August Bloodbath

In the end, Gehenna overtook us all.

Danz ruled last Saturday's tournament with his nasty, nasty Gehenna deck, garnering 4 of the final table's VPs, with Haig, using his Wynn deck, getting the other VP.

It was a fun tourney, with about 22 people participating. What I liked was the variety of deck designs that were brought to the table.

Some examples:

- Danz used a Gehenna deck, with Beckett ADV as the principal minion. During the preliminary round where he was my prey, he brought out about 7 Gehenna cards; during the finals, there were about 10. The deck pretty much crippled or shut down a good number of opponents.

- Johann brought a Mata Hari uses everything deck. Mata Hari, and the player controlling her, can play cards of any clan or sect. As a result, War Ghouls, Fix the Hessian, Thaddeus Zho, et al, were on the table. I never got to face this deck, and I'm pretty thankful I didn't.

- Tonichi brought an anarch deck, with Diversion being the key card. While it didn't garner him any VPs, he was able to play deep into each round. Probably with a little tweaking, it'll be more dangerous the next time around.

- Eric Gatus, who plays Ravnos, used the new card from KMW, Fatuus Mastery, to great effect. Fatuus Mastery gains counters each turn, which can be used to pay for Chimmerstry cards.

- Dante used a Gargoyle swarm, with the Create Gargoyle card. During the third round, about 19 of his Gargoyles had taken one for the team, and either went into torpor, or were burned.

Me? I used my Animalism swarm, which did pretty well, given the circumstances. I got one table win, and 4 VPs. I'm also pretty glad I didn't make the finals in this one; the other decks were just too nasty.

I also got some key cards in trades. Ossian and the Sword of Troile I got for collection purposes, and I increased my hoards of Crows, Majesties, KRCs and Computer Hacks.

The first round was a little weird for me. It started with Eerie (2-cap weenie voters)->Danio (Setite tempters) ->Charlie (!Ventrue wall)->me (Swarm). Since I played weenies, two things worked in my favor: one, my information highway came out in my starting hand, and Calebros, the Martyr in my starting crypt, which meant he came out immediately. This was detrimental to Eerie, who was playing a disciplineless 2-cap voting deck. Having a prince out early meant that he couldn't get his 2-caps to vote successfully, and having only 2-caps meant that I whaled on them. Charlie said that I was channelling my sire (Haig) because no less than 5-6 of Eerie's minions lay in torpor. I disposed of him easily enough, and then ran into problems with Danio and his Temptations. I was gone pretty quickly after (no wonder Charlie warned me not to get the 1st VP), and Danio took the table.

The second round saw me with the lucky hand, crypt, and seating position (Info Highway, Calebros and 4th player). Razi (Nossie Justicar vote) ->Pupay (Gangrel/!Gangrel combat) -> Louie (Brujah vote) -> me. Razi took care of Pupay, and my swarm just bled through Razi and Louie to give me the table win.

The third round was a mass of errors. I had Danz for my prey, and his Gehenna cards just screwed the entire table. My blunder? I kept on forgetting to use the New Inquisition to ping Beckett ADV and eventually send him to torpor. If I had gotten to diablerize Beckett ADV, Danz would be left with a small or no hand, as he had about 7-8 Gehenna cards on the table, with several of them carrying the "cannot replace" text. Dang. C'est la vie.

All things said, I'm kind of glad not to have made the final table; the decks that made it (Danz, Dante, Haig, Neil, and Erick) were all quite nasty, and this was without Johann's Mata Hari deck, since he had to leave before the finals. I guess I was a bit psyched out by the nastiness, and I wasn't sure if the Swarm could've gotten anything. Ah well.

It was a great tourney, and, while it'll be some time before I host another game at my house, I look forward to the next bloodbath.

Tourney!

It's nice that the Cheng-Chuas timed their big VTES sale with the coming tournament this Saturday. From them I was able to aquire 10 Camarilla, 5 Gehenna, 5 Black Hand, and 8 Anarch packs, along with a Malkavian and Gangs starter, as well as 3 original VTES starter decks. As a result, I now have some of the cards I'd been looking for, as well as sufficient stock for trade bait.

My quandary with the tournament remains: what deck to use? Do I go for the tried and tested, or do I take all the new cards I've gotten, and build something experimental, something that will jolt players? Hmmm, decisions, decisions.