
There were two points during this game when I considered ending Dave’s game after catching him trying to bleed me for 4 with Ivan. I had the Blur in hand while he was busy dodging with the samadji, and both times I threatened to end him. Both times I decided against it. Of course, if I had another turn I would have ousted Ahmed, but I’m not sure ruining Dave a turn earlier would have saved me from Sam. . .
Sam: 2.5 VP and a GW, Ahmed, 0.5 VP, John, 0.5 VP
Game MVP: Probably Loss, which nuked Dave’s ability to bloat by destroying the Karavalishna Vrana.
Game 2:
Dan (Kiasyd S+B Toolbox)>James(Nehemiah+Nana facepunching)>Brad Cashdollar, who gets special mention for hosing my game(Dmitra Alastors with Assault Rifles)>Devin(Trujah combat trumps bullying)>Me
I got a good draw this time, and got Masika out first thing. I also got Francois again. I like the Prince of Paris a lot for working a table with his blood thievery. I went for Anneke but Devin started bleeding me before I could get that moving.
Dan got Isanwayan, Dame Hollerton, and later the Arcadian and Lucy Markowitz.
James got Nehemiah the turn before Devin could influence him out, which caused some strife between them, but as Devin was playing an ALL-Trujah crypt he got out Ibn Khladun and went about his business. Then James got out Nana and eventually Enchanted out Patrick.
Brad got Karen Suduela and Dmitra, and then Alastored Dmitra an Assault Rifle. Karen got a heart of Cheating and Mr. Winthrop.
Devin had a late late start and eventually paid 10 pool for Ibn Khladun. By then Brad and James were into it and Devin got to do a bunch of stuff unmolested, like Summon History to get Ibn an Ankara Citadel. Devin lost a lot of pool to Parity Shift this game, but with Vessel and Perfectionist in play he got most of it back.
Masika got a gun and proceeded to bleed every single turn. This was okay, and I drew an Aire to mug Dan for 5 once while he was tapped out. Dan bled forward a little every turn, which James did not like.
James and Brad circled each other like jungle cats. Dmitra got knocked around by Nehemiah with a Torn Signpost Undead Strength Target Vitals incredible punch, after James had played a Fake Out in response to the AR maneuver. He did not Grapple, however, so Dmitra managed to shoot back for a lot and Taste of Vitae it back. Nana did something and Dmitra played a Second Tradition to block and then a (Heroic Might+) Slam+Grapple ended Dmitra’s fun and sent her to torpor.
Brad was clearly playing a _lot_ of Second Tradition. James was clearly playing a _lot_ of rush and FIST. After a turn going forward and placing Dragonbound in play, James let Dmitra get out of torpor and then started rushing the Kyasid backwards. James pleaded with me not to bleed, as he had played Vaticination the last turn and “Dan’s got two Deflections!” Dan assured me he did not and that James was either lying or wasn't paying attention (did I really believe him? No, but I had to get rid of them and James had 11 pool at the time). I bled once to make him play one, and then again the next turn. He played another that turn, but he and James both argued that they weren’t lying to the rest of us.
Not sure who was right. James went full backward, and Dan went full forward. Dan’s Fae Contortions were enough to save his guys from punchy rush while the Arcadian helped pump up the bleeds. James got ousted first.
After James had left Brad played another Parity Shift to steal some pool from Devin, but one of the Kyasid Aura Absorbed some intercept and stepped in front of it. Dan got Lucy around this time. Devin started influencing out Nehemiah again.
Ibn had been bleeding me for 3 unblockably for some time now, nearly every turn. Devin’s deck was all about Domain of Evernight, Outside the Hourglass, Decapitate. I knew this going in, and so I simply never blocked his actions. This was actually bad for me. When I thought on it later, I should have saved Direct Interventions for the Outside the Hourglass and torped Nehemiah or Ibn in the late game. Otherwise I simply couldn’t cycle cards; Dan was only taking D actions and Devin was essentially unblockable. I had combat and intercept that wasn’t going anywhere for much of the game.
I bled into Dan for a lot, drawing another Aire while he was tapped out from messing with Brad and hitting him for seven with my two huge Toreador. This made the table very aware of my presence suddenly.
However, Dan and Brad had moved into a strange two-player conflict for Brad’s VP, and Devin and I were coming up the winners in the situation. When the dust settled, Brad was low on pool, but had two ready minions, and I had ousted Dan and gained 6 pool, which Devin bled off of me his next turn with two Trujah.
At around this time Brad decided to be a predator and start blocking forward. Devin did his thing and popped Karen’s head off. Brad didn’t let that stop him from trying to shoot Nehemiah with Dmitra, and she wound up in the dirt as well.
Amusingly, Devin then rescued Dmitra to keep Brad in the game almost right after that, as Brad could not hope to self-rescue with my ridiculous intercept.
Dmitra and Masika went toe-to-toe, or perhaps barrel-to-barrel, but Masika proved the stronger, with more blood to lose and more bullets to fire. I had drawn the lone Parity Shift in my deck, and Francois was protected from diablerie by it.
Devin bled me for 6 and Summoned a renegade Garou from History, which immediately rushed (because it goes right into play, I guess?) and was shot into pieces by Masika with a Quicken Sight for a spare maneuver and a Pursuit for an additional strike. Scary that Ibn could find a Garou for 2 blood which can rush at will, however.
Brad was on 8 pool when I got rid of his last minion. He put 4 down on someone and paid one for a master card. The next turn, I bled for two with Masika, and when I play my Enkil Cog Brad Cashdollar DI’s it. The villain! The DI self-ousted him, and left me with a nearly empty Masika and a full Francois to contend with Ibn and Nehemiah.
In the heads-up I drew another Aire, and bled Devin down to two pool, but without the extra bleed (and action!) from the Cog he was able to get me with his bullying tactics.
Me: 2VP, Devin: 2VP, Dan: 1VP
Game MVP: No GW! No MVP.
Game 3:
Lync(Malk ’94 Classic)> Jay(the 40-card ally deck)>Me>Rod(Tremere G5 fattie vote)>Thomas(!Malk KS)
This game was strange. It was good for me. I pulled Masika and Felicia early, and then when I drew Villein I got Anneke. Rob got Gabrielle the Justicar and Troius. Thomas got Midget first thing, which was part of his deck concept, I guess. He said he got Midget first thing every game. He was the top seed going into the finals, so I’m not going to argue with this. After Midget he got Korah and Artemis. Lync got Roland Bishop, Ozmo, and later Lady Thunder.
Jay. . . Jay got a bunch of crazy shit going on. He discarded a Slaughterhouse with burn option about twice a go-around early. He said later that there are lots in the deck. Apparently it’s a 40-ish card deck? Jay’s ready region went something like this:
Turn 1: Sandra White-and-yet-not-white Unmasking
Turn 2: Blood Doll Sandra, start the hunt-loop. Zhenga arrives. Anthelios.
Turn 3: Vessel Zhenga. Parthenon. Vessel Zhenga. Zhenga finds Tutu the Doubly Evil Mummy.
Turn 4: Jake Washington. Tutu Finds Greg Winter. Break the Code.
Turn 5: Tutu finds Carlton. Zhenga gets Aranthebes.
Turn 6: Marguerite shows up. Jay is backpedaling from all the bleeds coming at him.
It got worse from there. I’m pretty sure Jay’s deck has a mission statement which resembles: Lose to guns. Lose big to Celerity guns. He didn’t really move forward much of the game.
So with free reign and a Cog early, I bled the crap out of Rod, eventually ousting him with a Resist Earth’s Grasp. While this was going on, Thomas was having a heck of time with Lync, who not only refused to block his bleeds, but occasionally sent them to Jay. Jay and Thomas played nice, but Thomas was using Dreams (several copies over the course of the early game) to get rid of stealth in order to draw bleed, and then a chunk of his KS did not land because he was trying not to bleed Jay.
With Carlton, Aranthebes, and Unmasking, Jay was catching Roland Bishop and Ozmo often enough that Lync was frustrated. On top of that, Greg Winter had Roland in a hunt-loop. Jay’s mad respiration included emptying Zhenga with Vessel, burning Jake Washington, then using a spare Slaughterhouse with Anthelios to get Jake back and playing him with the Parthenon.
It was pretty awesome.
After I ousted Rodd, Lync was looking bad. He managed one more turn, but he said he wouldn’t last another. Jay took this opportunity to become a predator, and played a Fear of Mehket on Anneke, which Lync inexplicably Sudden Reversaled. There was much gnashing of teeth at this.
Jay recycled the fear with his spare MPA, so I knew what was coming. Unfortunately, I had little to say about it. Anneke was on three (I’d Villein’d her deep) and likely to stay that way. I could hunt her to four, or hope to block and draw into a gun and a Taste of Vitae, but that was grim. Also, Jay was gonna recur that Fear if she lived anyway, so it was inevitable.
I got Marcellus and started on Francois with my oust pool. Jay had played the Zoning Board. He Zoned my Information Highway. He put Pentex Subversion on Masika. Anneke went away.
Thomas bled the hell out of Jay, who put up a good fight using his mad intercept, Aranthebes, and the bloat tech. Marguerite was BD-hunting by this point each turn as well.
When the dust settled, Thomas had a torped Midget, Artemis with 0 blood, Kite at 5, and Korah at 5. He had 24 pool, and he’d just ousted Jay. Before ousting Jay, he used an MPA to get his Pentex Subversion back into his hand. Awesome.
With Jay gone Masika had one turn to act. I bled for 3. With most of my guys, really. I had influenced out Francois Villon to make up for Anneke, but I hadn’t drawn a Villein in a bit, and I only had like 12 pool. Thomas bled me for 6 of it with his two ready !Malks and hunted with the empty one, and I burned through a hell of lot of reactions. Thomas always had more stealth than I intercept, but his deck was looking thin, as he had to play 3 or 4 cards to match my Eyes of Argus + Quicken Sight combo, and Jay and Lync had forced him to either play or discard a ton of black-diamond cards.
So there I was at 4 pool, with three ready !Malks right over there. . .not only that, my only Gun was on Masika, who was subverted. I did have a Fleetness, two Blur, a .44, and a Concealed Weapon in hand. But I didn’t want Kite to block the rush, leaving Thomas with two bleeders in the long run. I feinted, having Francois steal the blood from Artemis, who only had one and would have to hunt. Thomas bit on that feint and blocked with Kite, asking “Frenchie doesn’t have a gun, right?” The Prince of Paris unconcealed his .44 and blew three holes in Kite. Then Marcellus rushed one-blood Artemis and hit him fast three times for another dead !Malk.
All these Shennanigans left me on 4 pool. Thomas only had enough to drop me to 2. Whew. I played a Villein to get out of trouble and then dropped my own Pentex on Korah. My Princes bled for 2 each, Felicia bled for 3 with an Aire, and Masika bled for 3. Suddenly Thomas’ pool was looking low enough for victory.
He struggled to get at me, but I’d drawn yet another Villein and when I played it Thomas conceded victory, as he was at this point playing with a 3-card hand. He’d exhausted his library.
Me: 3VP and the GW, Thomas: 2VP
Finals:
I had player with each of the finalists in previous rounds. This was envied by the other finalists. Unfortunately, I’d played poorly in those previous rounds and was 5th seed, so my knowledge went unused.
Devin had managed to get a GW and 4 VPs in the third round because someone else played the Unmasking, so all of his ridiculous Unique lupines had +1 intercept. The imbued who played it proved to be resistant to aggravated wounds, but Hourglass still does a lot of damage prerange, and Stunt Cycle does a hell of lot more.
Me>Devin(Trujah Bullies)>David(Ivan is a Pretty Good Vampire)>Thomas(!Malk KS)>Sam(Assamite midcap Loss/Heartblood)
Going first isn’t good for Masika. Or Francois. Or Anneke. Sitting between a deck that can burn equipment off my guys and a deck that I can’t block forward (a certain percentage of my deck’s offense is Masika blocking forward) isn’t good at all.
Still, things went well early. I got Lilith’s Blessing into play on the first round, and proceeded to draw into two Villein, which gave me Masika and Francois on the cheap. Sam only bled me for 3 ever, playing a Loss with Sajdid almost immediately, but then never drawing another.
Thomas got Midget and proceeded his bleedy assault. He ran over Sam before too long and had a VP and some extra pool to go with Korah, Midget, and Artemis. Sam had gotten three guys out and a Heartblood of the Clan. He pretty much used the Heartblood and Vessel to stay in the game two or three turns longer, but was gone by turn 7 or 8.
I bled Devin pretty much every turn until he got Tye Cooper in play to essentially block a non-stealth bleed each turn without issues. He got Nehemiah and Summoned the Citadel, then got a pile of allies. He found Harzomatuili, Ossian, Tye, and a Renegade Garou.
David did his thing, getting a lot of equipment on Ivan and bloating each turn with the KV and PB:M. He also got Gabrin and later Joquinna. Eventually he got Heidelberg to go with his bleedy equipment and started forward. By then Thomas had ousted Sam and gotten Quentin King III. Midget was tapped and empty, and Thomas decided not to care about the infernal little monster.
I made a deal with Devin to use Francois to steal blood from !Malks instead of bleeding with him every turn, if he’d rush crosstable to keep Thomas from ousting me. I had 18 pool when Thomas rounded the corner, and 4 down on Anneke. I wound up taking all 4 back, as Thomas bled me for 6 or more every single turn.
At one point Devin had played Vaticination and told me that Thomas didn’t have much bleed. I said that maybe I wouldn’t block, hoping to jam him (he didn’t have a Dreams in play and I was low on intercept at the time anyway). He played two Eyes of Chaos to bleed me for 6 anyway. I’m starting to think that Vaticination gives people too much information at once, or perhaps everyone just likes to use the card to be disingenuous about their knowledge.
I was having trouble cycling cards, as I couldn’t block Thomas and Devin wasn’t an option. I wound up bleeding with Masika every turn in hopes of burning combat cards.(Given my fragile deal with Devin I was surprised he still considered Thomas enough of a threat to still rush crosstable) Eventually Devin bit, and I put Harzomatuili out of play with bullets and continued to bleed with Momentary Delay.
My backwards strategy was not working so well, as Thomas continued to bleed me pretty well. He was also getting bled by Dave pretty heavy by this point, so he was pressured to continue.
Devin bled for 3 each turn, and since I didn’t want Dave to get his game nerfed I had warned him in precisely the way I had failed to warn Brad Cashdollar (the rogue!) in round two about Devin’s deck. Dave was bent about never being able to b lock Devin, but his three pool bloat per turn let him keep up with Devin. I really wanted Devin to oust David, so that I could DI an Hourglass and kill Nehemiah, ending the Trujah threat and winning the game.
But Devin simply couldn’t do it. Dave ousted Thomas after Thomas got me to like 3 pool. I managed to Villein the once-again full François (his special is awesome) to get back to a healthy spot, but David was in control of the game by this point. I went backwards as much as I could, and Devin rushed the Ravnos with all his werewolves, knocking Joquinna into torpor and getting Ivan empty.
In my final acts of the game, David put a blood on Ivan, tried to Restore, which I blocked so that he couldn’t use his Helicopter, then I DI’ed the Freak Drive, leaving him tapped. But David had the False Resonance he needed to oust me with Gabrin shortly after that.
Devin actually won the heads up with David, but when the dust settled David’s 2 VP was better than Devin’s 2 VP.
David: 2VP and GW, Devin: 2VP, Thomas: 1VP
Game MVP: Probably Ivan Krenyenko or the Karavalishna Vrana
Banner
Friday, August 27, 2010
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Decks What I Lost with at Origins 2010 #3
I’ve been sitting on this report for a few weeks now. I figure I should just publish it.
The Sunday tournament felt a little more relaxed. This is in part due to the fact that we weren’t running nearly an hour late for it. But also, since it was merely a standard constructed tournament and not either a Qualifier or the U.S. Championships, it didn’t feel quite as cutthroat to me.
But then I started actually playing in it.
My deck was a Nehemiah + Obtenebration for stealth deck, backed up by huge voters with Presence and Obtenebration. I’ve been working with it since Legacies of Blood came out. I wrote the True Brujah newsletter for a time, and of all the various decks that I built and played, this one seems to be the most competitive. This is because Nehemiah is friggin’ awesome.
Deck Name: The Shadow Out of Time
Created by: Merlin
Description:
This deck has gone through several iterations. This is the latest. I'm considering a few Agent of Power because most of the time I'm lacking a discipline it's when I'm acting. Having the POT I need for an Iron Glare at +bleed or the additional Stealth from Shadow Play at OBT would be nice.
Crypt [12 vampires, average capacity: 8.58333]
1x Melinda Galbraith AUS CEL DOM POT PRE obt 10 Lasombra:4 cardinal
1x Melinda Galbraith (Adv) AUS CEL DOM POT PRE obt 10 Toreador antitribu:4 bishop
5x Nehemiah POT PRE SER TEM obt 9 True Brujah:4 2 votes
1x Tyler CEL POT PRE dom for obt 9 Brujah:3 primogen
2x Giangaleazzo, The Trait OBT POT PRE dom 8 Lasombra:4 prince
1x Tobias Smith DOM OBT PRE pot 7 Lasombra:3
1x Shawnda Dorrit CEL obt pot pre 6 Brujah antitribu:4 priscus
Library [87 cards]
Master [18]
2x Archon Investigation
2x Creepshow Casino
2x Dreams of the Sphinx
1x Giant's Blood
2x Tabriz Assembly
6x Villein
2x Wider View
1x Zillah's Valley (there were two Zillah's and 7 Villein at Origins, and zero Wider view)
Action [3]
1x Charming Lobby
1x Entrancement
1x Kiss of Lachesis (There were two Kiss and zero Entrancement in the deck at Origins, as well as an extra Charming Lobby, which was exchanged for Iron Glare)
Action Modifier [34]
1x Approximation of Loyalty
2x Awe
3x Bewitching Oration
2x Blanket of Night
4x Domain of Evernight (there were two Clotho's Gift in the deck at Origins, but Domain makes the deck more lunge-tastic)
4x Iron Glare
2x Pocket Out of Time
2x Recurring Contemplation
2x Shadow Play
3x Shroud of Night
2x Tangle Atropos' Hand
1x Tenebrous Form
6x Voter Captivation
Action Modifier/Reaction [1]
1x Hall of Hades' Court
Ally [1]
1x Mylan Horseed (Goblin)
Equipment [1]
1x Seal of Veddartha
Political Action [15] (this was an odd mix at Origins, there were 3 Con Ag in the deck, two of which have been dumped for another Neonate Breach [as it won me two games at Origins] and another KRC)
1x Anarchist Uprising
1x Ancient Influence
1x Conservative Agitation
6x Kine Resources Contested
2x Neonate Breach
1x Political Stranglehold
2x Reckless Agitation
1x Reins of Power
Reaction [7]
4x Deflection
2x On the Qui Vive
1x Wake with Evening's Freshness
Combat [7]
7x Majesty
Crafted with: Anarch Revolt Deck Builder [Thu Jul 29 00:35:54 2010]
Game 1:
Player A (Tupdog)--->Me---> Player B (G1 titled Brujah with New Carthage)--->Player C(Torrance Circle Blood Brothers Rush)--->Player D(Mary Anne Blaire and friends)
I feel really good about my gameplay in this game. Three of the players at the table were Hall of Fame members, and since I wound up with gamewin, through no fault of my own, I felt like a pretty good VTES player for perhaps the first time all weekend. I ruined it with poor play in the finals, but this game was excellent.
I felt I was in a bad spot, having sat next to a Tupdog deck. That’s because it was a bad spot. Player A got Antonio D’Erlette out first, which faked me out a bit. I didn’t bring up a minion right away, going for Nehemiah instead, and Antonio bleed me with some Dominate for 3. Then Keith Moody and another wee !Tremere popped up. But no Nephandus yet? I should have been suspicious.
I got out Nehemiah and Leila Monroe (since excised from the decklist for Melinda ADV) and that’s where things stayed for me, for most of the game. There was enough Dominate behind me to keep me worried, and the rest of the table was moving sort of slowly.
Player B got up Crusher, who Enchanted down to Tura Vaughn, and then they both Enchanted out Rake. I was worried about Crusher. That guy punches hard. Player C was having a dream draw and cardflow with the Torrance Circle, getting up his first guy, who Unwholesome Bonded/Freak Drove/Hive Minded out another BB, and then they both did the same the next turn. He had nearly the whole circle by turn four or so.
Mary Anne popped first for Player D, and she Governed down to Graham Gottesman. Then she got beat up on an Oppungnant night and the Ventrue had to slow down a bit. When Mary Anne got back from torpor she did manage to get out Mustafa as well.
Tupdog finally showed up after I got Nehemiah, and things went south. The damn thing rushed (using Dive Bomb stealth so Leila couldn’t block) with its Raking Talons and Immortal Grapple, and Nehemiah hit the dirt. Leila blocked the next rush and managed to survive, and the !Tremere had run out of Dominate, but still bled me for one. Player A bemoaned his lack of Graverobbing. Then he bemoaned his lack of Tupdogs after his active one burned after this minion phase.
Nehemiah managed to get rescued, and he bled for 4 with an Iron Glare and the recently equipped Seal of Veddartha, but I didn’t really feel like much of a predator. I still said “Haha! I’m a predator!” triumphantly. Player B smirked and played New Carthage. This altered the vote dynamic in a terrible way for both myself and Player D, whose Ventrue found themselves short of votes. Player B then began to bleed with his guys for 2 with Flurry of Action, using Resist Earth’s Grasp for stealth, and then call KRCs after untapping from Flurry. It was pretty sound stuff.
Player C didn’t like it. After a pretty stable turn where I got a Tabriz and stayed untapped and lots more damage came the Blood Brothers’ way, they fought back. The next Oppugnant Night saw Blood Brother rushes going all over that corner of the table. Mary Anne hit the dust again, but so did Rake.
The next turn saw everyone rebuilding: Mary Anne got rescued, another Ventrue bled for 3 and got bounced into me, but I showed my super-secret bounce tech (which everyone had already guessed about because of the Seal) and fired it down the pipe at my prey. The Brujah took that bleed. The !Tremere couldn’t finish their checks. The next Tupdog rush that came Nehemiah’s way had Raking Talons, but no Grapple, and I had Nehemiah Majesty himself out of that trouble.
Player A’s Tupdog deck wasn’t cycling well. He wasn’t drawing Dominate bleed to oust me, he wasn’t drawing the combat cards in the right sequence, and he was having trouble because he only had one Tupdog per turn to work with. I decided that one Tupdog was all he needed to end my game with a well-placed rush and that he needed to go. While Rake was down I called a Neonate Breach and named my pred and prey as the targets. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth, but the Ventrue loved it as I hit Player A for four, and I managed to cap Nehemiah back to healthiness.
Players A and B were both on 6 pool at this point. Player C was doing better, sitting on over 10, and myself and Player D were in between, both of us around 8 or 9 pool.
Player B couldn’t do much on his turn. He rescued Rake to regain vote lock, and moved some Majesties against Player C, who apparently didn’t have grapples. B left some guys up to defend against me, as I was bleeding at no stealth here and there, and he didn’t have a lot of pool lying around.
Player C failed to do anything of consequence on his turn. I think he might have rushed some Ventrue, but his punches bounced off Mary Anne this time, though
Graham hit the dust. The Ventrue had two minions to do six pool damage to the Tupdog player.
At this point I began speaking in earnest about getting rid of Player A. I told Player D that I’d done four damage to Player A in good faith that he could be ousted this turn. This would help us both. Player D played a KRC. Player A was of course against it, and actually lobbied Player B, who had most of the votes on the table, to stop the vote. He offered his Tupdog rush the next turn to Player B should he survive the turn. Furthermore, Mark was in play for Player C, and he didn’t like Player D getting a victory point and more pool.
However, Player D and I had some action mods, vote cards and the edge up our sleeves, and we managed to pass not only the first KRC, but the second as well, ousting Player A and giving me a slightly-worn Vote ‘n’ bleed predator.
During my next turn I called a Reckless Agitation. This was met by groans from the audience. Player B was of course against it. Player C was surprisingly game. I don’t think he was digging the multiple bleeds and votes coming from the Brujah. It took some convincing, but I managed to get Player D to vote for it as well, since New Carthage was pretty much ruining his vote game. With 7 less votes against and 2 more for, he might just do okay.
I honestly had no master plan for the endgame. I just knew that my prey had to go in order for me to get any VPs. I had an Awe in hand to force the vote through, but I wanted to save it for the late game against the Ventrue. The Brujah mustered a lot of votes against, however, and I needed to play it anyway, but for much less votes than I thought I’d need.
Nehemiah untapped with a Domain of Evernight and bled for two at stealth for the oust. Player B graciously left the table, asking to see the crypt of my “masterpiece” after the game. I’m pretty sure there was sarcasm in his voice, but the delivery was good enough that it sounded complimentary and snarky at once.
Player C had talked about rushing my guys to Oblivion with a well-placed Oppugnant Night during the big vote discussion, but he failed to play it over the course of the next two turns. The first turn I bounced a bleed from the Ventrue into Player C and he mugged Mustafa without hesitation. The other Ventrue rescued, and D went for another minion with his spare pool. During my go, I just bled for 2 with Nehemiah and Leila for 1, at stealth. Player C was on only 8 pool then. I put four down on Melinda Galbraith, having drawn a Villein and hoping to get oust pool to pay for her. Player C left two minions untapped after taking some respiration-type actions, taking two pool from uncontrolled guys to bring him back up to 10. One of the untapped Brothers was Mark, who has +1 intercept against bleeds.
I think Player D actually wanted C gone, because his Ventrue were getting quite the kicking. Still, he didn’t want them gone enough to give me an oust. He called a KRC and I lost some pool, and he took the spare pool loss himself. Then he bled again, and I again bounced it. C and D decided to play nice this time, but C had tapped his non-Mark blocker.
Nehemiah bled for 2 with the Seal, and I played the awesome Recurring Contemplation to tap poor Mark, leaving Player C blockerless against my next actions, as I didn’t think he was drawing wake-up tech. I pumped it to four with an Iron Glare, and Nehemiah untapped with another Domain. Leila bled for one. Then Nehemiah called another Reckless, and I forced it through with vote push, ousting Player C by a hair. I pulled up Melinda base with the oust pool.
This actually left me in a weird spot. Nehemiah, Melinda base, and Leila only have 3 votes between them, and I don’t have a lot of bleed pump in the deck. I resigned myself to trying to stay alive with bloat tech until the game timed out in order to secure a Game Win. The Ventrue had Governed out yet another voter but has also lost one to diablerie (Prince for a Primogen, I think), and now I was faced off against 6 votes if I wanted to pass anything.
Here I got really lucky. Nehemiah’s greatest attribute is that he allows a “free” discard of cards to the bottom on the library in untap, and moreover, the discard is not public knowledge. I often use this to hide cards I don’t want others to know I’m playing until I need them. Archon Investigation is the sort of card that I don’t like discarding, especially if I have a second copy in hand and they’re clogging up my flow. I don’t like telegraphing my punches that much.
Nehemiah allows me to play multiple copies of AI, but never discard one. I can nearly always have one in hand and with luck no one knows the better. Until they read this blog. Fuck. Anyway, Tabriz Assembly helps with this as well with extra handsize.
I was packing an AI in hand for most of the game. I drew a second one, but moved it below decks for later. This particular insurance policy paid off big time. Player D, who hadn’t bled for more than three the entire game, dropped a Govern + Bonding bleed with Mary Anne, and everything changed. I AI’d the Justicar, and then I wasn’t at much of a vote disadvantage at all, and since I was now up on pool I managed to mop up the Ventrue with votes and bleeds.
I showed Player B my crypt and he asked me whether I was playing Wider View. I replied that I hadn’t updated this deck much since HttB, and he suggested I add one. It was good advice.
Me, 4VP and the GW, Player D 1VP.
Game MVP: Tie between Neonate Breach (backoust for the win, again!) and Archon Investigation. The Seal of Veddartha really helped Nehemiah’s bleed output this game as well.
Game 2:
Me--->Player E (!Toreador anarch Palla Grande)--->Player F(Una kills everybody)--->Player G(Anson Toreador Votes that didn’t get to play much)--->Player H (Ondine !Toreador rush and block)
This game had such potential. Player E wasn’t suited to dealing with a votey predator, and Una wasn’t drawing the right cards to pop (or perhaps he was just biding his time). The early game went well. I got Nehemiah and Giangaleazzo, and Villeined them both for several extra beads, gaining the blood back with Voter Caps. I went for Shawnda as well, but she came later.
Player E pulled up a bunch of small- to mid-cap !Toreador, including Mercy, Remiliard, and Sabrina, I think. Player F got Una and a pair of 1-caps to do her dirty work. Player G got Anson, who was rushed into oblivion after being Villeined for most of his blood. This will be important later. Player H pulled Redbone McCray and Ondine Sinclair.
There was a lot of forward motion in my corner. Player H bled at me, and sometimes rushed. I let him bleed, but got beat up in the rushes. Turns out he was running some kinda weird agg-poke with !Toreador thing, probably had an Art of Pain in there somewhere. He didn’t see it this game. He still binned Famous Nehemiah early, but couldn’t do anything with the body afterward.
I bled and voted at my prey, who bounced my bleeds into Una (I played nice early) or reduced them, but took most of the vote damage. I sent incidental vote damage at H or Una/F, and Anson was down with that when he wasn’t in torpor.
E bled a lot. Most turns he bled with all of his minions using Undue Influence for Stealth. Sometimes he pumped the bleeds with presence mods like Power of One or Aire. Una hated that.
The table kinda went that way for a few turns, pool lowering all around. Suddenly Player F/Una started talking about rushing Shawnda, who’d hit the table by this point. Player H was all about ganging up on my deck, and I guess it was doing pretty well, but. . . Una’s on the table. If Una pops, we all go. I figured that I gotta go forward while I could. Player H had run out of rushes, but he’d gotten a Super Bowl on Redbone, and since he had no predator he could afford Spider in his ready region. Redbone’s Bowl was bothering me big time. I needed mad stealth to get my votes through, and it turns out Obtenebration stealth is goddamn expensive.
Well, when Player E was on the ropes, and most everyone knew I’d get him, I drew a Reckless Agitation. I had the votes to pass it, but I needed to get past Redbone. I didn’t even bother trying to make a deal with H to not block in exchange for me ousting Una, because it really wasn’t Play to Win for him; If I ousted E and then F/Una, I’d almost certainly get Player G as well, minionless with Anson in torpor, 14 pool and a handful of beads in the uncontrolled region, should she ever get the chance to play.
Her deck might have been good, but at that point I’d have serious momentum, and might even be able to afford a fourth voter; Tyler was down. Tyler is the shit.
So I didn’t bother asking H if I could call my Reckless without his interference. I knew I’d have to burn my blood and action modifiers to get it through. This might have been a mistake. It couldn’t have hurt, though H is a serious Hall of Fame player and probably would have said no. . .Una was still looking sort of lame over in her corner. I called my vote, but in the process I had to tap Giangaleazzo to fail Redbone’s block, using Blanket of Night. If I had had another stealth card instead I might have won this game. Alas. I pushed the Reckless through, ousting E and doing the rest of the damage to F/Una, leaving her on 5 pool.
Nehemiah Domained and bleed for 4 with the Seal and Iron Glare. And I was out of actions. Una went into overdrive, now only needing to torpor 6 minions to take the table, and did exactly that.
Player H looked at me and said, “I don’t think we stand a chance, but we can both transfer out to Player G and thereby deny F the game win.” I nodded. It sounded like the only sensible thing to do. We worked that angle over.
But here’s the thing: G had played a second Villein on empty Anson in torpor to cycle it, and it had cost a pool, bringing her total to 8. Una was showing a bleed of 7, with a Heart of the City on Una herself and three one-caps and Mylan Horseed in play.
Una happened to have the one Deep Song in the deck, and bled for eight, ousting G before H and I could put the master plan into action. Weak. I did transfer out to H, but Una took the table
Me 1VP, Player G 1 VP, Player F 3VP and the GW.
Game MVP: Una? Yeah.
Unfortunately, both Player F and I made the finals with our totals. So we had to sit down at the same table again. I wasn’t really looking forward to that. The Una deck, to me, sits at a finals table like the Nergal deck from the Infernal Plague Storyline: If the rest of the players in the final don’t agree that it’s a threat and needs to be hanged immediately, it has a certain chance of winning the game.
Finals:
Player F (Una)---> Player X (Midcap Setite Temptation)--->Me(The Shadow Out of Time)--->Player Y(Cesawayo wall)--->Player Z(PRE weenie bleed)
Player Z deliberately wanted to be the predator of the Una deck. It’s not a bad call. He was playing a very aggressive deck, and he’s not going to have much difficulty convincing us that Una needs to go. Being top seed in the finals is good, but being top seed in the finals with a table-granted VP is even better.
My deck didn’t draw a Villein early, and Player Y had dropped Smiling Jack on turn one, bleeding the table for 2-3 beads apiece. On top of that, he put a Pentex Subversion on my Zillah’s Valley+Dreams turn two Nehemiah. Player Y got out Saiz and left him untapped to block actions to destroy his toys.
Player Z got out a whole bunch of smallish dudes with superior Presence. I think Shasa “I totally rock if your deck has a dozen or more Presence bleed actions” was one of them. He also had an early Pentex, and Z, X, and myself agreed that if X got rid of the Pentex on me early, Z would play his on Una, and I would use Nehemiah’s first action to rid us of Smiling Jack.
All that shit went down. Cesawayo hit the table, but he wasn’t drawing the Aye he needed early. I went for Melinda despite my pool woes, and I was nearly ousted very early on. I had drawn a Villein before getting her, but I was low on pool; something like three. Player X had drawn into some Legal Manipulations of his own and bled me pretty good with his midcap Followers of Set, Hesha among them.
He came at me hard while I was on the ropes, but I managed to bounce his three bleed, take two more for one, and then bounce what would have been the ousting bleed with a wake. He was pissed when I Villeined not just Melinda, but Nehemiah as well the next turn, giving me a whole pile of pool. I got Shawda up soon after and Villeined her as well.
The Setite player had no real predator for some time, and kept coming at me with Temptations, Form of Corruption, and so forth. Thing is, since those actions are all at no stealth, I tried to block most of them with untapped guys and Majesty out of fights to block again. This was an issue for him; his ousts were bleed and Enticement based, so he needed black cards to do just about anything.
He did get a Form of Corruption in play, which was bad. He also was running enough Free States Rant to be annoying. He also destroyed the Pentex for Una when F was on one pool, effectively neutering Una, as she couldn’t pay for the Ivory Bow, but could still rush backwards and beat up Presence guys with her army of birds and wolves. Eventually Shawda played one blood too many and wound up working for the Settites, which was all kinds of bad.
So Player Z got a raw end of things, unable to oust Una in the midgame, and Player X was looking strong. Player Y was setting up Cesawayo still, and I was plinking him here and there, but only with votes, and now with Shawnda gone it was going to be difficult.
So, I played a Neonate Breach and hit Y and X for four pool apiece. Una voted it up, and I had the push to pass it. This left X in a precarious enough position that he didn’t want to tap out at me every turn anymore. He left Hesha up to block in case the Presence weenies got through Una.
They did, and then Player Z dropped a second Pentex on Hesha, and bled out Player X as well.
So now, in a three player game, things got down to the wire. I think it might have been my game to lose. Player Z was trying to catch a plane, and he was playing fast. I was honestly trying to oblige him myself, but quick play is bad for me. I forgot to do Nehemiah’s special at least twice by the time had come for me to lunge, and then things just got worse and worse.
I couldn’t draw any damaging votes, and Cesawayo was going to be able to block any D actions I threw at him, since he was merged and had 4 or 5 Aye. However, he hadn’t shown a lot of Wakes, and since he only had that many if I could force him to block an action I could make him Tap his Aye to block a damaging vote.
I eventually drew into a Reins of Power, which would have been great on so many levels. I felt that this was the turn I needed to oust Y, and so I set about doing it. I called the Reins with Nehemiah, and when Cesawayo tapped the Aye to block I played Tangle Atropos Hand, cancelling the action and getting ready to recall it. Then Y said, “but you can’t call that one again, right?” This was, of course, true. I had drawm a Reckless Agitiation during the whole affair, and proceeded to play that instead. If I’d had proper vote push (2 cards down, damn forgetting Nehemiah’s special) I might have ousted Y.
Instead I pushed most of the Reckless damage on Z, since I felt he was probably going to oust me otherwise. Then Z, realizing that he was top seed and had two victory points, self-ousted, hoping that I’d pull through the victory and thereby make him winner by default. Then he left to catch his plane.
The remaining turns were spent watching the counters on Smiling Jack pile up, while Cesawayo got more and more Aye. I managed to stealth a vote through to completion here and there, and I did have the Edge most of endgame. But Jack got up to something like six counters and I never really drew the stealth to burn Jack.
Also, I’d started drawing all the cards I’d put on the bottom of my library through Nehemiah’s special early on, and which were surprisingly useless to me in the late game: Approximation of Loyalty, Hall of Hades Court, Archon Investigation, Zillah’s Valley.
I conceded victory to Y after several turns of searching for the right cards to get to him, and perhaps if he hadn’t had the 6 pool from Z’s oust I might have gotten him.
It was a tough situation, as even if I won I lost. Bah.
Player Z 2VP, Player Y 3VP and the GW.
Game MVP: Smiling Jack (Cesawayo himself didn’t impress me much).
I got an Enkil Cog in my meager prize support, however, so Nyah Nyah.
-Merlin out
The Sunday tournament felt a little more relaxed. This is in part due to the fact that we weren’t running nearly an hour late for it. But also, since it was merely a standard constructed tournament and not either a Qualifier or the U.S. Championships, it didn’t feel quite as cutthroat to me.
But then I started actually playing in it.
My deck was a Nehemiah + Obtenebration for stealth deck, backed up by huge voters with Presence and Obtenebration. I’ve been working with it since Legacies of Blood came out. I wrote the True Brujah newsletter for a time, and of all the various decks that I built and played, this one seems to be the most competitive. This is because Nehemiah is friggin’ awesome.
Deck Name: The Shadow Out of Time
Created by: Merlin
Description:
This deck has gone through several iterations. This is the latest. I'm considering a few Agent of Power because most of the time I'm lacking a discipline it's when I'm acting. Having the POT I need for an Iron Glare at +bleed or the additional Stealth from Shadow Play at OBT would be nice.
Crypt [12 vampires, average capacity: 8.58333]
1x Melinda Galbraith AUS CEL DOM POT PRE obt 10 Lasombra:4 cardinal
1x Melinda Galbraith (Adv) AUS CEL DOM POT PRE obt 10 Toreador antitribu:4 bishop
5x Nehemiah POT PRE SER TEM obt 9 True Brujah:4 2 votes
1x Tyler CEL POT PRE dom for obt 9 Brujah:3 primogen
2x Giangaleazzo, The Trait OBT POT PRE dom 8 Lasombra:4 prince
1x Tobias Smith DOM OBT PRE pot 7 Lasombra:3
1x Shawnda Dorrit CEL obt pot pre 6 Brujah antitribu:4 priscus
Library [87 cards]
Master [18]
2x Archon Investigation
2x Creepshow Casino
2x Dreams of the Sphinx
1x Giant's Blood
2x Tabriz Assembly
6x Villein
2x Wider View
1x Zillah's Valley (there were two Zillah's and 7 Villein at Origins, and zero Wider view)
Action [3]
1x Charming Lobby
1x Entrancement
1x Kiss of Lachesis (There were two Kiss and zero Entrancement in the deck at Origins, as well as an extra Charming Lobby, which was exchanged for Iron Glare)
Action Modifier [34]
1x Approximation of Loyalty
2x Awe
3x Bewitching Oration
2x Blanket of Night
4x Domain of Evernight (there were two Clotho's Gift in the deck at Origins, but Domain makes the deck more lunge-tastic)
4x Iron Glare
2x Pocket Out of Time
2x Recurring Contemplation
2x Shadow Play
3x Shroud of Night
2x Tangle Atropos' Hand
1x Tenebrous Form
6x Voter Captivation
Action Modifier/Reaction [1]
1x Hall of Hades' Court
Ally [1]
1x Mylan Horseed (Goblin)
Equipment [1]
1x Seal of Veddartha
Political Action [15] (this was an odd mix at Origins, there were 3 Con Ag in the deck, two of which have been dumped for another Neonate Breach [as it won me two games at Origins] and another KRC)
1x Anarchist Uprising
1x Ancient Influence
1x Conservative Agitation
6x Kine Resources Contested
2x Neonate Breach
1x Political Stranglehold
2x Reckless Agitation
1x Reins of Power
Reaction [7]
4x Deflection
2x On the Qui Vive
1x Wake with Evening's Freshness
Combat [7]
7x Majesty
Crafted with: Anarch Revolt Deck Builder [Thu Jul 29 00:35:54 2010]
Game 1:
Player A (Tupdog)--->Me---> Player B (G1 titled Brujah with New Carthage)--->Player C(Torrance Circle Blood Brothers Rush)--->Player D(Mary Anne Blaire and friends)
I feel really good about my gameplay in this game. Three of the players at the table were Hall of Fame members, and since I wound up with gamewin, through no fault of my own, I felt like a pretty good VTES player for perhaps the first time all weekend. I ruined it with poor play in the finals, but this game was excellent.
I felt I was in a bad spot, having sat next to a Tupdog deck. That’s because it was a bad spot. Player A got Antonio D’Erlette out first, which faked me out a bit. I didn’t bring up a minion right away, going for Nehemiah instead, and Antonio bleed me with some Dominate for 3. Then Keith Moody and another wee !Tremere popped up. But no Nephandus yet? I should have been suspicious.
I got out Nehemiah and Leila Monroe (since excised from the decklist for Melinda ADV) and that’s where things stayed for me, for most of the game. There was enough Dominate behind me to keep me worried, and the rest of the table was moving sort of slowly.
Player B got up Crusher, who Enchanted down to Tura Vaughn, and then they both Enchanted out Rake. I was worried about Crusher. That guy punches hard. Player C was having a dream draw and cardflow with the Torrance Circle, getting up his first guy, who Unwholesome Bonded/Freak Drove/Hive Minded out another BB, and then they both did the same the next turn. He had nearly the whole circle by turn four or so.
Mary Anne popped first for Player D, and she Governed down to Graham Gottesman. Then she got beat up on an Oppungnant night and the Ventrue had to slow down a bit. When Mary Anne got back from torpor she did manage to get out Mustafa as well.
Tupdog finally showed up after I got Nehemiah, and things went south. The damn thing rushed (using Dive Bomb stealth so Leila couldn’t block) with its Raking Talons and Immortal Grapple, and Nehemiah hit the dirt. Leila blocked the next rush and managed to survive, and the !Tremere had run out of Dominate, but still bled me for one. Player A bemoaned his lack of Graverobbing. Then he bemoaned his lack of Tupdogs after his active one burned after this minion phase.
Nehemiah managed to get rescued, and he bled for 4 with an Iron Glare and the recently equipped Seal of Veddartha, but I didn’t really feel like much of a predator. I still said “Haha! I’m a predator!” triumphantly. Player B smirked and played New Carthage. This altered the vote dynamic in a terrible way for both myself and Player D, whose Ventrue found themselves short of votes. Player B then began to bleed with his guys for 2 with Flurry of Action, using Resist Earth’s Grasp for stealth, and then call KRCs after untapping from Flurry. It was pretty sound stuff.
Player C didn’t like it. After a pretty stable turn where I got a Tabriz and stayed untapped and lots more damage came the Blood Brothers’ way, they fought back. The next Oppugnant Night saw Blood Brother rushes going all over that corner of the table. Mary Anne hit the dust again, but so did Rake.
The next turn saw everyone rebuilding: Mary Anne got rescued, another Ventrue bled for 3 and got bounced into me, but I showed my super-secret bounce tech (which everyone had already guessed about because of the Seal) and fired it down the pipe at my prey. The Brujah took that bleed. The !Tremere couldn’t finish their checks. The next Tupdog rush that came Nehemiah’s way had Raking Talons, but no Grapple, and I had Nehemiah Majesty himself out of that trouble.
Player A’s Tupdog deck wasn’t cycling well. He wasn’t drawing Dominate bleed to oust me, he wasn’t drawing the combat cards in the right sequence, and he was having trouble because he only had one Tupdog per turn to work with. I decided that one Tupdog was all he needed to end my game with a well-placed rush and that he needed to go. While Rake was down I called a Neonate Breach and named my pred and prey as the targets. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth, but the Ventrue loved it as I hit Player A for four, and I managed to cap Nehemiah back to healthiness.
Players A and B were both on 6 pool at this point. Player C was doing better, sitting on over 10, and myself and Player D were in between, both of us around 8 or 9 pool.
Player B couldn’t do much on his turn. He rescued Rake to regain vote lock, and moved some Majesties against Player C, who apparently didn’t have grapples. B left some guys up to defend against me, as I was bleeding at no stealth here and there, and he didn’t have a lot of pool lying around.
Player C failed to do anything of consequence on his turn. I think he might have rushed some Ventrue, but his punches bounced off Mary Anne this time, though
Graham hit the dust. The Ventrue had two minions to do six pool damage to the Tupdog player.
At this point I began speaking in earnest about getting rid of Player A. I told Player D that I’d done four damage to Player A in good faith that he could be ousted this turn. This would help us both. Player D played a KRC. Player A was of course against it, and actually lobbied Player B, who had most of the votes on the table, to stop the vote. He offered his Tupdog rush the next turn to Player B should he survive the turn. Furthermore, Mark was in play for Player C, and he didn’t like Player D getting a victory point and more pool.
However, Player D and I had some action mods, vote cards and the edge up our sleeves, and we managed to pass not only the first KRC, but the second as well, ousting Player A and giving me a slightly-worn Vote ‘n’ bleed predator.
During my next turn I called a Reckless Agitation. This was met by groans from the audience. Player B was of course against it. Player C was surprisingly game. I don’t think he was digging the multiple bleeds and votes coming from the Brujah. It took some convincing, but I managed to get Player D to vote for it as well, since New Carthage was pretty much ruining his vote game. With 7 less votes against and 2 more for, he might just do okay.
I honestly had no master plan for the endgame. I just knew that my prey had to go in order for me to get any VPs. I had an Awe in hand to force the vote through, but I wanted to save it for the late game against the Ventrue. The Brujah mustered a lot of votes against, however, and I needed to play it anyway, but for much less votes than I thought I’d need.
Nehemiah untapped with a Domain of Evernight and bled for two at stealth for the oust. Player B graciously left the table, asking to see the crypt of my “masterpiece” after the game. I’m pretty sure there was sarcasm in his voice, but the delivery was good enough that it sounded complimentary and snarky at once.
Player C had talked about rushing my guys to Oblivion with a well-placed Oppugnant Night during the big vote discussion, but he failed to play it over the course of the next two turns. The first turn I bounced a bleed from the Ventrue into Player C and he mugged Mustafa without hesitation. The other Ventrue rescued, and D went for another minion with his spare pool. During my go, I just bled for 2 with Nehemiah and Leila for 1, at stealth. Player C was on only 8 pool then. I put four down on Melinda Galbraith, having drawn a Villein and hoping to get oust pool to pay for her. Player C left two minions untapped after taking some respiration-type actions, taking two pool from uncontrolled guys to bring him back up to 10. One of the untapped Brothers was Mark, who has +1 intercept against bleeds.
I think Player D actually wanted C gone, because his Ventrue were getting quite the kicking. Still, he didn’t want them gone enough to give me an oust. He called a KRC and I lost some pool, and he took the spare pool loss himself. Then he bled again, and I again bounced it. C and D decided to play nice this time, but C had tapped his non-Mark blocker.
Nehemiah bled for 2 with the Seal, and I played the awesome Recurring Contemplation to tap poor Mark, leaving Player C blockerless against my next actions, as I didn’t think he was drawing wake-up tech. I pumped it to four with an Iron Glare, and Nehemiah untapped with another Domain. Leila bled for one. Then Nehemiah called another Reckless, and I forced it through with vote push, ousting Player C by a hair. I pulled up Melinda base with the oust pool.
This actually left me in a weird spot. Nehemiah, Melinda base, and Leila only have 3 votes between them, and I don’t have a lot of bleed pump in the deck. I resigned myself to trying to stay alive with bloat tech until the game timed out in order to secure a Game Win. The Ventrue had Governed out yet another voter but has also lost one to diablerie (Prince for a Primogen, I think), and now I was faced off against 6 votes if I wanted to pass anything.
Here I got really lucky. Nehemiah’s greatest attribute is that he allows a “free” discard of cards to the bottom on the library in untap, and moreover, the discard is not public knowledge. I often use this to hide cards I don’t want others to know I’m playing until I need them. Archon Investigation is the sort of card that I don’t like discarding, especially if I have a second copy in hand and they’re clogging up my flow. I don’t like telegraphing my punches that much.
Nehemiah allows me to play multiple copies of AI, but never discard one. I can nearly always have one in hand and with luck no one knows the better. Until they read this blog. Fuck. Anyway, Tabriz Assembly helps with this as well with extra handsize.
I was packing an AI in hand for most of the game. I drew a second one, but moved it below decks for later. This particular insurance policy paid off big time. Player D, who hadn’t bled for more than three the entire game, dropped a Govern + Bonding bleed with Mary Anne, and everything changed. I AI’d the Justicar, and then I wasn’t at much of a vote disadvantage at all, and since I was now up on pool I managed to mop up the Ventrue with votes and bleeds.
I showed Player B my crypt and he asked me whether I was playing Wider View. I replied that I hadn’t updated this deck much since HttB, and he suggested I add one. It was good advice.
Me, 4VP and the GW, Player D 1VP.
Game MVP: Tie between Neonate Breach (backoust for the win, again!) and Archon Investigation. The Seal of Veddartha really helped Nehemiah’s bleed output this game as well.
Game 2:
Me--->Player E (!Toreador anarch Palla Grande)--->Player F(Una kills everybody)--->Player G(Anson Toreador Votes that didn’t get to play much)--->Player H (Ondine !Toreador rush and block)
This game had such potential. Player E wasn’t suited to dealing with a votey predator, and Una wasn’t drawing the right cards to pop (or perhaps he was just biding his time). The early game went well. I got Nehemiah and Giangaleazzo, and Villeined them both for several extra beads, gaining the blood back with Voter Caps. I went for Shawnda as well, but she came later.
Player E pulled up a bunch of small- to mid-cap !Toreador, including Mercy, Remiliard, and Sabrina, I think. Player F got Una and a pair of 1-caps to do her dirty work. Player G got Anson, who was rushed into oblivion after being Villeined for most of his blood. This will be important later. Player H pulled Redbone McCray and Ondine Sinclair.
There was a lot of forward motion in my corner. Player H bled at me, and sometimes rushed. I let him bleed, but got beat up in the rushes. Turns out he was running some kinda weird agg-poke with !Toreador thing, probably had an Art of Pain in there somewhere. He didn’t see it this game. He still binned Famous Nehemiah early, but couldn’t do anything with the body afterward.
I bled and voted at my prey, who bounced my bleeds into Una (I played nice early) or reduced them, but took most of the vote damage. I sent incidental vote damage at H or Una/F, and Anson was down with that when he wasn’t in torpor.
E bled a lot. Most turns he bled with all of his minions using Undue Influence for Stealth. Sometimes he pumped the bleeds with presence mods like Power of One or Aire. Una hated that.
The table kinda went that way for a few turns, pool lowering all around. Suddenly Player F/Una started talking about rushing Shawnda, who’d hit the table by this point. Player H was all about ganging up on my deck, and I guess it was doing pretty well, but. . . Una’s on the table. If Una pops, we all go. I figured that I gotta go forward while I could. Player H had run out of rushes, but he’d gotten a Super Bowl on Redbone, and since he had no predator he could afford Spider in his ready region. Redbone’s Bowl was bothering me big time. I needed mad stealth to get my votes through, and it turns out Obtenebration stealth is goddamn expensive.
Well, when Player E was on the ropes, and most everyone knew I’d get him, I drew a Reckless Agitation. I had the votes to pass it, but I needed to get past Redbone. I didn’t even bother trying to make a deal with H to not block in exchange for me ousting Una, because it really wasn’t Play to Win for him; If I ousted E and then F/Una, I’d almost certainly get Player G as well, minionless with Anson in torpor, 14 pool and a handful of beads in the uncontrolled region, should she ever get the chance to play.
Her deck might have been good, but at that point I’d have serious momentum, and might even be able to afford a fourth voter; Tyler was down. Tyler is the shit.
So I didn’t bother asking H if I could call my Reckless without his interference. I knew I’d have to burn my blood and action modifiers to get it through. This might have been a mistake. It couldn’t have hurt, though H is a serious Hall of Fame player and probably would have said no. . .Una was still looking sort of lame over in her corner. I called my vote, but in the process I had to tap Giangaleazzo to fail Redbone’s block, using Blanket of Night. If I had had another stealth card instead I might have won this game. Alas. I pushed the Reckless through, ousting E and doing the rest of the damage to F/Una, leaving her on 5 pool.
Nehemiah Domained and bleed for 4 with the Seal and Iron Glare. And I was out of actions. Una went into overdrive, now only needing to torpor 6 minions to take the table, and did exactly that.
Player H looked at me and said, “I don’t think we stand a chance, but we can both transfer out to Player G and thereby deny F the game win.” I nodded. It sounded like the only sensible thing to do. We worked that angle over.
But here’s the thing: G had played a second Villein on empty Anson in torpor to cycle it, and it had cost a pool, bringing her total to 8. Una was showing a bleed of 7, with a Heart of the City on Una herself and three one-caps and Mylan Horseed in play.
Una happened to have the one Deep Song in the deck, and bled for eight, ousting G before H and I could put the master plan into action. Weak. I did transfer out to H, but Una took the table
Me 1VP, Player G 1 VP, Player F 3VP and the GW.
Game MVP: Una? Yeah.
Unfortunately, both Player F and I made the finals with our totals. So we had to sit down at the same table again. I wasn’t really looking forward to that. The Una deck, to me, sits at a finals table like the Nergal deck from the Infernal Plague Storyline: If the rest of the players in the final don’t agree that it’s a threat and needs to be hanged immediately, it has a certain chance of winning the game.
Finals:
Player F (Una)---> Player X (Midcap Setite Temptation)--->Me(The Shadow Out of Time)--->Player Y(Cesawayo wall)--->Player Z(PRE weenie bleed)
Player Z deliberately wanted to be the predator of the Una deck. It’s not a bad call. He was playing a very aggressive deck, and he’s not going to have much difficulty convincing us that Una needs to go. Being top seed in the finals is good, but being top seed in the finals with a table-granted VP is even better.
My deck didn’t draw a Villein early, and Player Y had dropped Smiling Jack on turn one, bleeding the table for 2-3 beads apiece. On top of that, he put a Pentex Subversion on my Zillah’s Valley+Dreams turn two Nehemiah. Player Y got out Saiz and left him untapped to block actions to destroy his toys.
Player Z got out a whole bunch of smallish dudes with superior Presence. I think Shasa “I totally rock if your deck has a dozen or more Presence bleed actions” was one of them. He also had an early Pentex, and Z, X, and myself agreed that if X got rid of the Pentex on me early, Z would play his on Una, and I would use Nehemiah’s first action to rid us of Smiling Jack.
All that shit went down. Cesawayo hit the table, but he wasn’t drawing the Aye he needed early. I went for Melinda despite my pool woes, and I was nearly ousted very early on. I had drawn a Villein before getting her, but I was low on pool; something like three. Player X had drawn into some Legal Manipulations of his own and bled me pretty good with his midcap Followers of Set, Hesha among them.
He came at me hard while I was on the ropes, but I managed to bounce his three bleed, take two more for one, and then bounce what would have been the ousting bleed with a wake. He was pissed when I Villeined not just Melinda, but Nehemiah as well the next turn, giving me a whole pile of pool. I got Shawda up soon after and Villeined her as well.
The Setite player had no real predator for some time, and kept coming at me with Temptations, Form of Corruption, and so forth. Thing is, since those actions are all at no stealth, I tried to block most of them with untapped guys and Majesty out of fights to block again. This was an issue for him; his ousts were bleed and Enticement based, so he needed black cards to do just about anything.
He did get a Form of Corruption in play, which was bad. He also was running enough Free States Rant to be annoying. He also destroyed the Pentex for Una when F was on one pool, effectively neutering Una, as she couldn’t pay for the Ivory Bow, but could still rush backwards and beat up Presence guys with her army of birds and wolves. Eventually Shawda played one blood too many and wound up working for the Settites, which was all kinds of bad.
So Player Z got a raw end of things, unable to oust Una in the midgame, and Player X was looking strong. Player Y was setting up Cesawayo still, and I was plinking him here and there, but only with votes, and now with Shawnda gone it was going to be difficult.
So, I played a Neonate Breach and hit Y and X for four pool apiece. Una voted it up, and I had the push to pass it. This left X in a precarious enough position that he didn’t want to tap out at me every turn anymore. He left Hesha up to block in case the Presence weenies got through Una.
They did, and then Player Z dropped a second Pentex on Hesha, and bled out Player X as well.
So now, in a three player game, things got down to the wire. I think it might have been my game to lose. Player Z was trying to catch a plane, and he was playing fast. I was honestly trying to oblige him myself, but quick play is bad for me. I forgot to do Nehemiah’s special at least twice by the time had come for me to lunge, and then things just got worse and worse.
I couldn’t draw any damaging votes, and Cesawayo was going to be able to block any D actions I threw at him, since he was merged and had 4 or 5 Aye. However, he hadn’t shown a lot of Wakes, and since he only had that many if I could force him to block an action I could make him Tap his Aye to block a damaging vote.
I eventually drew into a Reins of Power, which would have been great on so many levels. I felt that this was the turn I needed to oust Y, and so I set about doing it. I called the Reins with Nehemiah, and when Cesawayo tapped the Aye to block I played Tangle Atropos Hand, cancelling the action and getting ready to recall it. Then Y said, “but you can’t call that one again, right?” This was, of course, true. I had drawm a Reckless Agitiation during the whole affair, and proceeded to play that instead. If I’d had proper vote push (2 cards down, damn forgetting Nehemiah’s special) I might have ousted Y.
Instead I pushed most of the Reckless damage on Z, since I felt he was probably going to oust me otherwise. Then Z, realizing that he was top seed and had two victory points, self-ousted, hoping that I’d pull through the victory and thereby make him winner by default. Then he left to catch his plane.
The remaining turns were spent watching the counters on Smiling Jack pile up, while Cesawayo got more and more Aye. I managed to stealth a vote through to completion here and there, and I did have the Edge most of endgame. But Jack got up to something like six counters and I never really drew the stealth to burn Jack.
Also, I’d started drawing all the cards I’d put on the bottom of my library through Nehemiah’s special early on, and which were surprisingly useless to me in the late game: Approximation of Loyalty, Hall of Hades Court, Archon Investigation, Zillah’s Valley.
I conceded victory to Y after several turns of searching for the right cards to get to him, and perhaps if he hadn’t had the 6 pool from Z’s oust I might have gotten him.
It was a tough situation, as even if I won I lost. Bah.
Player Z 2VP, Player Y 3VP and the GW.
Game MVP: Smiling Jack (Cesawayo himself didn’t impress me much).
I got an Enkil Cog in my meager prize support, however, so Nyah Nyah.
-Merlin out
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Pre-Qualifier VTES
We had a Great Lakes Qualifer recently in Michigan. August 22nd in Ann Arbor. Prior to that my friday night opened up, I sent out a call for players and managed to wrangle a few. Neil even came out from Royal Oak for some games. This has been sitting in my blogger queue waiting for a final edit for a bit. I guess I'll just let 'er rip.
Neil brought the strangeness with him, in the form of a hybrid imbued/vampire deck, which never really got off the ground. I asked him what the secret sauce in the deck was supposed to be, but he always deferred.
Robb had said he'd be there at 8 to play, but at 8 he wasn't there. So we played a 4-player game. Midgame Robb and Alayna arrived, and we suddenly had 6 players on our hands. Sean, Neil, Devin, and myself played the first game.
Game 1:
Me (Huge Setites Eternals Toolbox)---> Devin (Trujah prerange aggs)--->Sean (Kyasid sneak and bleed)--->Neil (Imbued and some vampires who were pretty large that had Demetation and Auspex)
Things went pretty well early. I started with 3 Eternals of Sirius and a Villein in my opening draw. My deck is pretty much a pile of only G2-3 Followers who are 9-11 cap (yes, Sutekh is in the deck). I was inspired by a deck I saw long ago on The Path of Blood, the Multi-taskimites. Originally built by Jay Kristoff, the only version I could find on the web was played by Jeff Kuta. My deck isn't that good, but getting Sutekh into play is a secondary win condition for me.
Alas, I had to settle for Nehsi this game. I got him out first, on turn two, without using transfers for him. I put 4 down on Khay'tall instead and 1 on Kahina the Sorceress. I drew yet another Eternals (there's 9 in a 70-card deck) and managed to get all three out in pretty short order.
However, my speed wasn't rewarded. Neil got out Marie Faucigny first off, having only drawn one Imbued. He claimed that his opening hand was seven Conviction cards, which sounds downright awful to me for one Imbued in opening draw. Marie's two votes, along with Dame Hollerton's CovinCraft, kept me from passing an early Reckless Agitation. After getting my huge crypt out i did bleed and vote Devin for some of his pool, which prompted him to play a one-minion game with Nehemiah. Instead of influencing out another Trujah (which is insane anyway), he just got an Ankara Citadel on N through Summon History and started pulling awesome allies out of his library instead. High Top was his first choice, and a good one at that.
Sean got Hollerton and Isanwayan, and eventually Roderick Phillips March as well. Sean's early bleed of three at one stealth got bounced into me, and although my deck has some Deflection (holy shit do FoS fatties have dominate!) I didn't have it early. I complained about Sean's terrible irresponsibility in bleeding.
Neil got Francois "Warden" into play and began to be all imbued in earnest. He pretty much just bled me with him every turn at effectively 1 stealth with Second Sight. That wasn't such a bad plan. I had no intercept and didn't intend to gain any. I also hadn't draw a second Villein yet. Further, Neil got Morrell up and bled me for 3 with some Eyes of Chaos at stealth. I was on two pool after that turn.
Robb and Alayna were excited that I would be leaving the table soon, and that perhaps another game could begin.
But wait! Nehemiah (Heart of the City'd up now) got bounced into Neil and played Domain of Evernight and Outside the Hourglass to send Morrell to torpor. Then during Sean's turn Neil used an On the Qui Vive to try and block a Kiasyd with his imbued. Draven Softfoot hit the table around this point for Sean.
With Morrell in the dust and Francois not untapping, I was free to take another turn, which I used to play a Villein and gain seven pool from Khay'tall. I still was having trouble passing votes without push, and now I needed stealth to do anything because of High Top. So my positioning wasn't great. I managed to push a Reins of Power through, and bled for 3 with a Tuth of a Thousand Lies, so Devin's pool was actually lower than mine.
On top of that, I was actually blocking Nehemiah Summoning History, because Nehsi could play Mental Maze and effectively end Devin's minion phase while avoiding Nehemiah's comboriffic combat. He was not happy. He still played Vaticination to make me discard a Lost in Translation, but that only kept me from being a force in the endgame.
Sean pecked away at Neil, eventually putting a Song of Pan into play and bleeding for two with all his guys, ousting Neil.
Then he ousted me with huge ridiculous bleeds, then he ousted Devin in short order.
I complained about Sean's terrible play at bleeding me irresponsibly, at which point he told me the Conditioning he used to oust me had been in his hand for some time, but he'd not played it while Neil was in the game because of the bounce.
So, I shut up then.
Sean, 4VP sweep.
Game MVP: Probably Song of Pan, as it helped Sean oust Neil and Devin quickly. Covincraft played a decent role as well. I'll get back to this.
Game 2:
Robb sat out to let Alayna play her new Dementation bleed deck. I decided to play a "good" deck as well, but it didn't work out for me.
Neil(Imbued do something with Dementation guys?)--->Sean(Nos Royalty featuring Cock jokes!)--->Devin (Cybeltron)--->Me(Are you an African or an African't?)--->Alayna(Dementation is a pretty good discipline, all told)
Neil got a better draw. Leif hit the table first. Sean had to pull his Cock out at first opportunity, probably because there was a lady there. That guy. Devin of course went for Cybele, but was complaining bitterly about not drawing a single Master Card in his opening draw, yet he failed to discard several times during the first few turns.
I have have some successes with my weenie Laibon bruise/bleed/vote deck, but this night was not one of them. I did not draw any of the Akunanse in the opening draw (which happens), did not get one with the two Mozambique Allure I played on turn three, and did not draw one of the 10 Abombwe skill cards in the deck for some time.
So the deck, which is like 25% Abombwe cards, didn't roll so well at first. In fact, I didn't get off the ground before Cybele started bleeding for 5 at a pop. I did get Ismitta, Misrak, Zhara, and Fish. Fish Founded some of that Ebony Kingdom to get my 4 pool back from Lumumba down, but I was having trouble with Cybele and her blasted Veneficti pal.
Alayna got Morrell, who Called his bros Sean Rycek and Arthur Denholm. Rycek got a Changling Skin Mask, which was pretty good for him. Neil wound up with Inez "Nurse216" Villagrande, Leaf "Potter116" Pankowski, Jennie "Cassie247" Orne, and Marie again. Sean got his giant Cock, Niklaus, and Calebos.
Cybele didn't need any help for a long long time.
I got bled out fairly early. without even the basic puppy, I couldn't play a fair amount of the cards I drew, though I did get a Shaman and beat the Venefecti up, and I did Computer Hack Alayna for at least four or five of her pool.
I was hoping Sean would oust Devin before it became an issue, but Sean did not draw his pool damage votes early, and couldn't cycle stealth. He even Darkly Influenced a Sense the Sing to give me an extra turn, but I was not worth his time. I squandered my extra turn trying to oust my prey, foolishly. But with the cards I was drawing I had little choice.
Cybele bled for five, and only five, until I was gone.
Sean managed to draw and play like three pool damaging votes in a row (Con-Ag, KRC, KRC) and ousted Devin, even with the table throwing mad votes at him. Alayna and Neil managed to combine their power with Marie, Confusion of the Eye, Wrong and Crosswise, the Edge, and the Rose Foundation, to keep Cybele in the game (is this ever a good idea?), but the Nos table presence was too strong and Devin got ousted.
Sean drew into nothing but Carrion Crows and pool damaging votes from that point forward, which meant that even if his votes got blocked bad things were happening. The Nosferatu ground their way into endgame domination. Alayna might've ousted Neil before Sean won the game, but I don't recall because there was a guitar there, and I was playing Stone Temple Pilots songs on it. Apparently Neil does not like the Stone Temple Pilots.
To be fair, he brought them up.
Sean 3-4 VP, Alayna 1vp?, Devin 1VP
Game MVP: Sean's tremendous Cock, hands down. That guy ruined a lot of minions in the middle and late game, all while pursuing a victory-based agenda.
Game 3:
Robb and Alayna left after the second game, which left the four of us to play another. Sean said he wanted to play one of my decks, so I reached into my bag and handed him one labeled "Tariqromancy."
I have a lot of decks at the moment. For a long time I had like 5 or 6 decks built, and I just worked with those or built newer ones to play for a while. But the issue was, I have a tremendous collection of VTES cards, having played since the game's beginning (and gone through stints of VTES obsession), or at least within three months of it. So one day I said to myself, "Merlin" (because I refer to myself as Merlin when talking to myself) "Merlin, why are you sitting on 7 Draught of the Soul if you're never going to make or play a Tariq deck, and ditto with all your Nos Royalty. . ." and so on. I basically decided that as long as I was hording awesome cards to "someday" make a deck with them, that the time should always be now.
The downside of this is that some of these decks have never been played, or at least not often. And they don't get updated with new sets, either. Gift of Experience is pretty much useless now that Wider View has been printed (it was probably useless before, but there's a GoE in my Tariq deck), and decks that have never been shuffled. . .
Sean didn't have a good game.
Neil(Not your Average Ravnos Trap deck)--->Devin(DoC Harmony)--->Me(The Truman Show)--->Sean(Tariqromacy)
Apparently Sean had 3 Freak Drive and 4 Eagle's Sight in his opening hand. That's not so good. All the Rowan Rings and Ivory Bows in the Tariq deck were in the bottom, so he never got started.
I saw that Devin was playing his DoC Harmony deck, which is incredibly aggressive, and decided that I needed to get all my guys out ASAP and save on pool in the process. I got Truman out first, as I always should, with 1 blood from the first turn 3-transfer on Ilse. My first two Masters were Effective Management (still good in BB decks!), and I drew a Thicker Than Blood, which is pretty awesome on turn three with one blood on Ilse. She Redistributed some blood to herself and then bled for three while Sean discarded a lot of cards with Dreams.
Sean got Tariq base, Rodolfo G, and Isabel G. Neil got Tatiana Stepanova and Gwen Brand, then bled the hell out of himself with Vessel on both guys, a Dog Pack for Tatiana, and two hunting grounds. Devin got up Gael first, then Celeste and finally Angela. I had absolutely nothing in my deck that says I could stop a Choir or a Harmony, so I figured I was on borrowed time.
Lucky for me, Devin was having trouble getting Freak Drives, so it was usually only a three pool hit every turn, sometimes six. It still stung a lot. I managed to get up Karl and Mark with Man-Love action cards and multiple copies of Dreams of the Sphinx, but I was running low.
Lucky for me, Sean had a death wish by this point in the game, and I managed to oust him with a Walk of Elvis bleed of five at Stealth.
Devin was hurting by this point, because the Ravnos had been bleeding pretty steady, and with no predator to speak of and a decent source of two pool per turn in play, Neil got Gharston Roland into play as well. Fata Morgana was pumping the bleeds that the DoC couldn't block very well anyway.
I did Wash two Command Performance, which apparently really was bad for Devin. Neil ousted him pretty quickly after Sean was gone.
The head's-up did not look good, and I considered conceding victory to Neil. But then, I thought that since Neil had driven a distance to play, I should try to make him drive home in shame with no game wins.
It didn't work out for me. The Ravnos were under a Week of Nightmares, and they blocked pretty much all my actions. After I ran out of Claiming the Body and Thrown Gates Tatiana put nearly all my guys in torpor in like a single turn (my turn), and then played an Edged Illusion to get the rest on Neil's next turn.
Me 1 VP, Neil 3 VP.
Game MVP: Tatiana Stepanova, Alastor. She got Neil an extra Hunting Ground for his Vessels, and then the Hunting Grounds kept his Ravnos from the ridiculous hunt loop sometimes caused by the Week of Nightmares. She also kicked all the other minions on the table into torpor one at a time.
Bleed Reduction + Vote gain reaction cards:
There were a lot of these around the table this night. Wrong and Crosswise, Covencraft, hell, Neil played quite a few Confusion in the Eye with Marie in games 1 and 2.
I'm not sold on how good they are. They did influence the game, and honestly, I like Confusion of the Eye, but mainly because it can ruin Parity Shift. That alone makes it better than the rest of them.
I'm not sure hanging onto these cards, and leaving guys up to play them, is entirely awesome. Maybe Deflection has jaded me? Wrong and Crosswise sucks because it costs a blood. I've decided that reaction cards that cost blood should be incredibly awesome, like Telepathic Midirection. Wrong and Crosswise isn't as good as T-Mis. Covencraft. . .well, I'm not sure I hate it. I have one or two in my Kiasyd deck, in fact, but I think I'm going to drop them for Delaying Tactics and more Deflection, sadly.
Why? Because I can. And Delaying Tactics is oust-tastic if your prey is one of those breed-boon style decks. Two lunges are better than one! And Deflection reduces a bleed by n, where n equals the bleeding minion's bleed, _and_ it bleeds your prey for n, potentially. I'd rather have two cards in my deck that do divergent things than two of the same card that does divergent things. This is why:
Two Covencraft in hand is not as good as two Deflection. It isn't as good as two Delaying Tactics. If your pred is going to bleed you you keep the Deflections. Because you'll play them. If not you'll discard them and move on. Utility cards like Covencraft are versatile, but they're also handclogging because of that versatility.
I think, I can probably play the bleed version of this next turn. I'll hang onto it. But reducing a bleed by one is scarcely enough. So then you need two guys untapped to play two reaction cards to make it worth it. If were talking about Wrong and Crosswise, you might be able to mix Telepathic Counter (which is pretty good as far as reduce cards go), which makes for a respectable bleed reduce of four, but doesn't bleed your prey for n.
"Aha!" say the bleed reducers of the world. "But this way I'm staying untapped to play multiple reaction cards!" Well, my response is "what the hell are you doing playing cards that force you to be untapped?" I tap out a lot. I admit that I play a lot of wake-type cards so that I can Delay and Deflect, but I lunge whenever I can. I'm a big fan of proaction.
Neil's deck seemed to hinge on Marie Foucigny not tapping all that often. For seven pool I want to tap her all the time. Alyana's !Malk deck routinely left a guy with DEM untapped to play Wrong and Crosswise. Seriously. I was stunned. But then, I've played a Kindred Spirits deck, and the KS is so insanely good I sometimes hate myself for playing it.
I play it anyway.
I have won a game because of Confusion of the Eye cancelling a Parity Shift. It was a qualifier final. So CotE gets a bit of a pass. But overall, I'm not all that sold on these reduce 'n' vote cards. Not until they can be played by tiny tiny tiny minions. Maybe a Kiasyd Embrace deck? Well, now I've got something to occupy my time. . .
-Merlin out
Neil brought the strangeness with him, in the form of a hybrid imbued/vampire deck, which never really got off the ground. I asked him what the secret sauce in the deck was supposed to be, but he always deferred.
Robb had said he'd be there at 8 to play, but at 8 he wasn't there. So we played a 4-player game. Midgame Robb and Alayna arrived, and we suddenly had 6 players on our hands. Sean, Neil, Devin, and myself played the first game.
Game 1:
Me (Huge Setites Eternals Toolbox)---> Devin (Trujah prerange aggs)--->Sean (Kyasid sneak and bleed)--->Neil (Imbued and some vampires who were pretty large that had Demetation and Auspex)
Things went pretty well early. I started with 3 Eternals of Sirius and a Villein in my opening draw. My deck is pretty much a pile of only G2-3 Followers who are 9-11 cap (yes, Sutekh is in the deck). I was inspired by a deck I saw long ago on The Path of Blood, the Multi-taskimites. Originally built by Jay Kristoff, the only version I could find on the web was played by Jeff Kuta. My deck isn't that good, but getting Sutekh into play is a secondary win condition for me.
Alas, I had to settle for Nehsi this game. I got him out first, on turn two, without using transfers for him. I put 4 down on Khay'tall instead and 1 on Kahina the Sorceress. I drew yet another Eternals (there's 9 in a 70-card deck) and managed to get all three out in pretty short order.
However, my speed wasn't rewarded. Neil got out Marie Faucigny first off, having only drawn one Imbued. He claimed that his opening hand was seven Conviction cards, which sounds downright awful to me for one Imbued in opening draw. Marie's two votes, along with Dame Hollerton's CovinCraft, kept me from passing an early Reckless Agitation. After getting my huge crypt out i did bleed and vote Devin for some of his pool, which prompted him to play a one-minion game with Nehemiah. Instead of influencing out another Trujah (which is insane anyway), he just got an Ankara Citadel on N through Summon History and started pulling awesome allies out of his library instead. High Top was his first choice, and a good one at that.
Sean got Hollerton and Isanwayan, and eventually Roderick Phillips March as well. Sean's early bleed of three at one stealth got bounced into me, and although my deck has some Deflection (holy shit do FoS fatties have dominate!) I didn't have it early. I complained about Sean's terrible irresponsibility in bleeding.
Neil got Francois "Warden" into play and began to be all imbued in earnest. He pretty much just bled me with him every turn at effectively 1 stealth with Second Sight. That wasn't such a bad plan. I had no intercept and didn't intend to gain any. I also hadn't draw a second Villein yet. Further, Neil got Morrell up and bled me for 3 with some Eyes of Chaos at stealth. I was on two pool after that turn.
Robb and Alayna were excited that I would be leaving the table soon, and that perhaps another game could begin.
But wait! Nehemiah (Heart of the City'd up now) got bounced into Neil and played Domain of Evernight and Outside the Hourglass to send Morrell to torpor. Then during Sean's turn Neil used an On the Qui Vive to try and block a Kiasyd with his imbued. Draven Softfoot hit the table around this point for Sean.
With Morrell in the dust and Francois not untapping, I was free to take another turn, which I used to play a Villein and gain seven pool from Khay'tall. I still was having trouble passing votes without push, and now I needed stealth to do anything because of High Top. So my positioning wasn't great. I managed to push a Reins of Power through, and bled for 3 with a Tuth of a Thousand Lies, so Devin's pool was actually lower than mine.
On top of that, I was actually blocking Nehemiah Summoning History, because Nehsi could play Mental Maze and effectively end Devin's minion phase while avoiding Nehemiah's comboriffic combat. He was not happy. He still played Vaticination to make me discard a Lost in Translation, but that only kept me from being a force in the endgame.
Sean pecked away at Neil, eventually putting a Song of Pan into play and bleeding for two with all his guys, ousting Neil.
Then he ousted me with huge ridiculous bleeds, then he ousted Devin in short order.
I complained about Sean's terrible play at bleeding me irresponsibly, at which point he told me the Conditioning he used to oust me had been in his hand for some time, but he'd not played it while Neil was in the game because of the bounce.
So, I shut up then.
Sean, 4VP sweep.
Game MVP: Probably Song of Pan, as it helped Sean oust Neil and Devin quickly. Covincraft played a decent role as well. I'll get back to this.
Game 2:
Robb sat out to let Alayna play her new Dementation bleed deck. I decided to play a "good" deck as well, but it didn't work out for me.
Neil(Imbued do something with Dementation guys?)--->Sean(Nos Royalty featuring Cock jokes!)--->Devin (Cybeltron)--->Me(Are you an African or an African't?)--->Alayna(Dementation is a pretty good discipline, all told)
Neil got a better draw. Leif hit the table first. Sean had to pull his Cock out at first opportunity, probably because there was a lady there. That guy. Devin of course went for Cybele, but was complaining bitterly about not drawing a single Master Card in his opening draw, yet he failed to discard several times during the first few turns.
I have have some successes with my weenie Laibon bruise/bleed/vote deck, but this night was not one of them. I did not draw any of the Akunanse in the opening draw (which happens), did not get one with the two Mozambique Allure I played on turn three, and did not draw one of the 10 Abombwe skill cards in the deck for some time.
So the deck, which is like 25% Abombwe cards, didn't roll so well at first. In fact, I didn't get off the ground before Cybele started bleeding for 5 at a pop. I did get Ismitta, Misrak, Zhara, and Fish. Fish Founded some of that Ebony Kingdom to get my 4 pool back from Lumumba down, but I was having trouble with Cybele and her blasted Veneficti pal.
Alayna got Morrell, who Called his bros Sean Rycek and Arthur Denholm. Rycek got a Changling Skin Mask, which was pretty good for him. Neil wound up with Inez "Nurse216" Villagrande, Leaf "Potter116" Pankowski, Jennie "Cassie247" Orne, and Marie again. Sean got his giant Cock, Niklaus, and Calebos.
Cybele didn't need any help for a long long time.
I got bled out fairly early. without even the basic puppy, I couldn't play a fair amount of the cards I drew, though I did get a Shaman and beat the Venefecti up, and I did Computer Hack Alayna for at least four or five of her pool.
I was hoping Sean would oust Devin before it became an issue, but Sean did not draw his pool damage votes early, and couldn't cycle stealth. He even Darkly Influenced a Sense the Sing to give me an extra turn, but I was not worth his time. I squandered my extra turn trying to oust my prey, foolishly. But with the cards I was drawing I had little choice.
Cybele bled for five, and only five, until I was gone.
Sean managed to draw and play like three pool damaging votes in a row (Con-Ag, KRC, KRC) and ousted Devin, even with the table throwing mad votes at him. Alayna and Neil managed to combine their power with Marie, Confusion of the Eye, Wrong and Crosswise, the Edge, and the Rose Foundation, to keep Cybele in the game (is this ever a good idea?), but the Nos table presence was too strong and Devin got ousted.
At that point Neil became something of a predator, bleeding Sean for 4-6 pool every other turn with his Imbued. Things went south when Cock Robin started playing Second Tradition and Carrion Crows, which is pretty brutal with that guy. Marie wound up in torpor, and without other vampires Neil was in a tough spot.
Sean drew into nothing but Carrion Crows and pool damaging votes from that point forward, which meant that even if his votes got blocked bad things were happening. The Nosferatu ground their way into endgame domination. Alayna might've ousted Neil before Sean won the game, but I don't recall because there was a guitar there, and I was playing Stone Temple Pilots songs on it. Apparently Neil does not like the Stone Temple Pilots.
To be fair, he brought them up.
Sean 3-4 VP, Alayna 1vp?, Devin 1VP
Game MVP: Sean's tremendous Cock, hands down. That guy ruined a lot of minions in the middle and late game, all while pursuing a victory-based agenda.
Game 3:
Robb and Alayna left after the second game, which left the four of us to play another. Sean said he wanted to play one of my decks, so I reached into my bag and handed him one labeled "Tariqromancy."
I have a lot of decks at the moment. For a long time I had like 5 or 6 decks built, and I just worked with those or built newer ones to play for a while. But the issue was, I have a tremendous collection of VTES cards, having played since the game's beginning (and gone through stints of VTES obsession), or at least within three months of it. So one day I said to myself, "Merlin" (because I refer to myself as Merlin when talking to myself) "Merlin, why are you sitting on 7 Draught of the Soul if you're never going to make or play a Tariq deck, and ditto with all your Nos Royalty. . ." and so on. I basically decided that as long as I was hording awesome cards to "someday" make a deck with them, that the time should always be now.
The downside of this is that some of these decks have never been played, or at least not often. And they don't get updated with new sets, either. Gift of Experience is pretty much useless now that Wider View has been printed (it was probably useless before, but there's a GoE in my Tariq deck), and decks that have never been shuffled. . .
Sean didn't have a good game.
Neil(Not your Average Ravnos Trap deck)--->Devin(DoC Harmony)--->Me(The Truman Show)--->Sean(Tariqromacy)
Apparently Sean had 3 Freak Drive and 4 Eagle's Sight in his opening hand. That's not so good. All the Rowan Rings and Ivory Bows in the Tariq deck were in the bottom, so he never got started.
I saw that Devin was playing his DoC Harmony deck, which is incredibly aggressive, and decided that I needed to get all my guys out ASAP and save on pool in the process. I got Truman out first, as I always should, with 1 blood from the first turn 3-transfer on Ilse. My first two Masters were Effective Management (still good in BB decks!), and I drew a Thicker Than Blood, which is pretty awesome on turn three with one blood on Ilse. She Redistributed some blood to herself and then bled for three while Sean discarded a lot of cards with Dreams.
Sean got Tariq base, Rodolfo G, and Isabel G. Neil got Tatiana Stepanova and Gwen Brand, then bled the hell out of himself with Vessel on both guys, a Dog Pack for Tatiana, and two hunting grounds. Devin got up Gael first, then Celeste and finally Angela. I had absolutely nothing in my deck that says I could stop a Choir or a Harmony, so I figured I was on borrowed time.
Lucky for me, Devin was having trouble getting Freak Drives, so it was usually only a three pool hit every turn, sometimes six. It still stung a lot. I managed to get up Karl and Mark with Man-Love action cards and multiple copies of Dreams of the Sphinx, but I was running low.
Lucky for me, Sean had a death wish by this point in the game, and I managed to oust him with a Walk of Elvis bleed of five at Stealth.
Devin was hurting by this point, because the Ravnos had been bleeding pretty steady, and with no predator to speak of and a decent source of two pool per turn in play, Neil got Gharston Roland into play as well. Fata Morgana was pumping the bleeds that the DoC couldn't block very well anyway.
I did Wash two Command Performance, which apparently really was bad for Devin. Neil ousted him pretty quickly after Sean was gone.
The head's-up did not look good, and I considered conceding victory to Neil. But then, I thought that since Neil had driven a distance to play, I should try to make him drive home in shame with no game wins.
It didn't work out for me. The Ravnos were under a Week of Nightmares, and they blocked pretty much all my actions. After I ran out of Claiming the Body and Thrown Gates Tatiana put nearly all my guys in torpor in like a single turn (my turn), and then played an Edged Illusion to get the rest on Neil's next turn.
Me 1 VP, Neil 3 VP.
Game MVP: Tatiana Stepanova, Alastor. She got Neil an extra Hunting Ground for his Vessels, and then the Hunting Grounds kept his Ravnos from the ridiculous hunt loop sometimes caused by the Week of Nightmares. She also kicked all the other minions on the table into torpor one at a time.
Bleed Reduction + Vote gain reaction cards:
There were a lot of these around the table this night. Wrong and Crosswise, Covencraft, hell, Neil played quite a few Confusion in the Eye with Marie in games 1 and 2.
I'm not sold on how good they are. They did influence the game, and honestly, I like Confusion of the Eye, but mainly because it can ruin Parity Shift. That alone makes it better than the rest of them.
I'm not sure hanging onto these cards, and leaving guys up to play them, is entirely awesome. Maybe Deflection has jaded me? Wrong and Crosswise sucks because it costs a blood. I've decided that reaction cards that cost blood should be incredibly awesome, like Telepathic Midirection. Wrong and Crosswise isn't as good as T-Mis. Covencraft. . .well, I'm not sure I hate it. I have one or two in my Kiasyd deck, in fact, but I think I'm going to drop them for Delaying Tactics and more Deflection, sadly.
Why? Because I can. And Delaying Tactics is oust-tastic if your prey is one of those breed-boon style decks. Two lunges are better than one! And Deflection reduces a bleed by n, where n equals the bleeding minion's bleed, _and_ it bleeds your prey for n, potentially. I'd rather have two cards in my deck that do divergent things than two of the same card that does divergent things. This is why:
Two Covencraft in hand is not as good as two Deflection. It isn't as good as two Delaying Tactics. If your pred is going to bleed you you keep the Deflections. Because you'll play them. If not you'll discard them and move on. Utility cards like Covencraft are versatile, but they're also handclogging because of that versatility.
I think, I can probably play the bleed version of this next turn. I'll hang onto it. But reducing a bleed by one is scarcely enough. So then you need two guys untapped to play two reaction cards to make it worth it. If were talking about Wrong and Crosswise, you might be able to mix Telepathic Counter (which is pretty good as far as reduce cards go), which makes for a respectable bleed reduce of four, but doesn't bleed your prey for n.
"Aha!" say the bleed reducers of the world. "But this way I'm staying untapped to play multiple reaction cards!" Well, my response is "what the hell are you doing playing cards that force you to be untapped?" I tap out a lot. I admit that I play a lot of wake-type cards so that I can Delay and Deflect, but I lunge whenever I can. I'm a big fan of proaction.
Neil's deck seemed to hinge on Marie Foucigny not tapping all that often. For seven pool I want to tap her all the time. Alyana's !Malk deck routinely left a guy with DEM untapped to play Wrong and Crosswise. Seriously. I was stunned. But then, I've played a Kindred Spirits deck, and the KS is so insanely good I sometimes hate myself for playing it.
I play it anyway.
I have won a game because of Confusion of the Eye cancelling a Parity Shift. It was a qualifier final. So CotE gets a bit of a pass. But overall, I'm not all that sold on these reduce 'n' vote cards. Not until they can be played by tiny tiny tiny minions. Maybe a Kiasyd Embrace deck? Well, now I've got something to occupy my time. . .
-Merlin out
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Roleplaying: The Backgroundening
I put the acronym “RPG” in the title of this blog. I did this because I still play roleplaying games. I don’t do so as often as I used, nor as often as I’d like. But it still happens. So I figured I’d write about that, too. But what, exactly, to write about? I could chronicle the events of each session, perhaps from the perspectives of one of more of the characters in the game. Or I could simply collect objective notes, lists of the events which occurred, plots foiled or come to fruition, and monsters slain.
I’m not sure that’s compelling reading.
So, inspired by recently discovering Lore Sjoberg’s The Book of Ratings amid the interwebs of the past, I think I’ll recount my roleplaying history and give a grade to each roleplaying game, a composite score based on my nostalgia and my much more critical current self. I won’t use letter grades; I teach composition at a Community College, so I’ll use the grade point system, where 4.0 is outstanding, 2.0 is middling, and 0.0 is Scrappy Doo failure.
Later blogs will focus on particular aspects of one or several roleplaying games, mainly so that I can be snarky about roleplaying games.
AD&D
I didn’t play a lot of AD&D. I was a bit young, though I did read all of my older brother’s books. I still have his copy of the now out-of-print and apparently litigious Deities & Demigods, which usefully includes statistics for using Chthulu as an antagonist for a game. Meh. In a world where every third dude is a sorcerer Big C isn’t all that gripping.
The game seemed alright, although some of the systems were sort of random. The psionic rules in particular seemed tossed into the back of the late-model Player’s Handbook willy-nilly. I can say that AD&D increased my vocabulary dramatically, as words like “enervate”, “contagion”, and “lucubration” entered my mind during elementary school. All of those are taken from magic-user spells. I always liked magic-users. My biggest gripe was the inclusion of a mechanic for even the most banal of tasks: the Open Doors roll from the Strength table. “Yes, I’d like my character to interact with the dungeon at an incredibly rudimentary level. Let’s see, can I open this door?” DM Response: “There’s a roll for that!” (checks Strength table) “Oh, and your chance of success is actually quite low.” 2.5
Favorite supplement: Unearthed Arcana.
AD&D 2nd Edition
I actually got a lot of mileage out of 2nd edition AD&D. I was the only one in my social circle of pre-adolescents who liked it enough to run the game, so I did. Often. It was pretty bad, narratively. But it was fun. The rules. . .were a lot like AD&D. There were some subtle differences, the Non Weapon Proficiency system being my favorite. Psionics was still fucked. The Open Doors roll was intact. Goddammit. 2.5
Favorite supplement: Tome of Magic.
Rifts
A buddy of mine picked up Rifts around my thirteenth Christmas. I think he gave it to me for Christmas, as a present to himself. Because he wanted to play the hell out of Rifts, but I was the guy who ran games. Poorly; but still, I ran them. I have this conundrum with Rifts. I absolutely love the “flavor” of the setting, the backstory, the varied mythologies, the various possibilities for gameplay, and the NPC Characters, which is amazing because of how referential it apparently is to other Palladium efforts. I came to Rifts cold and it resonates. Those other games didn’t even merit a look from me.
On the other hand, Rifts (and perhaps Palladium games in general) is so mired in awful rules and arcane, arbitrary systems I simply have to hate it. Two people can look at the core rulebook, make two different, interesting characters, and then find that their power levels are so wildly divergent at even the starting level one of them could vaporize the other with a thought. Perhaps I was too “power” focused when I was exploring Rifts. Perhaps it’s awesome if you give it the ol’ roleplaying chance. Or maybe the whole Mega-Damage system is fucked. Also, not so many great new words were learned from Rifts. Rifts makes up new shit, it doesn’t cater to etymology. 1.0
Favorite Supplement: Rifts World Book 2: Atlantis.
Vampire: The Masquerade
I was about sixteen when I played this game for the first time. My buddy’s brother Tom was home from college for the Christmas holidays and somehow got roped into Storytelling (GMing, every system has its own vocabulary) for a bunch of socially-awkward high-schoolers. We played for like ten hours straight. I think it was light when I went home. It was awesome.
I hate to say that I liked it so much, because the more we played the more I saw design flaws and weird rules bits, but those seemed so small compared to the good things about the game. Combat was a little silly: hours of die-rolling. God forbid someone have Celerity and get to take extra actions. Everyone else might as well go out to eat.
On top of that, scant months later Jyhad was released, and Tom actually gave us some cards for it. I have little negativity to bestow upon V:tM, and as positivity is generally not as funny, I’ll be brief. Vampire was also great for my vocabulary; I learned “obfuscate” years before someone used it to describe the Bush Administration’s closed-mouth White House Press policy. 4.0
Favorite Supplement: Clanbook: Tremere.
Supernatural Creature: the Gothic Noun
I wound up playing a lot of World of Darkness stuff, and buying a lot of supplements and games that we never even played. I have to say that I think that there was some interesting roleplaying elements going on in most of these games. We were still too young to realize it, so we didn’t get as much out of Wraith or Mage as possible. The downside, of course, is that ultimately those games weren’t compelling for the masses. There’s not a Mage: the Sorcelating video game out there. Vampire was as good as it got, I think, and every game they released actually seemed to cheapen the World of Darkness. I’ve got a copy of Mummy: the Resurrection around here that speaks volumes to the later point. Still, pretty good for the words. 2.0
Favorite Supplement: Changeling: The Dreaming (hardbound 2nd edition).
Werewolf: The Forsaken
I hadn’t roleplayed in several years when Robb, my local VTES Prince, asked if I’d like to participate in his own roleplaying resurgence. I of course agreed, as I don’t annoy him enough at the VTES table. He ran a WTF game for over a year, and I didn’t really enjoy it. It was around this time I realized that most roleplaying games take Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey a little too seriously. The characters start out as level/rank/whatever one and they’re chuds. It sucks. There’s some weird supernatural society that domineers the characters into certain patterns of behavior, and then the characters slowly accumulate power until they become, as my friend Joe puts it, studs. Chuds to studs, as it were.
Fuck that. At least, fuck that in a medium where the intent is to play a single character over that narrative arc for like two years. It takes a goddamn long time to hit the point where the character isn’t a chud.
With a year of Werewolf 2.0 I was really feeling that being a chud wasn’t fun. More to the point, nearly every week Robb would show up and say something like, “Hey, I was reading the rules, and I totally wasn’t rolling that Giant Ass Plundering Spirit’s toughness checks right. You guys actually had no hope of defeating it at all.” This did little to cheer up my lack of enthusiasm for the system. Said Giant Ass Plundering Spirit (apparently it was into big donkeys?) had nearly killed the entire party/pack/collective noun. I liked the rules less and less.
The rules discouraged min/maxing, and I’m not cool with that. I like specialists. I like playing a character that is great at something. Even if it isn’t something especially relevant all the time or even useful in a fight (let’s face it, there’s lots of fights in RPGs). In fact, most of the time that something is entirely useless in a fight.
Not so many new words to be learned here, and in fact I had to relearn all the made-up words for shit I already knew the made-up words for in Werewolf: The Catastrophe with other made-up words for the same shit. New word for near-wolf form instead of Hispo, new word for half moon instead of Philodox. I like learning new language that can be applied elsewhere. I don’t like learning new language that will only be useful if I’m playing the game. Pah. 1.5
Favorite Supplement: None, really. Core rulebook?
Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition
I’ll admit it. I gave in to the hype. I saw that a new edition of D&D was incumbent, and I liked the look of it. On top of everything else, I had a roleplaying group to play with. So I offered to run D&D 4E, reprising a GM role I hadn’t played in probably 8 or 9 years. I have to say, I wasn’t that disappointed. I quite enjoy 4th edition. But then, I don’t have to play it.
I did play a few sessions with some VTES guys at a local game store, and as a player I got remarkably bored by the actual rules crunch of the system. Mainly because when the dice start flying in combat, there are actually only a few choices each character has at low levels. I enjoyed the roleplaying bits, but most of those were self-directed, and the other players in the group weren’t all that engaged as characters. That’s okay: 4th edition sort of caters to a wide range of players, from people who just want to play board games to those of us who flesh out family histories for our alter ego. But in actual practice it sucked. My characters are nearly always more cerebral than diplomatic, but I found my wizard character doing all the talking to NPCs, despite my backstory of ambivalence.
As a system, I still like 4th edition. It’s standardized and fairly balanced, to the point that it’s quite the opposite of Rifts: two guys could create 4E characters, but their characters will almost certainly have to the same amount of class features and powers of the rest of the party. There’s an emphasis on team play, and it’s all around. It doesn’t appeal to the sociopathic misanthrope in me, but maybe we roleplayers need to be less sociopathically misanthropic. 3.0
Favorite Supplement: Player’s Handbook.
Dark Heresy
There was much talk about what Robb would run next. I was starting a second job and the crew was getting tired of the constant action of 4E. I was game for a lot of things, but I’m really down on the whole chuds-to-studs thing. We eventually decided on Dark Heresy, though we almost played Hunter: the Reckoning instead.
Dark Heresy is pretty cool. I feel like we, the players, are serious chuds most of the time in the early stages, but this is probably unavoidable. At least the game looks like the “stud” factor is actually not that high – most of the bad guys can get so incredibly arch that the odds are stacked against the inquisitors nearly all the time. I like being the underdog. The flavor of the game is pretty good, though there are a lot of unnecessary and ultimately useless new words, presumably to alienate the players from the world of their characters, making it all the more Other. I guess that’s alright.
I’m not sure I’m in love with the system. Some of the choices they’ve made for various game crunch annoy me, and it seems like as soon as the party has enough raw cash they can afford some ridiculous equipment-based advantages. I’ve never been a huge fan of games that allow players to throw money at the problem. Still, the setting is great, and I’m enjoying the game as a whole. 3.0
-Merlin out
I’m not sure that’s compelling reading.
So, inspired by recently discovering Lore Sjoberg’s The Book of Ratings amid the interwebs of the past, I think I’ll recount my roleplaying history and give a grade to each roleplaying game, a composite score based on my nostalgia and my much more critical current self. I won’t use letter grades; I teach composition at a Community College, so I’ll use the grade point system, where 4.0 is outstanding, 2.0 is middling, and 0.0 is Scrappy Doo failure.
Later blogs will focus on particular aspects of one or several roleplaying games, mainly so that I can be snarky about roleplaying games.
AD&D
I didn’t play a lot of AD&D. I was a bit young, though I did read all of my older brother’s books. I still have his copy of the now out-of-print and apparently litigious Deities & Demigods, which usefully includes statistics for using Chthulu as an antagonist for a game. Meh. In a world where every third dude is a sorcerer Big C isn’t all that gripping.
The game seemed alright, although some of the systems were sort of random. The psionic rules in particular seemed tossed into the back of the late-model Player’s Handbook willy-nilly. I can say that AD&D increased my vocabulary dramatically, as words like “enervate”, “contagion”, and “lucubration” entered my mind during elementary school. All of those are taken from magic-user spells. I always liked magic-users. My biggest gripe was the inclusion of a mechanic for even the most banal of tasks: the Open Doors roll from the Strength table. “Yes, I’d like my character to interact with the dungeon at an incredibly rudimentary level. Let’s see, can I open this door?” DM Response: “There’s a roll for that!” (checks Strength table) “Oh, and your chance of success is actually quite low.” 2.5
Favorite supplement: Unearthed Arcana.
AD&D 2nd Edition
I actually got a lot of mileage out of 2nd edition AD&D. I was the only one in my social circle of pre-adolescents who liked it enough to run the game, so I did. Often. It was pretty bad, narratively. But it was fun. The rules. . .were a lot like AD&D. There were some subtle differences, the Non Weapon Proficiency system being my favorite. Psionics was still fucked. The Open Doors roll was intact. Goddammit. 2.5
Favorite supplement: Tome of Magic.
Rifts
A buddy of mine picked up Rifts around my thirteenth Christmas. I think he gave it to me for Christmas, as a present to himself. Because he wanted to play the hell out of Rifts, but I was the guy who ran games. Poorly; but still, I ran them. I have this conundrum with Rifts. I absolutely love the “flavor” of the setting, the backstory, the varied mythologies, the various possibilities for gameplay, and the NPC Characters, which is amazing because of how referential it apparently is to other Palladium efforts. I came to Rifts cold and it resonates. Those other games didn’t even merit a look from me.
On the other hand, Rifts (and perhaps Palladium games in general) is so mired in awful rules and arcane, arbitrary systems I simply have to hate it. Two people can look at the core rulebook, make two different, interesting characters, and then find that their power levels are so wildly divergent at even the starting level one of them could vaporize the other with a thought. Perhaps I was too “power” focused when I was exploring Rifts. Perhaps it’s awesome if you give it the ol’ roleplaying chance. Or maybe the whole Mega-Damage system is fucked. Also, not so many great new words were learned from Rifts. Rifts makes up new shit, it doesn’t cater to etymology. 1.0
Favorite Supplement: Rifts World Book 2: Atlantis.
Vampire: The Masquerade
I was about sixteen when I played this game for the first time. My buddy’s brother Tom was home from college for the Christmas holidays and somehow got roped into Storytelling (GMing, every system has its own vocabulary) for a bunch of socially-awkward high-schoolers. We played for like ten hours straight. I think it was light when I went home. It was awesome.
I hate to say that I liked it so much, because the more we played the more I saw design flaws and weird rules bits, but those seemed so small compared to the good things about the game. Combat was a little silly: hours of die-rolling. God forbid someone have Celerity and get to take extra actions. Everyone else might as well go out to eat.
On top of that, scant months later Jyhad was released, and Tom actually gave us some cards for it. I have little negativity to bestow upon V:tM, and as positivity is generally not as funny, I’ll be brief. Vampire was also great for my vocabulary; I learned “obfuscate” years before someone used it to describe the Bush Administration’s closed-mouth White House Press policy. 4.0
Favorite Supplement: Clanbook: Tremere.
Supernatural Creature: the Gothic Noun
I wound up playing a lot of World of Darkness stuff, and buying a lot of supplements and games that we never even played. I have to say that I think that there was some interesting roleplaying elements going on in most of these games. We were still too young to realize it, so we didn’t get as much out of Wraith or Mage as possible. The downside, of course, is that ultimately those games weren’t compelling for the masses. There’s not a Mage: the Sorcelating video game out there. Vampire was as good as it got, I think, and every game they released actually seemed to cheapen the World of Darkness. I’ve got a copy of Mummy: the Resurrection around here that speaks volumes to the later point. Still, pretty good for the words. 2.0
Favorite Supplement: Changeling: The Dreaming (hardbound 2nd edition).
Werewolf: The Forsaken
I hadn’t roleplayed in several years when Robb, my local VTES Prince, asked if I’d like to participate in his own roleplaying resurgence. I of course agreed, as I don’t annoy him enough at the VTES table. He ran a WTF game for over a year, and I didn’t really enjoy it. It was around this time I realized that most roleplaying games take Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey a little too seriously. The characters start out as level/rank/whatever one and they’re chuds. It sucks. There’s some weird supernatural society that domineers the characters into certain patterns of behavior, and then the characters slowly accumulate power until they become, as my friend Joe puts it, studs. Chuds to studs, as it were.
Fuck that. At least, fuck that in a medium where the intent is to play a single character over that narrative arc for like two years. It takes a goddamn long time to hit the point where the character isn’t a chud.
With a year of Werewolf 2.0 I was really feeling that being a chud wasn’t fun. More to the point, nearly every week Robb would show up and say something like, “Hey, I was reading the rules, and I totally wasn’t rolling that Giant Ass Plundering Spirit’s toughness checks right. You guys actually had no hope of defeating it at all.” This did little to cheer up my lack of enthusiasm for the system. Said Giant Ass Plundering Spirit (apparently it was into big donkeys?) had nearly killed the entire party/pack/collective noun. I liked the rules less and less.
The rules discouraged min/maxing, and I’m not cool with that. I like specialists. I like playing a character that is great at something. Even if it isn’t something especially relevant all the time or even useful in a fight (let’s face it, there’s lots of fights in RPGs). In fact, most of the time that something is entirely useless in a fight.
Not so many new words to be learned here, and in fact I had to relearn all the made-up words for shit I already knew the made-up words for in Werewolf: The Catastrophe with other made-up words for the same shit. New word for near-wolf form instead of Hispo, new word for half moon instead of Philodox. I like learning new language that can be applied elsewhere. I don’t like learning new language that will only be useful if I’m playing the game. Pah. 1.5
Favorite Supplement: None, really. Core rulebook?
Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition
I’ll admit it. I gave in to the hype. I saw that a new edition of D&D was incumbent, and I liked the look of it. On top of everything else, I had a roleplaying group to play with. So I offered to run D&D 4E, reprising a GM role I hadn’t played in probably 8 or 9 years. I have to say, I wasn’t that disappointed. I quite enjoy 4th edition. But then, I don’t have to play it.
I did play a few sessions with some VTES guys at a local game store, and as a player I got remarkably bored by the actual rules crunch of the system. Mainly because when the dice start flying in combat, there are actually only a few choices each character has at low levels. I enjoyed the roleplaying bits, but most of those were self-directed, and the other players in the group weren’t all that engaged as characters. That’s okay: 4th edition sort of caters to a wide range of players, from people who just want to play board games to those of us who flesh out family histories for our alter ego. But in actual practice it sucked. My characters are nearly always more cerebral than diplomatic, but I found my wizard character doing all the talking to NPCs, despite my backstory of ambivalence.
As a system, I still like 4th edition. It’s standardized and fairly balanced, to the point that it’s quite the opposite of Rifts: two guys could create 4E characters, but their characters will almost certainly have to the same amount of class features and powers of the rest of the party. There’s an emphasis on team play, and it’s all around. It doesn’t appeal to the sociopathic misanthrope in me, but maybe we roleplayers need to be less sociopathically misanthropic. 3.0
Favorite Supplement: Player’s Handbook.
Dark Heresy
There was much talk about what Robb would run next. I was starting a second job and the crew was getting tired of the constant action of 4E. I was game for a lot of things, but I’m really down on the whole chuds-to-studs thing. We eventually decided on Dark Heresy, though we almost played Hunter: the Reckoning instead.
Dark Heresy is pretty cool. I feel like we, the players, are serious chuds most of the time in the early stages, but this is probably unavoidable. At least the game looks like the “stud” factor is actually not that high – most of the bad guys can get so incredibly arch that the odds are stacked against the inquisitors nearly all the time. I like being the underdog. The flavor of the game is pretty good, though there are a lot of unnecessary and ultimately useless new words, presumably to alienate the players from the world of their characters, making it all the more Other. I guess that’s alright.
I’m not sure I’m in love with the system. Some of the choices they’ve made for various game crunch annoy me, and it seems like as soon as the party has enough raw cash they can afford some ridiculous equipment-based advantages. I’ve never been a huge fan of games that allow players to throw money at the problem. Still, the setting is great, and I’m enjoying the game as a whole. 3.0
-Merlin out
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Confessions of a True Brujah Player
Alright. So I really like the True Brujah. No, not as a V:tES force; that's absurd. They aren't so good as a V:tES force. They only come in huge, fairly unstable packages that require superstar builds. Their in-clan disciplines (less of a failure for the latest batch) give them little access to stealth and no good bounce. Their staple cards have wildly divergent outferior disciplines, making them difficult to pair with supporting cast: obtenebration, or obfuscate. . .dominate, or serpentis, do I want to play with Followers of Set or Lasombra? Whichever I choose limits my access to Temporis cards with other outferiors, or I'm at least trepidacious about including cards only one guy can play. . .
Anyway, they're not so strong. But they're fun, I think. I've been working on several True Brujah decks since I wrote the True Brujah newsletter some time ago. But until recently I'd ignored the four newer Trujah. I decided to give them a look and Shalmath caught my eye.
Shalmath isn't so good. But he untaps a lot. I like that. I ran through some scenarios and decided to give him a try in the next game I played. This is what I eventually created:
Deck Name: Thou Shal Not Math
Created by: Merlin
Description:
Crypt [12 vampires, average capacity: 6.5]
5x Shalmath POT PRE TEM 10 True Brujah:6
1x Tara POT PRE cel 6 Brujah:5 prince
1x Gatjil Munyarryun POT cel obt pre 5 Brujah antitribu:5
1x Paul Calderone cel pot pre 4 Brujah:5
1x Sisocharis cel obf pre 4 Follower of Set:5
1x Slag ani obf pot 4 Nosferatu:5
1x Stephen Milliner nec pre 3 Giovanni:5
1x Honest Abe pre 2 Brujah:5
Library [74 cards]
Master [21]
6x Ashur Tablets
1x Creepshow Casino
5x Development
1x Giant's Blood
1x Information Highway
1x Parthenon, The
1x Perfectionist
1x Research
1x Tabriz Assembly
2x Villein
1x Wider View
Action [10]
1x Clio's Kiss
2x Entrancement
2x Kiss of Lachesis
4x Summon History
1x Vaticination
Action Modifier [18]
1x Approximation of Loyalty
4x Domain of Evernight
2x Enkil Cog
2x Iron Glare
4x Pocket Out of Time
2x Recurring Contemplation
3x Tangle Atropos' Hand
Ally [7]
1x Carlton Van Wyk (Hunter)
1x Gypsies
1x Harzomatuili
1x Impundulu
1x Mylan Horseed (Goblin)
1x Tunnel Runner
1x Tye Cooper
1x Veneficti (Mage)
Equipment [6]
1x AK-47
1x Ambulance
1x Amulet of Temporal Perception
1x Ankara Citadel, Turkey, The
1x Assault Rifle
1x Laptop Computer
Reaction [8]
2x Lost in Translation
2x On the Qui Vive
2x Rewind Time
2x Touch of Pain
Retainer [1]
1x Mr. Winthrop
Combat [2]
2x Majesty
Crafted with: Anarch Revolt Deck Builder [Sun Aug 01 23:42:10 2010]
There's a lot of shit going on in there. In fact, the street value of the deck is actually quite astonishing. I realized this as I was playing it.
We had about two hours before our weekly dick-and-fart-joke laced roleplaying session, so I arranged a VTES game beforehand, mostly with the guys who were gonna roleplay anyway, and Ray.
First game, I decided to play my Shalmath deck. I announced to the table that I was playing a "silly" deck, and that I fully expected to lose. Robb said he was playing "filth". Devin and Ray were all mysterious and shit.
Ray(Lucretia Trophy)--->Me(Shalmath)--->Devin(DoC Harmony)--->Robb(Tremere/!Tremere "filth"[DOM bleed])
Things went well for me early on. I played a Wider View and a Dreams of the Sphinx on the first turn. In my mind's eye, when I had built the deck, I imagined a world where I had first turn mastercards to play, and I played them. I lived in that world. I didn't redraw any other masters and I didn't have good cardflow until I had minions. I discarded an AK-47.
Devin brought up the Muse, which signaled to the rest of the table that Shit was Real. Devin did this very smugly, insomuch as it is possible to influence a vampire into play smugly. He said, "Oh, we're playing two games tonight." He was smug, and he said this, because his Choir/Harmony deck is very aggressive. It pretty much crushes forward until it wins or dies.
Robb sighed and put 4 blood on Selena. Ray worked on Lucretia.
I was using Dreams to put a blood on Steve Milliner each turn while I put beads on Shalmath. Devin put a Choir in play with Muse, then had her Drive the Freak bus and Harmony. Then he Freaked again and bled for one. It seemed pretty good. He got Celeste in the Influence phase, smugly.
Robb got Selena and braced for the worst. Ray put more on Lucretia but didn't bring her out. I popped Steve and Shalmath the same turn.
Devin had Muse and Celeste put Choirs into play, and he had the Stealthy Palace of Loud Singing in play, so Robb failed to block one. Devin got Angela Preston and played a Hanging Fermata. He did this in a very smug way.
Robb Governed out Aisling and finished his turn. Ray finally got Lucretia.
I had Steve find the Impundulu. This demon was a last-minute addition to my deck, and I think it was a good one. I have seen it played in limited a bunch and it seems like a decent investment.
Shalmath Summoned an Ankara Citadel, untapped with Domain, bled Devin for three with an Iron Glare, getting an Enkil Cog, untapped, and summoned Carlton Van Wyk.
I got Paul Calderone in my influence phase. I did so with great humility. My hand was starting to pile up with reaction cards to play on bleeds: Rewind Time, Touch of Pain, Lost in Translation. I didn't want to discard them, in case Ray got frisky. But I really couldn't play them either. I decided that there was no reason to rush and didn't discard them.
Devin put some Choirs in play, though Robb and I (Carlton, rather) made him play stealth on nearly all of his actions. Carlton might've blocked one, as I recall, because when Devin finally played his last Choir to burn them he only (only?) hit for 6. I bled for 2 with Shalmath during Devin's minion phase.
Robb said something like "fuck it." and bled Ray for 2 with both his guys, using Bondings and Mirror Walks for stealth. Ray put Red List on the Impundulu and then got out Clitoris. Now I'm a huge fan of Clitoris, but he was sort of numb this game.
Steve had to hunt. I had Shalmath bleed again, and then I realized I was out of useful actions to take. However, I did want to get that AK-47 out of my ash heap with a Kiss of Lachesis. I tapped Shalmath and announced my action to move an action card to my Research Area, and Robb said, "you don't have a Research Area. You have to play the Research card first." I explained that I felt that his talk was crazy, and that in my opinion, all Methuselahs have a Research Area, but most of us can't add cards to it.
I haven't asked LSJ to confirm this, but it actually requires much less effort to assume I'm right and move on.
So I had Shalmath get me a Kiss. I had a Development in hand waiting for it next turn. The demon stole a blood from Muse.
Devin went for more Choir and got them through Carlton and Robb's minions, eventually using a Harmony to hit Robb for 6 again. Robb's pool was looking bad. Robb used Govern on a smaller guy and took two back, leaving Aisling up to block.
Ray decided that Devin's aggressiveness was too much and put a Red List on Angela. He followed with a Freak Drive and an Ivory Bow for Lucretia. That could cramp my style. Clitoris got a Laptop. Maybe I'd get a chance to play my reaction cards anyway, I thought.
Shalmath played Kiss to get me that AK. Then he untapped and got an Ambulance. Then he untapped with Domain and bled for 2. I had Steve and Paul bleed for one. Devin's pool was down to about 8. There was worried mutterings all around.
Devin pushed into Robb but didn't do much damage. He was forced to cut his aggressiveness short due to Carlton making him stealth through just about every action. He still bled Robb for some with Choir/Harmony, putting Robb dangerously low, but he didn't get the oust. Robb again Governed down with Selena and pulled two off during Influence.
Ray decided that he needed to get a Trophy:Domain. He marked with his MPA, then rushed. . .Angela Preston crosstable? Ivory Bow sent her to torpor, then Lucretia played a Forced March and diablerized for the Trophy. Lucretia and Clitoris had vote control. So now the Cess Queen was running some untap and intercept.
I had Shalmath bleed for 2, untap, and get Mr. Winthrop. Paul and Steve bled for one. Devin was on the ropes and wasn't going to live through another turn. Impundulu gained yet another life from a DoC.
Devin was in a tough spot. He tried to do some singing magic, but after tapping the Stealthy Palace of Loud Singing Shalmath caught Celeste and shot her full of bullets. I bled him again on his turn for two with the Cog, ousting him.
Robb said something like "Mark has to go." He played a Pentex on Shalmath, and left his guys untapped to stop my destroying it. Lucretia rushed Paul Calderone and Amaranthed him. I was just wondering how the hell I was going to stop Lucretia from ruining my game when I realized that Ray had done it for me.
I tapped most all my guys getting the Pentex gone. Impundulu finally did it. Shalmath bled for two and again on Robb's turn. During discard I burned Carlton and told Ray that Lucretia could leave. He realized his mistake and Robb conceded defeat soon after (Ray probably would have transferred out to him, but I think I had the endgame) in the name of playing a second game before the roleplaying session started. But first I managed to piss Robb off and foil his bounce with Tangle Atropos' Hand (which might be the main reason I play the card).
Me 3Vp and 1 GW, Robb 1 VP.
Game MVP: Carlton Van Wyk, who singlehandedly foiled the plans of an entire bloodline. Turns out Devin's aggressive Choir deck doesn't like standing intercept on either side of it during its run. I type this. . .smugly.
Devin(Toreador Who Call Banishment Instead of Good Votes)--->Me(Kiasyd Ravagers)--->Ray(Petaniqua Wall)--->Robb(Saulot isn't Big Enough So I Play Fakir Too).
This game was silly. Devin got up Anneke and Isabel De Leon, starting a Grand Ball to keep Anneke unblockable on votes. Anneke got an AK-47 via Alastor soon thereafter. Robb brought up Saulot and eventually Fakir al-Sidi. I got up Rodd March, who Governed out Isanwayan, who Governed out Andrew Emory. My guys all got two Vessels, and I played the Hungry Coyote on turn 1, so they hunted for two. I played Ravager on Roderick, and started influencing Omme Enberbenight, who I realized fucks up an otherwise decent Govern chain.
Ah well.
Ray pulled Almiro, Petaniqua, and Maldavis. He Merged Pantaniqua and then menaced us with her ridiculous "I don't need combat cards" text.
The game devolved quickly into Devin calling damaging votes, then me bloating, or Devin Banishing one of my guys, and me bloating and bringing them back out (only to take the blood back with the Vessel already on them). I bled Ray here and there, but he bounced a fair amount into Robb. I eventually got Omme. I was taunting Devin most of the time about not bleeding me, but then he got Alexandra and began bleeding me in earnest. This allowed me to Deflect quite a few bleeds. Somewhere in there Isanwayan got beat up for trying to hunt by Petaniqua, but I saved him before it became an issue. He became a Ravager the next turn.
I finally drew a Song of Pan, and lunged forward to bleed Ray down to about 4 pool. He untapped and bled for one with Almiro, which Robb was allowing because Ray was in a tough spot.
Rob had managed to get out Lord Ephraim, and he bled Devin for a few every turn with Fakir and Saulot. Robb's guys were all anarchs, but he didn't play any Monkey Wrench. He needed one badly.
I ousted Ray the next turn, drawing four Stone Travels to save my guys in case they found themselves in a fight with Petaniqua. Then Devin dropped The First Tradition and made me pay to play my turns. I pulled from all my Vessels (six in play now) and hunted unblockably with two of them. Robb didn't block. Devin realized that I wasn't going away as quickly as he thought. During the Masquerade I actually held a mini-paty of my own, a Festivo Dello Estinto, and hunted to fill up all my empty Vessels.
Robb got a Super Bowl on Lord Ephraim. He bled Devin down to an inch of his pool, but Devin finally drew Villein and pulled something like 12 from Anneke and Alexandra.
It went on like this. I told Robb that Devin was irritating me, and that I wouldn't bleed much, just hunt, until Devin was gone. This went pretty well. Robb destroyed the Grand Balls in play and then binned Alexandra when she tried to call an Alastor the next turn. Then he ousted Devin on his next go.
Robb and I played for a bit, but the other roleplayers had arrived and they were waiting on us. It was apparent that Robb was playing a lot of bleed reduction, and that I'd need to draw another Song of Pan to hurt him. The game would have taken a long time, as I could always hunt with my Ravagers for blood unblockably, and I had vote control so he wasn't going to diablerize any minions he managed to torporfy. On the flipside, he was playing Detect Authority for bleed reduction, and since most of my bonus bleed in the deck is tied into Song of Pan + Gremlins for a respectable three bleed at one stealth, it was gonna be a slog. Who runs out first: Me of minions or Robb of bleed reduction?
We called the game on account of time, declaring it a draw. No MVP.
-Merlin out
Anyway, they're not so strong. But they're fun, I think. I've been working on several True Brujah decks since I wrote the True Brujah newsletter some time ago. But until recently I'd ignored the four newer Trujah. I decided to give them a look and Shalmath caught my eye.
Shalmath isn't so good. But he untaps a lot. I like that. I ran through some scenarios and decided to give him a try in the next game I played. This is what I eventually created:
Deck Name: Thou Shal Not Math
Created by: Merlin
Description:
Crypt [12 vampires, average capacity: 6.5]
5x Shalmath POT PRE TEM 10 True Brujah:6
1x Tara POT PRE cel 6 Brujah:5 prince
1x Gatjil Munyarryun POT cel obt pre 5 Brujah antitribu:5
1x Paul Calderone cel pot pre 4 Brujah:5
1x Sisocharis cel obf pre 4 Follower of Set:5
1x Slag ani obf pot 4 Nosferatu:5
1x Stephen Milliner nec pre 3 Giovanni:5
1x Honest Abe pre 2 Brujah:5
Library [74 cards]
Master [21]
6x Ashur Tablets
1x Creepshow Casino
5x Development
1x Giant's Blood
1x Information Highway
1x Parthenon, The
1x Perfectionist
1x Research
1x Tabriz Assembly
2x Villein
1x Wider View
Action [10]
1x Clio's Kiss
2x Entrancement
2x Kiss of Lachesis
4x Summon History
1x Vaticination
Action Modifier [18]
1x Approximation of Loyalty
4x Domain of Evernight
2x Enkil Cog
2x Iron Glare
4x Pocket Out of Time
2x Recurring Contemplation
3x Tangle Atropos' Hand
Ally [7]
1x Carlton Van Wyk (Hunter)
1x Gypsies
1x Harzomatuili
1x Impundulu
1x Mylan Horseed (Goblin)
1x Tunnel Runner
1x Tye Cooper
1x Veneficti (Mage)
Equipment [6]
1x AK-47
1x Ambulance
1x Amulet of Temporal Perception
1x Ankara Citadel, Turkey, The
1x Assault Rifle
1x Laptop Computer
Reaction [8]
2x Lost in Translation
2x On the Qui Vive
2x Rewind Time
2x Touch of Pain
Retainer [1]
1x Mr. Winthrop
Combat [2]
2x Majesty
Crafted with: Anarch Revolt Deck Builder [Sun Aug 01 23:42:10 2010]
There's a lot of shit going on in there. In fact, the street value of the deck is actually quite astonishing. I realized this as I was playing it.
We had about two hours before our weekly dick-and-fart-joke laced roleplaying session, so I arranged a VTES game beforehand, mostly with the guys who were gonna roleplay anyway, and Ray.
First game, I decided to play my Shalmath deck. I announced to the table that I was playing a "silly" deck, and that I fully expected to lose. Robb said he was playing "filth". Devin and Ray were all mysterious and shit.
Ray(Lucretia Trophy)--->Me(Shalmath)--->Devin(DoC Harmony)--->Robb(Tremere/!Tremere "filth"[DOM bleed])
Things went well for me early on. I played a Wider View and a Dreams of the Sphinx on the first turn. In my mind's eye, when I had built the deck, I imagined a world where I had first turn mastercards to play, and I played them. I lived in that world. I didn't redraw any other masters and I didn't have good cardflow until I had minions. I discarded an AK-47.
Devin brought up the Muse, which signaled to the rest of the table that Shit was Real. Devin did this very smugly, insomuch as it is possible to influence a vampire into play smugly. He said, "Oh, we're playing two games tonight." He was smug, and he said this, because his Choir/Harmony deck is very aggressive. It pretty much crushes forward until it wins or dies.
Robb sighed and put 4 blood on Selena. Ray worked on Lucretia.
I was using Dreams to put a blood on Steve Milliner each turn while I put beads on Shalmath. Devin put a Choir in play with Muse, then had her Drive the Freak bus and Harmony. Then he Freaked again and bled for one. It seemed pretty good. He got Celeste in the Influence phase, smugly.
Robb got Selena and braced for the worst. Ray put more on Lucretia but didn't bring her out. I popped Steve and Shalmath the same turn.
Devin had Muse and Celeste put Choirs into play, and he had the Stealthy Palace of Loud Singing in play, so Robb failed to block one. Devin got Angela Preston and played a Hanging Fermata. He did this in a very smug way.
Robb Governed out Aisling and finished his turn. Ray finally got Lucretia.
I had Steve find the Impundulu. This demon was a last-minute addition to my deck, and I think it was a good one. I have seen it played in limited a bunch and it seems like a decent investment.
Shalmath Summoned an Ankara Citadel, untapped with Domain, bled Devin for three with an Iron Glare, getting an Enkil Cog, untapped, and summoned Carlton Van Wyk.
I got Paul Calderone in my influence phase. I did so with great humility. My hand was starting to pile up with reaction cards to play on bleeds: Rewind Time, Touch of Pain, Lost in Translation. I didn't want to discard them, in case Ray got frisky. But I really couldn't play them either. I decided that there was no reason to rush and didn't discard them.
Devin put some Choirs in play, though Robb and I (Carlton, rather) made him play stealth on nearly all of his actions. Carlton might've blocked one, as I recall, because when Devin finally played his last Choir to burn them he only (only?) hit for 6. I bled for 2 with Shalmath during Devin's minion phase.
Robb said something like "fuck it." and bled Ray for 2 with both his guys, using Bondings and Mirror Walks for stealth. Ray put Red List on the Impundulu and then got out Clitoris. Now I'm a huge fan of Clitoris, but he was sort of numb this game.
Steve had to hunt. I had Shalmath bleed again, and then I realized I was out of useful actions to take. However, I did want to get that AK-47 out of my ash heap with a Kiss of Lachesis. I tapped Shalmath and announced my action to move an action card to my Research Area, and Robb said, "you don't have a Research Area. You have to play the Research card first." I explained that I felt that his talk was crazy, and that in my opinion, all Methuselahs have a Research Area, but most of us can't add cards to it.
I haven't asked LSJ to confirm this, but it actually requires much less effort to assume I'm right and move on.
So I had Shalmath get me a Kiss. I had a Development in hand waiting for it next turn. The demon stole a blood from Muse.
Devin went for more Choir and got them through Carlton and Robb's minions, eventually using a Harmony to hit Robb for 6 again. Robb's pool was looking bad. Robb used Govern on a smaller guy and took two back, leaving Aisling up to block.
Ray decided that Devin's aggressiveness was too much and put a Red List on Angela. He followed with a Freak Drive and an Ivory Bow for Lucretia. That could cramp my style. Clitoris got a Laptop. Maybe I'd get a chance to play my reaction cards anyway, I thought.
Shalmath played Kiss to get me that AK. Then he untapped and got an Ambulance. Then he untapped with Domain and bled for 2. I had Steve and Paul bleed for one. Devin's pool was down to about 8. There was worried mutterings all around.
Devin pushed into Robb but didn't do much damage. He was forced to cut his aggressiveness short due to Carlton making him stealth through just about every action. He still bled Robb for some with Choir/Harmony, putting Robb dangerously low, but he didn't get the oust. Robb again Governed down with Selena and pulled two off during Influence.
Ray decided that he needed to get a Trophy:Domain. He marked with his MPA, then rushed. . .Angela Preston crosstable? Ivory Bow sent her to torpor, then Lucretia played a Forced March and diablerized for the Trophy. Lucretia and Clitoris had vote control. So now the Cess Queen was running some untap and intercept.
I had Shalmath bleed for 2, untap, and get Mr. Winthrop. Paul and Steve bled for one. Devin was on the ropes and wasn't going to live through another turn. Impundulu gained yet another life from a DoC.
Devin was in a tough spot. He tried to do some singing magic, but after tapping the Stealthy Palace of Loud Singing Shalmath caught Celeste and shot her full of bullets. I bled him again on his turn for two with the Cog, ousting him.
Robb said something like "Mark has to go." He played a Pentex on Shalmath, and left his guys untapped to stop my destroying it. Lucretia rushed Paul Calderone and Amaranthed him. I was just wondering how the hell I was going to stop Lucretia from ruining my game when I realized that Ray had done it for me.
I tapped most all my guys getting the Pentex gone. Impundulu finally did it. Shalmath bled for two and again on Robb's turn. During discard I burned Carlton and told Ray that Lucretia could leave. He realized his mistake and Robb conceded defeat soon after (Ray probably would have transferred out to him, but I think I had the endgame) in the name of playing a second game before the roleplaying session started. But first I managed to piss Robb off and foil his bounce with Tangle Atropos' Hand (which might be the main reason I play the card).
Me 3Vp and 1 GW, Robb 1 VP.
Game MVP: Carlton Van Wyk, who singlehandedly foiled the plans of an entire bloodline. Turns out Devin's aggressive Choir deck doesn't like standing intercept on either side of it during its run. I type this. . .smugly.
Devin(Toreador Who Call Banishment Instead of Good Votes)--->Me(Kiasyd Ravagers)--->Ray(Petaniqua Wall)--->Robb(Saulot isn't Big Enough So I Play Fakir Too).
This game was silly. Devin got up Anneke and Isabel De Leon, starting a Grand Ball to keep Anneke unblockable on votes. Anneke got an AK-47 via Alastor soon thereafter. Robb brought up Saulot and eventually Fakir al-Sidi. I got up Rodd March, who Governed out Isanwayan, who Governed out Andrew Emory. My guys all got two Vessels, and I played the Hungry Coyote on turn 1, so they hunted for two. I played Ravager on Roderick, and started influencing Omme Enberbenight, who I realized fucks up an otherwise decent Govern chain.
Ah well.
Ray pulled Almiro, Petaniqua, and Maldavis. He Merged Pantaniqua and then menaced us with her ridiculous "I don't need combat cards" text.
The game devolved quickly into Devin calling damaging votes, then me bloating, or Devin Banishing one of my guys, and me bloating and bringing them back out (only to take the blood back with the Vessel already on them). I bled Ray here and there, but he bounced a fair amount into Robb. I eventually got Omme. I was taunting Devin most of the time about not bleeding me, but then he got Alexandra and began bleeding me in earnest. This allowed me to Deflect quite a few bleeds. Somewhere in there Isanwayan got beat up for trying to hunt by Petaniqua, but I saved him before it became an issue. He became a Ravager the next turn.
I finally drew a Song of Pan, and lunged forward to bleed Ray down to about 4 pool. He untapped and bled for one with Almiro, which Robb was allowing because Ray was in a tough spot.
Rob had managed to get out Lord Ephraim, and he bled Devin for a few every turn with Fakir and Saulot. Robb's guys were all anarchs, but he didn't play any Monkey Wrench. He needed one badly.
I ousted Ray the next turn, drawing four Stone Travels to save my guys in case they found themselves in a fight with Petaniqua. Then Devin dropped The First Tradition and made me pay to play my turns. I pulled from all my Vessels (six in play now) and hunted unblockably with two of them. Robb didn't block. Devin realized that I wasn't going away as quickly as he thought. During the Masquerade I actually held a mini-paty of my own, a Festivo Dello Estinto, and hunted to fill up all my empty Vessels.
Robb got a Super Bowl on Lord Ephraim. He bled Devin down to an inch of his pool, but Devin finally drew Villein and pulled something like 12 from Anneke and Alexandra.
It went on like this. I told Robb that Devin was irritating me, and that I wouldn't bleed much, just hunt, until Devin was gone. This went pretty well. Robb destroyed the Grand Balls in play and then binned Alexandra when she tried to call an Alastor the next turn. Then he ousted Devin on his next go.
Robb and I played for a bit, but the other roleplayers had arrived and they were waiting on us. It was apparent that Robb was playing a lot of bleed reduction, and that I'd need to draw another Song of Pan to hurt him. The game would have taken a long time, as I could always hunt with my Ravagers for blood unblockably, and I had vote control so he wasn't going to diablerize any minions he managed to torporfy. On the flipside, he was playing Detect Authority for bleed reduction, and since most of my bonus bleed in the deck is tied into Song of Pan + Gremlins for a respectable three bleed at one stealth, it was gonna be a slog. Who runs out first: Me of minions or Robb of bleed reduction?
We called the game on account of time, declaring it a draw. No MVP.
-Merlin out
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)