Origins Reportage #2: All The Flavor of Real Victory, But With None of the Calories

After the first Thursday tournament, Karl and I had time to run across the street and get some lunch at the North Market, a dense cluster of high-quality takeout eateries all under one roof, featuring just about every kind of food that I like. I grabbed some bowtie pasta in a thick chipotle sauce that's making my mouth water just to think of it, as well as a tall bottle of Shakespeare Stout, a favorite beer of mine which isn't currently available to buy in New Hampshire. Thus fortified against the rage and regret I'd had churning in my gut after the first tournament of the day, I returned to the convention hall to try to salvage a bit of my self-esteem.

After my comprehensive lack of victory point gain during the first tournament, I decided to switch gears as much as possible. Imitation Keeney is a deck that's all offense, relying on speed and some light bloat to not be ousted. Nunsploitation is the most heavily defensive deck I've got built at the moment, so I pulled it out and sat down to see how I'd fare with something that proceeds at a much more stately pace than the frenetic Black Hand aggression.

Round One: Double-Barreled Rant Blast
me (Nunsploitation) -> Brad (Brujah Alastor) -> Mark (Shadow Twins & Nocturns) -> Jay (Multi-Taskamites) -> Thomas (Imbued with Stakes)

Thomas had just barely had time to influence out his first imbued before he launched into a heated tirade directly into my face, loudly decrying the claims I hadn't actually made that the imbued are a natural table threat which need to be ousted before anyone else can play. I tried to explain to him that I'd nearly worn through the fabric of the newsgroup with my own ardent defenses of the imbued, back when debating about them online was all the rage, but Thomas was too busy scolding some nonexistent persecutor to have time to listen to me. He brought out The Unmasking on the first turn, which struck me as a potential problem. I brought out Antediluvian Awakening on my first turn, which probably struck the rest of the table as an actual problem.

Thankfully, Thomas dialed down the vehemence a bit once the game got going and no one other than Jay was actually trying to oust him. I blocked a couple of Thomas's attempts to get Vigilance on his imbued, knowing that said power is generally the kiss of death for its prey, as well as one Alastor vote that Brad attempted to call. Thomas rushed my vampires a few times, but his imbueds' Stakes failed to penetrate the rocky crust of my damage prevention. Unfortunately, this led Thomas to believe that he had no chance of ever ousting me and gave up on trying to bleed me, which wasn't conducive to my plan to oust Brad by bouncing a lot of bleeds for two at one stealth.

Jay bled with some stealthed Flurries of Action, and Thomas was now totally convinced that he was condemned to be ousted, in spite of the fact that Jay wasn't doing much else to him aside from a single damaging vote, so he started rushing Jay. Jake Washington blocked a rush which Thomas had attempted under Second Sight, proving yet again what a versatile minions he is. Unfortunately, the computer nerd with no legs wasn't able to hold off Thomas more than once, and a combination of Thomas's backrushing, Mark's vampires Shadow Twinning the Assamites, and a bunch of shadow-demon-ninja peppering Jay's pool with little bleeds led to Jay's oust.

Brad attempted to call Alastor again, and I let him have it, worried that Mark would get away with the table otherwise. I'd come to the conclusion that Brad wasn't going to be able to affect Mark in any kind of substantial way without giving Dmitra a big gun and a built-in rush. Brad obliged my prescience and began shooting up Mark's vampires. One of them got Famed and Rambo'd into torpor, but Mark wisely burned him to blow up the Antediluvian Awakening, thereby removing most of my offensive power.

Thomas had apparently given up entirely on ever trying to oust me at this point and simply turned himself rightward, doing his best to clear out Mark's ready region before he was ousted. He failed. I was the next to go, done in by some stratagem of Mark's that was so clever that it surged forward through time and erased my current memory of its existence. My notes say that I was ousted next, but my brain refuses to acknowledge that it happened, indicating a truly guileful play on Mark's part. I'm not surprised. That guy is sharp. He wasn't canny enough to stop Brad from torporizing all his vampires and taking the last two VPs after he ousted me, but as the mathematicians in the crowd have already figured out, that didn't matter in terms of who got the table win.

Round Two: Damn Those Spaniels!
me -> Karl (Karl's Got a Key In His Pocket) -> James (Assamite Black Hand combat toolbox) -> Dave (Potence Princes) -> Bob (Presence/Protean)

Spaniels? Okay, I'll freely admit that I don't know what a Papillon is. Wikipedia tells me that it's a breed of dog, as well as a restaurant in California, and that it's also French for "butterfly." I can't see what any of those have to do with James Dean or vampires, though. I do know that the damn thing cost me a game (and almost certainly won me several more, two days later, but keep it in your pants and wait for those reports) which might have gotten me into the finals, and that in spite of the fact that I had ghosts. Ghosts which I could have retrieved and sent on another mission. After getting them back from the morgue. V:TES is weird when you try to make sense of it in terms of a coherent narrative.

While we'd been arranging our travel plans to the convention, Karl had asked me if I had any interesting decks which he could borrow. For a while he used to write the Kiasyd newsletter, and he'd mentioned that he hadn't picked up any of the new Heirs set, so I told him about the Kiasyd bruise/bleed deck I'd played in our storyline tournament. He wanted to borrow it but thought it was too toolboxy, so I tightened it up a bit, honed it down to be more straightforward and handed it to him to borrow. As a result, I had a bit of what you might call an unfair advantage during this round, since I knew better than my prey did what the contents of his deck were.

James's Joe Hill had no use for a vampire with superior Dominate on his right, so he immediately put a Hand Contract on Isanwayen and rushed hir. Xe maneuvered to long range and Joe puked death on hir, sending hir to torpor. This set the precedent for what would be a long string of violent elf-bashing incidents that continued throughout the game. Karl spent as at least as much time rebuilding his ready region as he did taking any other actions, though some of his bleeds did manage to land, making James want to engage in even more hate crime against elves.

Bob brought out Nehsi and tried Enchanting some Kindred at superior, which actions I cycled my intercept against. Weirdly, the card cycles turned into successful blocks, and Bob was soon on the ropes as a result of me possibly not paying as much attention to his deck as I should have. His second vampire was Boss Callihan, and I told him that I appreciated his efforts to make Protean/Presence work, and then later confessed that I was confused at to why I hadn't seen him play any Obfuscate cards. Not the brightest kid in class, me. Dave also blocked a few of Bob's actions with Second Traditions, but for the most part left his prey alone in order to focus on building up his own position.

Bob Joseph has a long-running joke with me, which is that all of my decks are combat decks of one kind or another. Or maybe he doesn't think it's a joke. I don't remember which decks I've played against him, which is part of the reason that I wanted to start recording my plays and began writing this blog. In any case, there was a great moment during this game when one of Karl's vampires pulled off a successful Arms/Swords combo and sent the opposing Assamite to torpor, and a light suddenly came on above Bob's head as he said, "Of course it's got combat! It's one of John Eno's decks!" I really need to oust that guy with Choirs some day.

Karl kept fighting the good fight, and I didn't do much to him aside from occasionally bleeding for one and sometimes Lazarenely Inquisitating his Blood Doll. The Arcadian got a hot bleed of five past the Assamites, who weren't playing a whole lot of Ministry, but then Archons Investigated him for cheating at Galaga and Karl's game was about done. He'd beaten up James's pool pretty well, and had tapped out to burn my Lazarene Inquisitor, so I decided to try for the lunge. Two Trochomancies later, he was gone, and I was able to remove James's last pool during the same turn.

Dave finally decided to get around to taking out Bob, and we faced each other down in the heads-up. He had out quite a few more vampires than I did, and he managed to successfully Dispute my Maabara Territory, stripping me of my recursion tech. I thought I might have a chance of beating him anyway, as his vampires were pretty low on blood and blood denial is what my Harbingers do, but he drew into a run of Second Traditions and I wasn't able to successfully recruit any zombies. Dave's Papillon kept his vampires just healthy enough that I couldn't round the corner and achieve minion superiority, and before long my only remaining ready minion was Solomon Batanea. He held out against five of Dave's Potence vampires for quite a long time, but eventually he was made Famous. I was down to three pool and one blood on Solomon, and had to block a KRC that Dave's Preternaturally Strong Nikolaus called. I played a wake and Enhanced Senses, hoping to draw into more damage prevention, but didn't see any. Dave ousted me just as he ran out of library. It was an extremely intense endgame, and the first game I've gotten to play with that particular Dave in quite a while, so I was happy with the game in spite of not getting the GW. At least I managed to score a few victory points before the day was done, thus salving my ego a bit.

Decklist
Deck Name : Nunsploitation
Author : John Eno
Description : Harbingers blood denial/prey grinder, with plenty of defense. Now with Shambling Hordes for added minion control. Don't plan on getting more than three VPs.

Crypt [12 vampires] Capacity min: 5 max: 8 average: 6.5
------------------------------------------------------------
3x Mordechai Ben-Nun 8 ANI AUS FOR NEC Harbinger:5
3x Babalawo Alafin 7 AUS FOR NEC ani Harbinger:4
3x Sennadurek 6 AUS NEC dom Nagaraja:4
3x Solomon Batanea 5 AUS FOR nec Harbinger:4

Library [78 cards]
------------------------------------------------------------
Master [15]
2x Antediluvian Awakening
3x Blood Doll
1x Fame
1x Giant's Blood
2x Lazarene Inquisitor
2x Maabara
2x Parthenon, The
2x Perfectionist

Action [5]
1x Haunt
3x Restoration
1x Well-Marked

Action Modifier [8]
4x Call of the Hungry Dead
4x Trochomancy

Ally [8]
8x Shambling Hordes

Combat [16]
2x Hidden Strength
2x Indomitability
3x Resilience
3x Rolling with the Punches
4x Spiritual Intervention
2x Weighted Walking Stick

Equipment [3]
1x Bowl of Convergence
1x Kevlar Vest
1x Sawed-Off Shotgun

Event [1]
1x Scourge of the Enochians

Reaction [22]
4x Enhanced Senses
6x Eyes of Argus
2x My Enemy's Enemy
3x On the Qui Vive
7x Telepathic Misdirection

Jay Kristoff took a look at this deck after the tournament, and told me that he wants me to defend Mob Connections here. He's the master of this kind of deck, and I wouldn't want to let him down as my friend, so I plan to give that a try. I think the Maabara/Parthenon tech, while fun, is just slowing the deck down at this point, since I've played it enough to not need the extra MPA handicap. A bit more fight is needed, and I'm going to ditch the Spiritual Interventions for more damage prevention and Stick tech. The Interventions were a holdover from when the deck was more focused on the laibon Harbingers, who would get an Elephant Guardian and play the Interventions at basic for hilarious elephant-stomping good times, but I'm jaded to those simple pleasures now and that day has come and gone.

The crypt just isn't working, unfortunately, as every time I see Sennadurek come out, I get excited at first and later disappointed when she doesn't pull her own weight. She's a great vampire and I aim to find a good deck to feature her in, but this isn't it. I'm going to replace her with some appropriate Auspex/Fortitude vampires. The worst part of the crypt change is that I'll now have to make the hardest decision of all when it comes to tuning decks: coming up with a new name for it.

Origins Reportage #1: Inauspicious Beginnings

This year, I didn't make it to Columbus in time for Jay Kristoff's traditional pre-Origins tournament. I was a bit relieved, since I've never gotten even a single victory point in the previous three such tournaments I attended, and I've got just enough of a superstitious streak to begin to suspect that I might be cursed to suck in those Wednesday night tournaments. I thought that starting on Thursday morning would work out better for me. Hmm.

Round One: Well, That Was Fast
me (Art of Memory stealth/bleed) -> Mark (Ventrue tap and bleed) -> Connor (Kindred Spirits stealth/bleed) -> Dave (Vignes)

Once we all had our first vampires out, Mark said, "At least we're not going to time out." Dave commented that this was possibly the most boring table of V:TES he'd ever played, and I agreed. Aside from attempting and failing to start a conversation about whether Luccia Paciola was a better vampire with +1 strength or the two hand damage listed on the copy Mark was using, I don't remember a lot about what happened during this game. The game went so quickly that I really didn't have time to make notes, but I suspect that there just wasn't anything noteworthy going on.

I was ousted first, in about fifteen minutes. Dave bled out Mark next, and then Connor, and we walked away from the table with our faces burning in shame. Twenty-four minutes had passed since the judge had started the tournament. No one said it out loud, but in my heart I know that we four players had made a tacit agreement never to speak of this game again. I only feel that I can write about it now because people need to know. People need to know.

While I wandered away from the playing area to get more coffee, I began to wonder if my formulation of the method by which I suck was wrong. With another game to go, though, I figured that I could at least get one VP, given that I was playing an extremely aggressive deck. Ahem.

Round Two: The Black Hand Gives Me the Finger
me -> Darby (Dancing In Kiev) -> David (Lasombra anarch toolbox) -> Dave (Twelve Models of Saqqaf and Allonzo) -> Hugh (Kindred Spirits stealth/bleed)

Apparently, the Black Hand decided to punish me for allowing them to be disgraced with such ease by Edward Vignes's pals. I started the game with the worst crypt draw that I could get, literally - one Black Hand vampire and the other three non-BH guys. When Darby brought out one of the new Blood Brothers, I thought I'd be able to oust him quickly and then use the oust-bonus pool to cycle my crypt to get to more Black Hand vampires and get them out cheaply via Reunion Kamuts. Once Hugh brought up one of the standard Kindred Spirits vampires, I knew that I was doomed no matter how much I chastised the wily Brit for playing such sleaze. I launched into haranguing him anyway, figuring that I might as well get in some cheeky comments before I was ousted and forced to remain silent, lest I secretly coach one of the remaining players via an elaborate system of coded insults and snark. Or have I said too much already?

I have no idea what Dave's deck was supposed to do. He got out an Edge Vitiation and didn't do much else. I'm sure he had a plan, but like the cylons, he didn't seem to be able to execute it in any meaningful way. I thought I had a pretty good chance of ousting Darby, but his bloat dance was both mysterious and powerful, the kind of artistic statement that both beguiles and entrances, and I didn't seem to be able to make his pool go away in any fashion that he chose to regard as permanent. David tried to help out, at one point torporizing one of Darby's guys and giving him the Hell-for-Leather treatment, but Darby just kept putting those pool beads back.

Hugh ran out of bleed cards, presumably because he was choking on stealth since I never tried to block him, but since my deck foolishly didn't have any bounce, I had to eat every bleed up until that point. My Reunion/Freak/recur Reunion engine wasn't working, due to my awful crypt draw. Darby was taking so many actions with each of his four vampires every turn that David started using counters to keep track of which vampire had performed which action, just so that we didn't accidentally violate NRA. Fortunately for him, keeping tabs on who was up to what didn't prevent David from ousting Dave, which meant that I had bounced Dominate bleeds to look forward to, in addition to the other troubles I was encountering as a result of being snubbed by the Hand.

All in all, things were looking grim. I got Darby down to a lowish amount of pool, so he shifted to a more aggressive choreography and began rushing me during the dreaded Oppugnant Night. After diablerizing poor Marge Khan, my only Black Hand vampire, Hugh's priscus decided that the Blood Brothers were good little tools and didn't burn the diablerist. Though I pleaded with him to do so, David wasn't able to save me from my own sorriness, and Hugh kindly put me out of my misery by ousting me. Hugh then proceeded to oust Darby and David.

After the second round, I realized that it's my first game at the week of Origins that will go horribly and result in me gaining zero VPs. I bemoaned my scientifically unavoidable fate to Will Kristoff, who is a smart lad and conceived of the notion of a five-player invitational tournament the night before Jay's tournament, in order to work the stagnant mojo out of my system before the rated events begin. Evan apparently has about the same track record as I do for his first Origins tournament each year, and agreed that this was a fantastically out-of-the-box idea. We just need three more takers. Are you going to Origins next year, and do you expect to be an easy VP during your first tournament there? Let's work this out together.

Decklist
Deck Name : Imitation Keeney
Author : John Eno
Description : Stealth/bleed with Art of Memory for hand management.

Crypt [12 vampires] Capacity min: 5 max: 8 average: 7
------------------------------------------------------------
1x Bloody Mary 8 AUS DEM OBF pre primogen Malkavian:5
1x Persephone Tar-Ani 8 AUS DEM OBF cel pot !Malkavian:4
3x White Lily 8 DEM OBF cel dom for !Malkavian:4
3x Marge Khan 7 DEM OBF POT aus for !Malkavian:5
3x Hagar Stone 6 AUS DEM obf !Malkavian:5
1x Apache Jones 5 DEM aus for obf !Malkavian:4

Library [80 cards]
------------------------------------------------------------
Master [10]
4x Ashur Tablets
1x Giant's Blood
1x Pentex(TM) Subversion
4x Villein

Action [19]
11x Kindred Spirits
2x Restructure
6x Reunion Kamut

Action Modifier [40]
11x Art of Memory, The
4x Confusion
4x Elder Impersonation
5x Eyes of Chaos
4x Faceless Night
5x Freak Drive
4x Lost in Crowds
3x Spying Mission

Action Modifier / Reaction [3]
3x Touch of Clarity

Action Modifier/Combat [8]
3x Deny
2x Hide the Mind
3x Swallowed by the Night

Darby wanted to have a look at this bastard child of his after the tournament was over, so I spread it out on a table and he gave it a going-over. He said that it's probably not significantly different from his, though he mentioned that the Ashur Tablets (a new addition) aren't really useful, and I totally agree with him. We also agreed that the Restructures are a bit iffy - it's nice to be able to steal every single War Ghoul or Nephandus or Shambler that hits the table, by recycling Restructures, but whether or not the Restructures come up in time and whether or not it's better to spend those actions ousting preys are certainly open for debate.

I think this deck's time to be retired may have come for me, though, so I doubt I'll be making any changes to it. It's fun to play and is both more interesting and less matchup-dependent than most stealth/bleed decks, but it generally needs to be very aggressive during the whole game, and that doesn't suit my normal playstyle very well. On the other hand, I like to keep a variety of deck archetypes on hand, and I don't have any other use for that many Arts of Memory, so maybe this deck still has a reserved parking spot in my decks box.

A Time Warp, An Apocalypse or Two, and A Meditation On Transcience

Game One - Temporal Anomaly
me (Harbingers blood denial) -> Raquel (Malkavian stealth/bleed) -> Greg (!Salubri rush) -> Mike (Giovanni ?) -> Max (Gangrel with guns)

V:TES is a game with a vicious learning curve, Raquel is very new to the game, and most of us were playing decks that grind their opponents down rather than going for quick ousts. I was glad I'd gotten to the store early.

Raquel got out a couple of small vampires with somewhat mismatched disciplines, Greg started with Langa and added Dela Eden, Mike produced Stefano and Gillespi, Max went extra old-school with Gitane and those nameless little Gangrel who always hang out with her, and I got Mordechai and Sennadurek. That latter was a mistake, an especially stupid one given that Max had basically told me before we started playing that he was going to be rushing vampires a lot, and I could've brought out Solomon instead. Solomon's Fortitude would have served as much better combat protection than Sennadurek's Necromancy, and she suffered quite a bit for my error.

Mike's vampires got to take exactly one action before Greg, noticing a distinct lack of pressure coming from Raquel, puffed out his chest in a manly fashion and smashed Mike's guys. That meant that Max had nobody holding him back from sending his Gangrel on some Most Dangerous Game nonsense in my ready region, rushing me every turn and only bothering to bleed when his hand was out of rush cards. That meant that I didn't have time to do much, as I mostly spent my turns recruiting Shambling Hordes and trying to keep my vampires out of torpor. My zombies proceeded to stand around and look confused as they were picked off one at a time by Gitane's Deer Rifle, but at least they were standing between my vampires and Max's rushes. Needing to keep the Hordes on get-off-my-lawn duty did mean that they weren't able to go de-brain Raquel's Keller Thiel, whom I'd put a Fame on a while before. Aside from Lazarenely Inquisitating her vampires a couple of times, I really hadn't done much of anything offensive, hoping that she'd put a dent in Greg's pool or get mauled by his guys while attempting to do so.

That plan didn't come to fruition, as Raquel's bleeds were reduced or eaten by Greg, and weren't all that hefty to begin with. Mike asked me for a rescue, but with Langa standing over the fallen Giovanni and Mike not having shown a lot of combat defense, I assumed that Langa would simply walk on over to any freshly rescued vampires and punch them back down. Greg also deployed the fearsome talents of black metal superstars Dragonbound at this time, so I was more worried than ever about keeping my vampires from being all riddled with bullets, courtesy of Max's hunting trips. Mike did manage to get out Gloria, which brought him down to one pool, who did a valorous job of defending what little Mike had left in the world.

Max finally ran out of rush cards in hand, which left me some breathing room at last. Without rush, he bled me a few times for one, hoping to get into some more fights, which allowed me to finally play some of the bleed bounce which had been clogging my hand. Raquel neutered those bleeds with reduction, but it seemed like a good time to take in the slack in my relationship with her pool. Mike sacrificed his torporized Stefano to the Antediluvian's Snooze Button, thus saving him from both the pool loss of that card and Greg's Dragonbound, so I knew that I'd have to take a more active role in Raquel's demise if she was going to be ousted. It took an embarassing amount of work (who knew that Malkavians could block +1 stealth actions without even needing to play Telepathic Misdirection at basic?), but I convinced my zombies to quit hanging around the Monroeville Mall and go stave in Keller's skull. On her turn, another of Raquel's vampires rescued Keller, and I blocked his hunt and put him down again, ousting Raquel.

Greg had finally broken through the Wall of Gloria, at least in part due to an error on Mike's part during the deckbuilding process ("What do you mean, Eluding the Arms of Morpheus forces me to block?"). I spent my profits from ousting Raquel to finally bring out Solomon, just in time to act as a replacement for my beaten-down Sennadurek. After a few unsuccessful attempts, Greg curbstomped Max's Roman Alexander, who happened to be Famous at the time. Combined with Dragonboud's epic metal ballads, Max ran out of pool shortly thereafter. Greg's lunge at Max left him tapped out and lacking wake tech, though, so I was able to hit him with some hefty bleeds, using the same Trochomancy that I'd been recycling for the last few rounds.

Greg played Fame on Solomon and nearly ousted me with a final lunge, knocking Solomon into the torpor garage while I had only four pool left. He didn't any more vampires with whom to bleed, though, and I still had the edge from the round before, so I wasn't ousted. Greg conceded at this point, since he only had one ready vampire and two cards in his hand, and I had Shambling Hordes who could bin his last guy, at which point he'd be ousted on his turn from a combination of his own Fame and Dragonbound.

Conclusions: The Maabaara/Parthenon tech worked about as well as I'd hoped it would, though I really need to train myself to actually play it correctly: First put a card on Maabaara, then use the second MPA to play a master from hand, thereby drawing the card you just recurred from the ash heap [cue "Eye of the Tiger" during a montage of me repeating this sequence of actions]. This is also the first time I played the deck with Shambling Hordes rather than the generic blood denial allies, and I think that they're better for the deck, but I need to work in better blood management. I might just ditch the Blood Dolls from the deck altogether, as I never used one for poolgain during this game and could use those slots for better bloodgain.

Game Two - Government Waste In the Face of Imminent Disaster
While waiting for the other game of VTES to finish, we decided to pull out Pandemic. Pandemic is an entirely cooperative game in which the players take on the roles of CDC agents who are having a work week that's more Roland Emmerich than it is Robin Cook. Four different diseases pop up across the globe, and it's the players' job to find the cures for all four before humanity is wiped out. Every turn, players take actions, draw player cards, and infect more cities. The player cards are used both to move around the board rapidly and to devise the cures, so players need to balance their need to move to hot spots and contain the disease there versus their ability to accumulate enough cards of the same color to cure the diseases. There are a number of ways that the players can lose - if they run out of the wooden cubes that represent disease vectors, if any disease reaches a critical mass eight times, or if the players run out of player cards, it's the cockroaches' time to shine.

Our game ran fairly smoothly, though it seemed like we were usually one step behind the various diseases. We cured one of them fairly quickly, but then ran into a situation in which none of us were drawing cards of the right color to cure the other three. We managed to cure two of them in quick succession, and were only a few turns away from curing the last one and winning, when we ran out of player cards. I think we probably used too many cards to move around the board which we should've held onto in order to create cures more quickly, but as this was only the second time I've played the game (and the first that wasn't using the training-wheels beginner's rules), I've not yet sussed out which strategies work and which don't. I was glad that this game was more of a challenge than the first, as it had been so easy that it was mostly devoid of any tension at all.


Game Three - 28 Seconds Later
We set up Pandemic again for another try at saving the world. The distribution of starting disease was much less even this time, with a heavy concentration of blue cubes in North America. That didn't seem like an insurmountable problem, given that all the characters start in Atlanta. We'd just have to concentrate our efforts on our home turf, which was at least better than needing to travel a long distance to deal with a consolidated cluster of diseased cities halfway across the world.

On the first turn, we got hit with three outbreaks in rapid succession, all in North America. This was nothing more than the evil of raw luck, but it put us in a really poor position right off the bat. There's no way to accelerate the method by which you can devise a cure, since there's no way to draw extra player cards in a given turn. Still, the situation wasn't entirely bleak, and as long as we didn't get hit with any more heavy action in the US, we could probably pull ahead of the rapidly spreading disease.

On our second turn, Max drew an Epidemic card and we got hit with four more outbreaks, as so many of the cities in the US were already overrun with disease that the first outbreak led to a nasty chain reaction. By the end of that chain reaction, we'd reached a total of seven outbreaks. Since you lose automatically as soon as you hit eight outbreaks, and since there was no way for us to substantially reduce the number of cubes in the US in order to prevent another outbreak, we decided to call this game off. We were simply no match for whatever weapons-grade bioengineered virus had obviously escaped from an Army lab out in the desert, and we couldn't do anything more than witness the devastation as Randall Flagg strolled past with a wicked grin on his face.

Game Four - The Hungriest Coyotes
me (Cornbread, Earl and Me) -> Greg (Hermanas toolbox) -> Max (old skool Malks) -> Josh ("It's Not Vignes, Really") -> Matt (Guruhi Are the Orun)

We began to set up another game of Pandemic, one that would hopefully have a less humiliating ending, but we decided that we had just enough time left before the store closed to squeeze in another game of VTES, so we packed Pandemic up and put it away.

Greg played a hilarious Hermanas deck that I called the Buddhism deck, because it can teach a valuable lesson about how nothing in this world is permanent. The Hermanas lose all or some of their blood as soon as they appear, and continue to throw it away every turn immediately after gaining it back from hunting. They arm themselves with Sticks, which fall apart in short order. I don't know what an Oppugnant Night is, but it sounds like the kind of event that might result in enlightenment, which itself fades away shortly after it arrives. Greg also plays Agents of Power in the deck, which of course fade quickly, just as all temporal power slips away in the face of the infinite. About the only thing that sticks around for these ladies as they quest for bodhi is their Abbots, and even they have a religious connotation. There's also the Spontaneous Power which comes from within, but at a heavy cost to one's worldly resources. Yes, I just turned your toolbox into a theme deck, Greg. You're welcome.

Josh contributed to the hilarity by bringing out Edward Vignes and immediately denying that he was playing a Vignes deck. His next vampire was Ranjan Rishi, so naturally I proceeded to give him the standard harassment routine about playing a tournament deck in a casual game. However, he'd discarded enough Spirit Marionettes at this point, as well as eaten a bleed of six from Max's Didi Meyers without bouncing it, that I believed him. That his third and final vampire turned out to be Ingrid Russo made me feel a bit bad for him. Apparently Blanche Hill had turned down his invitation to the dance.

Greg bled Max for six, and again there was no bounce to be had. Shortly thereafter, the Hermanas celebrated a traditional Mexican night of Punching Didi In the Face, and she went to take a nap after being tired out from the festivities. I brought out Armin Brenner and thought I had vote lock, being the only person on the table with a titled vampire, so I attempted to call a Kine Resources Contested. Matt's Urenna Bunu didn't like the look of the vote, so she made herself the Guruhi Kholo and also played King's Favor, shutting Armin down. Though it sucked that my vote had failed to pass, I've never been put in my place by a king before, so at least it was an interesting experience.

Max brought out Greger Anderssen, but it seemed that none of his other vampires appreciated the earlier visit from Elvis and he was stuck with only two minions for most of the game. Matt brought out Eze and I got out Hektor, leaving the vote situation just dicey enough that I was in full wheel/deal mode. Josh did a lot of Mind Numbing of Matt's vampire in order to land his bleeds, which meant that I didn't have a lot of pressure on me. I also got quite a bit of pool from Villeining and Giant's Bloodening Armin, so I was all set not to be ousted. I offered to call a Con Boon for Guruhi if Matt cast all his votes in favor, as Matt was getting quite low on pool from Josh's not-Vignes-at-all bleeds. After lamenting about being in the position of giving free pool to his prey, Matt agreed to my terms, but Josh Delayed the vote.

Greg continued to stealth/bleed/untap/hunt, dropping Max's pool totals to dangerously low levels. I tossed a couple of bleeds for one in Greg's direction, mainly to move stealth cards out of my hand, but the third or fourth time that I did this, I noticed that Greg had almost no pool left. Apparently he'd spent a bunch of it while I was hypnotized by the snake on Eze's arm. Josh had the play of the night when Matt was down to three pool. Though Josh obviously had no bleed cards in his hand, he sent Ingrid to torpor by Daring the Dawn when Matt, tapped out, attempted to block a bleed of one. Much derision followed, but was quickly hushed when Josh's next two bleeds of one landed without Matt playing a card.

I ousted Greg soon after, now that I could call and pass votes without any real interference. Max had influenced out Aleph shortly before, an addition to Max's ready region that my Neonate Breach was all too happy to see. With two ousts on one turn, I had over twenty pool left in addition to Dmitra, Hektor and Armin, and Josh had two minions with only a little blood between them, so he conceded the game on the condition that I agree that he wasn't playing a Vignes deck.

Conclusions: My deck, which I've been playing on and off for about two years now, is probably about as good as it's going to get. I should maybe find room for another Iron Glare or two, as the surprise bleed can be very helpful, but I like having a deck that's mostly bounce-proof. The deck likely needs a new name.