Written by James Coupe
Major changes in the Portsmouth meta-game came into effect this month. Vote decks, having found it difficult to compete in the vote heavy environment that had prevailed, with Lunar's Big Nosferatu, many Brujah princes, the princes afforded to the OOT Malkie decks and so forth, with many other decks having some form of incidental vote defence too, people finally shifted away from votes entirely, and did it with force. Except one person. It seemed that quite a few people shifted to some form of bleed - either stealth, or weenie, or tap and bleed. Rob Shread's often seen weenie bleed deck moved towards including a couple of Misdirections (which hurt me, if no-one else). Of course, few people go into bleed now without some form of combat offence/defence and Rob showed up a few Magnums and Leather Jackets, and copious amounts of Fake Out and Dodge. He also invented Rob's Law of Reverse Probability - "The more Information Highways you include in a deck, the less likely you are to draw one in your opening hand." Other deck styles were, of course, on show, but most seemed to be neutered by the presence of the bleed decks. Will Lee's Gangrel deck got shafted by a bad combination of me as Predator and a terrible crypt draw - 2 Stanislava's, an Ilyana and a nine (Ingrid Rossler?), followed by two bleeds for ten within a couple of turns from my weenie Dominate bleed. James McClellan (Legbiter) did, as he already mentioned, perfected the Millicent Smith bleed for seven. On himself. Having put a Millicent in play, he promptly let himself be blocked in a bleed with Greger Anderrsen, the focus of his deck. Eek. Of course, when he brought a second copy out, someone had been paying enough attention to set about putting a Malkavian Dementia in his deck to steal control of it, ousting James and still managing to keep control of it (due to the change in the Law of Card Ownership, or whatever it's called) until his next untap phase. Huzzah for the Clan Hosers! But bleedy type things were very much the order of the day. With one particularly bad exception. The final was arranged as follows: Jon Cooper James Coupe Steve Cantlow Rob Treasure Lunar Lunar was playing a reasonably scary stealth bleed Lasombra deck, backing up Dominate bleed with Obtenebration stealth. A little large in capacity for the environment - fours and fives (!) - but good solid offensive capability. She was unfortunate enough to be sitting next to Jon Cooper, also playing a Lasombra deck. Jon's Lasombra deck had votes in it (Gratiano, Power Structure) but was also backed up with bleed and bleed bounce, so it had diversity as part of its appeal. The move away from votes to include other strategies was symptomatic of the current problems with votes in the Portsmouth tournament metagame. I, James Coupe, played a weenie dominate bleed deck, similar to that which appeared on the newsgroup recently. I didn't have much in the way of evasion - having only Bondings for stealth, and no Misdirections, hoping to rely on hitting hard and fast. Unfortunately, I didn't get the crypt draw in the final that would have helped (two copies of Gloria Giovanni, as I recall) and there was That Deck on the table, that had already royally screwed me over before. Steve Cantlow (Mr. Lunar) was playing another incarnation of the Malkie stealth and bleed deck he had on the Isle of Wight, once again inviting his Auntie to the party (Antediluvian Awakening), and horrible weenie stealth and bleed. Of course, playing with Malkavians meant that he absolutely HAD to have Malkavian Prank et al in the deck just because he could. And finally, That Deck was on the table being played by Rob Treasure. A horrible, horrible set of cards powers possibly the most horrific vote deck you have ever seen. Combining lots of weenie panders with Legacy of Pander starts off badly. The fact that quite a few Panders have Presence makes it possible for them to compete despite the No Vote Pushing Rules. Bringing out more and more panders fuels the vote capabilities of the deck, AND they count as a clan for Consanguineous Boon AND you can get even more Legacies down (since they are cumulative) to ensure a solid vote lock. Not that the deck doesn't have its weaknesses - lack of stealth, though Jost Werner is available, meant that it found it harder to call votes when people twigged as to what he was doing and what it was important to stop. Other Pander on the table hurt him, and other votes can, in the short term, make its life more difficult. I fancy that All Hail Mind Numb would have a good go at it too, since stealing three or four vampires (reducing his capacity to vote AND increasing my capacity to vote, all for a couple of corruptions) would really put the wind up it. But it's horrid. And it sweeps tables with hideous regularity. The final essentially was very close, since people knew what to do to slow him down, and then Rob swapped places with Steve Cantlow using a Dramatic Upheaval type card (may have been Kindred Restructure - I forget) and proceeded to start picking people off. I don't have a copy of Rob's deck to hand YET but my deck, which came second overall with 7 victory points, went as follows.... (Those people who feel that decks need lots of rares to compete please take note) Samson Mustafa Rahman Gloria Giovanni x2 Jing Wei Royce x3 Ohanna Cameron Brooke Christine Boscacci 3 Gird Minions 2 Malkavian Dementia 1 Brujah Frenzy 1 Sudden Reversal 6 Information Highway 8 Bonding 5 Wake with Evening's Freshness 12 Govern the Unaligned 12 Threats 4 Dominate 1 Dreams of the Sphinx 4 Tribute to the Master 8 Deflection 2 The Barrens 4 Dodge 3 Foreshadowing Destruction 4 Effective Management 7 Fake Out 2 Command of the Beast 1 Conditioning 90 Cards -- James Coupe (Prince of Mercia, England) Vampire: Elder Kindred Network http://madnessnetwork.hexagon.net http://www.obeah.demon.co.uk