VtES EC 2008 & Reports for NAC/EC2007

Along with the new tournament rules, the time and place for the EC 2008 have been announced! The VtES European Championship will be held in Prague (Czech Republic) from September 11th to 14th, 2008.

Also an extensive report of the EC 2007 in Gothenburg (Sweden) with many photos has been posted on the White Wolf website. The author of the report is Johannes Walch, the european VEKN coordinator.

In addition today a report of the NAC 2007, which was held in Los Angeles (US) has been added to the White Wolf website.

VtES on YouTube

Found this educational movie, the "VTES Deck Construction Clinic" vid, by accident on YouTube:

VEKN Tournament Rules 2008

The new VEKN Tournament Rules for the year 2008 have been posted by LSJ. The complete tournament rules for 2008 are on the White Wolf website. The actual changes (compared to the rules of 2007), which are effective for each official VtES tournament from January 1st, 2008 look like this:

• 3.7.5 -- All non-winning finalists tie for 2nd place.
• 4.1 -- Added three cards to the banned list: "Edge Explosion", "Memories of Mortality", and "Protect Thine Own".
• 161 -- Splitting prizes is prohibited.
• Ratings: Each tied-for-second finalist receives the same number of Ratings Points: 30. (The winner still receives 90).

These are quite some changes: three (presumably or not) strong cards have been banned, playing-to-win is being enforced in VtES finals, and splitting prizes (usually a part of in-game deals) are now illegal.

Results German VtES Draft Championship 2007

On December 2nd, 2007 the German VtES Draft Championship was held in Ludwigshafen, Germany with 21 players attending the final tournament. The final standings were as follows:

1. Benoit Moyen (FRA) -- 1 GW 6 VP -- 1,5 VP
2. Joscha Duell (GER) -- 1 GW 5 VP -- 1,5 VP
3. Orrian Gissler (FRA) -- 1 GW 4,5 VP -- 0,5 VP
4. Marko Lindroos (FIN) -- 2 GW 6 VP -- 0 VP
5. Otto Kukkasieniemi (FIN) -- 1 GW 5,5 VP -- 0 VP

Congratulations to Benoit Moyen for his win of the German Limited.

Erik, Otto, Didi and Vincent(?) are struggling for the win (Round 3, Table 1).

After Robert has de-facto ousted himself, Andreas tries to prevent the tablesweep by Joscha (Round 3, Table 2).


Marko tries to oust Mart's bloat & breed, Christoph's Lasombra cannot get past Otto's "Keith Moody" with a "Guardian Angel" (Round 3, Table 3).
The french players (Benoit & Orrian) are trying to out-talk Konrad and Richard (Round 3, Table 4).

Alex makes his move, after Johannes has made a gamble which brought him down to 4 pool (Round 3, Table 5).
The five finalists (Benoit, Marko, Orrian, Joscha and Otto) are eyeing each other's progress suspiciously, so the table is in balance for quite some time (Final Round).

Results German National VtES Championship 2007

On December 1st, 2007 the German National VtES Championship was held in Ludwigshafen, Germany with 34 players attending the final tournament. The final standings were as follows:

1. Ruben Feldmann (SUI) -- 10 VP 3 GW -- 4 VP 1 GW -- Legacy of Pander Boon & Events
   
2. Pierre Tran-Van (FRA) -- 7 VP 2 GW -- 1 VP -- Neo-Malk Stealth & Bleed
   
3. Erik Torstensen (SWE) -- 8,5 VP 2 GW -- 0 VP -- Arika & Lasombra Friends Bleed/Vote
   
4. Erol Oenguen (GER) -- 6 VP 1 GW -- 0 VP -- Neo-Malk Stealth & Bleed
   
5. Olivier Perez (SUI) -- 6 VP 1 GW -- 0 VP -- Imbued ..
   

Congratulations to Ruben Feldmann for his win of the German Nationals. The famous MetaGame was dominated by two extremes -- at least four !Malk S&B decks were present as well as an even greater number of (mostly Camarilla-based) Vote decks. The whole decorated by with some wallish decktypes based on Gangrel and Ahrimanes as well as a few Allies based-deck.

Left: Olivier prepares the tablesweep with his Imbued (Round 1, Table1)

Right: Martin looks sceptical at his hand, while Ruben seems quite content with his army of panders. (Round 1, Table 3).


Left: Amiel struggles to oust his second prey, the rest of table argues very lengthy about each vote being cast (Round 3, Table 1).
Right: Jörg's Garous dominate the table despite Alexander's Tzimisce Wall deck and Martin's super bloat techniques (Round 3, Table 3)

Left: A truly international table with Richard (GER), Alex (FIN), Pablo (ARG) and Pierre (FRA) (Round 3, Table 4).
Right: Fabian's Black hand Obfuscate try to oust Sascha's !Toreador Aus/Cel Gun deck (Round 3, Table 6).


Left: Ruben's Pander "boon" themselves up to 25 pool+ (Final Table).

Right: The finalist (Pierre, Erik, Ruben, Erol and Olivier) with tournament organizers Johannes & Andreas.

VtES Clan Newsletters in November 2007

Only two clan newsletters have been posted in the "rec.trading-cards.jyhad" usenet newsgroup this month. Beside using a newgroup reader, you can also access the newsgroup by Google Groups.

• Ahrimanes Newsletter November 2007
  
• Ventrue Newsletter November 2007

I am a little bit astonished, that after the release of "Lords of the Night" there are no newsletter for the four Independent clans.

Otherwise, I am off to the German VtES Nationals in Ludwigshafen, Germany. I am hoping to cover the results of the championship during the weekend already, taking some pictures and posting the results as well as soon as possible.

You know you are addicted to VtES , when ...

In the old MAD magazine tradition of useless lists, here are the top ten reasons for being recognized as a VtES addict:

1. You know what the abbreviation "IANLSJ" means.
2. You know the URL of cards on VTES Monger by memory.
3. You still know all the 11 rules of the "Prophecy of Gehenna" league by heart.
4. You know why "Camille Devereux", "Raven" and "Camille Devereux, The Raven" are played as the same vampire actually.
   
5. You only play decks with cards with the same background style "for aestetical reasons".
6. You nearly made to LSJ's killfile (for the usenet newsgroup "rec.games.trading-cards.jyhad").
7. You are buying extra furniture holding for your card collection.
8. You are buying not only prints of VtES cards, but the originals.
   
9. You can calculate your final tournament rating in your head.
10. You still play this game after 12 years of its existence.

For nitpicking rules mongers

From the VtES tournament rules for those actually who like calling the judge and like giving warnings to opposing players.

4.7. Tapped Cards
If a card must be tapped as a part of the game rules, it must be turned approximately 90 degrees from the normal position.

And for those who like to complain about complaining players, there's this section from the "Judges Guide":

152. Unsportsmanlike Conduct - Major
[...]
Example:
(A) A player repeatedly calls a judge and argues that an opponent should lose the game for insignificant procedural oversights.

Results of "Dark Cellars" VtES tournament (Utrecht)

These are the results of the "Dark Cellars" VtES Constructed tournament in Utrecht, Netherlands after 3 rounds + Finals. The tournament was played on November 24th, 2007 with 13 players participating. Here are the standings after the final round.

• Peter B. -- 1 GW 5 VP -- 1 GW 4 VP -- !Toreador Obf Pre Vote+Bleed
• Thomas K. -- 1 GW 5 VP -- 1 VP -- !Tremere Tupdogs
  
• Ralf L. -- 2 GW 7 VP -- 0 VP -- Assamite G4/5 Stealth Bleed
  
• Dietmar R. -- 1 GW 5,5 VP -- 0VP -- Giovanni G4/5 Shambling Hordes
  
• Jeroen v. O. -- 1 GW 4 VP -- 0 VP -- Ventrue Vote Old School
  

Congratulations to Peter for his undisputed victory in the final round. The decklist of the winner can hopefully be found in the dutch VEKN forum soon. (Currently I am not 100% sure about the VPs+GWs of the preliminary rounds). When you click on the pictures to see the large versions of them, take note that the pictures below are somewhat large (1.5 MByte each).

Left: The Joker, where the tournament was held.
Right: After the Thomas' Spell of Life has gone off, while the rest of the table are struggling to survive except Didi who sweeps the table later. (Round 1, Table 1).

Left: Michael's Aus-Chi wall controls the table, despite the Herman's Assamites and Peter's !Toreadors efforts to overthrow him (Round 1, Table 2).
Right: During the midgame Herman's Assamites manage to oust Michael's wall (Round 2, Table 1).

Left: One of the few timeouts, as Didi's Shamblers cannot break Herman's Assamites resistance (Round 3, Table 3).
Right: Peter's Toreador w/ Obf march for the win, after the Thomas' Tupdogs made their first (and last) VP (Final Round).

Results Polish National VtES Championship 2007

On November 17th, 2007 the Polish National VtES Championship was held in Warsaw, Poland with 43 players attending the final tournament. The final standings were as follows:

1. Tomasz Pietkiewicz (POL) -- 2 GW 11 VP -- 0,5 VP -- Imbued
2. Tomasz Izydorczyk (POL) -- 2 GW 7,5 VP -- 0,5 VP -- Weenie Auspex feat. Saulot
3. Michal Bugajski (POL) -- 2 GW 7 VP -- 0,5 VP -- !Nosferatu ANI POT combat
4. Lech Jablonski (POL) -- 2 GW 6,5 VP -- 0,5 VP -- Lasombra Black Hand Nocturn deck
5. Pawel Kukielczynski (POL) -- 2 GW 6 VP -- 0,5 VP -- Speed Shamblers Swiss Style
   

Congratulations to Tomasz Pietkiewicz for his win of the Polish Nationals. The winning deck has the been posted in the Usenet newsgroup here.

A Guide on Playing Fatties

In VtES especially new players are very keen on playing large capacity vampires who have a large number disciplines as well as one or more special abilities. The VtES slang for vampires with a capacity of 9 or higher is "fatties" (similar to the "Magic The Gathering" term for a large creature usually with five or more power and three or more toughness). (For additional VtES terms see Lasombra's list of VtES terms.) In this article I will give some reasons for and against playing fatties as well as some tips on playing fatties more effectively.

Reasons for playing fatties

• Discipline spread needed for the deck basic functionality (and cannot be provided for by younger vampires). For example, "Saulot" has a quite unique discipline spread with "dai AUS FOR OBE THA VAL". But most decks utilize a much smaller number of discipline usually 2-3 and rarely 4 or more.
  
  Playing "Matthias" instead of "Saulot" can be more effective, "Matthias" is out in two turn instead of three, he has +1 intercept and all the clan disciplines at superior, Saulot on the other hand has all clan discipline at superior and also superior "Thaumaturgy", superior "Valeren" and inferior "Daimonium", +1 bleed, +1 strength and a very useful special ability. So if you're not planning to play the extra disciplines, you're are usually better off playing "Matthias" than "Saulot".


• Useful special abilities are often the reason for playing a fattie, and often the best reason too, if the special is going to be an integral part of the deck's strategy, e.g. "Durga Syn" doesn't tap when blocking allies or vampires with a capacity below 5, "Enkidu" has a built-in rush and +2 strength, "Nakhthorheb" has built-in untap during your turn, etc.


• Useful other permanents or traits like votes or permanent bleed modifiers also enhance the usuability of the large cap. vampires. Primary example are the "Inner Circle" members, especially "Arika" and "Stanislava" with their inherent +2 bleed and 4 votes and cool special abilities.


• The high capacity is required/favourable for certain cards, Examples:
  
  • You want to make (more) pool by playing "Ancient Influence" or "Honor the Elders".
    
  • "Eternals of Sirius" can only be played on a "Follower of Set" with a capacity of 9 or higher.
  Adding fatties to deck should then only be done if you really use these types of cards somewhat often, or to give a counter examples, it doesn't make sense to play multiple copies of "Gwendolyn" if you play a single "Ancient Influence", but nothing else that takes advantage of her capacity.


• High cap vampires can better withstand combat and other troubles like "Temptation" or "Form of Corruption". This is usually a weak argument since you often use "Minion Tap"/"Vessel"/etc. to pull blood from the vampires to your pool, a lot of minion cards cost blood from the vampires as well. During the course of a game the blood on a vampire is reduced anyway. So a vampire with a capacity of 4 and 3 blood, can often be beaten up as easily by a combat monster as a vampire with a capacity of 10 and 3 blood.
  

Reasons against playing fatties

• Fatties are very slow to influence out of the uncontrolled regions into the ready region. This is a serious disadvantage in the early game where influencing a fattie takes 3 to 4 turns, while both your prey and predator can do anything they like. This can doom your own game right from the start, when you're being bled in the early and your pool buffer becomes so thin, that you run out of space to maneuver. In an extreme case I have seen, a predator playing weenie bleed as bleed its prey playing "Cybele" for more than 20 pool (killing him course) in turn 3, the round where Cybele moved to the ready region.


• The lack of actions that a fattie has compared to 3 weenies with the same total pool cost, is another significant disadvantage. For example, 3 weenies can bleed, take control of "Powerbase: Montreal" and hunt in the same turn, while your fattie can only do one of these actions without further support.


• Some players like to play certain fatties because they are "cool" or they have read in WoD clan novel about them. This is usually the worst reason for playing a particular vampire, VtES is not a roleplaying game, but a competetive multiplayer card game. Without a sound deck with a well-rounded crypt and library, playing a deck for flavour reasons and it perfectly fits into the "World of Darkness" background, the game is doomed for you. It is an entirely different thing if your friends and you agree to build and play theme-based decks, but don't do this in a competitive environment.


• Playing fatties is often a synonym for a star vampire deck; this is a deck where the main means of winning, is a single vampire with his unique abilities which powers the main "engine" of your deck. A good example is an "Una" deck, which solely uses the reduced costs for "Fortitude" cards to play 40+ "Freak Drives" for free.
  
  The disadvantage with playing with a star vampire is, that these decks are very vulnerable with regards to this vampires. "Pentex Subversion", "Sensory Deprivation" or "Protect Thine Own" (when playing Non-Camarilla) are killer cards against a star vampire, and often against fatties in general as wells, since these decks simply cannot afford to lose these vampires. Also if you are not playing combat by yourself, you will need some kind of protection against it. This can be a "Secure Haven" or an abundance of "Obedience" or "Majesties".

Support and requirements for playing fatties

So there are a couple of things you need to do in order to support playing big caps effectively:

Influence

• Influence out a support vampire (e.g. weenie or midcap) first, then the fatties, in order to be able to act and more importantly block/react early in the game.
• You will likely need ways of increasing your amount of influence, especially if you plan to use more than one fattie. The following library cards can help: "Information Highway", "Zillah's Valley", "Grooming the Protege" and "Eternals of Sirius" (for "Followers of Set" only).
  
• Other ways of increasing a player's amount of influence require the use of certain vampires, whose special ability will do the deed. Examples are "Ingrid Roessler", "Cock Robin", "Nikolaus Vermeulen", "Saulot", "Malgorzata" and "Ayo Igoli".
  

Bloat

• You need pool gain, usually by pulling blood of the vampires. The usual way is to use the classic cards like "Minion Tap", "Blood Doll" or most recently "Vessel. This will help you either bring out additional vampires or to increase your pool buffer against attacks from your predator.
  
  Other ways often of generating extra pool include ways which take advantage of the size of the vampires, e.g. the political actions like "Honor the Elders", "Ancient Influence" or "Reins of Power", or actions like "Govern the Unaligned" or "Enchant Kindred".


• It is also vital for the fatties to regain blood lost earlier either due to "Minion Taps", etc. or by playing cards or suffering from combat damage. The widely used classic for this purpose is "Giants Blood", but since it can only be played once a game, you shouldn't rely on it. Another classic is "Voter Capitivation" for political decks, since it is not limited to a specific amount of blood that can be regained and and you can regain up to 2 pool directly. Combat decks often use "Taste of Vitae", more generic ways of accomplishing a "refill" of the vampires are "Restoration" or "Entrenching".

Multi Actions

• Ideally your high cap vampires have ways of performing multiple actions per minion phase to enhance the effectity of playing them. If that's not possible, it is also quite helpful to the ability to react multiple times without repeated use of cards like "On the Qui Vive", "Forced Awakening", etc.
  
  
  • "Freak Drive", "Forced March", "Helicopter" -- let a vampire untap immediately after an action.
    
  • "Mylan Horseed (Goblin)", "Nakhthorheb's" special ability -- can untap a vampire during the minion phase.
    
  • "Homunculus", "Clotho's Gift", "Metro Underground" -- let you pay at the end of a minion phase to untap.
    
  • "Secrects from the the Magaji", "Eternal Vigilance" -- let a vampire untap and/or block actions while tapped during another player's minion phase.

Summary
Playing fatties is not a good thing per se nor it is a bad thing either. When playing fatties it should be really worth it in terms of disciplines and special abilities. Also make sure you can bloat enough (regain enough pool) to compensate the expense for the fatties. Optimally your minion can either multi-act and/or react/block more than once, otherwise you will often be outbled or out-vote by mid-cap or small cap vampires, which have a lot more actions at their deposal than the fatties.

Deck Archetypes: Toreador Grand Ball

The Toreador Grand Ball (TGB) decktype is around for quite some time now. Essentially it is a political deck, which uses the "Toreador Grand Ball" to make the political actions like "Kine Resources Contested" and "Parity Shift" unblockable. Another alias for this decktype is "AAA" or "Triple-A" for the three main vampires it features, namely "Anson", "Anneke" and "Alexandra".

How to win with them

The TGB deck lulls the table into the belief, it is utterly harmless and it won't do anything. In a way this is true, until the deck has had its required setup, then the first TGB hits the table, and the vampires start voting.

The main action to keep the deck alive is "Parity Shift"; if you have an aggressive S&B or Combat deck as predator, then you need to take down the aggressor first, and then turn to your predator. The deck is also a master of deal negotation, since with the help of "Parity Shift" and/or "Anneke's" special ability it is able to deal damage quite effectively cross-table or block actions crosstable. The description of Erol Oenguen's TGB deck was "Survive and make a deal with someone who can oust." and that exactly was this deck archetypes strength: it had table control. All of the "AAA" trio of vampires has it's own superior asset:

• "Anson" provides a second master phase action,
• "Anneke" can block cross-table, and
• "Alexandra" can untap a "Toreador" during it's player's minion phase.

Another neat "trick" is having multiple TGBs in play, but effectively you only need to not to untap only one of your "Toreador" vampires. And even that can be circumvented by "Alexandra's" special ability. The deck not only generates large amounts of pool by "Parity Shifts", but also with any other vote, by first (nearly) emptying the vampires with "Minion Taps", and then refilling them with "Voter Captivation" later own.


Bleed defense
The deck's bleed defense is quite simple, yet effective. It uses "Telepathic Misdirection" to bounce bleeds of and/or "Second Tradition: Domain" to block it. The amount of intercept can often be enhanced by "Eagle's Sight" or other "Auspex"-based intercept cards.

Vote defense
Usually no special vote defense is needed here, since the TGB deck has a lots of votes to offer, A TGB deck might pack either the classic "Delaying Tactics" or even better "Scalpel Tongue", since it can turn around both a vote that you call yourself or a vote that is called by your adversaries.

Combat defense
TGB's combat capability is defensive in nature, with an abundance of "Majesty", and sometimes with sprinkles of "Obedience". Also "Secure Haven" is often seen in this deck type. Some deck variants also feature "Concealed Weapons" and ".44 Magnums" to be able withstand other combat decks more consistently and even provide hitback against ally or weenie decks.

How to win against them

Once the deck is built-up often having multiple high cap. vampires out, it is difficult to oust, even more so it has then generated a considerable pool buffer.

So early pressure is mandatory, but you need to be aware of the deck's capability to steal "back" one's pool by playing "Parity Shift". The victim of the "Parity Shift" is often, especially early in the game, its predator, not its prey.

If the deck is low pool, especially after putting itself deliberately down for being able to play the "Parity Shift", it is vulnerable to "Delaying Tactics" and even more so "Confusion of the Eye".

It is mandatory, for both the prey and predator of the TGB deck, to remove the name-sakes of the deck. This is true even if the TGB player can recycle TGB from the asheap and play it as a second master phase action in the same turn. The reasoning is that if he uses two master phase actions to retrieve and play a "used" TGB, he cannot use it for playing and/or retrieving other vital master cards. And without the TGB the Toreador are either blocked during actions or they don't try anything funny at all.

Key Cards

• "Toreador Grand Ball" -- the namesake of the deck, vital for taking political actions without the fear of being blocked.
• "Anthelios" -- retrieve "Toreador Grand Ball", "Direct Intervention" and other vital goodies from the ashheap. Best utilized with "Parthenon" and/or "Anson" in play.
• "Parity Shift" -- the main means to keep the deck alive.
• "Second Tradition: Domain" -- the decks untap card and main source of intercept as well.

One of the key cards used to be "Anarch Revolt", but due to the fact that you can get "immunity" from the "Anarch Revolt" by making one (or more) of your vampires an Anarch, it is no longer one of the favourite cards of a TGB deck.

Notable Examples & Variations

• Classic TGB deck /w multiple copies of the "Triple-A" vampires
  
  • Toreador Grand Ball by Kamel Senni -- the basic version.
    
  • Anneke+Anson by Ruben Van Cauwenberghe -- another basic version, but w/o Alexandra.
    
  • Erol Triple-A by Erol Oenguen -- focusses on blocking and table control.
    
  • AAA by Marc Desaulniers -- an aggresive version with more KRC.
    
  • Masters of the Grand Ball by Teemu Sainomaa -- an updated version w/ some newer cards added.
    
  
  
• "Alastor" variant --here the main vote is Alastor, and the deck mutates into a Rush combat deck during mid-game.
  
  • Alastores Pipoqueiros by Sergio Trentin Jr.

Decklist

Coupe de Paris
Paris, France
February 28th 2006
23 Methuselahs

Tournament winning deck
Created By: Kamel SENNI

Crypt: (12 cards, Min: 17, Max: 42, Avg: 7,75)
----------------------------------------------
4 Anson aus dom CEL PRE 8 Toreador
2 Anneke dom AUS CEL PRE 10 Toreador
2 Alexandra dom ANI AUS CEL PRE 11 Toreador
1 Francois Villon chi obf pot AUS CEL PRE 10 Toreador
1 Dorian Strack cel AUS 4 Toreador
1 Delilah Easton pre 2 Toreador
1 Isabel de Leon AUS 3 Toreador

Library: (88 cards)
-------------------
Master (46 cards)
2 Blood Doll
6 Dreams of the Sphinx
2 Fortschritt Library
1 Giant`s Blood
1 Legendary Vampire
8 Minion Tap
1 Parthenon, The
1 Pentex Subversion
2 Sudden Reversal
1 Temptation of Greater Power
7 Toreador Grand Ball
5 Visit from the Capuchin
9 Zillah`s Valley

Action (6 cards)
4 Dominate Kine
2 Entrancement

Action Modifier (12 cards)
3 Aire of Elation
2 Approximation of Loyalty
7 Voter Captivation

Political Action (12 cards)
1 Anarchist Uprising
1 Ancient Influence
2 Ancilla Empowerment
3 Banishment
3 Parity Shift
1 Political Stranglehold
1 Reins of Power

Reaction (6 cards)
3 Obedience
3 Telepathic Misdirection

Combat (4 cards)
4 Majesty

Ally (1 cards)
1 Carlton Van Wyk (Hunter)

Event (1 cards)
1 Anthelios, the Red Star