Tournament Report By James McClellan and Rob Treasure
James:
14 Methuselahs turned up on Saturday for one of the most interesting tournaments i have ever been at. Here is a brief and posibly inaccurate account of who played what and to what effect. Anam Sheader Prince of Petersfield played a Malky sneak-bleed and deflect deck, got to the final with 4VP and got a VP there, too [at my expense]. Unworthy of our respected sister, you say? Ah, but it's the tyranny of the ratings, you see. It's also unworthy of her that she's propping up the ratings table, and this was her get-off-the-bottom deck. Ian Stubbington Prince Consort Elect of Petersfield played his ani/dom deck and so was one of 4 Ravnos-centred decks at this tourney. he got some VPs i think but not enough to get to the final. Michael McClellan aka Anklebiter played his Brujah Child Experiments deck again, and got 0 VP again. We REALLY have to change that deck for the next tourney. Sensory Deprivations, LOTS of them, were its undoing. DAvid hammond Prince of Watford played a Ravnos combat/bleed deck which did pretty well but didn't make the final this time. Adam lewis played some weird Malky stuff with loads of Malky pranks and games for pool-gain. Thanks for the Netrunner cards, Adam! Garry Scarlett played his Ventrue/!Ventrue dom/for/pre deck. It seemed to hand-jam a bit on pre cards and maybe needs a bit of family therapy. i showed him how to do this. He still got to the final [4VP] where he was rob's first victim. Niki Sehmi played a strange Tor/Malky deck with lots of malky games and pranks for pool gain. Good staying power but REALLY seemed to lack offensive punch. He made a couple of strategic errors in my opinion, including a Judgement Camarilla Segregation which was instrumental in handing the third-heat game we both played in to me [the only person it hurt was Rob Treasure who was his grand prey and my prey]. John Keech played a Giovanni deck and i've NO idea how he did, but i'm sure he didn't make the final. Barney baker played a Ravnos deck and might have made the final but for some backstabbing from Sid [of which more anon]. Jon Cooper played a Spiridonas deck and got roundly creamed, despite scoring the tournament record for a single bleed [13. He needed 14 to oust his prey, unfortunately]. Sid Sidhu played a really nice for.pot.ser princely combat deck but [IMO] made bad strategic and tactical errors, of which the two worst were to fall for my little tactic in the final, and to rat on a deal with Barney in the third heat so's not to have to face him [Barney] in the final. To Do A Sid thus passes into Portsmouth parlance as a term for the lower- than-a-Setite's belly kind of deal-renegadery. Anyway, mistakes or not it's a dam' fine deck and it got to the final with 5-ish VP. William Lee played an almost identical deck to Sid's [bit more takeover, bit less combat], and had the most VP going into the final. With my help he got Sid's scalp there, but really Sid's deck was the better one IMO. i played the latest version of my Temptation of Greater power deck which caused a lot of comment and no little fear. Forgive me if i don't post it just yet - Under Construction sign is still up on this one. Going into the third heat i only had 1.5 VP but then i got my fangs into Rob and all-but-swept the table [Rob got the other VP, at Jon's expense]. In the final i found myself downstream of Sid who in turn was downstream of Will, and i didn't therefore bring out any minions until about turn 5 when i activated 3 at once - Sheldon, Gilbert Duane and Mariel lady Thunder. For those who were puzzled by this, it is of course my patent buggering up combat decks strategy as pioneered on Sorrow in jyhad on- line. In a nutshell this is that if you are downstream of a combat deck and you give it no targets then 9 times out of 10 it will go for your grand-predator, and if you are lucky this will weaken both of them and give you a chance. It worked a treat, but table-rearrangement was my downfall [thanks, Rob!]. Rob Treasure played a version of his Ventrue untouchables and i hope he will post it here because he won, eventually, after an amazingly long and hard-fought game. John Eagles is now Prince of Southsea and thanks to him for organising and judging and forwarding the results to Todd, the MOMENT i have given him Todd's address. The next Portsmouth tournament is Saturday the 5th of August and there will be a lot more people there, i think, including some of our American friends. The next UK tournament is in Watford on Sunday the 23rd of July courtesy of dave hammond and his merry band, and a lot of us will be there [me, Anam, Ian, John Eagles, mark baxter and probably John Keech from portsmouth]. Hope to see you at one or both of those events!
Rob:
Good tournament this Saturday as always in Portsmouth. A lot of different decks and no weenies enhanced everyone's enjoyment. Some serious time wasting/stalling went on in my round 2 game. Players who shall remain nameless took an obscene amount of time to take their turns toward the end of the 2 hr limit, so all players would get ½ point. Not decent play if you ask me as I had the tools to take out 2/3 players - really pissed me off. James showed once again that Temptation of Greater Power is IMO overpowered. At least with Hostile the 'victim' gets some pool in return for their best vampire, ToGP you get squat. Ok so you need to back it up but I still think it is very powerful and possibly unbalanced. Then again I am only smarting as I took a total of 24 pool loss from them in round 3, targeting Queen Anne then Arika (thanks in return James!). As mentioned already, a lot of Ravnos decks. They for my money (along with Assamites) are 2 clans that are generally -not good- to play in tournaments. They have no real bleed, intercept, anti vote or anti S:CE in their bag of tricks. Don't get me wrong I like nothing better than Sensory Depping loads of minions or taking out a Fortitude deck with Blood Sweats, but they just don't cut it. Saying that I liked Barn's Ravnos deck with Sensory Deps by the cart load and good old Dawn Op / Draw ot Beast if you block. Would have done well if he hadn't been the victim of the worst example of deal-breaking/enemy making bad tactical play I have ever seen (more shortly). Huge 6 player final, which IMO is never a good idea. Radically changes the game mechanics and make certain cards even more powerful. None the less a good game was had, the seating order for absent friends and those who are interested was as follows - Sid S James Mc Anam S Wil L Gary S Rob T Sid and Wil generally beat the crap out of each other following James' obvious but very effective constipation tactic. Shame really as I think either Sid or Wil would had won if the seating were different. I ousted Gary following a 6 point Power Parity Shift (did I mention 6 player games suck) after he got serious hand clog. Anam was bleeding me heavily for 5-7 pool a turn but I had quite a bit of pool gain on the go which saved my butt. She could have taken me out on two occasions but a few well placed lies meant I had time (after some ridiculous deal making) for an essential Dramatic Upheaval. Anam used her 'Rob dies horribly' hand to then oust James and I went for the table. Anyway back to the interesting stuff, just what was that deal? and how pissed was Barn? Basically they agreed (and I believe shook) to try to share the points on the table in round 3. When it came to what I call 'the point of temptation' Sid was indeed tempted by the Dark Side. He took out Barn and created a really ill advised enemy in the process. Barn had obviously shaped his game around this whole play and both players needed 1 further VP to enter the final. This is a whole debate right here so I shall write a separate post to stir up the pot. In a nutshell Sid took the greedy option, I of all people understand this but you have to be prepared (and more importantly tooled up) to deal with the retribution and I don't think he was. Oh and by the way here is my deck. Heavily modified version of Ventrue Untouchables that I drag out every once in a while. Hint if you want to play it - Don't bring out the Frenchman unless there are no beats at all on the table. Deck name: Hostile - Parity sleaze Created by: Rob T. Crypt: (12 cards) [Min: 12, Max: 41, Avg: 6.83] 1 Arika (Ventrue, 11, au ce DO FO OB PR, Inner Circle) 1 Courtland Leighton (Ventrue, 4, do fo pr) 1 Emerson Bridges (Ventrue, 8, DO FO po PR, Prince) 1 Francois Villon (Toreador, 10, AU CE ch ob po PR, Prince) 1 Lena Rowe (Pander, 3, au ob pr) 2 Queen Anne (Ventrue, 10, au DO FO PR ob, Prince) 1 Ranjan Rishi (Ventrue, 5, DO fo PR) 1 Roland Loussarian (Ventrue, 3, fo pre) 1 Rufina Soledad (Ventrue, 2, fo) 1 Sir Walter Nash (Ventrue, 7, DO FO PR, Prince) 1 Suhailah (Ventrue, 9, FO OB po se, Prince) Library: (90 cards) 1 Anarch Troublemaker 1 Ancilla Empowerment 1 Banishment 2 Bewitching Oration 1 Changeling Skin Mask 2 Cloak the Gathering 2 Conditioning 1 Daring the Dawn 5 Deflection 1 Direct Intervention 1 Dramatic Upheaval 1 Dreams of the Sphinx 2 Elysium: The Arboretum 3 Fifth Tradition: Hospitality, The 1 Foreshadowing Destruction 4 Forgotten Labyrinth 2 Freak Drive 1 Giant's Blood 2 Govern the Unaligned 5 Hostile Takeover 2 Information Highway 2 Legal Manipulations 2 Lost in Crowds 8 Majesty 4 Minion Tap 2 Obfuscate 4 Parity Shift 1 Revelations 1 Rumor Mill, Tabloid Newspaper, The 3 Rumors of Gehenna 5 Second Tradition: Domain 1 Secure Haven 2 Skin of Steel 1 Sudden Reversal 3 Superior Mettle 2 Swallowed by the Night 2 Unflinching Persistence 1 Ventrue Headquarters 2 Ventrue Justicar 3 Wake with Evening's Freshness Apologies for the uber-long post but it was a good tourney and a lot went down ! Rob T