Ashur´s Gothcon experience 2015

Hi. This is a short report from the Swedish ECQ 2015, as usual held at the Gothcon gaming convention in Gothenburg.

     I was kind of out of shape before this tournament, my first this year. I promised to play more after my nice 11^th place at the EC 2014, but stuff has held me from it, for example a 10 week long course weeknights. Also I haven´t felt inspired by the Unaligned and Storyline sets – lots of boring cards that haven´t made me feel for building new decks.

     So I had no clear idea of what deck to pick for Gothcon. I settled for something that I´m used to, some kind of grinder or lawfirm. But I didn´t want to play my old Princes with sticks (which I reached the final at the Swedish Nationals 2011), or the G4-5 “bleedfirm” I won a small tournament with in late 2013.

     But I felt stressed and couldn´t bother to think a lot, so I just search secretlibrary.info for decks with Lodin, and found David Duráns TWD from Camarilla Conclave 2014. I switched some cards – 2 Vessel for 2 Villein, 4 Public Trust for Governs, 1 Parity Shift for 1 Anarchist Uprising, 1 Foreshadowing for 1 Conditioning, 2 Redirection for 2 Deflectioning, 2 WWEF for 2 Second Traditions, 4 Taste of Vitae for 2 Soak and 2 Weighted Walking Stick, and Joseph D for an extra Mustafa.

     These alternations can be discussed, and I realise that there are still much room for improvement in the deck, but … the rest is history :)

Deck: The feel of the rod

Crypt (12 cards)

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 1x  Emily Carson         5  for pre DOM          Ventrue:5

 2x  Graham Gottesman     7  obf pre tha DOM FOR  Ventrue:5

 1x  João Bilé            5  pre DOM FOR          Ventrue:4

 1x  Juniper              6  ani dom pre FOR      Ventrue:4

 3x  Lodin (Olaf Holte)   8  aus pro DOM FOR PRE  Ventrue:5

 2x  Mustafa, The Heir    6  cel dom FOR PRE      Ventrue:4

 1x  Victor Donaldson     6  for pre DOM          Ventrue:5

 1x  Victor Pelletier     5  cel dom for PRE      Ventrue:4

Library (82 cards)

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Master (7)

 1x Direct Intervention

 2x Dreams of the Sphinx

 1x Ephor

 1x Giant's Blood

 2x Villein

Action (16)

 2x Entrancement

14x Govern the Unaligned

Political Action (4)

 3x Parity Shift

 1x Anarchist Uprising

Action Modifier (15)

 4x Conditioning

 2x Daring the Dawn

 2x Foreshadowing Destruction

 6x Freak Drive

 1x Kiss of Ra, The

Reaction (22)

 6x Deflection

 4x On the Qui Vive

 2x Redirection

 8x Second Tradition: Domain

 2x Wake with Evening's Freshness

Combat (18)

 8x Hidden Strength

 4x Soak

 6x Weighted Walking Stick

Table 1:

 

Red arrow: Aggressive
Orange arrow: Semi-aggressive
Yellow arrow: Not aggressive


Difficulty for me: 3/5. Tap n bleed is not nice to have as predator, but I run a lot of wakes so things could be far worse. Also having the other deck with lots of votes as my table ally is always better than playing against it.

My performance: 2/5. I handled Rudolf, and put Oskars Blackhorse to torpor with Graham Gottesman in a stick vs stick fight. But I could bleed Oskar hard because of his bleed bounce.

I did a really stupid decision when I was heads up when I guessed Oskar had a Daring the Dawn in his hand and that it didn´t really matter how I played. Turns out Oskar don´t even play Daring, and I would have won the game have I only not tapped out.

The other players: Rudolf really wanted Marko to disappeared, and played Pentex Subversion on his first vamp, Anson. Oskar then put Revelations at superior on Marko as his first action, forcing him to play with an open hand. When Marko finally got rid of the Pentex, Rudolf contested his Anson = bye bye Marko. Oskars Revelation stayed in play for the whole game, giving him a great advantage against his preys. More about Oskars deck in the finals.

Lesson to learn: Knowledge of deck archetypes is good, but don’t have too much bias about other peoples decks.

Oskar: 4 vp

Table 2:

 

 
Difficulty for me: 2/5. My predator is a Tzimisce wall, but without many Eagles Sights or bleed cards to do the old “prey punisher” routine. My first prey is odd, but not impossible to handle.

My performance: 4/5. I played this extremely slow, almost being ousted by Fredriks John Paleologus-thing (“During your untap phase, if John is ready, he may burn 2 blood to cause your prey to burn 1 pool.”) – he had me down at 4 pool once! Heads up I think Ivan made a mistake allowing me to cycle cards by a block when he didn´t need to, so I could draw the bleed card I needed to oust him just in time.

The other players: Bea had a funny deck, with 2-cap Sabbat vamps with Desert Eagles+Magazines+Scatter shot, backed with Hungry Coyote and Blood Dolls. She dashed out a lot of damage to my vamps, but my fortitude saved me. A funny deck, but not so funny if Scourge of the Enochians hit the table! She played well, but could survive in the long run.

     Fredriks deck was WAY to slow, and played a very strange and expensive combat module with Body Arsenal and Blood of Acid. Cheaper combat (say Aid + Crows) and more wakes and bleed bounce would have served him well.

     Ivan (Myrdin when he writes at Stockholmjyhad) is one of the best players I know, at least when it comes to deck building and counting and such stuff, but here he had problems. He used Mirror Walks to escape Fredriks combat, but couldn´t really handle being rush with Scatter shots. And he had Selena burned by Beas Archon Investigation when he was bounced.

Lesson to learn: It´s nice to have a calm predator. Always make the best of it.

Ivan: 1 vp

Me: 3 vp

Table 3:

 

 
Difficulty for me: 1/5. A very, very good seating, with a first prey that had problems defending her pool without drawing a Protected Resources, while damaging her own prey a lot. Isak is aggressive, but I can bounce his bleeds.

My performance: 4/5. Well, what can I say. I didn´t mess this up, I just took care of what was given to me.

The other players: Everybody did their thing, including Isak bleeding me with 1-stealthed 6-bleeds that I could bounce to Caroline, so I ousted her fast. Sure, doing so is a kind of kingmaking, but on the other hand not bleeding is also so. Kalle was really close to ousting Isak with big bleeds and cancelling the bleed bounce with several Touch of Clarity. I had to blow up the table with a Anarchist Uprising to be really sure to secure the game win.

Lesson to learn: None really. It just fell into my lap.

Final:

 
1. Marko

2. Hugh

3. Randy

4. Henrik

5. Oskar

Difficulty for me: 4/5. This table was top notch, with the top ranked players of Sweden, Finland and the UK, and me only third seed, so I had to get more points than both Hugh and Marko to win. My deck should be able to stop Hughs and Randys.

My performance: 4/5. Everybody told me I played well afterwards, so I guess I did. I applied a kind of strange tactic – I knew Randal and Hugh was going to talk A LOT, so I decided to quite randomly only listed to about every other “advice” they gave me. I also decided to mess Hugh up quite hard, blocking and damaging his minions a lot in the beginning, just because I knew he is a good player. And I wanted Randy to damage Marko just about enough so he couldn´t have a chance to oust Oskar.

The other players: Randy was very frustrated with his situation, me blocking his first Embrace and not permitting him to put Marko within ousting range.

     Marko did his best moving pool with Parity Shifts, me voting with him just enough to make him survive but not ousting Oskar (Mustafa the Heir was very nice here, asking for blood to vote with him, but by doing so stealing a blood from one of his vamps).

     Hugh was gone quite early to Oskars heavy bleed. Very heavy bleed! I have to give Oskar real strong cred for his deck – not until after the tournament, facing him twice, I realised the deck a powerbleeder disguised as a stickmen grinder. Every stickmen player can be “unlucky”, and just draw some stupid bleed cards and almost no stick or prevent, so it´s not that easy to unveil the deceit. I heard he played only 2 Weighted Walking Stick and 2 prevent cards!

Lesson to learn: This game is tricky. It´s not enough to know your own deck, recognize the other decks, read the table correctly and make the right decisions based on all that, you also profit by knowing the other players, and knowing when to follow their advice and when not to.

Randyman: 1 vp

Oskar: 1,5 vp

Me: 1,5 vp (game win and tournament victory)

All the final decks can be found here.

Conclusion: I have played this tournament every year for 15 years or so, and now it was my turn to get lucky. I guess the tree don´t fall on the first cut, right? 

     I want to thank Isak for arranging the tournament, as well as the very nice draft the day before and the gathering at his home the night before that (when Rudolf thought Montano-Baltimore Purge was suitable for a casual game!)

     Thanks also to the other 16 players who bothered to attend. Hope seeing you again soon, in Warsaw or before that!

     I sincerely hope this game will be rekindled within shortly, as some rumours tell me. I get the feeling that we are “playing in the end times” right now, and that it´s critical to get things done now, if we want new players to discover the game and old players to return. I wish those responsible for this the very best of luck.