The aftermath...

Erik has written about his RopeCon experience!
I am home from Ropecon and it has been a great trip! Thanks to the swedes and fins making the trip and the competition awesome. Special big up to our gracious host with the amazing comic book collection who let us stay there. I’ll definately be going next year too.

So here’s a few thoughts of the V:TES experience. I picked the deck I’ve had most success with and played the most in the Stockholm league. It’s pretty much a standard dom/tha bleed deck with a few added allies and Grooming the Protege. I managed to win the second round table barely. I got into heads-up with a kiasyd bleed deck and it could really have gone either way. That win plus one vp from the first table got me into 18th place which gave me a t-shirt. Awesome!

I must say that I was pretty nervous having to play while speaking english. Specially when I was playing two tables as the only swede but I quickly got relaxed because the finnish people were really kind. There were hardly any missunderstandings due to language as far as I remember.

I saw a lot of interesting decks but I was a bit surprised by the lack of rush combat. I saw a few such decks but I thought there would be more. There were a lot of famous archetypes with funny quirks which made me really happy to see. Finland has really good players even though some may not play as often as our group in Stockholm.

All in all a great trip with V:tes, sauna, beer and amazing company. Ropecon was a great way for me to play outside of Stockholm for the first time and I can really recommend it. The cosplayers was cool to watch as well.

See you at the EC!!!

Erik writes his thoughts on Ropecon.

Hello! 

I’m Erik and I’m going to my first V:tes tournament abroad, ropecon, in less than a week now. I’ve been playing the game for about two years now in Stockholm and it’s finaly time to see what other players are like outside of Sweden. I haven’t really figured out what deck to bring yet but I’ve narrowed it down to two choices.

I can pick the ‘safe’ deck which would be my bleed with dominate and sneak with obfuscate version. And by safe I mean that the toughest choices you get to make with it is whether to play Govern the Unaligned on superior or inferior. The deck has a few wins in the stockholm league and managed to get into the finals in one tournament where unfortunately I got a faster dom-obf bleeder as my predator. The deck has no combat though so if opposing vampires get hungry I’m dead.

But I can also pick a more difficult deck to really test my own ability. I have recently played an anarch midcap rush-bleed deck with CEL that is really funny to play but quite problematic for me because of the tough choices. 

Picking targets for rushes isn’t that easy actually! More so when you know there’s other decks on the table that can hit you back, and even harder sometimes. I have heard from others that Finland likes to play Potence combat so my deck would be having a hard time. Or a fun time!

I will have to think about this some more. I do have a few other decks that I could bring as well but right now these two seems more likely but we’ll see.

Obvious but useful thought

In games having exact knowledge of what your strategy is and what resources you have is essential to maximize your play. Therefore knowing exactly what you have in your ash heap, your hand, and your library is too good not practice.

Evolving or mastering this is a very good way of becoming a better player. And if you do currently can't have an exact card count of your library and ash heap, start your training by trying to remember your hand and playing (as in planning your turn, reacting and acting) with your cards put down.

//

Randyman

Never respect thine elders

We all have them. Every single playgroup have a player, or a few players, that play more, are better, and will most likely have a bigger chance of winning the current game then others on the table. In Stockholm we are blessed with quite a few very good players. The majority of the players have been playing forever and the newer ones are doing very good. But still there are games where that player is more likely to win.

And then there are the players who not only have been playing forever, but also have been playing together forever. Based on years and years of earlier experience playing with these people one has a tendency to play slightly different, talking different, and to some extent acting different when one of the others is someone you have been playing with since 1994. I would like to call this a form of respect, or fear or admiration, which might give that player an advantage against the others.

The combination of the above is something that I believe is a big reason that some of the players around the world keep on winning game after game after game.

One example is me, Randal Rudstam. I have been playing for a very long time, not 1994 but still, and I’m a pretty good player. The years I lack with the really old players I make up with the fact that I have been demoing this game to a lot of beginners and teaching them how to play. This gives me a advantage – people are evolving and sees me less and less as an authority figure, but it is still there and I can see it once in a while.

Another example is a man named Erik Torstensson. He a very good friend of mine and a very, very good player – some would say he is the best player having won two of the biggest international turnaments there are. His extensive playing and years of tournament wins gives him a very special position when sitting down at a table of V:tES. He has a lot of respect of the Swedish V:tES community, and that and the fact that he is a immensely good player grants him a lot of gamewins.

In my case I can´t really complain much – one does like to win right? – but I have on several occasions been irritated, not at Erik himself, but at games where Erik has been, in my opinion, handed the win by others that could have gone for the oust or not taken that deal which gave Erik the game. But as with Erik I can see how others that I play with could be less happy with me at a table and a player or two who respects me a little too much.

The lesson of the day is that past experiences and accomplishments, teaching the game to other included, is no reason to assume a player currently is playing at his or her best. This game is a lot about being up to date with meta and slaking, i.e not playing for a while, does lessen your skill.

I try to never assume a player will be better than me or treat him or her any differently just because I know the player has done well in the past.

/Randyman