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
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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]
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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.