Gelsenkirchen VtES League 2011: June 1st

Here I wanted to show you the decks of the Gelsenkirchen VtES League 2011 from the meeting on June 1st, 2011, this time with photos again. This time we had a visitor (Martin V.) from Slovakia, who's currently staying in Germany because of his job ..

Currently popular are vote decks (for whatever reasons), so three vote decks (and the other two decks had titled vampires as well) were present during that session.

• Thomas played a quite interesting Aabbt Kindred vote deck based on Anarch Barons to make the voting work. The deck is usually incapable of taking any directed actions (actually I don't know anymore if Nefertiti is present in the deck). The deck did fine most of the time bringing up new Aabbt Kindred by using Mesu Bedshet and building up in general (see the picture). But since there were a lot of votes around of tables, he was most of the time only able to push votes through when he had a vote push card (like Bewitching Oration ) in his hands. He put some damage to Martin, but with both Ancient Influence and Reins of Power being passed during the game, he was not able to oust Martin.

• Martin (E) played Brujah G2/3 Bruise/Bleed deck. Most of the game Martin's biggest problem was that his prey's Akunanse could not only deliver damage (almost) as good as the Brujah, but since they prevented most of the damage he was having problems keeping his own vampires out of torpor. Eventually he managed to put his prey's Nestor Kaba (with Fame) to torpor but that was clearly not enough to oust (the other) Martin.

• The other Martin (the one from Slovakia) was playing an Akunanse toolbox deck, which was able to bleed, rush and fight (mostly using Animalism). In the beginning he was able to put some pressure on Zille by bleeding (sometimes using Deep Song). But he was not able to effectively attack the Toreador by rushing them, since they often used Majesty to escape combat. In the end his prey out-bloated him, and he was also unable to secure a full victory point.

• A classic Toreador Grandball (feat. the famous triple-A vampires) deck was used by Zille this time. In the beginning things looked grim for him, since Martin as his predator was bleeding him hard, and by bringing up Anson and Alexandra first his pool was down to about 5. But after Ancient Influence was played by him, plus several Voter Captivations and a Villein on Alexandra he was doing nicely. But like the other players he couldn't pass his votes easily. Also, instead of bleeding Ralf (who didn't play any bounce), he traded the Powerbase: Montreal with his predator each and every turn in the mid- and endgame.

• Ralf played an Istarri Vote deck, who also competed for the political Dominance. While he was doing well, when it came down bloating (via Villein) and to passing votes (using Perfect Paragon), Thomas (as his prey) was actually spending little on his vampires, and kept bloating via Con Boon, and so he was not really in ousting range for most of the game.
  

In the end, the game didn't really move forward, and so nobody was really in ousting range. And all the bloating and in comparison to that not enough forward motion made the table finally go to the timeout. About 10 minutes before the timeout and after a Reins of Power had been passed, all players agreed on stop playing. Funny fact was, that each of the votes decks was using different vote push cards. Ralf used Perfect Paragon, Zille used Awe and Thomas was using Bewitching Oration.

Result: Thomas 0.5 VP, Martin E. 0.5 VP, Martin V. 0.5 VP, Zille 0.5 VP, Ralf 0.5 VP.