Joshua Duffin#
Yay Camarilla!
We had seventeen people show up for the DC-area prerelease event.
I had about five nervous minutes when I asked the guy behind the
counter if they had gotten the product and he had to go in the
back room and look... and look... and look... before finding the
box somewhere apparently out of the way. :-) Thanks to Lisa
Charlton and White Wolf for getting the stuff delivered in time!
We decided to run the event as "open your three boosters, then
choose what clan you want to play to go with them". (No trading
of cards, no booster draft, as I felt those formats would be less
newbie-friendly than a more "straight sealed" method.)
Despite noise about how unloved certain clans would be, the
actual distribution was:
3 Brujah
3 Malkavian
2 Nosferatu
3 Toreador
3 Tremere
3 Ventrue
So, the Nosferatu did seem a *little* bit unloved, but not as
much as some would have predicted. ;-) Of course, this may
have been due in part to the scoring method we were using: the
top player from each clan, minus the lowest-scoring clan, would
go to the finals. So there was some benefit to being in a less
popular clan. Personally, I chose Malkavian because I had gotten
two Malks in my boosters, a Muddled Vampire Hunter, and a couple
stealth cards I liked (which I took out existing stealth cards
for, I think - added a Mask of 1000 Faces and maybe a Spying
Mission for a couple Lost in Crowds and Cloaks).
Results after three rounds:
Brujah:
Dan Coleman, 0 GW, 1 VP, 98 TP
Charles McDowell, 0 GW, 1 VP, 90 TP
Chris Cavett, 0 GW, 0.5 VP, 90 TP
Malkavian:
Joshua Duffin, 1 GW, 5 VP, 126 TP
Samuel Ntonme, 1 GW, 3 VP, 96 TP
Emily Lloyd, 0 GW, 2 VP, 102 TP
Nosferatu:
Trey Morita, 0 GW, 4 VP, 120 TP
Huan Vu, 0 GW, 0 GP, 64 TP
Toreador:
Colin Riggs, 2 GW, 5.5 VP, 120 TP (had to leave early)
Joseph Feeney, 0 GW, 2 VP, 124 TP
Heather Fogg, 0 GW, 1 VP, 66 TP (had to leave early)
Tremere:
John Oyerbides, 2 GW, 6 VP, 138 TP
Forrest Nielsen, 0 GW, 1 VP, 94 TP
Jim Suh, 0 GW, 0 VP, 60 TP
Ventrue:
Jason Babbitt, 2 GW, 9 VP, 168 TP
Peter Oh, 2 GW, 7 VP, 144 TP
Dan Scheidegger, 0 GW, 0 VP, 64 TP
Our finalists were therefore, in prelim-ranking order:
Joseph Feeney (Toreador, 2 VP)
Trey Morita (Nosferatu, 4 VP)
Joshua Duffin (Malkavian, 1 GW 5 VP)
John Oyerbides (Tremere, 2 GW 6 VP)
Jason Babbitt (Ventrue, 2 GW 9 VP)
Seating was:
Joseph and Trey facing each other.
I (Josh) inserted myself as Trey's predator, Joseph's prey.
John inserted himself as Trey's prey, Joseph's predator.
Jason inserted himself as my predator, Joseph's prey.
So order was, starting with the randomly-determined first player:
Joseph Feeney (Tor)
Jason Babbitt (Ven)
Joshua Duffin (Mal)
Trey Morita (Nos)
John Oyerbides (Tre)
In the finals, Jason apparently managed to not draw a titled vampire
for the second or third time; instead he got, um, I think Diana Vick
and Elena Gutierrez and that 6-cap with DOM PRE for. Trey on the
other hand got Cock Robin, Nosferatu Justicar, and therefore
controlled the politics. He got somebody else, too, later, but I
forget who, somebody in the 2-5 range I think. I got Watenda, Dr.
Netchurch, and I think Ruth McGinley - new vamp, DEM obf aus.
Joseph got (perhaps) Radeyah and Isabel de Leon, and eventually
Victoria Ash. John got Aisling Sturbridge, Blythe Candeleria, and
one more whose name I forget.
Both me and Trey were pretty quickly reduced to pretty low pool
totals (like 5-10); I had been bleeding Trey for a couple a turn
and he spent quite a bit on vamps; Jason had been putting some vote
damage on me and getting bleeds through occasionally (Trey had
allowed him to pass at least one Conservative Agitation but required
it to be 2 points to me, 3 points to his prey (John)). I made a
deal with Trey that I'd quit bleeding him if he didn't let Jason
pass any more votes damaging me; that deal held up for a couple
turns but after I had a Pulse and a Spying Mission on Dr. Netchurch
I could no longer live in fear at 4 pool and went for the oust
(Trey had 8 or 9 if I remember right, so I needed to do the 5 with
Dr. Netchurch, 1 with Watenda, and 2 or 3 with Ruth and Eyes of
Chaos?). Trey would have lived if the Archon Investigation in
his hand could have saved him from the Spying Mission bleed of 5,
but as far as I could tell the wording hasn't changed to make AI
playable against Spying Mission bleed increases, so he died and I
was in somewhat less danger of being ousted.
John had also spent himself down pretty low on pool (and he'd also
gotten bled at stealth by Trey a fair amount - Trey had plenty of
stealth but the lack of bounce or very much intercept meant he was
unable to very effectively stop my Malkavian bleeds). I think he
was at about 3-5 when I ousted Trey; if I remember right I ousted
him the next time around the table - apparently he didn't have
any Harassment for me at the crucial moment.
Somewhere in there I got a Muddled Vampire Hunter, too, and used
it to intimidate Jason (after he'd played a few Majesties) into
laying off me some (or at least not trying bleeds that Muddles
would be able to block).
Joseph was also pretty low on pool at this point, as John had
gotten a couple Conditioned bleeds through (and beat up his
vampires a fair amount with the Thefts and the Harassing and the
hey hey it hurts me). So I ousted him pretty quickly too.
At that point Jason still had maybe 10 or 15 pool, and had
finally gotten out a titled vampire (Wilhelm Waldburg), but I
also had around 15 pool and had gotten out Khalid (my secret
Nosferatu ringer with obf, in to replace the nigh-useless
dom on Ohanna) as well. Oh yeah, and then I got Victoria too,
with my ill-gotten pool gains - I managed to gain another 4
or 6 pool with her edge-forfeiting ability in the endgame. So
basically Jason was doomed; it took a few more turns of bleeding
but I ousted him as well.
So, result was:
Josh 5 VP
Jason 0 VP (first-ranked going in)
John 0 VP (second-ranked going in)
Trey 0 VP (fourth-ranked going in)
Joseph 0 VP (fifth-ranked going in)
Thanks to everyone for coming out to play, and I hope you all had
a great time. I know I did, and it wasn't just because I won. It
was also because I bought a bag of 100 glow in the dark zombies
(intended for use with the game Zombies!) and used them for my pool
in the final round. :-)
Josh
eat... brains...