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 11th 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)
===============================================
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)
==================
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.
