South African Nationals 2009 Report
Hodgestar
convention which took place from Friday, 10 July, to Sunday, 12 July,
in Johannesburg.
On Friday we shared a room with the anime club and ran demo games for
new players. The first hour or so of the morning were a bit slow, but
as soon as we had one set of four new players involved in a game
things took off quite nicely. We had a second set of new players setup
about half an hour later and then we had a third group waiting once
the first two games finished.
Saturday we moved to one of the wargaming rooms after it was decided
that the anime fans were just a little too noisy to run a tournament
next to. This year nationals was a four booster draft using one
booster from each of 3rd Ed, LotN, KMW and SoC. We don't see many
draft tournaments here so it made a nice change and I think everyone
enjoyed the format. In the end we had ten players sign up. It would
have been nice to have a few more, but it wasn't too terrible a turn
out.
The first round saw me and Clement (the Prince of Pretoria) take game
wins. Clement benefitted from a number of other players tangling with
Nizzam (who has aggravated hand damage). I managed to oust my first
prey when he had my grandprey on the ropes which set me up nicely for
the rest of the game.
In the second round Victor (winner of nationals last year) got his
Templar and Improvised Flamethrower combination going and cleaned up
his table to secure a place in the final.
The remaining two finalists were Joshua (relatively new to the
Johannesburg VtES scene) and Ivan (who was playing in his very first
tournament -- he learnt the game at one of the demos the day before).
The final rapidly became interesting with Clement spending a lot of
his pool on minions and banking on being able ot hold off Victor's
bleeds once they were out. The tactic initially proved fruitful and
Clement ousted Ivan to get the first VP.
Clement then found himself locked in a war of attrition with Victor's
minions, one of who had the Improvised Flamethrower out again. Joshua
and I played a cat and mouse game as he tried to find the right
balance between capitalizing on the tussle between Victor and Clement
and I tried to go forward without leaving myself vulnerable to
Clements minions (who although very low on blood were capable of
putting through solid bleeds with the help of a some bleed modifiers
and a Camera Phone). In the end, neither Joshua nor I could find a
way through and Victor managed to oust Clement, putting himself in a
commanding position.
The dying stages of the final did produce one interesting twist
though. Both Joshua and I reached the point where we had exhausted our
library and our reshuffles. I found myself on two or three pool with
all my vampires in torpor on zero blood and so attempted to withdraw
(with little hope of succeeding). Joshua still had a couple of
vampires out but both were on zero blood and his pool was no better
off than mine so he too attempted to withdraw. Victor's minion with
the Templar and Flamethrower was forced to hunt (being on zero blood)
and Victor only had only just enough bleed to get through me and so I
was ousted and Joshua withdrew successfully -- the first successful
withdrawal I've witnessed in tournament play.
On Sunday we all took the opportunity to get in some long overdue
social games with our constructed decks and it was good to see a bunch
of the players from the demo games on Friday back to join in the fun.
A few more people interested in learning the game showed up and
Clement kindly ran a demo game for them too -- by that point I was
feeling a bit wasted. :)
It was good to see the players from up country again and next year
we'll have to make a plan to pry the national crown from Victor's
grasp. :)
Schiavo
Simon
(Prince of Cape Town)