Swedish ECQ 2016
Gothcon, Gothenburg, Sweden
March 26, 2016
3 rounds + final
16 players
Pre-game considerations: As I have been rather successful the last year (won ECQ, won Nationals, played EC day 2) I opted one of the decks that have worked for me in those tournaments. For once I had also played a couple of those decks fairly much in the last couple of months, namely my Lasombra/Kiasyd stealth-bleeder and my (well, actually Hugh Anseesings) Ventrue princes with sticks. The Lasombra deck is a simple and super aggressive deck that won me the Nationals, and the Ventrue deck is a deck I´ve played various versions of since september 2011. The variant I´ve used this winter is very much like the one Hugh Anseesing wonEC 2013 with, I only changed a couple of master cards or so.
In the morning I decided that the Lasombra deck felt a bit too boring and obvious, although it´s very effective. So I choose the Ventrue deck. But when I arrived at the venue I noticed that I forgot my Ventrue crypt at the hotel! So I had to go for the Lasombra deck, which I had with me, complete with crypt :(
Deck Name: Avalon Incorporated Gothcon 2016 version
Author: Henrik K (Ashur)
Crypt [12 vampires] Capacity min: 3 max: 8 average: 5.75
2x Isanwayen 6 DOM MYT OBT Kiasyd:4
2x Dame Hollerton 5 DOM OBT myt Kiasyd:4
1x Arcadian, The 8 DOM MYT OBT chi for Kiasyd:5
1x Badr, Shadow of Gr 7 DOM OBT POT Lasombra:5
1x Lord Vauxhall 7 DOM OBT POT THA Lasombra:4
1x Onaedo 6 DOM OBT aus pot Lasombra:4
1x Virginie, Prodigy 6 DOM POT obt bishop Lasombra:4
1x Andrew Emory 5 OBT aus dom pot bishop Lasombra:4
1x Ermenegildo, The R 5 DOM OBT pot Lasombra:4
1x Lucy Markowitz 3 dom obt Lasombra:4
Library [65 cards]
Action [13]
13x Govern the Unaligned
Action Modifier [28]
4x Bonding
2x Command of the Beast
5x Conditioning
2x Foreshadowing Destruction
2x Leverage
4x Seduction
3x Shadow Play
3x Shroud of Absence
1x Shroud of Night
2x Stone Travel
Ally [5]
5x Nocturn
Combat [2]
2x Shadow Body
Master [11]
1x Coven, The
3x Dreams of the Sphinx
2x Great Symposium
2x Life in the City
3x Pentex(TM) Subversion
Reaction [6]
2x Deflection
2x On the Qui Vive
2x Redirection
As some of you might notice, the only difference between this and the Nationals deck is that it has 2 fewer Govern the Unaligned, but 2 more Nocturns. This is because I´ve tried to play it with more Nocturns in our weekly Stockholm GregerAnderssen Memorial league games (because people tend to play more rush-combat in any non-tournament games), and I realized that it ain´t so bad even in tournaments. But I´m still not sure. I see the “Blockturn” deck as a somewhat different archetype (with multiple Unmaskings, possibly FBI, etc) – the main reasons for the Nocturns here is not to block various actions, but to block just some key rushes and to get a less predictable bleed delivery.
16 happy players attended, including one Brit, one German and one Portuguese. Don´t know what happened in Finland nor Denmark, but I hope those players get back to the game soon. Otherwise the usual suspects, plus some Skåne players and Mathias all the way from Umeå – thanks for turning up!
As always I´ll illustrate the tables with these fancy pictures. The colours are red = aggressive, orange = semi-aggressive, yellow = not aggressive at all.
Round 1
Difficulty for me: 4/5. Kim´s deck is a solid wall – it´s really sad the Design Team ignored all warnings about Guardian Vigils brokenness. It´s way too strong, all good players I´ve discussed it with have suggested the for-effect should have been either protein or a much weaker effect. While my deck has some wall-breaker tech, it hasn´t enough defense to survive Hugh´s persistent stealth-bleeding. One other problem is my decks high profile. Kim could handle my bleeds, even when she got crippled by Fredrik, who of course knew I was a bigger threat than Kim. I guess maybe he just let me die.
My performance: 2/5. I really failed in the table talk. Hugh of course talks all the time, and influenced Fredrik to allow him to have 3 minions, which meant doom for me. My only response to Hugh´s excellent table talk would be “Never listen to that man!”, and that just don´t work.
The other players: I don´t think I´ve played against Fredrik before, and he had a deck that´s very difficult to win with, but apart from that he allowed Hugh to oust me (which I think was a mistake even not considering my self-interest!) I think he played good. I had to leave the table to do something else when I was ousted, so I didn´t see the whole game, but I heard it continued rather long, with Kim saving Hugh from being ousted and Hugh eventually doing the sweep.
The other players: I don´t think I´ve played against Fredrik before, and he had a deck that´s very difficult to win with, but apart from that he allowed Hugh to oust me (which I think was a mistake even not considering my self-interest!) I think he played good. I had to leave the table to do something else when I was ousted, so I didn´t see the whole game, but I heard it continued rather long, with Kim saving Hugh from being ousted and Hugh eventually doing the sweep.
Lesson to learn: Learn better table talk. Play less threatening decks.
Hugh 4 vp
Round 2
Difficulty for me: 2/5. Sitting between two decks with no intercept is extremely good for me, and I Govern out 5 vamps with no trouble. But Stefan play a lot of bleed-bounce and Faerie Wards which stunts any decent launch attempts from my side, and Mathias circumvents my own (not very plentiful) bounce with nasty Revelation of Ecstasy and Enticement (damn that Mokole Blood!), so I problems both ousting and staying alive myself.
My performance: 4/5. Carlos puts the first Nakhthorheb to torpor and I sacrifice Lucy Markowitz to diablerize him, totally worth burning her. I´m forced to play Pentex backwards on Mathias to stay in the game, and Carlos ousts Mathias with some bounced bleeds from me and Stefan. I oust Stefan and draws into even more strong bleed cards, so I manage to oust Carlos with a well-timed 7-bleed from Virgine (Command of the Beast, Leverage, Foreshadowing Destruction and her special). Good work and a bit of luck.
The other players: All played good. Mathias played a extreme all-or-nothing “glass canon” deck. Stefan ran a fairly original Marconius-based bigcap obtenebration stealth-bleeder, with titled vamps mainly for vote defense. Carlos ran a 90 card-ish Tzimisce wall with some political actions that maybe need some tuning – but he got to the final, so what should I say about tuning?
Lesson to learn: None really. A fairly straightforward game, not a lot of surprises.
Carlos 1 vp
Me 3 vp
Round 3
Difficulty for me: 4/5. Even though I have 4 Seduction and 3 Pentex, I have real problems with a dedicated wall deck, such as Rudolfs. I got really annoyed with getting that seating, had rather bad draw and made some bad decisions.
My performance: 1/5. Primarily I failed in my table talk again. In a critical situation, Jacob was choosing if his Nergal should play his first Barrenness on Rudolfs Heart of Nizchetus-equipped Anarch Convert or on Daniels Saulot, and I somehow forgot to promise him to remove the (for the moment contested) Pentex on Nergal. So he played the Barrenness forward instead of backward, drastically improving Rudolfs hand optimization and at the same time making it impossible for Daniel to ever play Neutral Guard affecting Goratrix. Very bad of me. I also wasted a Pentex and 3 of my Seductions in an early totally failed launch at Rudolf, so I pretty much gave up and let Daniel oust me.
The other players: Apart from the incident mentioned above I was annoyed by all the other players :) Jacob played a bit too sloppy, Daniels deck is too reckless and Rudolf did some strange mind games on me. But that is part of the game!
Lesson to learn: Never give up early. Sit it out even when next to a wall that is so fucking boring a deck can ever be. Shit might change things, you might get lucky.
Daniel 1 vp
Jacob 1 vp
Jacob 1 vp
Rudolf 2 vp
Final
Randy was top seed, Rudolf second seed.
I watched almost the whole final, and it was fairly entertaining. Randys deck is really vulnerable, and after he took a couple of bounced big bleeds he was out. Carlos got Eternal Vigilance on Lambach and got a bit to cocky with Eagles Sight-blocking stuff (if I recall correctly), so he was ousted by Hughs persistent bleeding. The rest got really interesting, although I actually missed the last minutes.
Carlos 1 vp
Kari 1 vp
Hugh 3 vp and tournament victory, congrats!
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| Hugh´s tournament winning deck. |
Friends of the German language can read Rudolfs tournament report here.
I´ll guess I´ll be back next ECQ, that will be my 17th Gothcon or something like that, possibly my 14th in a row. Hopefully we will have the game back in print by then! See you there!
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