Night of 4th November 2008, Paradigm Infinitum.
I was lucky to have a Nights Off my reservist duty today, and after a short rest, decided to pop by PI to see if I can pick up some Black Library books and get a Vtes game or 2; afterall, it is Vtes night.
Luck is with me, as today we actually manage to have 2 tables of 4 by the end of the day. After dinner we manage to start with a table of 5, with Bann, Damien, GeeHuan and Dan playing with me. I have with me my Malkavian Prank deck, and Bann, being tired of his own deck, decided to borrow my not-very-useful Rabbat Anarch Black Hand deck. (It's quite a pathetic deck as you'll see)
We sorted out our seating, I was to be player 5, bleeding Dan's Harbinger Slaughterhouse (Finally!), being bled by GeeHuan's Nosferatu/!Nosferatu vote deck, my grand-prey is Damien's Kiasyds, and my grand-predator is Bann's borrowed deck.
The table wasn't really prepared for an extended game with many Malkavian Pranks. I wasn't too good in guessing pools either, so many Methuselahs gain pool from my Pranks. I got Leandro out as my first Vampire by turn 3, and that tend to slow down the table a little. There was very little combat at all, and intercepts are not heavy, almost all bleeds are successful. The vote arena is pretty active, with GeeHuan's Ysador the Foul and a stolen Prince title from my Calebros, and the random Kiasyd's vote reactions, brings about some negotiations on table. My Malkavian Pranks served as a good bargaining chip too.
My attacks towards my prey was quite aggressive, Leandro being a strong bleeder afterall. With strong votes presence on table, Leandro and Lucian manage to fend off some of my predator's offensive votes while pushing out some of my own KRCs downwind. Damien's Kiasyds were bleeding successfully through the Rabbat deck, which I know have very little intercepts to deal with that. In order to keep Bann alive, I use Malkavian Pranks to keep giving him 4-8 pool every round (I had a Parthenon out rather early, but Dan started contesting it after a while), which kept him alive, and Damien frustrated. Meanwhile Dan's multiple Slaughterhouses really thinned out Damien's library, and all of us could see that the Kiasyds would have difficulty having enough cards to kill more than 1 prey.
GeeHuan eventually pushed my pool to a dangerously low level that I was forced to alpha strike Dan. A successful KRC, followed by a very enhanced 7 bleed from Leandro (Govern + Conditioning) ousted Dan from the game, and kept me in the game. Damien killed off Bann once I ran out of Pranks to keep Bann's pool at a comfortable level (I stopped supporting him after a while anyway)
With depleted library, Damien wasn't able to keep up the kind of bleed pressure that he had earlier, and GeeHuan had been consistently trying to block him in order to thin out his library further. My Leandro with a .44 was able to bleed his pool a few times (he bounced a good number of my bleeds to Bann earlier, but ran out of cards already), and a consistent bleed got him killed. I now had Korah and Greger Anderssen on table, and outnumbered and outvoted GeeHuan, the kill was inevitable.
Final Table Standing
Damien - 1 VP
Me - 4 VP
I find the Malkavian Prank a powerful bargain card, but I'll need to upgrade my ability to guess the way the different Methuselahs take their risk. My Malkavians do not have much vote enhances, and completely rely upon their titles to get things done - not a very reliable way of getting offensive votes through. However, I can always fall back to my secondary ousting path - stealth bleed. The lack of rush combat on the table helped greatly to my Vampires' survival, and I actually discarded many Read Intentions. If the rumour about the Obfuscate Combat End cards is true, I believe that this deck will become even more efficient.
(o.o)y
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