Tournament Report and TWDA - North Central Region Qualifier
Jon
a smallish turnout because of the timing...lots of vacation conflict I
think. Twelve players gathered to contest the qualifier spots up for
grabs and they brought out the mean and lean stealth bleed decks in
force.
It was a fast tournament. The first oust of the tournament was Darby
Keeney's. He was playing weenie presence and ousted his first prey in
about 15 minutes, and of the 9 preliminary round games, three or four
had players ousted in 20 to 30 minutes of the start. Not a single game
went to time, and only one came even close.
The finals consisted of the four fastest bleed decks and one wall deck
which managed to split his second round table, the only table without
a fast bleed deck all day.
The five finalists, and qualifiers were:
Marshall Hogue (2GW, 10VP, DOM/OBT)
Darby Keeney (2GW, 8VP, weenie PRE)
Bill Troxel (2GW, 7VP, DEM/OBF)
Burt Sheldon (1 GW, 4VP, DOM/PRE/OBF)
Kevin Butcher (0GW, 2VP, Laibon Wall)
Play order was Bill -> Kevin -> Burt -> Marshall ->Darby
Darby (3VP) ended up on top of the heap ousting three players while
holding off Marshall's bleeds somehow, but Marshall (2VP) finished him
off in the end for the final two victory points.
Congratulations to the qualifiers and here is Darby's weenie presence
TWDA entry:
North Central Region Qualifier
Denver, Colorado
July 19, 2008
Qualifier - 3R+F
12 players
Deck Name : Weepy Bleed V4
Author : Darby Keeney
Description : Fairly straightforward, archetypical weenie [pre] bleed
with 4-cylinder crypt engine.
Not as defensive as tap-n-bleed Mind Numb [PRE] versions, but
significantly faster to the oust.
Crypt [12 vampires] Capacity min: 1 max: 6 average: 2.66667
------------------------------------------------------------
1x Jost Werner 6 AUS PRE ani !Toreador:2
1x Mariana Gilbert 4 PRE cel Toreador:1
1x Violette Prentiss 4 PRE dom Ventrue:1
1x Gideon Fontaine 3 PRE Ventrue:1
1x Itzahk Levine 3 cel pre Ventrue:2
1x Uma Hatch 3 cel pre Brujah:1
1x Delilah Easton 2 pre Toreador:1
1x Frederick the Weak 2 pre !Brujah:2
1x Vasilis, The Trait 2 pre Brujah:2
1x Angela Decker 1 pre Pander:2
1x Antoinette DuChamp 1 cel pre Caitiff:2
1x Igo the Hungry 1 pre pro Caitiff:1
// Jost is a questionable investment, but +1 stealth has won enough
games to merit continued inclusion.
Library [90 cards]
------------------------------------------------------------
Action [49]
1x Aranthebes, The Immortal
15x Enchant Kindred
3x Entrancement
4x Intimidation
8x Legal Manipulations
2x Propaganda
7x Public Trust
9x Social Charm
// Propaganda is hit or miss. It has won enough games to still
occupy a couple of slots among the 48 bleed actions.
// Public Trust is pure gold here, frequently financing a 1-cap
vampire early in the game.
Action Modifier [3]
3x Aire of Elation
Combat [20]
20x Staredown
Master [15]
2x Anarch Troublemaker
6x Effective Management
1x From a Sinking Ship
1x Momentum's Edge
3x Pentex(TM) Subversion
2x Sudden Reversal
// From a Sinking Ship seems to get used in about half of the games
played.
// Momentum's Edge is a bit questionable, but a few extra pool never
hurts in the late game.
// Previous versions have toyed with Direct Intervention, which would
still be a fine inclusion.
Reaction [3]
3x Delaying Tactics
Crafted with : Anarch Revolt Deck Builder. [Sun Jul 20 19:50:04 2008]
Peter D Bakija
<a488b2c8-dde4-42c3...@8g2000hse.googlegroups.com>,
Jon <jsush...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Deck Name : Weepy Bleed V4
> Author : Darby Keeney
> Description : Fairly straightforward, archetypical weenie [pre] bleed
> with 4-cylinder crypt engine.
>
> Not as defensive as tap-n-bleed Mind Numb [PRE] versions, but
> significantly faster to the oust.
Heh--I'm always entertained by decks that are this focused on doing what
they are doing (my current wennie pot deck has, like, 15 each Computer
Hacking, Increased Strength, and Thrown Gate. And it does pretty well :-)
> Combat [20]
> 20x Staredown
The only real question is: doesn't your hand get clogged with these a
lot of the time? Looking at the final game (if it is at all typical of
the games this kind of deck sees), it doesn't look like you are gonna
get blocked much, let alone rushed. With zero hand cycling tech, I'd
imagine that you'd end up with a hand full of these on a regular basis.
Peter D Bakija
pd...@lightlink.com
http://www.lightlink.com/pdb6/vtes.html
"It's too bad she won't live! But then again, who does?"
-Gaff
Darby Keeney
> > Combat [20]
> > 20x Staredown
>
> The only real question is: doesn't your hand get clogged with these a
> lot of the time? Looking at the final game (if it is at all typical of
> the games this kind of deck sees), it doesn't look like you are gonna
> get blocked much, let alone rushed. With zero hand cycling tech, I'd
> imagine that you'd end up with a hand full of these on a regular basis.
I am a huge fan of hand cycling tech. It's in almost every deck that
I build. It simply didn't fit here, as a single discard phase is
generally enough to move Staredowns in favor of bleed cards. When I
do jam, it is because of both Staredowns and Masters combined. (yes,
I considered 15 Masters on the edge of too many in this deck - it
might run better with 12).
Speaking to the final, I never bled for 1 as a default action unless
it ousted a player. At one point heads-up with Marshall, I did have
4 Staredowns in hand, but as I had just bled him for something like 15
the turn before, he had to block some of my bleeds anyway (to move his
own combat S:CE package, in addition to preserving pool). So that
problem was self-rectifying.
To address your point from a more general angle, it seems like there
are (many) more times that I dive into a bleed without Staredown than
I do bleeding as a default 1. So I believe I jam infrequently with
this deck.
Breaking that down further, it's not like stealth-bleed jamming, where
the number of non-bleed cards are roughly equal to stealth cards, and
you're still running Masters and reactions. For instance, !Malk S-n-
B, if you expect 1 bleed card in three draws, its a "light stealth,
heavy bleed" deck. With weenie [pre], you expect to draw a bleed card
on every other draw. So I 'hit" bleed more than a stealth deck every
could (without an intercept-blocking prey)
As an example, let us dissect a turn with 5 minions even without
blocks. Play a Master. Play 5 bleed cards. Discard. I move 7
cards, and expect to draw 3-4 bleed cards and another Master - almost
the same number I played. It's possible to jam, but at some point
your prey gets to an unsupportable pool total and even bleeding for 1
will kill him - or he'll block to survive and your jam resolves.
Yes, I know that as the number of minions increases beyond 5, the odds
shift more towards jamming. But with 7 minions sitting there, your
prey MUST block you or face the possibility of being ousted on the
spot. Don't block, lose 18 pool. Block, cycle the Staredowns.
Clearly there's no good choice - and isn't that the situations the
predators try to create for their prey?