Wednesday, October 08, 2008

Skirmishes in the Dark : 07-10-2008 Part I

The night of 7th October 2008, Paradigm Infinitum.
After 3 weeks of draft tournament, it is great to have a casual bleeding session with the guys again, to try out constructed decks and have a chance to further test the composition and functionality of my decks. I was there pretty late due to a meeting at Borders, arriving at about 7pm. Bann was out for dinner, TVC was busy counting stocks and there were nobody else around. I waited for about half an hour before Bann came back with GeeHuan, and then Dan showed up. We started a game but ended it quickly when Paul arrived. And now we have a table of 5. We randomly decided our table position the normal way (mixed our Vampire cards in and deal out the Vampires, their relative positions indicated their owner's table position). I was to be player 4, bleeding GeeHuan's Malkavian Antitribus and being bled by Bann's Daughters. The first player, my grand prey, was Paul's new and shiny Imbued deck, whom was bleeding Dan's Malkavian Derange deck. I was playing my newly built Gargoyle deck. I brought out Ublo-Satha in turn 2, but he was unable to prevent the Daughters from taking away my WMRH with a Disputed Territory. Without the intercept, and having no Razor Bats in hand, Ublo went ahead to Jack of Both Sides a Stone Dog (and then I drew a Razor Bat...), I then brought out Kyoko Shinsegawa to allow Ublo to do its thing. My prey was happily bleeding the Imbues while Dan put a Derange on Celeste, whom soon lose all her blood and remained tapped pretty much the whole game. She actually embraced, and brought to the table a Malkavian Embraced under the Daughter's control - kinda pointless. Bann was struggling to survive against Dan's relentless bleeding, and pretty much left me alone. However, I was being very careful and throughout the whole game I only worked with 2 Vampires despite Ferox and Luma in my uncontrolled region. In hindsight, I should have brought out another one. Nevertheless, my Ublo was soon armed to the teeth with a Razor Bat, a Stone Dog, an Armor of Terra and an Guardian Angel - making him effectively indestructible by normal means. It was however, unable to prevent the Daughters from transferring a Derange to him, and suffered a blood loss every turn for untapping. I didn't want to put the card back since Bann was a good buffer against Dan, and there were no other available target to put the card on. I did, however, went to beat up GeeHuan's Vampires to slow him down a little. That didn't do me much good though. At a point I went after Dan's Vampire, Immortal Grappled him once, and decided to press. I didn't use the Immortal Grapple in my hand and suffered the consequences of a Coma. Despite the fact that Dan had lost a Vampire from Paul's Recalled to the Founder, from that point onwards, I was pretty much out of the game. GeeHuan bled Bann to death with a Kindred Spirit, and gave Dan 12 pool from the oust due to an early 12 point Political Flux. He then diablerized my Ublo Satha and that's pretty much it for me. Dan ousted GeeHuan but was then ousted by Paul. Dan had the table. Final VP standing Dan - 3VP Paul - 2VP Me - Nothing Apparently my Gagoyle deck still needs a lot of work. It is too pool intensive with no reliable pool recovery. Kyoko is too big a Vampire for just being a "bleed for one" Vampire, I will replace her with a smaller Tremere, probably Roreca Quaid and/or Jing Wei. I was also thinking to remove all my Blood Dolls and Vessels and instead throw in even more Pool recovery cards such as different Powerbases and Threestar Cab. I'll do a deck re-tune soon. (o.o)y

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