Ready for Testing

Finally got the pieces of the City Gangrel deck together. It's a prototype, and rather clunky, so I'll probably give it a once over before I try it out on others.

I also refurbished my Animalism weenie deck. Let's see if my plan works. Heheheh.

Tournament Memory # 3

During the Black Hand prerelease, my !Nossie deck was going after Ca's !Malkie deck. One fight involved one of my vamps (I forget which) against his Escaped Mental Patient.

I maneuver away with Behind You!

Ca: That's good. Now if you had a Thrown Gate...

I threw a Sewer Lid, killing the Patient.

Ca: (pause) That's even better.

Tournament Memory # 2

During the Merry Christmas, Methuselahs tourney last December, I found myself using my !Nossie pitch deck. My prey, Cl, was using a Ventrue weenie vote deck, and his prey Ca was using !Brujah combat. Cl was screwed. I had Kendrick out, who picks out and discards prey's political cards, and Ca was beating the crap out of Cl. Poor Cl was reduced to singing "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" from Monty Python's "Life of Brian." It must've worked, because he did better in the later rounds, and I think he won the tourney.

Go figure.

Tournament Memory # 1

The very first tournament I played was the Lambach's Legions storyline tourney. In the first round, I got eliminated by my prey. Ta was playing Gangrel stealth-bleed, and tried to bleed his prey for 4. His prey Deflected it to his prey, who promptly Telepathic Misdirected it to me, and how much pool did I have left? 4, and I can't recall why, but I couldn't block the bleed, so that was it for me on that table.

Infernal Plague

News about the upcoming storyline tournament has been released!

http://www.white-wolf.com/vtes/index.php?line=plague

It has me wondering if I'm game enough to try playing infernalists this time around; the pool management is going to be tough.

Maybe I can try out the City Gangrel deck for the tournament.

Card Acquisitions

It was a good day to buy cards. It started in CCHQ, when I picked up the cards I bought from K. At the same time, I also got a pack of Bloodlines. The key cards in the pack were Reg Driscoll, which I had been looking for, Create Gargoyle, which I can trade away, and Dirty Contract, a Samedi card.

In the evening, when I went to SM City, I passed by Comic Quest and got 2 packs of Gehenna. And, lo and behold! I finally got my copies of Beckett Advanced, as each pack had one. And Theo Bell Advanced, as well as another Desert Eagle.

I can stop buying now, until the next expansion, as I can trade for the other cards that I need.

Hoody-hoo!

Upcoming Starter Decks

White Wolf has released a preview of what to expect from the upcoming Kindred Most Wanted in February. Four starter decks will be released: the Anathema, which will probably contain vampire who have angered the Camarilla one way or the other, the Alastors, which consist of the archons who make it their job to hunt down Anathema, and two clan-based decks, the Gangrel antitribu, and the Baali.

I'm really hoping to score with the Gangrel antitribu deck. Hopefully, it will be City Gangrel, which is a clan I'm planning to experiment with. What's ironic is that I probably now have all the necessary pieces to build the deck, so I'm not sure what's going to come out in the starter.

I'm puzzled at the choice of the Baali, considering how difficult being infernal is. Imagine having to spend one pool in order to untap the infernal minion. Reading the newsgroups, I'm of the school of thought that the deck will contain cards which will minimize the infernal quality of the vampires. Because of this, I've also decided to keep the Call the Great Beast for now. Who knows? Maybe I can engineer a better trade once people start playing the Baali. Or, on the other hand, if I get the Baali starter in the prerelease, I can incorporate the card into the deck.

Sorting Out One's Collection

I just finished sorting out my collection a while ago. I didn't realize it would be so difficult. I also didn't realize that I had accumulated so many cards.

What I did was to divide them first according to card type (master, action, combat, etc.), and then sort them out according to the cards which I intended to use, and the cards for which I hadn't any use at the moment. The cards which I planned to use, I placed into my plastic carrying case, and the ones I didn't, into card boxes stored in an old cellphone box. This way, I don't have to be carrying around so many cards with me when I go to play. And, with the current arrangement, I can build the decks I need fairly quickly. In theory, of course. I'll try it out after this hectic month.

Why I Don't Play Dominate

Of all of the disciplines available in VTES, the one discipline I disdain to use and hate to face is Dominate. While I concede that it's probably the most versatile discipline, and can be very painful for opponents, I dislike the sheer cheesiness of it. One can prevent opponents from attacking, or blocking, through cards like Seduction, The Sleeping Mind and Obedience and Dominate bleed modifiers such as Conditioning and Govern the Unaligned are so obscene. As one player puts it, Dominate is used for baboy bleeding. It's too easy to use, I think, and I prefer challenges. I'm sure other players would disagree with my opinion, but that's just me.