6th April, in the year 2010, Paradigm Infinitum.
Another routine Vtes night, and some of the Methuselahs are preparing for the coming Battlelines Tournament, but we still see many non-bloodline decks skirmishing around for dominance.
I managed to get into 2 games, but brought with me 2 decks that were un-prepared. Oh well.
Randomized Seating for Game 1.
Danz's Toreador Vote, bleeding
Jeff's Unnamed Baali, bleeding
My Dead Hand Punching, bleeding
YeQi's Malkavian bleed, bleeding
Nick's Tremere bleed.
With zero pool recovery card in this deck (I forgot to put them in), I was living with a ticking clock of doom, not to mention Lorrie's problematic issue. I was lucky in the sense that my predator was under a lot of pressure from Danz, and was pretty intimidated by Lorrie's combat capabilities.
Danz, as the resident ally killer, truly present the ultimate ally-killing technique. Summoning a Smiling Jack somewhere in the middle of the game, he also called enough votes to damage his prey and his predator, but did not manage to kill them off. Meanwhile, everybody else was suffering from the Smiling Jack.
My attacks against YeQi went pretty well, and I torpored several of her vampires, reducing her ability to kill of Nick, while Nick bounced quite a number of bleeds to Danz (some ended up to Jeff), which reduced YeQi's ability to gain pool and kill off prey quickly. Lorrie's combat ability is frighteningly effective against the Malkavians, whom had no real answer to her mighty attacks. Malkavians after Malkavians went to torpor until YeQi only had 4 pool left.
At this point she decided to bleed me with Kindred Spirit instead, hoping that I would die and Jeff would give her some time to get her VP. Unfortunately she miscalculated and left me with 1 pool.
At that point, Jeff had a Vampiric Diseased Unnamed with only 1 blood, Abdelsobek with 1 blood, and only 4 pool left. With Smiling Jack at 3 counters it was a delicate situation. After a lot of suggestions from surrounding Methuselahs, and backtracking what he did and redoing everything again, Jeff decided to pull back 1 blood from the Unnamed, untapping her with 1 pool and burn the Vampiric Disease counter, retaining 1 blood on Abdesobek to attempt to kill me. A stealth bleed went through as my Lorrie failed to block with the WMRH and losing the 1 pool that I had, despite Danz actually trying to use Eagle Sight to help me block that bleed (without first telling me he's going to, so I'm going to brand him as ally-killer still~ :) )
With me out of the way, and YeQi having 4 pool left and a single vampire with 1 blood, Jeff was then in a great position. Eventually he called in the last Shatter the Gate that was needed to activate it, and the Shattering plus the Smiling Jack killed off everybody else, in the exact order that Jeff wanted~ a perfect Shatter the Gate!
Final VP Count
Jeff had the table!
Randomized seating for Game 2
Dzaki's Gangrel, bleeding
BK's Salubri, bleeding
Danz's Toreador Vote, bleeding
Ben Sum's Black Hand, bleeding
My Bouncing Magic.
Another of my fun deck that usually doesn't work very well, but the stars aligned this night to make it pretty effective.
To start with I was lucky to brought out a 4-cap Tremere in the first turn when Danz called Ancient Influence while nobody else had any vampires. That really hurt everybody except me and Danz. (in fact I was the biggest winner since my vampire was 4-cap and Danz's was 3). Ben called a Powerbase Montreal and everybody started to take it from him, without his combat engine in place yet, his lone Izhim didn't really dared to block everybody, including me.
With the Powerbase Montreal's help I influenced Helena ADV eventually and had Janine to add to my bleed power. The Bouncing Magic deck, however, relied a lot on my predator's bleeds, whom I will then bounce it to my prey, in this case, Ben wasn't exactly the biggest bleeder, but enough Loss was bounced to Dzaki to make his life difficult.
Dzaki called Danielle onto table and soon recruited a Homonculus. I thought I was going to have issues with this powerful blocker when Danz again called his Smiling Jack. Dzaki influenced another Gangrel onto table and left his pool at 4, I stealth bleed through with a Bonded Governed to oust him immediately.
With many minions in my camp (I had 4 at this point), I also managed to burn BK's Lord of Serenity the turn it came into play (very bad timing for BK) and that pretty much stopped BK from bloating. A successful block from Ben when I tried to take the Powerbase from him again ended up with both my vampire and his going into torpor (I had Flames of Netherworld while he maneuvered to long with his .44).
BK was soon ousted with my Deflections and bleeds.
Ben eventually burnt the Smiling Jack since he could no longer handle the cost. Danz successfully called a couple of KRCs that hurt Ben a lot, but it did not enable him to survive my Deflections and bleeds - though during then, Ben's bleeds was bounced here and there couple of times but I usually win the bounce contest with Helena's special ability.
A Pentex Subversion got me my final ousting as Izhim was unable to react to my final strikes despite having Abbot and Mr Winthrop and a buckload of uptaps.
Final VP Count
The table is mine!
(o.o)
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