Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Vampire : The Evaluated Situation : 14-10-2008

The Night of 14th October 2008, Paradigm Infinitum.
It was a lonely evening as only 4 Methuselahs turned up for the tournament (financial crisis week?). The game started quite late as we waited for more to turn up, but The Voice Behind the Counter (TVC) finally decided to join up to top the number to 5 players and started the tournament at about 9pm.
The table order was decided and I was to be player 3, my predator was Paul with his mysterious Imbued deck (didn't know that until turn 2, and Paul had his new shiny sleeves with boobs to distract our attention...mmm, devious Imbueds). I was to bleed Dan and his too pretty to block the Toreadors deck, TVC was my ally with his Ventrue/!Ventrue Stockmarket deck, he was to bleed Paul and GeeHuan was bleeding TVC with his Settites. Things didn't go very well for my Daughters. A first turn Tupdog calling a KRC was blocked by an Angel of Berlin + Sniper Rifle on Paul's first Imbued (their names were inconsequential, they pretty much do the same thing to me anyway, the only difference was who's got guns). Nevertheless, due to TVC's bleeding pressure I was still able to bring out several Daughters and sorta made a deal with Paul on not throwing damaging votes to him if he allowed me to do some of the random things such as Consanguineous Boon or even Firebrands. I did not have enough stealth to do most of my actions, and soon Dan had about 6 votes sitting on the table. Looking at Anson and Alexandra I kinda give up on trying to call any votes to attack Dan. I concentrated on trying to keep myself alive and at least tried to get some vote parity in. I got the Bastille Opera House in play and manage to Fee Stake 1 Baron and even successfully got a Firebrand. I actually got to sacrifice one of the Tupdogs to burn the Judgment : Camarilla Segregation called by Dan. With Aching Beauty on Anson and Toreador Grand Ball, Dan managed to Parity Shift GeeHuan and eventually ousted him with a combination of bleeds and votes. I wasn't able to stop him as my Bastille came into play too late. Paul was being pressured quite badly by TVC's bleeds and he had to keep a couple of his people untap, just in case. He periodically bleed me for 2 with 1 stealth, and Daughters normally do not agree with blocks anyway, so I had to take those bleeds pretty much all the time. I did got my pool under control with occasional Voter Caps and Boons. Dan called an Ancilla Enppowerment though, and I lost 6 pool just because I had a few Embraces walking around, and that reduced my pool to 5, just within killing range. Paul took advantage of that and bled me to death. Without my vote parity Dan had the ability to call through any votes that he wanted. He Parity Shifted Paul to invite TVC to go in for the kill. Even with the 6 extra pool that ousting Paul provided, TVC couldn't really handle the Grand Balled plus Aching Beautied Toreadors. By then there was like 12 votes on table - Alexandra, Anson, Democritus and a Toreador Justicared weenie. The consistent attack destroyed TVC. As there was only 5 players, we decided that the next round would be the final round, no point going for 3 rounds then. Unfortunately the time is late, and we have to stop the game and wait for next week. Since I would be in reservist by then, I probably wouldn't see the outcome of the battle. Hopefully another player can filled me in and I'll post the conclusion of the tournament when I can. Table Standing Dan - 3 VP TVC - 1 VP Paul - 1 VP Me - 0 VP I was actually pretty happy with the performance of my Daughters. But they were in a very difficult position in this game. My predator has recycling intercepts that can block everything I do, the table had 6 (or was it 7?) votes by turn 3 and none of those are mine. By turn 6 or so the table had a foreign vote of about 13-15, and only 3 of those are mine, and any referendum that I needed to call had to be negotiated aggressively. Despite that, if not for the Ancilla Empowerment, I would've survived quite a while more. Oh well, there would be a second chance to teach those Toreadors a lession. Until next time... (o.o)y

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