Playing Steven Bradbury-style

Sometimes you succeed. Sometimes you fail. Sometimes you fail miserably. And sometimes you fail on the edge of success. The latter might just be the worst. Especially if you know what you did wrong.

2012 Swedish Qualifier - Pre-game considerations
As usual I never play particulary cheesy decks. Each large tournament I´m kind of decided on that this time, oboy this time, I´m gonna play cheese and do well. But every single time I then come to think of
1) cheesy decks are boring to play
2) cheesy decks can be hard to play because they require exact focus and
3) cheesy decks are obvious – after 2 vamps good players tend to know exactly how to handle them.

So I tend to go for either something new and exciting or some kind of toolbox. This time I went for a variant of the group 4-5 Ventrue lawfirm/grinder-toolbox which put me into the finals last years NC. I tried it out at the last tournament in Stockholm and made it to the final.

The day of battle
I got up 06.00 and managed to pack everything I need for a weekend in Örebro, the bleed-capitol of the world. Got picked up by Randy. He drove very nice and legal, yet we mysteriously arrived at the venue one hour before we intended to. I ate half a Italian BMT and shook some hands. Several finnish players were present as usual – as a matter of fact the Swedish champion has a tendency to be from Finland. All the finnish players are good – some are _very_ good, like European champion Otso Saariluoma who rode next to me from Stockholm. But they have … some problems.

Game 1
Tremere big cap-vote > Me > Imbued > !Tremere sb > Aus-weenie

This seating is just about the worst I can get. Imbued wall (with chainsaw finish) as prey and 8 votes as my predator. The Aus-weenie-player (Otso S) drop turn one Smiling Jack … interesting. As usual, the discussions go wild about who benefits most/least from removing Smiling. Deal attempts are made and short deals are struck.

So I lean back and do just about nothing. The Imbued player (Adam) let me Govern down two times, which turn out to be just about enough for me to survive the Smiling.

Otso defends the Smiling all game and it´s me and him heads up. I have double Daring the Dawn in hand, but only need to use one of them to oust him. Once again what I have named the Steven Bradbury-style of play triumphs!

Me: 4 vp, Otso: 1 vp

Game 2
Lutz-voter > Weird ani-obt-dom toolbox > G1-2 Ventrue lawfirm > Me

My prey put out Lutz and Gabrielle. My predator (Ivan) choose Democritus and Sir Walter. Jippie, I´m vote locked. But my prey make some wrong choices and I manage to oust him when I draw a lot of bleed cards in a row.

My last minute addition Ericyes Fragment was important in this game – I have no idea why my prey fed me a Mind Rape (+2 bleed!). I really like the Fragment – try it out if you haven´t.

Next prey now is the ani-Lasombras (Marko), which has lost a big cap to a Banishment and is low on pool. I actually thought I had him, but suddenly he flashes out a strong combat hand (Crows+Shadow Strike+Torn+Taste) and torpors my key bouncer Emily Carson.

Me: 1 vp, Ivan: 3 vp

Game 3
Mono-obf sb > Shambling hordes w Dragon Breath Rounds > ME > Turbo-Nergal > Warghouls

This is the game were I screwed up. The warghoul-player (Andreas) got a _very_ strong start with Pentex Subversion on his predators Nergal and the softest of soft obf-weenies as prey. It seemed as he was getting the table, the only problem for him was his bad bleeding ability, just bleeds for 1 or 2.

Also, I was not very fond of letting Nergal out of Pentex, because I know that type of deck is hard to stop when it´s on a roll. But with no Nergal there was absolutely no pressure on the Warghouls, so after a while I had to remove the Pentex.

Nergal quickly ousted the Warghouls and the totally crippled obf-weenies. Then zombies with DBR (Jens) rushed Great Beast and a Giovanni Graverobbed him. Not good.

Now the Nergal-player (Ville) hinted that he was going to self-oust, being in a lost position as he was, but I somehow missed the hint, and instead of playing safe and taking my 1 vp (which had taking me into the final!), I influenced out an extra vamp and was smashed by zombies and Great Beast, and ousted.

Me: 0 vp, Jens 3 vp, Ville 2 vp

Finals (which I missed)
G1-2 Ventrue lawfirm > Malk bigcaps sb > Turbo-Nergal > !Tremere sb > Aus-weenie

I think I would have about the same chances as the G1-2 lawfirm if I played in here, and that would have been my place if I´d taken that last vp (Ivan beat me on TP´s). It´s just Steven Bradbury-style, watch the others make bad deals and then heads up with Otsos Aus-weenies I just repeat Game 1 :)

A very memorable final though. Santaleous whopped Nergals butt, some very classy dealmaking from the Malk player Henrik E, nice slowplay by the !Tre-player BobbyDoc and finally aus-weenies running out of wakes. Congrats again BobbyDoc!

Summary
So this was one of those times I failed on the edge of success. All in all I´m quite pleased with the weekend, as I made it to the finals in the draft on Sunday with a super-shitty deck. Also if I can´t win our last Stockholm tournament before the EC, I´ll be going to Budapest without being qualified, and that kind of suck, but it´s not the end of the world.