Games from 11/20

We had a tournament scheduled for last Sunday, but due to short-ish notice, lack of harassment and the X-factor, we had only six players. We made the most of it with three grueling games.

Game One:
Me (Young Turks)> Eric (!Salubri weenies)> Jeff Yin (Masque of Judas)> Joel (Ravnos)> Andy (BH Assamites)> Ian (stealth bleed?)

Ian spent a lot of the game looking threatening and doing nothing significant. He got a +1 bleed retainer with one of his two dom/obf minions, left a guy untapped a lot, and was generally inscrutable.

Jeff saw Eric's army 'o dudes and walled up. His damage prevention was often, but not always, able to deal with Eric's ~3 agg strikes from Dagger and Armor of Caine's Fury.

Eric spent part of his time going forward, part rushing backwards. I had guys dunked at least twice and got a cross-table rescue one of those times. With enough time, I was able to get out two princes, giving me vote lock. I was just about to discard Framing an Ancient Grudge when Ian brought out Graham Gottesman. Perfect target! He lost his title and went anarch soon thereafter, disaffected by the whole ancient grudge thing. I Parity Shifted once against Eric, landed some bleeds, and soon he was out.

At this point, Joel was actually pretty low on pool. I'm not sure what he was doing, but Jeff couldn't have bled him for more than six. Maybe some of the bleeds were courtesy of Eric. I had to carefully set up Jeff and Joel at the same time because I feared Sensory Deprivation and other Ravnos tricks. Joel Sense Depped Andy, I guess because he was afraid of his two occasional intercept and ranged agg. I Paritied again, giving Joel one pool to bring him to four (one trochomancy bleed +1). After this, I managed to KRC twice and take that pool back as I ousted Jeff.

Andy ousted Ian with repeated bleeds of three and I knew there weren't too many of those I could deal with. Joel died, so I got six more pool. I put three down on Sir Walter Nash or Timothy Crowley, I don't remember. Andy bled me for 12/14 pool and I ousted him with a combination of bleeding and voting. Huzzah!

Me: GW 5vp Andy: 1vp

Game Two:
Me (weenie trem B&B)> Jeff (same)> Ian (weenie Nos anarchs) > Andy (Malk bleed) > Joel (AUS DEM obf vote) > Eric (Kiasyd s&b)

The deck I was playing was very straight-forward, basically a demo deck. It plays a lot of Theft of Vitae, Apportation, and then assorted other combat backed by Computer Hackings, a few Governs and a lot of Conditioning.

Jeff was dismayed to have another weenie deck for a predator. I bled into him a few times a turn and, after having Lessons in the Steel nearly torpor one of my minions (presses), I learned to move to long range and/or play theft against him to prevent damaging him. Joel was bled heavily from Andy and played a Parity Shift. I saw it coming and told him before he even announced the card that I wanted pool. I was sitting on a DT that I could have saved against him later, but there would be no later. Joel wanted all six of Eric's pool for himself. I told Eric that he shouldn't bleed me for two turns and I'd cancel the vote, but we settled on one. DT was played and the griping phase began.

Eric was true to his word and didn't bleed me the next turn, buying me a little more room to go after Jeff. Ian's anarch bleed machine was in high gear with Toby, Jeremy Wix, Foureyes, etc bleeding for three per action. I ousted Jeff eventually and finally saw what I was going to have to out-bleed. After Andy got Joel, Ian ousted Andy and it became a heads-up game. I did have a funny moment where a three-cap with DEM bled me but didn't have the stealth to get past the one action I tried to block that game and was beaten into torpor. Ian bled me really low, but I prevailed with a topdecked bleed card or two (not hard in a 76 card deck where 17 of the cards are +bleed).

Me: GW 3vp, Ian: 2vp, Andy: 1vp

Game Three:
Me (Fatty Lasombra vote/bleed)> Ian (Imbued + Mistress Fanchion)> Jeff (Same) > Andy (Stanislava + Gather)> Eric (!Salubri from above)> Joel (Howler wall)

I have to preface this game with the comment that Joel must have been playing an absurd amount of wakes.

Ian screwed the game up for everyone by playing an early Blood Cult Awareness Network. Great, like I need less stealth next to Howler and the imbued! I still managed to get out Ambrosio, Francisco Domingo de Polonia and eventually Gratiano. There were a ton of table votes, so I had to make some deals. Honestly, I was feeling pretty burned out by this point, as were a lot of the other players.

I bled Ian and was mostly bounced at zero stealth. Andy played a Political Stranglehold once I have two fatties out, giving me six pool. Howler got three raven spies, two carrion crows and an owl companion. Blah. Anarch Revolts that Joel played kept the pool total at the table down. When Ian was low enough on pool, fearing his bounce I Golconda'd Fanchion, played Ancient Influence and then bled a couple times, leaving him to die lamenting his lack of Anarchs.

Eric got the tar beat out of him. Without going into detail, I tried to coach him in how to overcome a wall deck. Rescue. Hunt. Rescue. Hunt. Bleed. Rescue. Hunt. You get the idea. He gave up and slowly died.

Ian pointed out later that I should have ousted Joel first to not have to deal with an annoying blocker. He's right. I had to settle for the one VP and let Joel and Jeff duke it out. This is why we practice before tournaments :)

Jeff: GW 4vp (I don't think it was Andy who ousted Eric) Joel: 1vp me: 1vp