Monday, June 27, 2011

Gelsenkirchen VtES League 2011: June 22nd

Before (hopefully) a large number of tournament reports of the NAC 2011 will flood the VEKN forum, I wanted to show you the decks of the Gelsenkirchen VtES League 2011 from the meeting on June 22nd, 2011.

Left: Ralf played a new deck, based on Nergal & the Great Beast (and some other Baali from G4/5). But since he was the starting player and no Nergal showed up in his starting crypt, he decided to move Anazir to the ready region. But without being able to fully utilize the potential of the library cards (i.e. Anazir had the wrong disciplines), a Great Beast only showed up very slowly. And since he could only play one Villein successfully, he was ousted quite quickly by the Martin's Malkavians/Malkavian antitribus. Therefore no VP (and no picture!)..

Left: Kinner played a Celerity Gun deck based on the weenie/mid-cap vampires from group 2 (and 3?). Initially it looked got, he got his guns and had enough combat mojo, but then two of his three vampires (those with guns of course) were "gifted" with a Sensory Deprivation. But eventually he drew a Fame, and managed to torporize the famed vampire, this allowed him to oust his prey, and suddenly he had all the forward motion he had lacked a good part of the game.



Left: The deck Zille played was his well-known Gabrin & Friends Bleed deck. In the beginning he really had to struggle against the Celerity Gun deck behind him, but things looked better when he used his defensive part of his deck (i.e. the Sensory Deprivation) against his predator. He tried to lunge against his prey, but when his Week of Nightmares was canceled by Sudden Reversal he simply lacked the ousting power to oust the Brujah before him quickly. One or two turns he was so weakened by the pool loss of the Fame, that he was ousted by Kinner, even though his predator had only minion (Jimmy Dunn) who could act.

Left: Another well-known deck was the New Brujah Vote deck played by Thomas. While not being serious pressure, he was building up quite nicely, having three titled vampires in play (Dmitra, Karen Sudela and Tara) eventually. But he lacked some forward momentum initially, and so he could oust his prey only after he had put a New Carthage in play and only after his prey already had scored a VP.




Left: Martin finally played his Malkavian/Malkavian antitribu Dementation Bleed deck. An early Jackie allowed him to bleed hard in the first few rounds (using Kindred Spirits and/or Eyes of Chaos, but then his bleed modifiers didn't show up in sufficient quantities and it took him some turns to finish off Ralf's Baali. Weakened by a back rush of the Great Beast and careless block of a Brujah by Gem Ghastly didn't leave him enough vampires (and time) to oust his second prey.



The heads-up was witness to an interesting stand-off between Thomas' Brujah and Kinner's gun-wielding vampires. While Thomas had the superior bleed and vote potential, Kinner managed to send all of Brujah to torpor quite quickly, and Thomas yielded the game with no ready minions available about ten minutes before the time limit.

Result: Kinner 3 VP GW, Thomas 1 VP, Martin 1 VP

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