Minicon Last Staurday, or The Rise of the Ravnos

I had a close call on Saturday. I told myself that, since I've had such an AWFUL run lately, if I failed to score any VPs at Minicon (London, UK) last Saturday, I would sell my cards and live somewhere as far away from VTES as possible, in a sulk. I scored 3 on the day, and just squeezed into the final (where I lasted all of 2 minutes - more later), so I feel a bit more confidant. All my Dan Murdocks, !Tremere Vampires, and Complete Collection (MUST SEE - HUGE COLLECTION (tm)) is safe. For now... It was a fine September day when 12 brave souls walked onto the field of combat. A good standard of player, and a newbie too! Mike Nudd, as well as organising, was playing the Sleaziest Setite Deck... EVER! Much use of Nephertiti, Crowbar Towers, Temptations, and Stealth Bleed. Yuerck! Jackie Eves was playing a Potence Gangrel Rush deck. Mid range vamps and lots of Potence, topped off with a smattering of Claws. Nice. Adam Payne Chickened out of playing his much promised Jimmy Dunn deck (*JimmyDunn, JimmyDunn, JimmyDunn-Dunn-Dunn*) and settled for a Ravnos deck using the awesome power of the Starshell Grenade Launcher. Reduce Stealth, Block, Range (Amia) and pop! A great deck, but suffered due to the competition. Legbiter was playing a Temptation of Greater Combat deck (votes, ToGP, and a bit more combat than in previous incarnations). New boy Calebros the Matyr and Sheldon featured heavily. "New Boy" Tony was playing Assamites. Pretty much what you'd expect, except lots of Fortitude. Phil Mattingly was also playing a Ravnos weenie deck. This one had lots of Attonements and Sniper Rifles. Martin Cubberley was playing a Ventrue Potence rush / vote deck with a nasty Hostile Takeover angle. Also Yeurgh! Matt Green was playing a !Toreador deck with a splash of Obfuscate. This has made a few appearances of late in friendly play and is tighter than a ducks bum (this means it is a Good deck)! It uses a lot of Suddens and Revelations to rob Preys of Pool gain, and then stealth bleed them with Legal Manipulations. Will Lee should be shot on sight for playing a HIDEOUS Theo Bell / Beast rush deck with LOTS of Fortitude. Rush, Signpost, Grapple, slap, Disarm, Decaptate. Yuck. James Lewis was (bravely) playing weenie presence bleed / vote. It died a death! Simon Croome played a Protean/Dominate bleed deck using lots of Gangrel / Gangrel Anti. I played my Best Ever Gangrel deck. Lots of Big vampires with potence and protean. Minion Tap / 5th to buy up Angus, Wynn and Ingrid. ToGP vampires using Angus, rush vampires with Wynn in an Uncontrollable Rage, Parity Shift with Ingrid. It sort-of worked 2 times, and got nuked before I could even start by a Hostile for Martin Cubberley in the second game. Going into the Final, we had: Legbiter on 6 points Phil Mattingly on 5.5 points Will Lee on 4 points Matt Green on 5 points David Hammond on 3 points (tied TPs, so on the toss of a coin) In the final, I got smashed out by Will Lee (even AFTER being moved around the table) giving Legbiter 1 point. Phil Mattingly, Will Lee, and finally Legbiter got smashed by Matts Stealthy (!) bleeds, giving Matt 4 points, and the day! Well, here's some thoughts... 1) Lots of Independant action. Note that 4 players elected to go the way of the independants, 2 of which were Ravnos. One Ravnos deck actually made the final - the first to do so in the UK for as long as I can remember. Huzzah! 2) We were, however, playing mainly 4 player games (except the final). This made a huge difference to the environment. 3) As predicted in the Gangrel Newsletter, the Starshell Grenade Launcher has started to make a wholesale appearance. They are Awesome! 4) Matt Greens first Tourney win in some time! Well done Matt... 5) Theo Bell with Fortitude. How broken is THAT!!! ;) See y'all in the funny pages... DH

On 1 Oct 2001 05:49:47 -0700, Dave Hammond wrote: >2) We were, however, playing mainly 4 player games (except the final). >This made a huge difference to the environment. You split your players as 3*4. Nothing much wrong with that but would 2*6 be a good alternative? I was running a Shadowfist event on the same day. This was double-elim and it worked out that we had 6 winners going into the final stage. I offered them the choice of a 6-player game or 2*3 followed by a duel. The voting was evenly split so I used my casting vote to make it a 6-player (I like big games). This was risky as it might have gone on forever but, as it happened, the play was aggressive and it finished in just over an hour. I've run Doomtown with up to 11 players in one game and think something like this is a great format for VTES. LMK if you ever set one up. Andrew

"Andrew S. Davidson" wrote: > > On 1 Oct 2001 05:49:47 -0700, Dave Hammond wrote: > > >2) We were, however, playing mainly 4 player games (except the final). > >This made a huge difference to the environment. > > You split your players as 3*4. Nothing much wrong with that but would > 2*6 be a good alternative? I was running a Shadowfist event on the As it was a sanctioned tournament, 3*4 is the only option. All tables in a sanctioned VTES tournament are 4- or 5-player tables. Please avoid cross-posting needlessly. This topic has little interest to the other groups you've included. (Likewise I implore anyone following up to Mr. Davidson's original message with non-VTES material to remove r.g.t-c.jyhad from the Group: list, thanks in advance. This request being the only reason I do not reset the Group: list to just r.g.t-c.jyhad where it belongs in the first place - my apologies for the necessary further cross-posting.). -- LSJ (vte...@white-wolf.com) V:TES Net.Rep for White Wolf, Inc. Links to revised rulebook, rulings, errata, and tournament rules: http://www.white-wolf.com/vtes/

> I've run Doomtown with up to 11 players in one game and think > something like this is a great format for VTES. LMK if you ever set > one up. > > Andrew Bad, Bad, Bad Andrew!!!! Back in the day, I ran a 12 player tournament back in '96 with everyone sitting on the same table. Not only was it rife with collusive activity, but some yahoo played a all Conservitive Agitation Weenie Presence deck. I ConAg you for 12, I ConAg you for 12. Thanks for playing. It was really nasty, and brutish, and amazingly unfair to everyone who wasn't part of the 3 player triumverate. It pissed alot of players off. Comments Welcome, Norman S. Brown, Jr. XZealot Archon of the Swamp

Newsgroups snipped. In message <9F5D0B40FB5B3015.2CC12597...@lp.airnew s.net>, Andrew S. Davidson <a...@csi.com> writes >I've run Doomtown with up to 11 players in one game and think >something like this is a great format for VTES. It's an absolutely terrible format for V:TES. Being able to keep track of what's on the table becomes nigh on impossible, even for rules purposes rather than strategic (e.g. are you contesting something?) Vote decks become seriously destabilised as a strategic force, because of the fact that it becomes extremely difficult to gain anything even remotely resembling vote-lock, even with table talk. Combat decks end up being seriously screwed card-wise. It's not impossible, even with 5 players, for a serious combat deck to end up running out of cards. Maintaining a sensible state of play is difficult, because it can take an extremely long time for your turn to come round again. This doubles up with added difficulties of what happens if someone ends up screwed early on (which is more than possible) and gets ousted early by a fast deck. They end up sitting round for *hours*, or having wasted their time travelling etc. completely if you cut down the number of rounds to, say, 1. The game can take a *huge* amount of time to play. Something similar was attempted at a European GenCon (back when it was EuroGenCon, rather than GenConUK, IIRC) ending up taking 7 or 8 hours. Matt Green can probably provide more details. '96, I believe. -- James Coupe PGP Key: 0x5D623D5D When all the world seemed to sleep, why, why did you go? EBD690ECD7A1F Was it me? Was it you? B457CA213D7E6 Questions in a world of blue. 68C3695D623D5D

> >I've run Doomtown with up to 11 players in one game and think > >something like this is a great format for VTES. > It's an absolutely terrible format for V:TES. Being able to keep track > of what's on the table becomes nigh on impossible, even for rules > purposes rather than strategic (e.g. are you contesting something?) Indeed. I remember one time when I was playing with the group back in D.C. (pre Josh Duffin) where, just for shits and giggles, we played a 12 player game. 1 table (actually, it was the entire living room floor). We played for 8 hours and only a few people were ousted. We ended up just giving up because it was late and ppl had to work the next day. Table size < 3: bad Table size > 5: bad Everything else: just right. Sorrow --- "I am Jack's inflamed sense of rejection." - Narrator

> Table size < 3: bad > Table size > 5: bad > Everything else: just right. I enjoy occassional 6 and 7 player tables. It makes things interesting and doesn't really upset the table THAT much. It's fun to do crazy things like this soemtimes :) But anything more then 7 is really too much. Roger

<snip account of decks> > > Going into the Final, we had: > > Legbiter on 6 points > Phil Mattingly on 5.5 points > Will Lee on 4 points > Matt Green on 5 points > David Hammond on 3 points (tied TPs, so on the toss of a coin) > > In the final, I got smashed out by Will Lee (even AFTER being moved > around the table) giving Legbiter 1 point. Phil Mattingly, Will Lee, > and finally Legbiter got smashed by Matts Stealthy (!) bleeds, giving > Matt 4 points, and the day! Hmmm, dunno about smashed. i thought the final was very tight and that it swung around in a very interesting manner. i think any one of Will, matt or i MIGHT have won it and, in fact, i was ONE card away from doing so [but i had crappy guard Dogs and not second tradition in hand when it mattered - what have we learned today, children?]. But, fair play to Matt, a good seat-of-the-pants effort, and props to all the finalists for a REALLY good game. > > Well, here's some thoughts... > > 1) Lots of Independant action. Note that 4 players elected to go the > way of the independants, 2 of which were Ravnos. One Ravnos deck > actually made the final - the first to do so in the UK for as long as > I can remember. Huzzah! > > 2) We were, however, playing mainly 4 player games (except the final). > This made a huge difference to the environment. > > 3) As predicted in the Gangrel Newsletter, the Starshell Grenade > Launcher has started to make a wholesale appearance. They are Awesome! > > 4) Matt Greens first Tourney win in some time! Well done Matt... > > 5) Theo Bell with Fortitude. How broken is THAT!!! ;) > > See y'all in the funny pages... > > DH It WAS good to see the Ravnos, Setites and Assamites making a splash. Quite a lot of combat and table deals which meant that the first three games i played in were, well, DIRTY, in each case me ganging up with another combat deck for a 2-2 table-split. Still some very fine episodes of play. Also some bad mistakes, the worst probably when i parity-shifted to help my predator not be ousted by Martin when what i SHOULD have done was let this happen, which would most likely have given me 3VP and not 2 for that heat. Actually, the worst was probably putting Guard Dogs into my deck when they should have been second traditions.

"Roger Carhult" <rogc...@student.luth.se> wrote in message news:<9paob2$helo1$1...@ID-104455.news.dfncis.de>... [ quoted text not captured ] We quite often have 6-7 player games on Wednesdays in the pub. i don't like them, for the reasons James has mentioned, even though we have house-rules for these big games which limit the otherwise HIDEOUS con ag and parity shift cards.

dave...@hotmail.com (hamdamcwa) wrote in message news:<9e10847c.0110...@posting.google.com>... [snip good list of decks] > > Going into the Final, we had: > > Legbiter on 6 points > Phil Mattingly on 5.5 points > Will Lee on 4 points > Matt Green on 5 points > David Hammond on 3 points (tied TPs, so on the toss of a coin) > I had 4, but no matter. > In the final, I got smashed out by Will Lee (even AFTER being moved > around the table) giving Legbiter 1 point. Phil Mattingly, Will Lee, > and finally Legbiter got smashed by Matts Stealthy (!) bleeds, giving > Matt 4 points, and the day! > A good final game that was determined by Legbiter's Kindred Restructure that put me downstream of him and allowed Will to soften up his vampires before I got to him. Phil's 4th ever V:TES tournament and first final saw him make some really good plays throughout the day and only really get done over in the final due to a lack of experience in facing decks like Will and James'. I also sleazed Will quite badly with a triple Legal Manipulations hand to oust him. After dancing around on 4/5 pool to avoid James' Parity Shifts he eventually ran out of 2nd Traditions and I got him with my last standing vampire and 5 cards left in my library. Close game. Deck: Rough Night at the Palla Grande Crypt: Dan Murdoch Lena Rowe Remilliard 3 Jost Werner 2 Shiela Mezarin 2 Greta Kircher Lachlan Donatien Library: (80 cards) Masters (16) 3 Blood Doll Minion Tap Fetish Club Hunting Ground Giant's Blood (yes i did search for it) PB:Madrid 3 Sudden Reversal Unnatural Disaster Elder Library 3 Obfuscate Vast Wealth Minion (64) 8 Legal Manipulations 2 KRC 2 Ancilla Empowerment Dramatic Upheaval Crusade: Miami Crusade: Chicago Cardinal Benediction 2 Bewitching Oration 10 Cloak the Gathering 2 Lost in Crowds 7 Revelations 5 Patronage 2 Enhanced Senses 6 Telepathic Misdirection 4 Forced Awakening 2 WwEF 2 Deer Rifle Changling Skin Mask 3 Majesty 2 Fake Out Playing the deck: Never discard any of the 12 kill cards. Counter Blood gain with the Suddens. Use Revelations to remove Deflections or blood gain from your prey's hand as the first action per turn if possible. Depending on the deck use a Revelations about 1 in 3 turns. Get someone with superior obfuscate quite quickly to cloak actions. Remember that, largely, you suck at combat. Kill Mr. Winthrop or spys/revanents at range if possible. Could probably do with a Bomb instead of a Patronage, if I was to play it again. cheers mattgreen.

>I enjoy occassional 6 and 7 player tables. It makes things interesting and >doesn't really upset the table THAT much. It's fun to do crazy things like >this soemtimes :) But anything more then 7 is really too much. I don't recall having a bad 8 player game. Seventeen was bad, still amazed that there was so little cross table stuff the game "worked".

[ quoted text not captured ] It was probably too hard to find out just what the heck was going on way the hell across the table to bother doing anything about it. Fred