What: Sect Wars Draft + ECQ 2010
When: April 24th (Sect Wars) + April 25th (ECQ 2010)
Where: IT-University, Rued Langgaards Vej 7, 2300 København S
April 24th, Sect Wars Draft.
* See rules at the bottom of the post
Registration starts at 10.30
The 1 hour deck building period starts at 11.30
This will be a 2 rounds + final (2 hour limit) tournament, and the
first round starts at 12.30
PLEASE LET US KNOW IF YOU PLAN ON ATTENDING THIS EVENT, AS THE NUMBER
OF PLAYERS AFFECT WHAT SHOULD BE PLAYED.
Entry fee: 210 Danish Kroner (around 28 euros)
This gives each player a starter deck from the selected Sect and
access to cards from the18 boosters the team has available.
Prizes will be a display of boosters (not determined yet which one) to
be shared amongst the team.
April 25th, Danish ECQ 2010
Registration starts at 10.30
First round starts at 11.30
This will be a 3 rounds + final (2 hour limit).
Entry fee: 40 Danish kroner (5 euros)
Accomodation:
If you are interested in crash space at local players, please contact
one of the organizers below. First come, first serve. But we can
probably fit 10-15 people.
If you are looking for cheap hotels, here are some of the good
overviews:
http://www.gtahotels.com/cities/copenhagen.htm
http://www.hotelclub.net/hotel.reservations/Copenhagen.htm
Non-hotel options:
http://www.visitdenmark.com/international/en-gb/menu/turist/inspirati...
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Card Analysis: Grooming the Protege
An excellent card that I've observed speeding up my gameplay and providing options even mid/late game. Primarily thought of as a Master card accelerator similar to Zillah's Valley, Information Highway, Eternals of Sirius, Tend the Flock; the fact that it moves blood from a ready minion to an uncontrolled minion allows it to mimic the ability of Minion Tap.
First up, Grooming's advantages are that it a) effectively reduces the cost of the 2nd minion by up to 3, making your spent pool go a longer way. This also allows cap 7 and lower minions to be influenced in 1 turn. For decks that do not or cannot use Governing the Unaligned/Enchant Kindred this can be a godsend against a weenie or bleed deck. b) by moving blood from a ready minion to your uncontrolled region, this makes Grooming a Minion Tap-lite for 2+1 (bring 2 with 4 transfers, then 1). Sure this takes up transfers, but transfers matter most in the early game, and at that point you'd want to influence out vampires instead. Rarely do I find myself Minion Tapping for more than 4 anyways so 3 is plenty in many cases; plus it is not affected by Villein (which everyone packs due to HttB starters).
Its limitations are 1) older vampire -> younger vampire, and 2) they must be of the same clan. These limitations aren't really that limiting, as often decks themed around specific overall purposes often share a similar disc. spread, and clan-similar vampires usually share that. Mind you, that's alot of qualifications there, so Grooming is not for every deck. Also, you must first have a minion out, and so it speeds up only the 2nd minion onwards.
Tactically you also must decide if losing 3 blood from your (likely to be first) minion poses a hazard, or at least ensure that the 2nd minion influenced out will block any rushers. And obviously it can't be used if there's no uncontrolled minion.
Zillah's Valley and Information Highway suffers from the fact that they do not have the blood/pool management like Grooming. They are, to all intents and purposes, allow you to spend your pool at a near 1:1 ratio (Zillah's Valley has an additional cost of 1 pool). Eternals of Sirius is Followers of Set-specific. And other than Eternals being a decent Ascendance (needing at least 4pool to buy in), they are nigh on useless mid/late game. Benefits wise Eternals is for one turn 9caps, Zillah's Valley is for 8caps while Info Highway allows first turn 6caps or 2nd turn 9-11caps. Importantly, they can help influence the 1st minion.
Tend The Flock is clearly a superior version of Grooming, but has a limitation of only infernals. Infernals have their own pool management problems to address, thus the power boost.
All in all, Grooming the Protege is a versatile card that I find is a welcome draw whether early or late game. I'm willing to sacrifice some advantages of other accelerators and Minion Tap if I can get 90% of either on a single card.
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Current Decks
I have 3 full decks at the moment that i use in regular play.
My G4/5 Brujah deck has seen the most play, and most tweaking. No major overhaul really, bruise/vote at its base. Still suffers from stealth/power bleeding and extremely violent combat. It can pump out votes like nothing else; New Carthage assures me vote lock (gotten 12 permanent votes before) . Not to mention Scalpel Tongue, Bewitching Oration, Perfect Paragon etc.
The Rachel Brandywine deck is a pretty well-known deck concept that can oust in a single round. Very few moving parts and decent combat survival. Very little pool gain though, Rachel's a 10Cap and she needs partners.
The G1/2 Toreador Aching Beauty deck is the most recent, and needs the most adjustments. Powerful once it gets its engine running, but slow setup. Not the most efficient in terms of actions per vampire, but the actions hurt. Aims to outlast the opposition.
Got a couple of deck ideas floating around at the moment. Thought of a Gargoyles deck, but the split crypt/library really threatens to kill it. I'm still not really convinced it could work effectively. Gargoyle combat is ridiculously card intensive while the Trem sit around waiting to bleed.
A Daughters deck might work too, what with the new political actions and Virtuosa. I'm split on whether to have a split crypt with !Ven or Ven to help bounce bleeds. !Ven can block while Ven has better perma-votes. Choir/Harmony seems very dicey while Shattering Crescendo looks workable. Will need powerful blood gain to make this work. They need a Path of Music to juice it up.
Or I could just make that Obf Tor deck I was throwing about a couple of months ago.
My G4/5 Brujah deck has seen the most play, and most tweaking. No major overhaul really, bruise/vote at its base. Still suffers from stealth/power bleeding and extremely violent combat. It can pump out votes like nothing else; New Carthage assures me vote lock (gotten 12 permanent votes before) . Not to mention Scalpel Tongue, Bewitching Oration, Perfect Paragon etc.
The Rachel Brandywine deck is a pretty well-known deck concept that can oust in a single round. Very few moving parts and decent combat survival. Very little pool gain though, Rachel's a 10Cap and she needs partners.
The G1/2 Toreador Aching Beauty deck is the most recent, and needs the most adjustments. Powerful once it gets its engine running, but slow setup. Not the most efficient in terms of actions per vampire, but the actions hurt. Aims to outlast the opposition.
Got a couple of deck ideas floating around at the moment. Thought of a Gargoyles deck, but the split crypt/library really threatens to kill it. I'm still not really convinced it could work effectively. Gargoyle combat is ridiculously card intensive while the Trem sit around waiting to bleed.
A Daughters deck might work too, what with the new political actions and Virtuosa. I'm split on whether to have a split crypt with !Ven or Ven to help bounce bleeds. !Ven can block while Ven has better perma-votes. Choir/Harmony seems very dicey while Shattering Crescendo looks workable. Will need powerful blood gain to make this work. They need a Path of Music to juice it up.
Or I could just make that Obf Tor deck I was throwing about a couple of months ago.
HttB for non-Bloodlines decks
There are limited cards in HttB that would help non-Bloodlines decks.
Scobax allows a pre bleed reduction, identical to aus Telepathic Counter. Useful in a draft tourney due to limited options, i'm pretty iffy about it in constructed. 1 card for avoiding 1 pool loss?
Momentary Delay looks very useful for large cap decks trying to overcome weenie AUS or ANI, a very common match-up.
Cavalier is definitely very powerful (1 blood for 1 untap) as long as extensive blood gain is available. Additional actions are out and out one of the means to ousting and avoiding the oust. Cavalier competes with Perfectionist for top utilitarian Archetype.
Dabbler is harder to use with its 3 disc. req. Decks with stealth could find a use for it, though I think the easiest are combat decks. Carrion Crows, Stoneskin and Claws of the Dead.
Amulet of Temporal Perception plugs a problem in Trujah decks, which is what do the little helpers around the Trujah of choice do? Having more than one Trujah is a non-option due to their high cost and Scarce. Obvious (ab)uses of the Amulet would be an Ankara Citadel-ed random mook using True History, Rewind Time, Hourglass of the Mind.
Joumlon's Axe and Dagger are decent weapons. Joumlon's Axe is critical against IG and costs nothing, with the drawback of being Unique. Dagger allows you to pull another one out for free, and can do ranged pokes.
Foldable Machine Gun is ugh. Just awful. Could've done something else. Anything else.
Hunger Moon has ridiculous artwork. With a usable ability, though other than trick decks (read: spying mission or Imbued/Gehenna ones) i don't see this working that well.
The Rising has (slightly) less stupid art. Harder to pull off, but very powerful game breaker.
Scobax allows a pre bleed reduction, identical to aus Telepathic Counter. Useful in a draft tourney due to limited options, i'm pretty iffy about it in constructed. 1 card for avoiding 1 pool loss?
Momentary Delay looks very useful for large cap decks trying to overcome weenie AUS or ANI, a very common match-up.
Cavalier is definitely very powerful (1 blood for 1 untap) as long as extensive blood gain is available. Additional actions are out and out one of the means to ousting and avoiding the oust. Cavalier competes with Perfectionist for top utilitarian Archetype.
Dabbler is harder to use with its 3 disc. req. Decks with stealth could find a use for it, though I think the easiest are combat decks. Carrion Crows, Stoneskin and Claws of the Dead.
Amulet of Temporal Perception plugs a problem in Trujah decks, which is what do the little helpers around the Trujah of choice do? Having more than one Trujah is a non-option due to their high cost and Scarce. Obvious (ab)uses of the Amulet would be an Ankara Citadel-ed random mook using True History, Rewind Time, Hourglass of the Mind.
Joumlon's Axe and Dagger are decent weapons. Joumlon's Axe is critical against IG and costs nothing, with the drawback of being Unique. Dagger allows you to pull another one out for free, and can do ranged pokes.
Foldable Machine Gun is ugh. Just awful. Could've done something else. Anything else.
Hunger Moon has ridiculous artwork. With a usable ability, though other than trick decks (read: spying mission or Imbued/Gehenna ones) i don't see this working that well.
The Rising has (slightly) less stupid art. Harder to pull off, but very powerful game breaker.
Heirs to the Blood Draft Tourney
As Brandon has mentioned in his post, the South Bay group hosted an HttB draft tournament at Game Kastle last Saturday. 4 boosters per person, option of all HttB or switch some with KoT or 3rd. I opted for 3 HttB and 1 KoT; HttB lacks quite a few things a regular deck needs, like intercept, bleed enhancers.
Min 4 card crypt, Min 20 card library; from total of 12 vampires and 32 (+1 WwEF given to each person) library cards.
Pre-game I decided either Shalmath or the unnamed would be my top choice. None of my packs had them, despairing I started to pick Kiasyd before someone passed me a the unnamed. Thinking evil thoughts I started playing my first game when I realized a problem with the unnamed. It takes blood to power stealth cards like Masca, Under the Skin, Greater Curse and the one Public Trust (from KoT) I got. And the unnamed hunts poorly, thankfully I had a Visionquest (draft allows hunt and untap).
Got shut down in my first game with a prey having Serenna the White (1/turn can burn a blood to reduce a bleed by two. Not an action) and Nahum (gives 1 blood to a vampire during untap phase). Second game Andy could not deal with the unnamed's aggravated damage and let me bleed him out and gain pool. Ousted him fairly quickly, then the game stalemated 3 ways with Ian Thompson's Gargoyles bleeding Ian Lee's !Sal bleeding my unnamed. Ian Lee didn't want to oust me as he thought Ian T would dominate in a 2 way game. I slowly whittled Ian T's pool down and managed the second oust. Conceded the game to Ian Lee as by then he had nearly 20 pool from Off-Kilter, Tend the Flock and god knows what.
Coin-flipped my way into the Finals table, which was pretty bland for me.
Lessons:
Ian's design philosophy, as far as I can tell, revolves around surviving. Pool gain, blood management (Azrael's hunt special) and combat ends allow his vamps (and him) to survive to the other cards that ousts. Of all the games i've played with him as my prey, I think i've only ousted him once (he was playing a pre-HttB !Sal deck w/o intercept).
There's this concept in Warhammer 40k, called front-loading/back-loading. Front-loading involves spending points on stuff that kills things dead, like twin-linked plasma rifles or missile pods, while back-loading is all about shield drones and disruption pods. War40k skews towards front-loading due to the nature of the game (limited turns, really really frigging close range between the two armies, and alpha strike-ish nature of weaponry). Translated to VTES, that would mean that Malk OBF/DEM or Kiasyd OBT/MYT/DOM bleeding is front-loading. VTES however, its less unbalanced than War40k. Since lunging requires setup and the right moment, its best to hang around, stay alive til that time.
Min 4 card crypt, Min 20 card library; from total of 12 vampires and 32 (+1 WwEF given to each person) library cards.
Pre-game I decided either Shalmath or the unnamed would be my top choice. None of my packs had them, despairing I started to pick Kiasyd before someone passed me a the unnamed. Thinking evil thoughts I started playing my first game when I realized a problem with the unnamed. It takes blood to power stealth cards like Masca, Under the Skin, Greater Curse and the one Public Trust (from KoT) I got. And the unnamed hunts poorly, thankfully I had a Visionquest (draft allows hunt and untap).
Got shut down in my first game with a prey having Serenna the White (1/turn can burn a blood to reduce a bleed by two. Not an action) and Nahum (gives 1 blood to a vampire during untap phase). Second game Andy could not deal with the unnamed's aggravated damage and let me bleed him out and gain pool. Ousted him fairly quickly, then the game stalemated 3 ways with Ian Thompson's Gargoyles bleeding Ian Lee's !Sal bleeding my unnamed. Ian Lee didn't want to oust me as he thought Ian T would dominate in a 2 way game. I slowly whittled Ian T's pool down and managed the second oust. Conceded the game to Ian Lee as by then he had nearly 20 pool from Off-Kilter, Tend the Flock and god knows what.
Coin-flipped my way into the Finals table, which was pretty bland for me.
Lessons:
Ian's design philosophy, as far as I can tell, revolves around surviving. Pool gain, blood management (Azrael's hunt special) and combat ends allow his vamps (and him) to survive to the other cards that ousts. Of all the games i've played with him as my prey, I think i've only ousted him once (he was playing a pre-HttB !Sal deck w/o intercept).
There's this concept in Warhammer 40k, called front-loading/back-loading. Front-loading involves spending points on stuff that kills things dead, like twin-linked plasma rifles or missile pods, while back-loading is all about shield drones and disruption pods. War40k skews towards front-loading due to the nature of the game (limited turns, really really frigging close range between the two armies, and alpha strike-ish nature of weaponry). Translated to VTES, that would mean that Malk OBF/DEM or Kiasyd OBT/MYT/DOM bleeding is front-loading. VTES however, its less unbalanced than War40k. Since lunging requires setup and the right moment, its best to hang around, stay alive til that time.
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