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.