Written by James Coupe. Deck compiled by James McClellan/William Lee.
Isle of Wight Tournament - 13/02/99 A tournament which was a lot of fun, marredslightly by the lack of players, which was a shame. Unfortunately, though the tournament itself was free to enter, travel to the Isle of Wight can be prohibitively expensive, at 7 GBP a head, and two potential players (Alan Gates and Pat (Roberts?)) were busy role-playing. Grrr, dirty splitters ;). Still, a good time was had by all. The tournament was due to start at 11.00 am, but was delayed slightly by Matt's cries of "Does anyone want to play?" which garnered us two new players, Daniel and David. Both of them played extremely well for novices, and Daniel shone as a potentially excellent V:TES player. Following the standard format of three rounds and a final, the players were as follows: James McClellan: Using a more or less complete clone of a deck played previously by Jon Cooper, he fought hard with the Brujah, mostly. A fair amount of Protean weedled its way in, leading to a fun hybrid of potence, protean, celerity and Brujah princely madness. The Fifth Tradition (Horse Brutality - ackn. The Rocky Horror Picture Show Audience Participation scripts), 2nd Tradition and Earth Control were all put to good use. Sadly under-used were Shadow of the Beast and RPG Launcher. The deck did quite well over all, securing itself neatly 3.5 victory points. It also had a tendency to amass vast quantities of pool aided, unwittingly, by Will when he played Golconda on Don Cruez, expecting a payment of 2 pool to swiftly follow. It didn't, of course. Jon Cooper's deck was primarily Lasombra. Only having seen it in the final, I can't comment on it in any real depth but it did very well victory point wise. A fair amount of Lasombra rush and graverob seemed to be there, with Obtenebration back-up. In the heats, it amassed a pretty nifty 7 victory points. Lunar was playing a very nice Nosferatu/Anti-Nosferatu vote deck. She had anticipated a lower vote environment than she ended up playing in, but still did quite well. Using that most necessary of tactic for political decks, diplomacy, she managed to have a much greater influence on the table than her victory point table would indicate, forcing people into somewhat annoying alliances, such as James McClellan and myself (cross-table) when I really actually wanted to target him, and not his prey, with the damage-dealing votes I had. A lot of big titled vampires - such as Sheldon and Kendrick - did her proud. She got two victory points, but easily contributed to the actual make-up of the final with her political wheeler-dealing. She also had sufficient stealth to go for bleeds when her politicking failed her. Matt Green went out with his "sleaze" deck again. He was let down on the trades he needed for his Alamut deck which, with proxies in a practise game, proved to be highly effective. Definitely a deck to look out for. After its good showing at Portsmouth in January, it was badly let down by bad shuffles, it seems. Not a deck I had the"pleasure" of playing against this time, it only gained 1 victory point this time round. David Williamson, one of the two novice players, was introduced to V:TES through what can only be termed a Baptism of Fire. When scrambling for decks, James McClellan had two on offer - the Betrayer deck, or his out of turn Malkavin combat deck. We plumped for the Malkavian deck. He was beset by difficult hand management in a notoriously difficult to manage deck. Though he was unable to gain a victory point, he got into the Malkavian spirit nicely (being a LARPer) and had his own point of view on the deck by the end of it. His take was that, since he needed to get normal bleed actions through, more stealth was needed. Perhaps, in part, that was due to him needing to slip past vampires he should have torporised (finding it difficult to control this inherently uncontrollable deck) but it shows how quickly people can adapt to V:TES, form ideas and throw around terminology as if it were second nature to them. Steve Cantlow (Mr. Lunar) played a Malkavian stealth-ish Computer bleed type deck. Steve has also recently purchased a new set of contact lenses, which allowed him to use X-ray vision to do uncannily well in Malkavian pranks. Having had to have his beloved Lunar oust him, he managed to garner 2 victory points. Will played a very hard Brujah princes combat deck. It was pretty good at being able to rip through any vampire it chose to, and had bleed and vote elements in there too. A powerful deck, it garrnered 4 victory points over all. Adam Boulton played briefly with a very powerful combat deck, loaned by Will. It really needed to get Cailean out, and then set range, going on the rampage as it chose range. Being new to the deck, but not the game, it was played a little too conservatively, I feel, not cycling enough, or attacking enough. It failed to gain a victory point. Daniel Trodden played for the first time, with a very powerful permanent stealth Presence bleed deck, backed up by Toreador Antitribu, and Rebekka, with intercept and bleed bounce and so forth. Needing a little tutoring early on, he waited until the final round before garnering for himself 3 victory points. Even with a powerful deck, it shows the makings of an incredibly good player if he is able to do that well with it, only having learnt the game four hours before, if that. If he stays in the game, which I sincerely hope he will, he should do very well. Finally, there was me, James Coupe. Having hoped that the metagame had shifted away from votes, I guessed wrongly. "Weenie" Brujah with votes, I'd hoped to have a better control of tables, but failed, sadly. I had been hoping to get quite a few weenies out (also using the Embrace and 3rd Tradition), and then use Consanguineous Boon to help out my pool. I failed in both games but one, where a cross-table Legbiter aided me in my plight, letting me get Lunar out. Keeping Legbiter from ousting Daniel with a Life Boon, I Restructured myself in front of Daniel, bled him out myself and then got Legiter. My card mix was out, and I needed permanent votes which were Brujah and, so, very popular on the table. I managed to claw together 4 victory points though. The final was fairly routine, as I saw it. Seating order went James Coupe, James McClellan, Jon Cooper, Daniel Trodden and Will. I fell first to Will, and Jon graverobbed a couple of my vampires first, then Jon got Daniel out. Will then dispatched James McClellan and Jon, winning the tournament and a fair stack of boosters. Anyway, next UK tournament is this Saturday (20th) at Second Byte, Fratton (as per usual). William Lee's Brujah Princes. CRYPT Don Cruez 3 x Donal o Connor 2 x Constanza Vinti Anvil Lizete Vizquel Volker Jimmy Dunn Dre Jacob Bragg LIBRARY 16 Masters Rumour Mill Dreams of the Sphinx Carthage Remembered Major Boon Sudden reversal Minion Tap x 3 Information Highway Dominate x 3 Golconda Direct Intervention The Rack Blood Doll Deflection x 4 Govern the Unaligned x 3 Scouting Mission Conditioning x 2 Bonding x 3 Foreshadowing Destruction Thoughts Betrayed Immortal Grapple x 3 Torn Signpost x 4 Pushing the Limit x 3 Thrown Gate x 2 Disarm x 2 Undead Strength Sacrament of Carnage Decapitate Blur x 4 Acrobatics x 2 Sideslip x 3 Pursuit x 2 Sidestrike Psyche Archon x 2 KRC Disputed Territory Parity Shift Camarilla Exemplary 2nd Tradition x 6 Wakes x 2 Forced Awakening Fifth Tradition x 3 Bum's Rush x 2 Ambush Mr Winthrop Leather Jacket Taste of Vitae x 2 Pulled Fangs