Origins Reportage #4: I Hear Dominate Is Good

This was the big qualifier event, so I knew that I had to do my best if I wanted to screw with other peoples' chances to qualify. Also, because I hadn't yet gotten into the finals of any of the previous tournaments, I knew it was time to buckle the hell down, flex some steel, and spout some other tough-guy phraseology in order to go home with something more substantial than disgrace in my pocket. Nothing's tougher than a pissed-off lawyer with a gun and some Dominate, so it was time to let the Ventrue off the leash. (Also, I figured I'd have a good time watching peoples' reactions when they figured out that I wasn't playing just another Law Firm deck.)

Round One: Contestation Is a State of Mind
me (Lawyers, Guns and Money II) -> Darby (Jeremy MacNeil and friends) -> Evan (Ventrue Law Firm) -> Bob (Kindred Spirits stealth/bleed) -> Dave (Ventrue)

Before this round began, I related a story that's been floating around the Boston playgroup for years now, about a game in which Dave had a Monocle of Clarity on his vampire, asked a question of his prey during his untap phase, waited for an answer and then followed that up with, "And now for my Monocle of Clarity question..." Good stuff, made even better when the first turn that Dave's Graham Gottesman took was to Govern at superior, Freak Drive, and then equip the Monocle of Clarity.

After Dave got out Graham, I told him that we'd need to have a chat in order to avoid a very embarrassing game, at which point Evan said, "Yeah, about that..." Miraculously, we were able to work out a three-way agreement so that each of us could get out two vampires without any of us contesting. Dave got the slightly shorter end of the stick on that deal, ending up with Juniper while Evan and I got princes and justicars, but at least we were all able to play the game.

Darby decided early on that me having vampires with Dominate wasn't cool, so Jeremy MacNeil swung by Mustafa's place to say hi, drop off some really nice herbed focaccia he'd made, and oh yeah also crush Mustafa's face. I played three damage prevention cards and kept Mustafa out of torpor, which I thought was a pretty good deal for me, given the amount of Potence-hate which had just been thrown my way. The upside was that Darby had worn out Jeremy pretty well by spending a bunch of his blood and getting whacked with a cane a few times, and he seemed to think that the amount of damage prevention I'd just shown off would be par for the course during the entire game. The downside was that I didn't have any prevent left when Mustafa blocked one of Juniper's bleeds, got smacked with a Molotov Cocktail and had his Fangs Pulled. Mustafa recovered quickly enough, and one of Bob's vampires was even nice enough to drive him to the dentist for his first appointment, but those two turns were a good reminder that I'd need to be very careful about picking my combats during this game.

Darby mostly left me alone after that, squeezing a new "I won't bleed you next turn if you don't rush me" deal out of me practically every turn. I know it was cowardice, but I wanted to have ready vampires! History will exonerate me. As a result of those filthy deals, Evan was getting beaten down pretty badly. Evan tried some moves against Bob, but his bleeds were bounced and he didn't seem to be drawing much in the way of votes. Ruth McGinley did get her Ra Kissed for blocking a KRC with Telepathic Misdirection, but she came back to the ready region next turn.

Darby's deck was built to bleed and rush, but he was wise enough not to begin bleeding until both Mary Anne Blaire and Johannes Castelein were in torpor. Once they were, he unleashed a tonne of Presence actions and mods, all at about the same time that Dave apparently ran out of bounce and Bob's bleeds overpowered Dave's Govern-based bloat. Once he was knocked out of the game, Evan revealed that he did have a hand full of bounce, though whether or not Darby would've been better off throwing some bleeds down the pipe to slide leftways is open to debate, since he immediately had to begin bargaining with Bob once Evan was ousted. Darby wanted me ousted, since he knew that my Deflections were doomful for him in our current three-way position, but at the same time he couldn't allow Bob to get too much of a lead on him or else he'd be ousted during the endgame before he could destroy all of Bob's minions. Enter the Haggling Phase.

I just keep my yap shut during this phase, usually, and this time was no exception. This is because what I often see happen during this phase is this: two or more smart people try to convince one another to do a dumb thing. This thing will help the do-ee, but not the do-er. Repeat this attempt at persuasion one or more times for each person in the conversation, and then move to end of line when everyone just goes ahead and does what they were going to do anyway.

Now, I've got no issue with negotiation in this or any other game. I encourage it, completely. But I find that I'm not ever able to convince anyone to do anything that's not in their best interests anyway, and people aren't able to convince anyone else to do stuff that's not in their best interests either. That's why my form of table talk is almost always suggestions about how someone can improve their position, and by the way improve mine, rather than suggestions about how they can screw themselves over to help me. That's why, during the Haggling Phase, I tend to eat that apple I brought along or glance around at what people at other tables are playing or whatever.

The point of all this is that I don't remember what Darby and Bob eventually settled on. I do recall that Bob said he had a Spying Mission that he could play on a bleed if I bounced it, which he'd done once already. That seemed okay to Darby, so Bob charged forward with a bleed, leading with the vampire who already had the Spying Mission on him. (You can see why Bob was doing that, though I think he should have spread the Spying Missions out to one of his other minions so that all his bleed-eggs wouldn't be wrapped up in one rushable basket after he'd ousted me.) I tried to block the bleed, and Bob apparently ran out of stealth cards, because he played the Spying Mission, all right...but at basic. Whoops.

I "let" him stealth past me and Deflected, which Bob canceled with Touch of Clarity. I shrugged, played On the Qui Vive with my other vampire and played another Deflection. Darby experienced a instance of red vision and cordially expressed his opinion on the overpoweredness of Dominate. I was worried about him having an aneurysm, but not so worried that I didn't redirect another stealthed bleed into his pool. Shortly thereafter, I ousted him, and since I knew that Bob was out of stealth, it was easy enough to catch his vampires and destroy them. Once he had no vampires, a few bleeds were all it took to take home the game win.

Round Two: The Most Generous Infernalists
me -> Robyn (!Toreador breed/boon) -> Hugh (Nakhthorheb Purge) -> Jeff (!Salubri combat toolbox) -> Cameron (Unnamed bloat)

Years of playing with a certain V:TES superstar have forced me to learn the advanced techniques of AntiPealjitsu, the martial art devoted to shutting down breed/boon decks, so I wasn't terribly worried about having Robyn as my prey. I played smart and blocked the Embrace actions, knowing from long experience that those people who tell you that you should allow the Embrace actions and then block the Embraces when they hunt? Yeah, those people are wrong. Don't make the assumption that the breed/boon deck doesn't have sources of bloodgain other than hunting.

Hugh did an early Purge, but picked small guys for his cross-table buddies to send to naptime, and no one blocked me rescuing Joao, so no harm done. Cameron bled into me many, many times, but his deck seemed to be built to make a lot of pool rather than take a lot of pool away from its prey. Bleeding with the Unnamed, using Greater Curse at the Daimonion level, and then playing I Am Legion gains you a bunch of pool every turn, but not adding Sense the Sin or other bleed mods means your prey can pretty much ignore you.

I ousted Robyn, which I've felt bad about doing on the few occasions that I've done so due to her becoming so despondent when it happens, but this was no time for empathy. This was time for cruelty of the most atavistic kind, the sort of knife-edged ruthlessness that cuts through even the strongest compassion. From that point on, Hugh couldn't achieve any successful Purges, leading to a hilarious turn in which he declared, "I can't do Graverobbing. I mean, I don't have Graverobbing in my hand. Uh. Discard Graverobbing."

The most fantastic play of the game was when Jeff, low on pool, had his Famed Uriel with one blood step in front of a bleed which would have ousted him. Uriel's nosiness showed us all the contents of Hugh's hand, and then Uriel accepted a punch from Hugh's vampire in order to empty himself down to zero blood, so that he could blow himself up and have two pool rain down into Jeff's lap from the resultant explosion of Heaven's Unforgiving Eye at basic. After that bit of climatic action, we all knew that we couldn't live up to Jeff's precedent, and decided to futz around doing nothing until the judge called time.

Round Three: That's What Happens When You Don't Know Your Lines
me -> Mark (Carna wall) -> John (weenie Auspex) -> Jen (Kindred Spirits stealth/bleed) -> Pete (Zombo Combo)

The week before I left for Origins, I'd considered changing up the combat package of my deck in order to work in more guns and get them via Concealed Weapons instead of taking actions to do so. Getting the Shotguns the hard way hadn't ever been a problem for me before, though, and I was wary about changing the ratios of a deck I knew so well without adequate time to test out how the changes would affect the way that the deck played, so I decided against it. Sitting next to Carna, who mocked both my attempt to get a gun and my damage prevention, has made me think that the next iteration of this deck is definitely going for long trenchcoats and concealed weapons permits. At least I got to trigger a look of surprise on Mark's face when he realized that I wasn't playing a vanilla Law Firm deck.

Mark and John and I didn't do a whole lot for the first chunk of the game, other than watch Jen pile into Pete and idly discuss whether or not John would try to save Pete with an Eagle's Sight. We had a lot of discussions about what we would and wouldn't let each other do, with the consensus mostly being that hunts were okay and everything else was out. Mark did manage to use the Magic of Will Smith to craft himself an Ivory Bow, but I was a lot less concerned with that than his ability to Theft my Vitae away.

Pete struggled mightily to get The Baron's bloat mechanism running, but he couldn't keep up with Jen's relentless attacks on his pool. He sent Shambling Hordes over to wreck some Spirited Kindred, but they were too slow with their rushes to take Jen's vampires down in time to save him, and even with the existence of vampires Unmasked on national television they only helped Jen cycle to more bleed mods when they tried to block, so Pete was ousted fairly quickly. Suddenly I had a stealth/bleed predator behind me, and suddenly I was in the game again. Oh, stealth/bleed decks, how I love you when I'm prepared for you.

A couple of Jen's bleeds went flying around the table, and a few of them landed in Mark's pool, which was totally okay with me. Around this time I had a bunch of Governs and Conditionings in my hand, and I couldn't Govern at superior because the only vampire I had in my uncontrolled region was Lodin, who was also in my ready region. In order to get those useless cards out of my hand to get to more of that sweet, life-affirming bleed bounce, I cycled them by using them to bleed into Mark. He apparently hadn't studied his script for this scene, though, because even though he had out Neighbor John and Carna (who, as we all know, do nothing but block and redirect bleeds all day long), he just accepted my bleeds and was ousted. I was so shocked that I didn't even realize he was ousted until he reached out to shake my hand, because I hadn't been paying any attention to his pool up until that point. Go me.

I played as smartly as I could against John, not taking any actions at stealth and using maneuvers and presses to put his vampire with a Deer Rifle into torpor. From that point on, I took actions to diablerize that vampire until he'd lost about half of his ready region, and then I was able to bleed him out. Jen ran into the exact same issue that Bob had in round one, where my permanent intercept and Second Traditions ran her out of stealth in hand and library soon thereafter, so I cleaned up this game and wandered off to find something to eat before the final.

Final Round: A World of Teflon
me -> Connor (Giovanni powerbleed) -> Bob (Kindred Spirits stealth/bleed) -> Karl (Black Hand Coolers) -> Rodd (Tremere vote toolbox)

I was top seed going into the final, which didn't help because I didn't know what anyone was playing. Oh, sure, Karl had told me his deck choice before the tournament had begun, and I'd actually played my first round with Bob, but I somehow managed to totally forget both of those facts. I had seen that Rodd was playing Tremere when I'd walked around a bit earlier, so I figured that sitting in front of him was probably a relatively safe place to be. While it's totally possible to make a very speedy Tremere deck, in theory, in practice I've never seen anyone try it. This turned out to be the perfect choice, so apparently my mojo is strongest when I'm tired, having a good time, and not worrying too much about winning. Make a note of that, self.

The final was over quite quickly. We were all playing with bleed bounce, so there was a point when Connor admonished Bob to be more responsible with his bleeds, to which I replied, "That's not usually something you need to say to your prey at a five-player table." Unfortunately, Rodd didn't really get to play. He got out Troius, who attempted to call a Kine Resources Contested but got blocked by my Carlton Van Wyk. On Bob's next turn, two bleeds were Deflected to Rodd, and he only blocked the first one. Sensing weakness, Karl uncorked a bottle of unblended 16-year Dominate bleed, shredding through something like 14 pool in four actions, thereby leaving Rodd with nothing but a peaty aftertaste.

I didn't do much except get a Shotgun and bleed Connor for one a lot, largely because my hand was full of Second Traditions and Deflections, which was a pretty good hand to have with all the oust-power behind me. Bob was ousted next, but in order to do so, Connor's vampires had to get pretty low on blood. Karl held out for a while but with consistently less and less pool, and just as it occurred to me that I should tell him to bleed into me with everything he had so that I could at least unload the Deflections I'd been hoarding before the game ended up with only two players, Connor ousted him. At this point, his vampires had almost no blood, and one of them was in torpor from when I'd blocked a hunt. At this point the game got dull quickly, as I simply bled for one with all my vampires each turn and blocked everything Connor tried to do. He wasn't ever able to make a recovery in the face of my implacable barrier of Second Traditions and Carlton, and eventually I torporized all his vampires and bled him out, winning the tournament due to my seeding. Most importantly, as Matt Morgan pointed out, I'd trampled the dreams of a child underfoot, and the opportunity to pull that off is the number one reason I play V:TES. (The number two reason being to have chances to spend time with Hugh so I can make fun of him, of course.)

Decklist
Deck Name : Lawyers, Guns and Money II
Author : John Eno
Description : Second iteration of the Ventrue prince Patience deck. More bleed, less combat.

Crypt [12 vampires] Capacity min: 3 max: 10 average: 6.91667
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3x Lodin (Olaf Holte) 8 DOM FOR PRE aus pro prince Ventrue:5
2x Mary Anne Blaire 10 AUS DOM FOR PRE ani pot justicar Ventrue:5
2x Graham Gottesman 7 DOM FOR obf pre tha prince Ventrue:5
2x Mustafa, The Heir 6 FOR PRE cel dom prince Ventrue:4
1x Jephta Hester 5 DOM FOR aus !Ventrue:4
1x Joao Bile 5 DOM FOR pre Ventrue:4
1x Ulrike Rothbart 3 dom for !Ventrue:4

Library [80 cards]
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Master [15]
2x Anarch Troublemaker
5x Blood Doll
1x Ephor
1x Giant's Blood
1x KRCG News Radio
1x Papillon
1x Pentex(TM) Subversion
1x Smiling Jack, The Anarch
1x Ventrue Headquarters
1x WMRH Talk Radio

Action [9]
1x Aranthebes, The Immortal
8x Govern the Unaligned

Action Modifier [8]
2x Conditioning
2x Foreshadowing Destruction
4x Freak Drive

Ally [1]
1x Carlton Van Wyk (Hunter)

Combat [23]
3x Hidden Strength
3x Indomitability
4x Resilience
4x Rolling with the Punches
2x Taste of Vitae
2x Unflinching Persistence
5x Weighted Walking Stick

Equipment [4]
1x Bowl of Convergence
2x Sawed-Off Shotgun

Political Action [2]
1x Anarchist Uprising
1x Banishment

Reaction [18]
8x Deflection
2x On the Qui Vive
8x Second Tradition: Domain

Retainer [1]
1x Mr. Winthrop

I think this deck is actually slightly better than the !Ventrue deck which it's based on. The titles and Headquarters mean that you don't need to worry as much about cross-table voters taking you down or even getting pinged with the tail end of damage from KRC votes, and being able to pass votes of your own adds a bit of needed variety to the offense. Being able to diablerize without fear of a blood hunt is very handy, too. I think that all these benefits outweigh the fact that this deck doesn't block quite as well as the !Ventrue do, since the only Auspex here is that used to power the Bowl of Convergence (and that usually just as a free Sport Bike, since Mary Anne doesn't often come into play).

I'm going to try another iteration of this, minus the Sticks and plus more guns and Concealed Weapons, as I mentioned above. Just to keep experimenting with what can be done with this crypt, which I love, I'll also reduce the permanent intercept in favor of more multiacting and offensive votes.

Bonus Round One: Like Son, Like Father
me (Apollo) -> Scott (Tyrol) -> Dave (Boomer) -> Hugh (Ellen) -> Karl (Adama) -> Darby (Zarek)

Ah, Battlestar Galactica. Not only the best translation of pop culture to boardgame ever designed, but a wholly wonderful game in itself. Its nearly limitless replay value is an especially strong selling point for me, given how many times I've played it. It's also probably the most immersive boardgame I've ever played, consistently giving me the feeling that I'm actually playing through a season of the show.

Battlestar Galactica is based on the most recent version of the television show of the same name, a show about the apocalyptic conflict between humankind and the robots they've created. In this new take on the show, the cylons have created a new breed of robots who are human in everything but name, and it's this concept that the boardgame centers around. Each player takes on the role of one of the characters from the show and is given a loyalty card that determines whether the player is a human or a cylon secretly posing as a human. The humans try survive the frequent cylon attacks and deal with logistical and political issues within their fleet, all handled by the game itself rather than being controlled by any of the players, while the hidden cylons try to sabotage the human efforts to avoid destruction. To complicate matters further, a second set of loyalty cards are handed out at the midpoint of the game, meaning that it's entirely possible for one or more players who had thought they were human to be activated as sleeper agents and switch sides to the cylon team. The result is that gameplay is very tense and paranoid, as everyone tries to suss out who's human and who isn't.

I made sure I got to play in this game, fearing that otherwise my life would have been worth nothing in Darby's eyes. At one point he had mentioned that the whole reason he was attending Origins at all was to play Galactica with me, and I still don't know if he was joking or not. What can I say? He's fierce, and I'm easily cowed. Scott, whose tidy DIY travel set we were using, was pleased to finally be playing the game with people who had some experience with it, and wanted to try out the New Caprica expansion, an alternate endgame scenario that comes with the expansion to the base game. I'd played the expansion a bunch of times, but never with the New Caprica module, so I was more than happy to see how the game would play out after the humans made planetfall.

My initial loyalty card told me that I was a cylon, which meant that at least I wouldn't get any nasty surprises regarding my heritage in the middle of the game. In order to keep me from feeling like I was getting short shrift in the nasty surprise department, the game was kind enough to give us a turn-two Legendary Discovery, the only way that the humans can get closer to their goal by actively trying. (Excepting this one particular event, the speed of the humans' progress is effectively random.) I hoped that the skill check would fail and the humans wouldn't gain any distance, given that almost no one had a full hand of skillcards yet, but Hugh was smart enough to play an Investigative Committee on the check. This forced everyone to bid on the check openly, meaning that I couldn't even provide a gentle nudge in the direction of failure, and the humans managed to pass the check. Insolent little hoo-man cockroaches!

I flew off toward the small pack of cylon raiders in space, and got shot down out of my viper. Fine by me: a show of bravery immediately followed by failure seemed like a useful way to begin implementation of The Plan, even if I had no idea what the overall shape of The Plan might turn out to be. (I still don't, even after having watched the entirety of the television show.) I also convinced Karl to play an Executive Order on me so that I could get out of Sickbay before my turn began, but someone pointed out that it would be much more resource-efficient to launch two vipers and have me jump into one of them using Apollo's special ability. I couldn't hang out with Doc Cottle all day without raising suspicion, so back out into the void I went, this time hanging out back by the civilian ships in order to "guard" them. At least being in space prevented that hag Ellen from trying to get into my pants in order to give me a card and try to use her discount cylon detector on me.

Not long thereafter, we made a hyperspace jump. Our admiral informed us that we'd jumped three distance, thereby already moving us to the sleeper phase. Great Holy Ones and Zeroes, these humans were quick. Something was going to need to be done to stop their little romp, and in a hurry. Scott outed himself as the sympathetic cylon and gave his loyalty card to Karl, which I guessed meant that Scott had probably gotten a pro-cylon objective. Putting extra suspicion on the admiral or president by giving them an extra loyalty card, particularly when both cylons are still undercover, isn't something that generally helps the hoo-mans win.

I drew the second You Are a Cylon card. That meant that I'd have to reveal myself as soon as possible, because otherwise I didn't have a teammate. I spent some time thinking about who to recruit to my cause during the other players' turns, knowing that I couldn't hesitate to give my loyalty card away once I took the action to reveal or else everyone would figure out that it was a team-switching card. Just before my turn began, I decided on Karl, whom I was hesitant to pick because he already had a bonus loyalty card, and having yet another card would generate a lot of suspicion. However, Dave was in the brig for having chosen to play Boomer, Ellen was too busy cozying up to the boys in power to be much use to me, population wasn't low enough for Zarek's ability to be useful to a cylon, and I needed to slow down the humans to prevent them from getting another three-distance hyperspace jump.

Once my turn came around, I revealed that I wanted nothing to do with the talking monkeys and shot their president in the chest just to show how serious I was about my scorn. Darby wasn't a great choice of target in terms of the turn order, because I knew he'd get back out of Sickbay via an Executive Order before his turn came around, but he also had the most skillcards in hand at the moment and I figured that making him discard five of them was a pretty good deal.

Karl kept his head down, which was good, since I was more than happy to draw attention with my antics. Probably because Darby wasn't letting Dave get out of the brig, Dave decided that Darby must be the other hidden cylon and suggesting airlocking him. Karl was smart enough not to have suggested this himself, but immediately backed Dave's play and pointed out the many ways in which the president had not conducted himself in a manner befitting a hoo-man. Remember this, fellow cylons: people who suggest radical courses of action always draw suspicion, but those who support those causes of action appear loyal.

Apparently Karl and Dave had Hugh convinced that Darby was a no-good toaster, so out the airlock he went. Well, dang! Turned out that he'd been born of a woman and not a milkbath after all. Zarek was replaced by Baltar, despite the fact that post-sleeper Baltar can't use his once-per-game special ability even if his previous incarnation hadn't used it, because Darby knew that Roslin is a crappy president and didn't want Hugh to be in charge of the government, for some reason that I didn't catch.

The untimely demise of Zarek made the fleet sad, and morale was starting to look a bit worn out, so I moved on over to Caprica in order to camp there and try to manipulate crises so that morale would continue to be hit. Karl came home to the cylon fleet around this time, and we worked together to kick puppies, broadcast The Swans over the human fleet radio, do snarky standup comedy routines to mock the humans' chances of success and otherwise lower morale. Our efforts to sad-make paid off big dividends, as the humans got too depressed to bother trying to continue and ran out of morale before they even made it to New Caprica. Scott revealed that his agenda had been to help the cylons win but salvage all the human equipment - apparently Tyrol continued loving his machines even after he found out that he was also a machine - but I seem to recall there there were still some holes in the hull from the bomb which Karl had thoughtfully armed and hidden before resigning as admiral.

Bonus Round Two: Who Thought Colonizing This Planet Was a Good Idea, Again?
me (Six) -> Darby (Tyrol) -> Dave (Boomer) -> Scott (Baltar) -> Karl (Helo) -> Hugh (Cain)

Once more unto the breach, dear friends! Given the poor hoo-mans' inability to even make it as far as their new colony during the last go-round, I decided to take pity on them and play a Cylon Leader, who would most likely be sympathetic to the meatbags' cause. Also, since I was choosing my character last in the order, and since no one else had picked a Cylon Leader and I'm not a big fan of the sympathetic cylon mechanic, choosing a Leader was the most painless way of sidestepping that mechanic.

Scott uses an ingenious houserule which makes sure that a six-player game featuring a cylon leader doesn't end up with three cylons versus three humans, which is almost always a nightmarish loss for the humans. My agenda was pro-human, so that meant there would be two cylons hidden amongst the humans. My goal was to help the humans win, but be infiltrating among them and not in the brig once the game ended. In the past, when I've played without the New Caprica board, this agenda has been trivially easy to complete, so I was disappointed that I'd received a goal that wasn't at all challenging.

Initially, this round was much easier on the humans than the first one had been. I infiltrated the fleet almost immediately and did what I could to help them, knowing that I'd need to earn their trust early to keep them from throwing me in the brig or out an airlock. It quickly became clear that if there was a hidden cylon, he wasn't doing a particularly good job at undermining the humans, which meant that everyone probably still thought that they were human. Good use of the Pegasus guns meant that our lack of ace pilots didn't matter much, and none of our resources were running particularly low, though morale had taken a few hits.

By the time we reached the sleeper phase, I was in full Jane Goodall mode and had been accepted amongst them. Boomer marched off to the brig, as she always does, and no one wanted to let her out until we knew whose loyalty she now espoused. Scott helped pass a critical check by using a combination of Investigative Committee and his special ability, so we knew he was human, and on his next turn he fired up Ol' Baltar's Cylon Detection and Fruit Juicer and informed us that Hugh was also human.

Human president and admiral? Check. Smooth sailing for the most part, with a few bumps in the road probably thrown up by a hidden but not particularly effective cylon? Check. Blind Jump at distance six to make sure that we didn't get screwed on the last leg of the trip to New Caprica? Check. We moved everyone to the new board and prepared for the showdown.

Karl had revealed shortly before we made planetfall, and he moved amongst the occupation forces, quickly throwing me into Detention. Crap. Somebody had forgotten to lock the door on the brig when we landed on the colony, so Boomer was hanging out with the other humans in the Resistance HQ. She decided that now was as good a time as any to show why we'd been smart not to let her out of the brig, and set up Hugh to be executed. He was obviously human at that point, so we got hit with a morale loss and Hugh lost a bunch of skillcards. We retaliated by executing Boomer, to prevent her from using her auto-scout ability more than anything else, since Dave had played so many skillcards on Cain's execution that he didn't lose many for being executed. Hugh picked Adama so that we'd have some slight help passing skill checks drawn on his turn, but got thrown into Detention with me shortly thereafter. All the other humans camped out in the Shipyard and started sawing spaceship keys out of blocks of soap, which seemed like the only useful action to take at that time.

I had been feverishly scheming to get myself out of the pokey. I was so close to victory that I could taste it, and I did not want to be left behind on New Caprica to be executed when the humans jumped away from the planet, as that would violate my win condition. I saved up my hand, making sure that I had a Declare Emergency since the colors on the check to escape Detention didn't include green, but unfortunately I didn't draw either yellow or purple, so I was at the mercy of the humans as to whether or not I escaped. I assumed that they wouldn't help me much, if at all. Even though I'd proven myself useful, they could just as easily leave me behind during the endgame and suffer nothing for it.

While Adama and I were in Detention, our morale was suffering critical losses. It seemed like every other crisis card had a tough skill check with a morale loss as the penalty for failure, and we just weren't able to play enough cards to pass all of them. It was like some bright light in the Colonial administration had thought it would be a great idea to loop Come and See on a movie screen big enough to be seen by everyone in town, and everyone was getting increasingly depressed as a result.

Galactica returned to orbit, and I made a huge mistake. I forgot that I now had a very simple way to get out of Detention and walk amongst the humans again. I could have simply bashed my head into a wall until I stopped moving and then woken up on the Resurrection Ship, using my next turn to head over to the Human Fleet to begin infiltrating again. Instead I made the check to try to escape from Detention, and to my initial delight all the humans helped chip in to free me. That delight turned to horror when I saw that we'd overshot the amount needed to pass the check by nearly twice as much as necessary.

That was a lot of wasted skillcards for my mistake, and though we were able to continue stealing ship keys and evacuating civilian ships, we didn't have any pilots to fight off the cylon raiders in space. A bad roll on one of the nuke launches meant that one of the two basestars was still floating near the Galactica, and a Broadcast Location played on a reckless skill check meant that another basestar showed up not long after the first one had been destroyed. We sent Tyrol up to the battlestar to launch unmanned vipers to try to defend the civilians. The vipers made a valiant effort, but the huge swarm of raiders eventually punched through their defenses and destroyed our vacation ship, fatally dropping our morale down to zero. I thought it was fitting that the humans had lost because of their noble sacrifice in order to save someone who wasn't even a member of their species, but then, it was easy for me to be philosophical about it, since my race wasn't the one which had just been erased from the cosmos. Sorry, guys.

Requests From the Audience

Ishvalan over at the Ishvalan V:TES blog asked if I had any decks featuring Shattering Crescendo, and it just so happens that I do.

Deck Name : Louder Than a Bomb (Trophy Variant)
Author : John Eno
Description : Hit the high notes and earn some trophies for it.

Crypt [12 vampires] Capacity min: 3 max: 8 average: 6
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3x Scout Youngwood 8 MEL OBF PRE for qui 2 votes Daughter :6
3x Hillanvale 5 FOR MEL obf Daughter :6
2x Benjamin Rose 7 AUS OBF ani pot prince Nosferatu:5
1x Bloody Mary 8 AUS DEM OBF pre primogen Malkavian:5
1x Arthur Denholm 5 AUS DEM obf Malkavian:5
1x Janet Langer 3 MEL pre Daughter :5
1x Veejay Vinod 3 AUS Nagaraja:6

Library [75 cards]
------------------------------------------------------------
Master [15]
4x Blood Doll
1x Charisma
1x Command Performance
1x Elder Library
1x Fame
1x Giant's Blood
1x Jake Washington (Hunter)
1x Paris Opera House
1x Trophy: Diablerie
1x Trophy: Hunting Ground
1x Trophy: Library
1x Trophy: Revered

Action [20]
4x Red List
16x Shattering Crescendo

Action Modifier [16]
3x Cloak the Gathering
3x Faceless Night
3x Lost in Crowds
4x Siren's Lure
3x Spying Mission

Action Modifier/Combat [3]
3x Swallowed by the Night

Ally [6]
4x Caiaphas Smith
1x Impundulu
1x Ossian

Event [1]
1x Dragonbound

Reaction [14]
2x Eyes of Argus
3x On the Qui Vive
7x Telepathic Misdirection
2x Wake with Evening's Freshness

There's a lot of theoretical goodness here that didn't actually work out very well the one time that I played the deck. Using Caiaphas Smith seems like a great idea, since he can either block stuff or else travel right, at which point you've got a guaranteed target for a Red List. If Ossian gets stolen, as he inevitably will, that's another guaranteed target for some trophy-hunting.

There were some issues that came up during play that I hadn't foreseen when building it. The Siren's Lures were pretty worthless, because I usually didn't have a second Daughter out, and the non-Daughter actions aren't generally the ones that I care about definitively making happen successfully.

The main problem is that the deck is actually too focused. There were a number of times during play when I had enough stealth and Crescendos in hand to torporize two of my prey's minions, but iddn't want to because it would prevent him from going forward. It was the classic rush deck dilemma, but given how much more card-efficient Crescendos are than rush, I think just dialing back the number of Crescendos will solve that issue. And those card slots can then be used to add more ousting power to the deck, which was its other issue.

I don't plan on playing this again - trophies are still too much work for how much they pay off - but hopefully this might serve as a useful blueprint for a decklist.

Origins Special Report: US Championships Final Round

As promised earlier, I pulled some strings, called in some favors, and cashed in some markers in order to get a special guest writer to give us the account of his journey to success in the US Championships. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm extremely pleased to present to you: Jay "The Way" Kristoff, our newly-minted US Champion!

Championship Perspective
by Jay Kristoff

It was the date of the US Championship that made it so important for me to try to win. My first child was expected in early July. That meant the US Championship in late June would likely be the last major V:TES tournament I could participating in for quite some time. I wanted to win it, so I chose to use the deck with which I have had the most success in casual play this year. The deck that is now known as "Father To Be" surprised me with how well it had performed in numerous plays against strong, local competition.

About one month before the US Championship I stopped playing it locally, but spent a lot of time with it at my thinking table. Many, many trial draws of the library and crypt shaped the final card ratios. I knew as the Championship drew nearer that the deck was finely tuned and primed for victory. I was concerned that my child would arrive early, and force me out of the Championship. I spoke with my friend and Columbus playgroup member James Messer, who agreed to play my deck in case I was unable to do so. I also spoke with the Queen of the Nosferatu, Robyn Tatu, to see if she had Nos plans for the US Championship (to avoid contesting). My enthusiasm and eagerness to play my deck in the Championship betrayed my usual policy of secrecy about my deck choice before tournaments.

Each preliminary game of the Championship was amazing. In round one, I was decimated before I could take an action with my first vampire when my predator, Matt Green, used Spirit Marionette/Heidelberg Castle/Daring the Dawn to torp and empty my Cock Robin. I was able to rebound from that awful start, oust my prey, and finish with 1.5 vps. That was the first time my deck had ever not won a game. Even with that recovery, I knew that would be my worst game of the day.

Round two was a four-player table with Connor Bell as my prey, John Bell as my predator, and Eric Chiang as my cross-table "ally," playing his Tupdog deck. Eric destroyed Connor (playing DEM bleed with lots of Sudden Reversal) first. He then smashed John (Toreador-anti breed/boon) next. I was soon to follow when Eric torped and then Graverobbed my Josef von Bauren. Connor was wise enough to stay in the game (rather than transfer out, despite my request). His decision to persevere gave him the chance to play S.R. on Eric's Fame that would have allowed Eric to sweep the table. That gave me an extra turn to assemble Eric's oust (with a combo of vote damage, bleed damage, and Cam. Seg. pool loss).

Round three was extra crazy when my cross-table "ally" Kurt Kopp called a Justicar Retribution after a Cryptic Rider. Kurt thought that he would take vote control by burning the two Inner Circle members at the table: Mindy Bell's Stanislava, and my Josef von Bauren. Neither Mindy nor I were Kurt's predator or prey, but Kurt felt it was in his best interest to ruin the games of both of his cross-table allies. Shortly after no blocks were declared on the J.R. vote, I pointed out that my I.C. member only has +1 bleed, and therefor isn't concerned with Justicar Retribution. Later in that game I felt it was time for Kurt and his Renegade Garous to leave the table, so I bled into my prey, Pete Oh, knowing that Pete would Deflect to his prey Kurt. It is rare that I assist my prey in earning a VP, but Kurt was a special case. Following Kurt's ouster, I slipped my deck out of neutral and into drive, raining pool damage down on Pete Oh. I ousted Pete and then John Pattie for the Game Win.

Word travels fast after two Game Wins at a V:TES tournament. Long before all of the round three tables had concluded, I had learned that I was the top seed at the final table. I also learned that James Messer (Lutz/Maris vote), Hugh Angseesing (EuroBrujah), David Tatu (Tzimisce) and Pete Oh (Black Hand AUS/DOM) were the other finalists.

James and I sat down and cautiously spoke. Though he and I are friends and members of the same playgroup, we have a history of betraying each other at the V:TES table. I told him I needed a vote-buddy, and that he should be it. I also
told him that my number one goal was to win the Championship, and that my number two goal was to make sure an American won it. Hugh's two victories the day before were already too much. I think I would have been sick if our British friend had won the US Championship. Despite my great dislike of Lutz von Hohenzollern, James and I agreed to be political partners at the start of the final round.

Being able to pick my seat was a big advantage. When it was my turn to choose, the players were arranged like this:
Pete->James->Hugh->David. I knew that James and Hugh had titled vamps, and would be immune to my Judgment: Camarilla Segregations. I had just finished earning a Game Win with Pete Oh as my prey in round three, so my choice to sit in between Pete and David was an easy one.

Before the round started, I gave several speeches to my tablemates. I congratulated them on reaching this ultimate game. I also thanked them for knocking out several nasty decks that I was happy to not have to deal with again. Finally, I requested an opportunity to play cards during their political actions after terms were set, and before votes were cast. I had been making that request at my preliminary round tables as well. It was a line that I thought important after I decided to include Confusion of the Eye. I like the idea of making that request at the start of games for two reasons. Most obviously, because I would like a window in which I can play Confusion of the Eye, as it is easy to skip past that window when taking political actions. Also, just beyond the surface of that request is, "Hey, I am playing with Confusion of the Eye. You should think twice before you try to screw me with your political actions because I can screw with them".

I did not like getting only one transfer on the first turn. Having no Info Highway in my opening hand was also no fun. All of that was made up for by the fact that my opening hand included two Villein and Giant's Blood. I was so pleased with my hand that I choose to secretly reveal it to the Queen of the Nosferatu who had stopped by to root on her husband. I don't know what she thought, but I saw it as a sign of good things to come.

At the end of turn four I had influenced my first vamp out, Josef von Bauren. My slow start wasn't so bad because my predator, David Tatu, took a while to bring up his first vamp; Lambach. James had told me that David was playing Tzimisce. However, I was surprised to learn that David was playing huge, titled Tzimisce. His slow start minimized the pain of mine, but those fat flesh sculptors were sure to be a nuisance later in the game. My turn five had me Villein Joseph v.B. for 11, trifle: Giant's Blood, followed by Joseph rescuing Lutz from torpor after Hugh's Theo Bell had been mean to my fellow Inner Circle member.

Hugh again torped Lutz on his next turn. He asked me if I planned to rescue him again. I told the entire table that my plan for my next turn was to call Honor the Elders. At James' request, this time David came to Lutz's rescue. James' now ready, empty Lutz meant that Hugh was no longer interested in me calling Honor the Elders. I debated with myself for a while as to whether I should call that vote. In the end I decided to do it because it was the action available to me that helped me the most, and because an American should win the US Championship.

Everyone but my prey benefited from Honor the Elders. I concluded my turn by bringing out Cock Robin. All of the effort that David and I had put into rehabilitating James was soon shown to be for nought. Pete conjured up an onslaught of Dominate bleeds that ousted my vote-buddy. James' departure really altered my game. I said aloud, "Hugh, I need you now." I was down to one partner, the guy I least wanted to win.

James' oust also brought on a mid-game section of the final round that I don't remember very well. Here are some things that happened in that section of the game, in no particular order: David played Powerbase: Montreal, I borrowed it, Hugh borrowed it, then I burned with Conceal. I passed a Political Stranglehold that helped everyone but Pete. We all knew a lot about each others' hands. Pete Oh was making good use of Sennadurek's special ability, I had SchreckNET in play, and David had an Owl Companion on Lambach. At one point Pete Oh called out the contents of my hand, and revealed that I was out of stealth modifiers. David used that info to Eagle's Sight block my next D-action against Pete. In the resulting combat, David burned my Gustaphe Brunnelle with combination of Carrion Crows and some aggravated strike.

My immediate response to the death of Gustaphe was to rescue one of Hugh's vampires from torpor (on whom David had played Rötschreck). David continually bled me for several pool each turn. I blocked only once, when Lambach was bleeding for four with Govern + Enkil Cog. I played my No Trace in the resulting combat. Hugh was not able to do much to David for fear of the agg. combat. I was able to get my Judgment: Camarilla Segregations into play. Pete burned the first one by bringing up Piotr Andreikov and sacrificing him to the J: C. S. Later on, I was able to put the other two in play, and they stayed. Hugh perfectly timed his lunge to oust David. He played Pentex Subversion on the only untapped Tzimisce, and uncorked with Dominate bleeds. The first bleed landed in Pete Oh's lap thanks to My Enemy's Enemy. The next two bleeds hit their intended target and were enough that David was ousted on his untap phase by my 2x Judgement: Camarilla Segregation.

As I untapped at the start of my turn, I realized that David's departure was great for me. Gone was the looming permanent intercept to my right, as well as the fat, titled vamps to which it was attached. I passed a vote to lower Pete's pool, then SchreckNET told me my bleeds were good, and I was able to oust my prey with about ten minutes remaining in the game.

The US Championship had boiled down to Mr. Angseesing and myself. He seemed intent on bleeding me for a lot with Dominate and initially I let him. On my turn, I was able to Banish one of his Princes, steal his hunting ground, and take the edge. Hugh then loaded up for what I knew would be his final onslaught. He pushed as much blood as he could to his two remaining vamps via Blood Dolls. He opened with a Theo Bell Govern bleed, which I chose not to block, but rather play Confusion of the Eye on to reduce it to a two bleed. My replacement for Confusion of the Eye was the the only copy of Second Tradition: Domain in my deck.

I needed that card on Hugh's next action as he bled with Constanza Vinti. I tried to block with Cock Robin, he played Resist Earth's Grasp for stealth, and I responded with the 2nd Trad. and successfully blocked. Hugh later told me that I was dead without the 2nd Trad. because he was holding Foreshadowing Destruction. In the resulting combat, Cock went to long with Aid from Bats, pressed, and torped Constanza in round two with hands for two damage. On my turn I was able to reduce Hugh's pool to zero with a combination of bleeds and votes. The final round had needed nearly all of its two hours. I raised my hands in victory, having successfully completed my first and second goals.

Origins Reportage #3: Overcrowding At the Polling Booths

Bonus Round: Tribalmans
I arrived at the convention hall several hours before the VTES tournament of the day was to begin, having arranged the night before to participate in a game of Battlestar Galactica in the morning. Apparently there was some kind of miscommunication, because when I arrived there were already five players ready to accuse each other of being cylons and I had a sixth with me, Karl. He hadn't ever played the game before, and I'd been pimping it to him for the past few days, so I figured I'd sit out and let him play. I sat near him and Eric, who was also new to the game, and did my best to give impartial advice and rules tips to the two newbs.

The Tatus arrived, as they always do, in a corona of perfect light accompanied by an seraphic chorus, and asked if anyone wanted to play a game. I did, so I left the Galactica to her fate and joined Robyn and David at another table, where they were already setting up Stone Age. I'd never played before, so Robyn and David ran me through the rules. We'd gotten about halfway through our second turn when an extraordinary event occurred: the very atmosphere around us suddenly hummed with classiness. Startled, I looked behind me at the other table, but I was astonished to see that Hugh hadn't suddenly left the room. (Zing!) I then realized that the quiet dignity in which I was unexpectedly awash was emanating from a well-spoken young gentleman whom Robyn introduced to me as Matt Green. I knew of Matt Green from the internets, where his reputation is that of a...well, a Mind Raper, not to put too fine a point on it.

In spite of that infamy, Matt threw a monkeywrench into my cultural assumptions about Britsh players of V:TES. Previously, I'd only met Hugh, and I'd assumed that all of his countrymen would be the same kind of leering reprobate whom I'd gotten to know all too well, that this was some kind of Musashi-esque affect all Brits had adopted in order to unnerve their opponents with their vile, capering antics. Yet in Matt I immediately detected the reserved confidence of a man licensed to operate any number of automobiles, mopeds and lorries, the kind of person you instinctively know you can trust. I was surprised, albeit in the best possible way, to find him so affable when I made his acquaintance.

But enough of this pointy little diversion. You're here to read about games, not my process of judging the character of foreign visitors to our proud American soil. Stone Age is a worker-placement game in which each player is attempting to make their tribe of mans better than the other players' tribes. This betterness is judged via recourse to a somewhat vague system of points, which can be gained from a wide variety of sources. They're "my tribe is cooler than yours" points, I suppose? There are four different resource-gathering spaces on the board, which can hold a limited number of mans, and a few spaces on the board which can only hold mans from one tribe at a time. I can see why nobody would want anyone else in the sexy times hut while they're in there, and I guess the toolmaker and farm-maker are just overbooked? There's also an eats-gathering space, which can hold all the mans in the world.

I got excited when I saw the stone axe tokens, thinking that I might be able to inflict bodily harm on other players' mans, because I'm a jerk like that. Turns out that those aren't axes but Swiss Army tools, able to help with everything from gathering food to quarrying stone, but as this game is apparently set in the time before violence had been invented, you can't use them on the members of other tribes. Unlike other worker-placment games, there's randomness involved in Stone Age, in that you roll dice to see how successful you are at harvesting food and resources. You can use your tools to slightly modify those dice rolls, making it a bit more likely that your lackeys understood when you were trying to explain to them the concepts of "wood" or "gold." I appreciate this bit of randomness, and the accompanying mechanic to mitigate it, as I'm not a fan of games which lack an element of chance, since their math phases always seem to last forever during play.

Gameplay involves trying to balance the your mans' need for eats against getting them out there to partake in activities which can earn you points. Since there are so many different ways to gain points - using resources you've gathered to build huts, buying artistic objects, improving your tool technology, increasing the size of your tribe - it seems like your path to victory will usually be determined somewhat haphazardly, as the big points at the end of the game are earned via multipliers which appear randomly. There's a lot of strong interaction between these different elements of the game, as you need to balance your eats-gathering with the number of your mans and what you do with those mans. There were some choices that seemed very obvious, such as building farms, which I think every player did when they got the first option to do so. Many of the other options are murkier, given that the higher-scoring resources are also more difficult to gather, which leads to interesting choices about whether or not tools are worth making, babies are worth having, and whether it's better to take a chance on the more valuable resources or bottom-feed the cheaper ones.

Though I enjoy this style of game, I'm usually terrible at them, so I was surprised to come in second once we'd tallied all our points. I had been maknig tools every opportunity I got, and also managed to pick up a number of tool point multipliers, though I'm unable to judge how much of that was my successfully following a strategy and how much of that was the luck of those modifiers being made available to me, both due to coming up in the deck and my opponents not choosing to buy them when they did. I quite liked Stone Age, though not quite as much as Eketorp, and would definitely give it another play. Once we'd finished the game, the V:TES tournament was going to start soon, so we packed it away and prepared ourselves for much more cutthroat competition about to ensue.

Because this was the big day! The US championships, moved away from GenCon where it was poorly attended and lacking in prestige, and transplanted to glorious Origins, where the creme de la creme of VTES society hob their nobs while starry-eyed spectators scream for autographs. Or something.

I knew I was either going to play my !Brujah breed/boon deck or my Ventrue princes for this tournament, since they were the two best decks I've got. I'd seen very little in the way of vote decks in the previous two tournaments, and since this was supposed to be the Big One, I thought I'd encounter mostly stealth/bleed and weenie swarm bleed. The !Brujah deck bloats like yo mama and generally builds its ousting ability as the game goes on, meaning that if my metagame guess was right, I'd be able to get my first prey around mid-game and then overwhelm my opponent in the endgame duel. I really should learn to start ignoring my instincts and just roll a die to pick which deck to play before any given tournament.

(Note: I should have pointed out in the first chunk of reportage that all of the Daves you see in these reports aren't the same person - the Archon wasn't falling asleep on the job. It's just that there are a lot of different guys playing V:TES whose parents all had the same idea.)

Round One: My Strategy Begins When I Cut Your Deck
me (Cornbread, Earl and Me) -> Bob (Lasombra bleed and vote) -> Connor (Kindred Spirits stealth/bleed) -> Hugh (Eurobrujah) -> Dave (!Brujah bruise/bleed)

When Bob asked me to cut his deck, I saw that there was a Jyhad card on top, so naturally I cut the deck so that it would be on the bottom. If he's been playing with the card for 16 years, it's probably pretty good. To make light of my cruelty, I told Bob that I'd cut his deck in such a way that the Homunculus ended up on the bottom, and he looked at me like I was a complete weirdo. Well, he wasn't wrong, I guess.

My opening hand contained three Unexpected Coalitions, which isn't necessarily a terrible thing, but then my predator's first vampire was Sela. The upside was that this development freed me from having to expend any strategy-think during my discard phase for most of the game. The downside, apart from the obvious, was that Dave was playing a bruise/bleed deck which apparently relied on hope as its primary defensive mechanism, and Narrow Minds as its weak secondary layer of protection. This meant that Dave spent most of his game bleeding me for four or six with each of his vampires, being unwilling or unable to rush Hugh's minions, and then eating a lot of pool damage during other peoples' turns.

My bloat was able to keep pace with Dave's bleeds, after a somewhat scary opening game during which he got me rather low before I was able to start seriously gaining pool, but the relentless assault combined with Hugh's three princes meant that I wasn't much more than a plaything for that savage trans-Atlantic brute. It occurred to me that the kind of bruise/bleed deck which Dave was playing acts like a playground slide for its predator, in that it initially generates very little friction and then actually speeds you up as you near its end.

Hugh decided that he should share some of Connor's bleeds with Dave, and once he saw what a good time Connor was having making Dave pick up and throw away beads, he decided to join in on the fun and bled Dave himself. Dave had an untapped Jacko who attempted to block, whom I was really hoping was going to mess up Constanza's day something fierce, but Hugh had developed this technique whereby he added stealth to a bleed that his prey was trying to block. It worked so well that I was amazed no one had ever thought of it before. I'm sure it'll become all the rage, now that I'm making it common knowledge.

Bob ousted Connor and used the bonus pool to buy a new vampire. That new vampire was Tabitha Fisk. I pointed out that she has Protean, because I've got some kind of weird OCD whereby I always point out the useless disciplines on vampires that people bring out. I dunno what that's about, but it seems like I thing I can't help but do. After bringing Bob's attention to Tabitha's worthless waste of a design point, without considering what we'd talked about before, I said, "That's why she's so good, the Protean. That's what makes your deck work." Without missing a beat, his face fell into weary despair, and he replied, "Yeah, but you put the Homunculus on the bottom of my deck." I was laughing so hard that I barely noticed when Hugh ousted me. I don't remember who won the endgame or if the table timed out, but I'm assuming Hugh won since he made it into the finals.

Round Two: Armin Brenner Gets Laid Off
me -> Jeff (Lasombra and Marcus Vitel vote) -> Dave (Kiasyd stealth/bleed) -> John (Sergei Voshkov and friends)

I brought out Armin and Jeff brought out Marcus Vitel. I'd already Villein'd Armin for something like eight blood, so I didn't want to take the chance of contesting the DC title if Jeff didn't Tap or Villein Vitel. I assumed that Jeff was playing Obfuscate Ventrue, and that Hektor's priscus title would be enough to beat the prince title of whomever else Jeff brought out. (I assumed he wasn't going to influence out Arika, as he would've done so as his first minion for the Govern chain.) Imagine the way my face fell when Jeff's second vampire was Gratiano. That made it two games in a row where that snide super-priscus had made Hektor feel totally underdressed at the priscus convention. What an arrogant prick that guy is.

John had brought out Sergei Voshkov, presumably just to change my worries from "what will I do once I reach referendum during my political actions?" to "will I even reach referendum during my political actions?" He's just thoughtful that way. He's a giver, John is. Luckily for me, Dave was unafraid of what The Eye might do to his elves if he managed to catch the twisty little buggers, and kept the pressure on. Stone Travel goes a long way toward alleviating the kind of fear that The Eye generates, even once he's Heroically Mighty.

This was a tense game. There were any number of times when it seemed that the table might fall in any direction. John was low on pool but had a lot of permanent bleed, fight and intercept, as well as some bounce. I had three vampires, but one of them had no title and another had a title that didn't matter. Jeff was making forward progress into Dave, but had to fight for every inch, thanks to my attempts to vote down his offense and some Covincrafts that Dave wisely held onto for vote defense. Dave had the least worries of the four of us, but he was concerned that pushing forward too hard would oust me via redirected bleeds.

Eventually Jeff discarded a Minion Tap, because there were six Villeins in play at that point, explaining that his other copies of Villein were scattered throughout his other decks. I Golconda'd Armin Brenner, which gave me a enough pool to bring out a new copy of Armin. Having accepted Jesus as his lord and savior, this time around he possessed the inner strength to hang on to his title. Vitel had almost no blood left, so suddenly Jeff's votes were unable to pass. Dave's Omme and Hektor were enough to nullify Gratiano's sneer, and Vitel's title was soon to be handed over to Armin, so Jeff went for a third vampire. He brought out Alvaro, but the Scion didn't have time to abstain in even one vote before I ousted Jeff. I was able to mop up the rest of the table shortly thereafter, as Dave didn't have any way to stop my damaging votes and John had run out of transient defense.

Round Three: And Lo, The Table Did Groan 'Neath the Weight of Their Beads
me -> Darby (Daughters anarch vote) -> Rob (!Gangrel Shattering) -> Matt (Zombo Combo) -> Brian (Assamite anarch vote)

Wow. The amount of pool gained during this game was unreal. There were times when I wanted to just stop and start a new game, because trying to do the math was killing my brain. A lot of that was just low blood sugar and sleep deprivation, but...damn, there were a lot of beads on the table.

I did a lot of saving during this game, calling Con Boons for !Gangrel and Assamites to try to keep Darby from gaining six more pool and to keep zombies from ruining my neighborhood, respectively. I also Golconda's Matt's Baron when Darby was about to oust him. At one point I got faux-exasperated enough to yell, "I'm not Jesus! I can't save all of you!" It was that kind of game.

Early on, Rob Shattered a lot of Darby's Daughters, and I was fully expecting to hear a Crescendo echo back at the !Gangrel, but Darby wasn't playing that kind of deck. He was playing another of his decks where all of his minions take lots of actions every turn, so I got to trot out my tired old joke about how long imbued decks' turns take. Matt got out a lot of Corpses that bled into Brian, who was mostly ineffective because I kept being a fascist and removing his baronies before he had much chance to do anything with them. There was a lot of math during each of my turns as I counted how many of Darby's Daughters were untapped and therefore singing extra-loud thanks to their Conductor, but I was too much of a moron to come up with the idea of making a deal with Rob for him to Shatter the Conductor into torpor and then eating her.

I realized that Brian had out enough minions that a successful Revolutionary Council would vaporize me, so I stopped keeping him afloat and Matt got a victory point. Darby was now at ten pool and effectively unable to stop me from doing whatever I wanted. He turned to look at me and said, "Ah, okay, I'm ousted now." While I appreciated this vote of confidence in my manly virility, I wasn't actually able to close the deal. He gained a bunch of pool during his turn, closing the window on my chance of gaining a VP, and then ousted Rob using bleeds boosted by Rob's own Club Illusion. It seems that Rob forgot industry rule number four thousand and eighty: record company people are shady.

Darby kept grinding away at Matt's pool, and ousted him in spite of my attempts to keep him around. While this was going on, I stopped worrying about how much pool Darby had left and learned to love the bomb, instead just doing my best to make as much of it go away as quickly as I could. I did oust him eventually, somehow, but with the way the table had fallen that didn't give me a game win, and I didn't make the finals.

I hadn't had a chance to eat much of anything all day, and the fine beer, finer food, and even finer ladies of Barley's Brew Pub were calling to me, so I grabbed some folks and slipped away before the finals. I've squeezed a promise out of a very special eyeball witness to write up a report of that final round, but it's not prepared yet, so I'll add that to the blog once I get it. Watch this space.

Decklist
Deck Name : Cornbread, Earl & Me
Author : John Eno
Description : !Brjuah breed/boon, with some help from their pal on the other end of the political spectrum, Dmitra. Bleed me all you want, I'll make more.

Crypt [12 vampires] Capacity min: 9 max: 10 average: 9.33333
------------------------------------------------------------
4x Armin Brenner 10 CEL FOR POT PRE ani obf archbishop !Brujah:4
4x Dmitra Ilyanova 9 CEL FOR POT PRE obf justicar Brujah:5
4x Hektor 9 CEL POT PRE QUI for priscus !Brujah:4

Library [72 cards]
------------------------------------------------------------
Master [12]
1x Creepshow Casino
2x Dreams of the Sphinx
1x Giant's Blood
1x Golconda: Inner Peace
1x Monastery of Shadows
1x Powerbase: Madrid
5x Villein

Action [6]
6x Creation Rites

Action Modifier [20]
6x Forced March
4x Forgotten Labyrinth
2x Freak Drive
2x Iron Glare
2x Perfect Paragon
4x Voter Captivation

Action Modifier/Combat [5]
5x Resist Earth's Grasp

Action Modifier/Reaction [6]
6x Unexpected Coalition

Combat [6]
4x Majesty
2x Pushing the Limit

Political Action [17]
6x Consanguineous Boon
7x Kine Resources Contested
2x Neonate Breach
1x Political Stranglehold
1x Reins of Power

In the past year I peformed a bunch of experiments with unusual crypts. With this deck, I knew that these were the three vampires I wanted to have in play, so I figured I'd eliminate any chance of not seeing them. The crypt has worked just about perfectly in that regard, but this deck tends to end up with a great stonking pile of pool in the endgame, which it can't find any use for since it's literally got its entire crypt in play already. With that in mind, it's time to send the findings from this experiment off to the Scientific Crypt Draw Society and diversify the selection of vampires in the deck.

Mostly, this is The Armin and Dmitra Show, so I definitely want to keep at least three copies of each of them. Hektor's main use is that when people see him, they often assume that they're going to see me play cards that have words like "enter," "combat," "with," "a," "ready," and "minion" on them and plan accordingly. While that's amusing, I don't think it's nine pool worth of amusing. Well, much less pool than that thanks to our friend Villein, but you get the point. There are enough other vampires in this pair grouping with decent titles and similar discipline spreads that I'll likely use one copy of Hektor and one more of some of those guys, which will in turn result in the knock-on effect of forcing the library to be much less of a breed/boon affair, since few of the vampires I'll be using will be !Brujah any more.

After the third round was over, Darby said, "If that was my deck you'd been playing, you'd have ousted me that turn that I was down to ten pool." True, but ouch. This was the second year in a row that I'd played this deck in Boston, felt like it had plenty of ousting power, and then took it to Origins and felt like it didn't have nearly enough. Darby mentioned adding more Iron Glares, which I initially didn't want to do because I want to avoid having my bleeds of three hurt my grandprey. He pointed out that they're easy enough to cycle on votes that I call if that's something I'm concerned about during a game, and that for games when I need the bleed boost that's might handy as well. He's totally right, of course.

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.