Battling For Lines In Boston

I hadn't been planning to attend our V:TES storyline event, largely because I wasn't able to think up anything interesting to build for it. However, the week before the date of the event, I realized that I had already built two decks which sported storyline-compliant crypts, both of which I wanted to play more in order to tune them. So I headed south, to battle for lines. Battle with lines? Against lines? There were lines, and there was battling, so it all worked out in the end.

The decks in question are a Harbingers blood denial deck and a Kiasyd combat toolbox. I didn't make any changes to either one for the event, and I decided to choose the Loyalist faction, simply because that meant I'd be much less tempted to use the special card that choice granted me if I had a moment of weakness during play. Guide and Mentor has such a small effect on the game that I didn't think I'd ever feel the desire to tap it.

I'd played the Harbingers deck quite a bit more than the Kiasyd one, but I was worried that the elves would be a much more enticing prospect than the skulls for people who might really want to win. I really hate contesting, so I considered asking the other nine players who showed up for the tournament if either of those decks would cause issues with their own deck choices. In the end, I decided that everyone would probably be playing Baali and the scarce clans, and went with the Kiasyd. Mostly, that was a good guess, though my other metagame guesswork turned out to be totally wrong.

Round One - Suicide Prevention Hotline
Greg (Trujah vote) -> me -> Chris (Trujah vote) -> Prescott (Salubri) -> Matt (Baali stealth/bleed)

Greg brought out some titled Trujah, I brought out some elves, Chris brought out some titled Trujah, Prescott confused Matt by bringing out Matthew, and Matt brought out WhoEatsALottaBroccoli. Chris and Greg were both playing Lilith's Blessing, and each of them decided not to pay any pool for their vampires by abusing Villein and Blessing. As a result, it quickly became clear to me that I was never going to oust Chris, and Matt wasn't able to get much going against Greg. Matt bled with his three vampires each turn, but didn't really play any cards. I assumed that he was playing a bad deck, as Matt has a tendency to enjoy playing bad decks.

All this meant trouble for Prescott, who decided that his precarious position naturally meant that he should spend himself down to almost no pool. Chris obliged this suicidal urge by calling an unblocked oust-vote, but for some reason Greg decided that Chris shouldn't get the oust and voted it down. Maybe Greg thought he could sweep the table? By the time his next turn rolled around, Chris had apparently decided that Greg was right and that he shouldn't oust Prescott, so he played Golconda on Prescott's 10-cap. Meanwhile, Prescott had seemingly had a George Bailey revelation and decided that he wanted to live after all, so his vampire found religion and he found some pool. After that, nothing interesting happened. Everyone had bloat and lacked the muscle to move forward, so we hung our heads in shame and submitted to the dreaded zero-oust timeout.

My only real relevance in this game was to separate the two vote decks so that they would mostly agree to help each others' votes. This should have meant that Chris and Greg could run the table, but both of them made inexplicable choices, and the rest of us didn't seem to have much to do. I failed to get into any meaningful combats, which I began to realize was the point of my deck. I thought I'd built a deck geared toward an even mix of meaningful combat technology, ousting power and defense, but the latter two were definitely lacking, which was worrisome.

Round Two - Remember That Thing We Talked About?
Dave (Salubri wall) -> Greg -> Max (Gargoyle bruise/bleed) -> Jen (Kiasyd stealth/bleed) -> me

Jen was more committed than I was to this tournament, so she had actually put in the effort to build something new for the event. That was good, because it meant that she was able to use vampires from groups that I hadn't allowed myself access to, which meant that we were able to mostly avoid contestation issues in three consecutive games.

Dave brought out Solomon Batanea, who was the worst minion who could possibly show up in my prey's ready region. Intercept and combat defense? I didn't roll into town with a Plan C. Nonetheless, I resolved to try to give Dave as much free rein as I could, since I figured that Greg wasn't going to be interested in paying for his vampires, just like in round one. He wasn't, but he was quite keen on mangling Max's pool. Max lacked bloat or rush, so he decided to power forward. His bleeds all slid down the conduit of Jen's bleed bounce into my lap, but that worked out pretty well for me, since I wasn't going to be able to block Jen anyway and blocking Max allowed me to cycle combat cards which would have been utterly wasted against Dave.

As luck would have it, Dave was experiencing some critical issues with his hand at the same time that I drew into a big chunk of oust. Dave had gotten Matthias into play, but wasn't doing much to stop Greg, who had already ousted Max at this point, so I decided to see if I could punch through Dave's defenses and start working on Greg's pool. Amusingly, Dave and I had been talking about whether or not Pentex is problematic for the game before the tournament had begun, and now Dave found his untapped +1 intercept minon scared of a van outside his apartment. After that led to my victory point, I was forced to concede that while Pentex might be bad for the game, it was certainly good for my game. Jen and I struggled gamely on, but Greg didn't have much trouble blasting through us, walking away with four VPs.

Round Three - The Broccoli Gambit Unveiled
Max -> me -> Matt -> Jen -> Peter (Trujah vote)

Matt brought out WhoEatsALottaBroccoli again, but this time showed me that my initial assessment of his deck had been wrong. It wasn't that he'd built a bad deck, but that he hadn't drawn what seemed to be the key to his deck, Call the Great Beast. Amidst a lot of talk of Broccoli Lessons and Vegetable Hats, I managed to fend off Max's bleeds, using my supposed combat offense as bleed defense. As Jen hammered into Peter, Matt's CTGB got a Contagion, which I was totally cool with. Jen ousted Peter and everyone else continued to grind away at their respective preys, with both Matt and I having some success.

Omme got Condemned to sit in front of the computer and play Doom rather than take actions, which hampered my ability to go forward somewhat, but thankfully Max started turning his attention elsewhere. He used Lucinde to rush one of Jen's vampires, and shortly after that Matt ousted her. Lucinde then paid the CTGB a visit, sending the Beast to naptime after Matt realized that he hadn't given it Presence and so couldn't play the Majesty in his hand. I assured Max that if he diablerized the Beast I'd vote to keep him alive in the blood hunt, and he agreed that this was a good idea. For a change, I managed to keep my word during a tournament, and didn't vote to burn Max's diablerist.

Not too long after Matt lost his star vampire, I unleashed the oust that I'd been piling up in my hand for most of the game, including a Conditioning that had been sitting in the Storage Annex since turn three. He blocked one of my bleeds but ran out of wake after that, and I nabbed a VP. I dropped Pentex on Lucinde and torporized both of Max's other vampires with the first Arms/Swords combats that actually managed to have an effect on this tournament, at which point he conceded.

Final Table - Arms Can't Help You Now
Jen -> Dave -> Ben (Nagaraja intercept/combat) -> Greg -> me

I had third choice of seating, meaning first actual choice of seating, and decided to prey on Jen rather than Dave. I'd like to claim that this was a clever way to glean more play data for my deck, since preying on Dave would have put me into the same initial predator/prey relationships that I had in round two, but actually I was just tired and thought that I'd have an easier time ousting Jen than Dave. That turned out not to be the case, but not because of anything either of them did, so choosing the other available seat might not have made any difference.

Greg chose to prey on me, which I thought wouldn't be so bad. Trujah can't generate a whole lot of stealth, and I had a fair sprinkling of intercept in my deck, so I figured he'd have a really tough time getting through me. Before we started transferring, Jen and I talked about our crypt options, and I saw that I'd be forced to play with The Arcadian and Omme, as my other guys were about to appear in her ready region. I figured I could dig around for a third minion once I'd stabilized my postion and beaten Greg back a bit. File that under "best laid plans."

I brought out The Arcadian first, so that he could Govern down to Omme. Before either of us had a second minion in play, Greg attempted to initiate some hostility towards my pool. I had an Arms and a Swords in hand, which made me feel safe, so I blocked. Greg promptly played Domain of Evernight at basic and Outside the Hourglass at superior, dumping me into torpor before there was a window for me to play any combat cards. Annoying, but not a huge deal, as I had no problem self-rescuing on my next turn. I proceeded to get out Omme at the same time that Greg got out a second Trujah. With Omme's priscus title, we now each had an equal number of votes in play. I knew he had votepush in his deck, but figured that Omme's votes would at least slow Greg down a bit.

During all this, Jen was bleeding heavily into Dave. She got him down to three pool and then sputtered out. Dave launched headlong into activities such as drawing a line in the sand, digging his heels into the ground, scrabbling desperately for purchase, and so on and so forth. He managed to build back up a bit, eventually having one vampire with Sight Beyond Sight and the Bowl of Convergence and another with +1 intercept. He explained to Jen unequivocally, several times, that he was going to put her vampires into torpor every time he got the chance to do so. During all this, Ben bled steadily into Greg, without apparent effect on Greg's plans. (Remember, Greg chose not to pay any pool for his vampires during this tournament.)

Greg took another action to reduce my pool while The Arcadian was tapped, Omme was untapped, and I had no wakes in hand. I still had that same Arms and Swords in hand, so I figured I'd block, since the chances of Greg dropping the Domain/Hourglass combo again weren't very good. What could go wrong? Of course, Greg unstoppably torporized Omme, which very neatly left him with votelock. The next Trujah in line chowed down on delicious elfmeats, and I was down to one minion. I tried to explain to Greg that I was pretty sure his move had been a mistake, since I now couldn't do anything at all to Jen for the rest of the game, because all of the other guys in my uncontrolled region were already controlled by Jen.

V:TES isn't normally much of a spectator sport, but I did have a good time watching Jen and Dave interact, which was good since I didn't have much left to do in the game at that point. Jen attempted to take a Guide and Mentor action to get an archetype for Kassiym, and Dave blocked him and sent him to torpor with a string of four prevent/press cards. That made for some highly compelling comedy, as we got to watch this conversation iterate itself exactly, four times in a row, with increasing vehemence on both sides:

Dave: "Press to continue."
Jen: "But I'm not doing anything to you right now!"
Dave: "I already told you that I was going to do this."
Jen: "Fine."
[repeat]

I drew a Great Symposium shortly thereafter, and had enough pool to grab my second copy of Omme and get him into play. Greg was unimpressed and called votes to oust me, which Ben wasn't able to block. I retired from the table at this point, because some of the other people who hadn't made the finals were starting up a new game elsewhere, so I'm not sure exactly how the table shook out. I do know that Jen won in the end, adding a Kiasyd/Loyalist victory to the rolls.

Non-V:TES Bonus Round - Vikingmans
Prescott wanted to play more V:TES, for some bizarre reason. Thankfully, we were able to talk him down from that particular ledge, and Matt taught us how to play Eketorp.

Eketorp is a worker-placement game like a lot of others, except that in this game your mans are vikings, not farmers. So rather than getting to the area first and taking more stuff than other players' mans deployed to that area, the mans in Eketorp fight each other if there aren't enough resources to go around. Those resources are used to build your base, and your mans can also be sent out to smash other peoples' bases.

As with most games, the preliminary rules explanation made the game sound much more complicated than it actually was. Each turn, resources drop onto the board randomly, everyone secretly assigns destinations for their mans, the mans fight it out and carry home resources, and then mans who got beat up earlier in the game get better. Pretty simple stuff, but it's got a lot of interaction between the individual mechanics that add nice bits of tasty design.

For example, combat is conducted via War - each player has a hand of cards with numbers on them, both players play a hidden card, and the higher card wins. But there are two fun twists to that system. The first is that the card you play is given to your opponent, so winning with a high card guarantees a win for one of your opponents at some time in the future. The cards you get from other players in this manner don't go into your hand right away, though, which is the other clever mechanic. You don't get to pick up the cards you've received until your current hand is empty, which gives combat a more strategic feel than it first appeared to have. Rather than just using your highest card during your most important fight of the turn, you have to consider what the long-term consequences of giving away such a powerful card are, and try to mitigate those by giving that card to one of the players who's not doing well.

Everyone had a good time playing this, though there didn't seem to be any particular long-term strategies so much as reacting to a continually evolving situation and trying to outguess your opponents. I'm not sure if that's due to the nature of the game itself or just because most of us playing had never played it before. For a relatively light, fast-playing game, it was a lot of fun, and it's definitely a game I'm looking forward to playing again.