Skirmishes in the Dark : 11-11-2008

The night of 11th November 2008, Paradigm Infinitum.

This night we received a visiting Methuselah from Tokyo, Japan. Karl is a friend of Dan's, and he was passing by Singapore, and was able to make it to PI for a game or two. Prior to tonight, I've spread words to the Prince as well as on PI's forum for Methuselahs to gather. And we had a healthy 8 Methuselahs present to have games with Karl. I had the privilege to play in a game with Karl on a 6 players table, Damien's Blood Brothers Ventrue deck was the first player, bleeding Karl's Anarchs, bleeding my new Akunanse deck, bleeding Dan's Tzimisce wall, bleeding Bann's new Enkidu Raptors, bleeding Joshua's Lasombras.

The game began with an interesting move from Karl. He became the first player in Singapore to actually influence out an Anarch Convert in the first turn, and use it as a Vampire. The Convert then got itself an Ivory Bow at turn 2. I had the good fortune to have a Mbarre Market early, and influenced Uchenna as my first Vampire, and slapped a No Secrets from the Magaji on it. Uchenna blocked the Convert, and was in process of beating up the fella before Dan played a Rotschreck on me! Again, this is the first time that I was on the receiving end of an offensive Rotschreck (it's an interesting way of using it, but I've never seen it used this way). Fortunately I was playing Akunanse, and cancelled the Rotschreck with an Invoking the Beast.

Karl was in a reasonably difficult position, even though he had a Seattle Committee and a Twilight Camp on table rather quickly. He was being bled aggressively by Damien's many little mighty critters. He did kept up the pressure of bleeding me quite constantly with Undue Influence (and even an occasional Aire of Elation). I was able to torpor his Anarch Convert at one point, and manage to survive a Blood Hunt after diablerizing it to acquire the Ivory Bow. One of his 4-pointer had a .44 Magnum, and I lacked the manouevers to handle that combat, so I suffered quite a few bleeds from him.Meanwhile, the Enkidu was being torpored several times by my Tzimisce prey, Joshua and me both rescued him to keep Bann in play, while his Enkidu happily armed himself to the teeth with Raptors. The Tzimisces were not doing much except putting out a Smiling Jack, and occasionally blocking my advance against him. I remembers Sasha Vykos and Caliban on table, and Dan had another Vampire that I can't recall. Overall I was pretty stable, with Jungle Hunting Ground, Powerbase Tshwane, Mbare Market and a WMRH Radio on the table to keep me reasonbly healthy. Both my Magajis (I had Nkule out after Hasani) had No Secrets on them, both had a Raven Spy, and Uchenna had a Murder of Crows while Nkule got the Ivory Bow from the Convert. I also managed to slapped a Kholo on Hasani, hence having a good vote defense against the Lasombra. Karl was the first to go, unable to handle the bleeds and Potence attacks from Damien's deck. (He had to leave for the airport soon anyway), and I was soon facing a new predator. Fortunately for me, Joshua was doing his job too, calling several useful referendums for me - Political Stranglehold, and even a Consan Boon (which I don't really get the strategy besides trying to keep his Grandprey alive so that his prey must work harder to get his next VP and 6 pool, but my pool was pretty healthy and I had blocking capaibilities that I think far surpass whatever Damien can throw out, moreover, I fight very well too). That, combined with his sneaky Obtenebration bleeds, reduced Damien's pool significantly. But in process, Joshua probably over-committed to resource acquisition, and was ousted by Enkidu when he had only 1 pool left. Enkidu then proceeded to oust Damien as quite a number of his Blood Brothers were in torpor either after combat with Joshua's Entombment, or my Akunanse's Animalism combat.By then I had some success with Dan, but geneally a very difficult battle. The problem lied in Bann's Constant Revolution, which I tended to pay with pool rather than cards. Eventually both me and Dan had not much library left. Seeing that the time was very late (over 1 am then), we decided that it was pointless to continue the battle and called it a day. Final Table Standing Bann : 2.5 VP Me 0.5 VP Damien 1 VP Dan 0.5 VP I was pretty elated about the game I had. Not only did I witness superior use of Rotschreck and seen a different play style from Karl, I also enjoyed greatly the mechanics of a 6 players game. My Akunanse deck required some touch up, perhaps throwing away a couple of Belonging Grants Protection, and add in a few bleed enhancer would work better. The new Enkide Anarch Raptor deck that Bann had was still in process of tuning but I can already see it as a difficult opponent to defeat. Can't wait for Keepers of Tradition, but Donkey said that it would still take a while to arrive here. Guess I can only drool about it by reading online reports~Looking forward to next week! Finally out of the reservist duty!!!!! (o.o)y