Wednesday, January 23, 2013

2.2.2013: Open War - Ostrava - Tournament nearing

New year is here and I am trying once again to do something for V:tes scene in Czech Republic. Since I did not get Prince title only to brag about it on internet, I am organizing tournament once again. There are few things that I just have to get out of my mind and on paper.


1) Skills

Since the EC, my game skills pretty much went south. My game analysis is often off, performance lacking consistency and results are basically none. Not sure what the reasons are, but I will try to work on that. Maybe I am too serious and should concentrate more on having fun.

2) Judging

It looks like there are going to be more players than usual and  some visitors and although I am pretty confident in my knowledge level of rules, I am still little shaky when restoring game to its rightfull state and rollbacks.

3) Deckbuilding

I have been pretty much stuck at 0 new decks and ideas from EC. I am finally getting some inspiration again and not the sort, when you start with Govern+Conditioning+Deflection combo and hope it will work somehow - it will, but that is almost not a deckbuilding anymore.

4) Decks

Although three previous problems are much more important and long term, this one is urgent - what the hell am I going to play? My friend has done this at his new blog - Thoughts Betrayed. I will follow his example and write down decks, that are viable, since it helped him with decision making - at least to some point. My options are:

a) Tremere politics v 1.00

Obvious choice. I have secured my only two TWDA entries with it and latest version of it seems very stable and tournament worthy. Still, I would like to perform well even with different decks. Although it seems that this one has ended as my staple deck. It is not likely, that I will play it, but stranger things have happened. (5%)

b) Gotsdam Wall

One mistake and less than five minutes away from winning tournament, I feel that I owe this deck second chance. Often stable as hell, but as all wall deck, slowish and kind of boring. Still I am kind of favor of this deck, becaus I just loooove Gotsdam:) (25%)

c) Al-Muntathir, God's Witness

Revised version of this deck. I am trying to balance it out for some time now, with very mixed results.  I would rather play something more proactive in this tournament and I have at least some experience with this. (15%)

d) Serenna + Santa

Another one which is tempting, because it is very active and speedy deck. I have also played a lot of games with it. Still, I feel that this deck is not really tournament material. I have tried it even once in previous tournaments. I do not really see it happening though. (10%)

e) Count Germaine beatdown

Reconstructed after a long time with a few new twists, few old twists. I have not played real combat for some time and it shows. My perceptions are off and I am somewhat hesitant to proceed with sometimes needed backrushes. If I had more time, it would be pretty viable option. Now it is very risky, although I can see itt happening. (10%)

f) Edward Vignes Rip-off

Classic Vignes deck.  Easy way out. Since I do no like playing archetypes, not really choice I would prefer. But it is pretty strong and I will consider it. (10%)

g) Scout and Friends

This deck is definitely forward going, but I am still unsure how I feel about it after EC. It performed pretty well, however it seems that I have problems with decision making in this one. Still, this seems like a good training and I should probably consider trying. (15%)

h) Something else

There are few more options, but I do not have any concrete candidate at this point. Still, I may change my mind and go through them. There are many decks, that I play from time to time, but they are not on my current list - such as Giovanni bleed or kyasid SB. (10%)

Looking on this list, that is quite a few options I have and there should be no trouble when choosing, but since lately my games are not going so well, there is more to it than usual. In the end, I will probably end up chosing the deck night before tournament and doing some minor changes to it as usual.


Well this post has ended up more as help for me to decide, than something useful for community. Still I prefer to put my thoughts on "paper" and see how it ends up. I will try to bring tournament report and hopefuly, there will be some pictures as well. I will try to continue with Thoughts about cards "series" as well.

See you next time...

Friday, January 18, 2013

Thoughts about cards - 1) Giant's Blood

I have currently two unfinished posts and huge writters block, so I will try to start a series of short posts with my thoughts of some cards. They should be short, simple and from my personal point of view. I hope I will be able to finish at least these.

I was usualy against including this card when it came to deckbuilding. My reasoning was, that this is very unreliable card - you cannot play lots of it, you will never have it when you need it and it will often end up as a dead card. I ended up with 0 coppies in all of my decks, including those, that would really used this card.

But yesterday, in a process of modifying one of my more retarded decks, I discovered, that I have ran out of them and I am using them more and more. I have started to think about, what has led to a such huge change in my deckbuilding.

Only thing I have came up is, that this is just another aftershock from introducing villein to the game. And yes I know, that it happened a long time ago, but since the ceaseproduction of this game, developments of new decks and strategies are slowing down and Villein has become permanent part of Vtes tournament scene. And if you are playing mid to high caps, why don't just throw one in. If you are able to villein same minion twice for almost all of his blood, it can be a gamechanger. And that is of course most extreme case.

When constructing deck, which has need for some blood gain these days, I just put Giant's there, because I just cannot let others benefit from this huge advantage. I have few deck, where I can benefit a lot from playing this card, but on the other hand, there are decks, that will just benefit more. I often end up playing it early for not much benefit, but just denying playing others is often enough. This has led me to adding this card to more and more decks and this trend will probably last.

In the end, I really do not like this card. Its effect on each game is much more based on luck, than it should be. I would be satisfied with changing "Only one Giant's Blood can be played in a game." to "Each player can play only one Giant's Blood in a game." or even ban this card altogether.

I know there are lot of people, that they are satisfied with the way it is, and I am not surprised. To issue errata or ban cards in dead game is further complicating things, but with this card, I belive that is just not right to let a card, that has this much luck/strength potential in the game.

Once again, this post is a lot longer, than intended from start and I will end it here. I will be back with some more cards soon an probably some other topics.

See you next time...