V:TES On V:TES Night

Mike had been agitating for our V:TES group to actually play some V:TES on V:TES night, which seemed like a reasonable request, so we capitulated. While we were arranging seating, Max asked if anyone had a six-sided die that he could borrow. I thought that was odd, since Max is one of our newer players, and I didn't think he owned six different decks from which he'd want to choose randomly.

Game One - Crazy Go Nuts University
me (Art of Memory stealth/bleed) -> Mike (aus/dem/obf stealth/bleed) -> Max (aus/dom/obf stealth/bleed) -> Tony (the weirdest Ravnos) -> Ben (Kiasyd toolbox)

Three decks featuring Malks and Malk antis! Five decks capable of generating non-trivial bleeds at stealth, four of which also featured bleed bounce! Almost zero combat or intercept! I felt like I'd been taking crazy pills. It was particularly strange to be the only deck at the table which couldn't redirect bleeds, given how much I love the wu wei involved in that particular jujitsu trick, and how often the other people in my playgroup don't play with bounce.

I started the game with three Effective Managements in my hand, which wasn't necessarily a bad thing, since the deck I was playing has some definite crypt issues. After playing the first one, I had all three of the vampires I cared about in my uncontrolled region, so I just discarded the others. Mike brought out some aus/obf nerds and Max brought out J. Ozzy White, explaining his need for a die. Tony brought out Gwen Brand, Ben put Isanwayen into play, I influenced out Hagar Stone, and we were all ready to get the bleedfest started.

Tony's deck was noteworthy for how confusing it was for us to figure out what it was, exactly. First he brought out Gwen Brand, who attempted to put a Nightmare Curse on one of Ben's elves. This led me to think that Tony was trying out the new Ravnos with Auspex, but I was thrown off the scent when he later played a Dominate skillcard on Vassily Taltos. Some time after that, he discarded a Magic of the Smith, reducing me yet again to a state of bewilderment. In terms of its functioning, it operated like most other stealth/bleed decks, with the Dominate giving it access to bounce and somewhat more bleed punch than the Ravnos can usually generate. But surely there was more at work here?

The game proceeded as you might expect, with a lot of stealthy bleeds getting tossed around the table. I managed to nullify a few of the redirections and reductions with Hide the Minds and Touches of Clarity, recycled via Arts of Memory. Ben bled into me fairly hard, depleting four to six of my pool each turn, much to Tony's consternation. I went the eco-friendly route and recycled all of my Reunion Kamuts, and then used Villeins to move the blood on those discounted vampires into my pool, which allowed me to stay a step ahead of Ben's bleeds while I chipped away at Mike's pool.

At about the same time that Tony put Week of Nightmares into play and my pool was starting to get low enough for me to be concerned, Matt (who'd been waiting in the other room for someone to be ousted so that he and some others could start a new game) wandered in and said, "Hey, Ben, are you playing a starter? Yeah, let's see, all your cards have the same expansion symbol on them, and that just happens to be the same expansion that had the starter for this clan. You playing a starter?" My worries that Ben might oust me via expedient use of Tony's bleeds were gently lifted from me, as the cool breeze clears the fog after a heavy rain.

Max transferred out a surprise late-game Helena just before I ousted Mike, and as expected, Ben folded shortly thereafter. Max laid into the six pool Tony had just earned, putting him near ousting just before I took out Max. Tony got in one more turn of heavy bleeding and sewed up Hagar's face, but all for nought as I snuck past him to grab the last two VPs.

After the game was over, Tony revealed that he hadn't been playing a Ravnos deck at all, but an Aidan Lyle deck, which suddenly made the game we'd just played make a whole lot more sense. Oh, perfidious Chimerstry! It had fooled me into perceiving Tony's dashed hopes as a group of Ravnos. Truly, Sigfried and Roy would've been proud of these masters of illusion. Using Aidan and Ankara Citadel to put out a bunch of cheap Sense Deps and Nightmare Curses is actually a pretty great idea, and hopefully Tony will get it working with a little more reliability.

I told Tony and Max about the insight my deck's godfather, Darby Keeney, had revealed to me when I'd asked him about it. The deck looks less sleazy than vanilla stealth/bleed, because it's doing extra tricks and has more cogs in the machine than just Govern/stealth/Conditioning, but it's actually more sleazy because it's so much less reliant on lucking into good matchups. Tony agreed that it's as sleazy as a used-car salesman, so we talked about putting a copy of Well-Aimed Car into my deck, as the deck does have a smattering of incidental maneuvers and presses, and a third of the crypt happens to have Potence as well. While waiting for the other game to finish up, we killed some time marvelling at the high prices of boardgame expansions and lamenting the twin sadnesses called Potence and Celerity. Eventually, the other guys completed their chapter in the Grand Jyhad and we re-convened for another game.

Game Two - Sticking Rocks In the Meat Grinder
me (Harbingers blood denial) -> Ben (Gargoyles) -> Tony (Nosferatu fightin' royalty) -> Max (aus/dom/obf stealth/bleed) -> Matt (Gargoyle Laboratory)

Ah, this was more like it. Whatever conditions had caused the weird dimensional warp which had landed me in what appeared to be a French tournament metagame were apparently dissipated by this point, so there was plenty of combat to be had. Being squashed between the two gargoyle decks made me very happy that I'd chosen to play a deck packing S:CE on top of both permanent and transient damage prevention.

Ben brought out some new school Gargoyles, Tony brought out Cock Robin, Max brought out William Biltmore and J. Ozzy White, and Matt brought out Erinyi and a bunch of Tremere. I had Solomon Batanea and Babalawo in play just in time to block Matt's first Create Gargoyle action, so he switched focus to building up Erinyi instead. She got a Dominate skillcard and was twice Experimented upon with great Biothaumaturgicality. Since she wasn't a slave, though, I could safely block the bleeds of the Tremere and just bounce hers to Ben.

Ben and Tony got into a couple of tussles, which inevitably ended badly for Tony, in spite of his Preternatural Cock Strength. Ben taught us all a valuable lesson in how you can play a combat deck, sit next to another combat deck, and not automatically self-destruct, and the theme of that lesson was Damage Prevention. This was a lesson I've already learned, so I managed to keep all of my vampires out of torpor in spite of being surrounded by a bunch of strength increasers, Razor Bats, Lead Fists and a whole shedful of Raking Talons.

I got Mordechai into play and managed to make him a laibon for the first time ever. He also got Well-Marked during the same turn. That's about it for how extensively my actions affected the table; I did some building up and messing around with my vampires, but didn't impact anyone sitting next to me very much. In spite of the fact that I've never gotten anything short of a game win when I've played this deck, almost every time I play it, there's a period during which I feel like I'm out of sync with the rest of the table, which is moving more quickly than I am. This always fills me with worry. As an example of how the rest of the table was doing stuff while I fiddled and futzed, Matt spent himself pretty low by bringing out more vampires, so Max did the obvious thing and ousted him. That was fine with me. Since my Harbingers have a lot of bleed bounce, I didn't mind one or two girthy bleeds at stealth coming at me every turn.

I put an Antediluvian Awakening (a card I've recently fallen in love with) into play, which finally made me feel like I was generating some forward motion. Ben chewed through all of Tony's vampires and finally managed to land an ousting bleed, but he'd spent so much blood doing so that most of his vampires had to hunt. Morechai had successfully completed Operation Dumbo Drop by this point, and he was able to block those hunts and introduce Ben's minions to Mr. Stampy. My Ossian also hit a few of Ben's guys with a hearty GRRR before one of them fought back and crippled him, but he'd done his job and Ben's ready region was a shambles. I re-gifted Ben with several of the bleeds that Max gave me, and then managed to squeak one through myself to oust him.

Max was apparently low on stealth, as I managed to catch two of his vampires who attempted to bleed me and smacked them around a little bit. I had also finally drawn into a Lazerene Inquisitor and began stripping blood from his guys. Max decided that his chances of climbing over the top of my intercept before I could take his vampires down weren't reasonable and decided to concede.

Maabaara was once again my MVP card. I had assumed it was garbage before I threw it into this deck, and I'd only done that because the deck used to have one copy of each of the Harbinger clan cards in it. It's proven itself to be highly valuable every time I've drawn it, even in spite of the fact that I usually use it in a boneheaded fashion to retrieve master cards, which is much less efficient than using it to recur minion cards. (As further proof of how smart I am, it happened on three separate occasions during this game that I put a card on top of my library and then was amazed two minutes later that I'd happened to draw the exact card that I needed, before remembering that said draw wasn't such a miracle after all.) This deck needs a fairly significant overhaul, as the abundance of laibon tech isn't working out as well as I'd like for the amount of effort I put into shoehorning it in, and I'm seriously considering adding a second copy of Maabaara and a couple of Parthenons to maximize my use of it.