So I just got back from a great EC event and same as last year I would like to leave some notes and impressions. Since my posts are often legthy, I will separate report to four parts - one for each day and last one for the final impressions, thanks and shout outs.
So the first day, I was one of our Nations cup team and since I did not want to let down other teammates, I have chosen my probably most stable deck - Tremere politics 0.79. Here is the decklist:
Deck Name: Tremere politics 0.79
Author: Silmegil
Crypt (12 cards; Capacity min=7 max=9 avg=8.25)
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2x Anastasz di Zagreb 8 ani cel dom AUS THA Tremere:3
1x Carna, The Princess Witch 7 AUS DOM THA Tremere:3
1x Dr. John Dee 9 chi ANI AUS DOM THA Tremere:4
2x Ladislas Toth, The Torch 7 for AUS DOM THA !Tremere:3
3x Malgorzata 9 pre AUS DOM THA VIC !Tremere:4
2x Orlando Oriundus 9 obf AUS DOM THA !Tremere:4
1x Polly Kay Fisher 8 for pot AUS DOM THA !Ventrue:4
Library (90 cards)
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Master (15)
6x Blood Doll
3x Dreams of the Sphinx
1x Erciyes Fragments, The
4x Information Highway
1x Sudden Reversal
Political Action (16)
1x Ancient Influence
1x Ancilla Empowerment
1x Domain Challenge
10x Kine Resources Contested
2x Neonate Breach
1x Political Stranglehold
Action Modifier (4)
4x Mirror Walk
Reaction (28)
1x Eluding the Arms of Morpheus
2x Enhanced Senses
2x Eyes of Argus
2x Forced Awakening
4x On the Qui Vive
3x Precognition
5x Spirit's Touch
9x Telepathic Misdirection
Combat (27)
10x Apportation
4x Aura Reading
10x Theft of Vitae
3x Walk of Flame
Created with Secret Library v0.9.4a. (Oct 30, 2012 23:50:48)
I am not sure if it was a smart choice, but I did not want to let anyone down and this is one of my most reliable decks. I want to apologize in advance, that I did not write down names of other players and my memory is not as it used to be, so there maybe some mistakes, but I will try to keep it as real as possible.
First game:
Ravnos deck - Me - Nana Buruku animalism rush - (First memory gap) - Antonio d'Erlette Nephandus deck
This was really bad game overall. I drew like 5 apportations in the beginning and after that replaced them with five thefts of vitae. No dreams of the sphinx, no aura readings. Early political cards blocked, since animalism deck played quite a few intercept cards, which surprised me a little. I was pretty threatened, because it looked like both my predator will die soon and there were like 5-6 mages on the table already. I chickened out, kept the thefts, applied minimal pressure to my prey and he ousted my grandprey. I was cycling everything like crazy and tried to stack on political cards, even discarded some of those thefts in the end, but was unable to go for oust and killed with a lot of bleeds for one. I killed few mages, cycled aura readings, thefts but no wakes, no anarch uprisings, neonates or anything else. I had a really bad draw, discarded every turn and tried to get ready, but I should have tried to go forward more and maybe more cycle, but that could easily mean some backrushes for me and end game. But seeing how it ended and that my prey got 3VP and GW, it was bad play on my side.
Second game:
Flurry of action IC bleed - Queen Anne with Mind rapes - Jack Drake anarch rush deck - !Toreador undue influence - Me
Another game I am not so proud of. IC bleed had a great start with Rafael Corazon bleeding for 6 and then getting Enkil cog. I made a mistake by taking out Carna before Malgorzata, which slowed down my votes and my prey got an early votelock. Queen Anne did a great job with defending herself - mind raping Yazid Tamari backwards and after I have suddened villein on him, all blood was taken by hedleberg and he was banished with our joint votes. But after that, my prey got a second IC and ousted Queen Anne. With blood gained, he got out Yazid again and even with my Orlando Oriundus out, he still got votelock and managed to kill even Jack Drake player. After that deal was made, that he will let !Toreador player to oust me before he will go for him. Here is when I started to feel good finaly - I had a lot of defensive cards in my hand, knew that if I have time, I will get vote lock with Malgorzata and may have a shot at GW. I had my 3rd minion out, finaly drew some Blood Dolls and getting into a strong position. I managed to stop some votes with intercept, blocked some bleeds and my prey was asking each turn if he can bleed and if the !Toreador player has some misdirection cards. I already played 4 misdirections and after one turn I brought out fourth minion, got the votelock, but was again low on pool. IC player asked about misdirection, bleed for four at 1 stealth and after me declining to block, bleed got up to 7 and I have sent it backwards, unfortunatelly ousting my predator. After that if was quick. At 1 hour and 50 minute marker I have passed my first vote and i have blocked every single action going my way. At 1:57 I have ended my turn with three Kine Resources Contested and Anarchist Uprising, finally killing my prey and getting two VPs. Again I had problems with card cycling, and was really slow so I couldnt go forward from the start and almost did not make it in time.
Third game:
Me - Pander legacy deck - Nosferatu royalty - AAA - Ventrue princes
Third game ended in complete disaster for me. With only one influence, no Malgorzata, I decided to take Dr. John Dee out, followed by Anastazs di Zagreb, because there were two of them in my starting crypt. There were votes all over this table, so it did not look good for me, but I was hoping to build more stable position in time. This was ruined by my prey, which had placed Fear of Mekhet on Anastasz, jumping then to my grandpreys Angus the Unruled and returned to me, finaly burning Anastasz. I replaced him with Ladislas Toth the Torch, but got pretty low on pool with dominate heavy deck on my back. My vampires got tapped with anarch troublemaker and I died because of bleeds with two misdirections on my hand but no wake cards.
So total of 2 VP for entire three games is not much. Especialy when my seating was not so bad. I am pretty clear where my mistakes were.
One of the most interesting things for me was that I got actually pretty intimidated by facing such a great players and great names and actually played more passively than I had to. On the other hand my last game I maybe got too reckless and ended up dying. Anyway this was great experience for me and my deck definitely caused some surprises like when I bring Carna out first and everyone expected tremere block deck, after that I discarded few mirror walks, everyone expected heavy bleed. Delaying tactics were often piling up in discard piles and probably my favourite was dialog with my deceased predator in first game after like 1 hour and 30 minutes:
Predator: You realy do not play any dominate cards there, right?
Me: Nope, there are none in my deck.
I still enjoyed playing this deck, but I have some ideas for changing it again, but nothing big. It is still very stable although suffering from beeing little toolboxy. I am not saying, that this deck is something realy special, but I would like to play it ocasionaly in the future.
I am little sad, that I hadn't managed to score more VPs for our team, I guess I have to improve my skills even more for next time. I guess, that this is enough about nations cup and I will come back with report from Day 1 soon.
See you next time....
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