Bochum VtES League 2011: July 1st

Here are the decks of the Bochum VtES League 2011 from the meeting on July 1st, 2011 (the next prey is from top to bottom).

Didi (without picture of his play area) played a variant of the Order 66 (I think) deck. As a start player he was stuck to one transfer, and therefore decided to bring up Dmitra first, and quite some time later Mistress Fanchon as well. But without any means of retrieving the blood (read: Villein), he was ousted more (or less) easily by Michael. His final downfall was a Deflection that was canceled by Veil of Darkness. If he had managed to stay in the game (that round 6), he would have had quite a good chance of ousting his prey himself.

Left: Sascha played his Assamite Black Hand Contract deck. Sascha's first impact on the game was a DeflectionTension in the Ranks, which affected the whole table for a long time, but mostly his prey and grandprey. Like Didi, he also had a slow start, and initially couldn't decided to give the first Hand Contract to either his prey or predator. The Hand Contract landed on Dmitra, which still was allowed to bleed to for one with Flurry of Action, and she even helped Sascha when she used a Neonate Breach on his prey (Hardy). Slow, but constant pressure pressure (and also a little help from Ralf by killing some of Hardy's minions), gave Sascha eventually his first VP. Most interestingly Hardy was also ousted by bleed that failed to be bounced due Veil of Darkness's effect. But then he was stopped by the Unmasking and the Asanbonsam Ghouls even though Ralf (his next prey) was quite low on pool, since Sascha's deck is not running that much stealth.

Left: Hardy resorted to play his Giovanni Khazars Diary again, which is well known in our playgroup and much feared as well. Initially it didn't look too bad for Hardy, he brought out three Giovanni in quick succession and recruited a few allies, but when he was near of completing the Diary, he ran out of stealth to bypass Ralf's allies. Thinks become worse when one of Ralf's War Ghoul trapped Carlton van Wyk and Ralf himself recruited the traitorous Carlton. In addition he was constantly losing pool due the Tension in the Ranks and by some random bleeds from Sascha. So in turn 9, he was ousted by Sascha, and wasn't able to put single wraith into play during the whole game, even though he'd finally managed to put the seventh counter on Khazar's Diary two or three rounds before.

Left: Ralf played the same Anarch Piper War Ghoul deck he played a week ago in Gelsenkirchen as well. Ralf had a reasonable start and could put an Asanbonsam Ghoul and a War Ghoul in play very soon, but applied almost no pressure on his prey for a good part of the game, because he wanted to keep the necromancers behind him in check. So only very late in the game, when had his predator under control and when a second War Ghoul came into play he was able to hit his prey hard (torporizing Francois Villon and depriving one of the Daughters of her blood), but it was too late a score a full VP.

Left: For another time a non-standard was used by Michael. He used one of Lasombra's deck (intented for use during Origins) as template for his own variation. The deck is rather toolboxy deck with some votes, some block (via 2nd Tradition) and some forward momentum using the votes and Shattering Crescendo. Initially Michael could make Yseult pass a Kine Resource Contested (or something like that) before Dimitra showed up (for which Yseult was promptly banished). Even though that slowed Michael somewhat ,he was slowly nibbling at Didi's pool with Francois Villon and a newly influenced Yseult and since didn't draw any Villein, he was ousted very soon (turn 6). Even though he still felt not pressure from his predator, he couldn't apply the pressure in his prey to oust him, and after Sascha ousted Hardy the window of opportunity had closed forever.

Result: Michael 1.5 VP, Sascha 1.5 VP and Ralf 0.5 VP.

Most Valuable Cards: Tension in the Ranks and Veil of Darkness.