Isle of Wight Tournament - 13/02/99
James Coupe
A tournament which was a lot of fun, marredslightly by the lack of
players, which was a shame. Unfortunately, though the tournament itself
was free to enter, travel to the Isle of Wight can be prohibitively
expensive, at 7 GBP a head, and two potential players (Alan Gates and
Pat (Roberts?)) were busy role-playing. Grrr, dirty splitters ;).
Still, a good time was had by all.
The tournament was due to start at 11.00 am, but was delayed slightly by
Matt's cries of "Does anyone want to play?" which garnered us two new
players, Daniel and David. Both of them played extremely well for
novices, and Daniel shone as a potentially excellent V:TES player.
Following the standard format of three rounds and a final, the players
were as follows:
James McClellan: Using a more or less complete clone of a deck played
previously by Jon Cooper, he fought hard with the Brujah, mostly. A
fair amount of Protean weedled its way in, leading to a fun hybrid of
potence, protean, celerity and Brujah princely madness. The Fifth
Tradition (Horse Brutality - ackn. The Rocky Horror Picture Show
Audience Participation scripts), 2nd Tradition and Earth Control were
all put to good use. Sadly under-used were Shadow of the Beast and RPG
Launcher. The deck did quite well over all, securing itself neatly 3.5
victory points. It also had a tendency to amass vast quantities of pool
aided, unwittingly, by Will when he played Golconda on Don Cruez,
expecting a payment of 2 pool to swiftly follow. It didn't, of course.
Jon Cooper's deck was primarily Lasombra. Only having seen it in the
final, I can't comment on it in any real depth but it did very well
victory point wise. A fair amount of Lasombra rush and graverob seemed
to be there, with Obtenebration back-up. In the heats, it amassed a
pretty nifty 7 victory points.
Lunar was playing a very nice Nosferatu/Anti-Nosferatu vote deck. She
had anticipated a lower vote environment than she ended up playing in,
but still did quite well. Using that most necessary of tactic for
political decks, diplomacy, she managed to have a much greater influence
on the table than her victory point table would indicate, forcing people
into somewhat annoying alliances, such as James McClellan and myself
(cross-table) when I really actually wanted to target him, and not his
prey, with the damage-dealing votes I had. A lot of big titled vampires
- such as Sheldon and Kendrick - did her proud. She got two victory
points, but easily contributed to the actual make-up of the final with
her political wheeler-dealing. She also had sufficient stealth to go
for bleeds when her politicking failed her.
Matt Green went out with his "sleaze" deck again. He was let down on
the trades he needed for his Alamut deck which, with proxies in a
practise game, proved to be highly effective. Definitely a deck to look
out for. After its good showing at Portsmouth in January, it was badly
let down by bad shuffles, it seems. Not a deck I had the"pleasure" of
playing against this time, it only gained 1 victory point this time
round.
David Williamson, one of the two novice players, was introduced to V:TES
through what can only be termed a Baptism of Fire. When scrambling for
decks, James McClellan had two on offer - the Betrayer deck, or his out
of turn Malkavin combat deck. We plumped for the Malkavian deck. He
was beset by difficult hand management in a notoriously difficult to
manage deck. Though he was unable to gain a victory point, he got into
the Malkavian spirit nicely (being a LARPer) and had his own point of
view on the deck by the end of it. His take was that, since he needed
to get normal bleed actions through, more stealth was needed. Perhaps,
in part, that was due to him needing to slip past vampires he should
have torporised (finding it difficult to control this inherently
uncontrollable deck) but it shows how quickly people can adapt to V:TES,
form ideas and throw around terminology as if it were second nature to
them.
Steve Cantlow (Mr. Lunar) played a Malkavian stealth-ish Computer bleed
type deck. Steve has also recently purchased a new set of contact
lenses, which allowed him to use X-ray vision to do uncannily well in
Malkavian pranks. Having had to have his beloved Lunar oust him, he
managed to garner 2 victory points.
Will played a very hard Brujah princes combat deck. It was pretty good
at being able to rip through any vampire it chose to, and had bleed and
vote elements in there too. A powerful deck, it garrnered 4 victory
points over all.
Adam Boulton played briefly with a very powerful combat deck, loaned by
Will. It really needed to get Cailean out, and then set range, going on
the rampage as it chose range. Being new to the deck, but not the game,
it was played a little too conservatively, I feel, not cycling enough,
or attacking enough. It failed to gain a victory point.
Daniel Trodden played for the first time, with a very powerful permanent
stealth Presence bleed deck, backed up by Toreador Antitribu, and
Rebekka, with intercept and bleed bounce and so forth. Needing a little
tutoring early on, he waited until the final round before garnering for
himself 3 victory points. Even with a powerful deck, it shows the
makings of an incredibly good player if he is able to do that well with
it, only having learnt the game four hours before, if that. If he stays
in the game, which I sincerely hope he will, he should do very well.
Finally, there was me, James Coupe. Having hoped that the metagame had
shifted away from votes, I guessed wrongly. "Weenie" Brujah with votes,
I'd hoped to have a better control of tables, but failed, sadly. I had
been hoping to get quite a few weenies out (also using the Embrace and
3rd Tradition), and then use Consanguineous Boon to help out my pool. I
failed in both games but one, where a cross-table Legbiter aided me in
my plight, letting me get Lunar out. Keeping Legbiter from ousting
Daniel with a Life Boon, I Restructured myself in front of Daniel, bled
him out myself and then got Legiter. My card mix was out, and I needed
permanent votes which were Brujah and, so, very popular on the table. I
managed to claw together 4 victory points though.
The final was fairly routine, as I saw it. Seating order went James
Coupe, James McClellan, Jon Cooper, Daniel Trodden and Will. I fell
first to Will, and Jon graverobbed a couple of my vampires first, then
Jon got Daniel out. Will then dispatched James McClellan and Jon,
winning the tournament and a fair stack of boosters.
Anyway, next UK tournament is this Saturday (20th) at Second Byte,
Fratton (as per usual).
--
James Coupe (Prince of Mercia, England)
Vampire: Elder Kindred Network
http://madnessnetwork.hexagon.net