Re: More GenCon news anyone ?

This year there were only three events due to the fact that our Week of Nightmares will be held at the NAC in Atlanta this year.

Friday's event was an unsanctioned Internal Recursion draft. Each player received three packs of the new 3rd Edition set and three packs of Black Hand. I won't put a bunch of spoilers here, but suffice to say 3rd Edition makes for very strong drafting. Also, unfortunately the thing about upside-down backs is true.

I managed to put together a very strong deck with several Black Hand vampires, some Reunion Kamuts, Circumspect Revelations (oh so good in this format), extra bleed, stealth, intercept, an Abyssal Hunter and a key vampire with the likeness of Oscar Garza. I won both my preliminary tables and would have been top seed in the final except the other finalists didn't really want to play, being tired, hungry and facing almost certain defeat at my supreme creation. :) So we decided to intentionally draw and split prizes.

After that there was much Duffin Drafting of 3rd Edition. It's great fun. After dinner, we tried to do that Texas get another pack each round thing, but I think we screwed it up on account of being tired and perhaps a little drunk. It was still fun seeing the new cards.

Saturday's draft was the first part of the US Championship. We did four packs of Camarilla Edition, three packs of Bloodlines and three packs of Legacies of Blood. I only managed a so-so deck, I'm afraid. The format was a little unusual in that everyone played exactly three rounds. The non-finalists played an extra third round at the same time the finalists were playing the final. This was so six rounds of vtes would determine the US Championship outcome (Sunday's final didn't count for the championship).

I had some good forward momentum in my first round, but couldn't close the deal before John Bell's No Secrets from Falhu Shibaba deck rounded the corner and put heavy pressure on me. I attempted a dangerous gambit to draw Falhu into combat with Marconius in order to torporize Falhu with a Basilisk's Touch, but Falhu was rescued and I was ousted.

My second round went a little better and I managed 3 VP and a GW by working with my cross-table buddy to bring it into an endgame and then defeating him.

Things were looking good for a while in my third round, since I actually managed to pull a vampire with Dementation to play all my Kindred Spirits rather than having to sit around waiting for my skill cards to show up (sigh, always on the bottom of my deck), and was able to tap out to oust my prey and put my pool level at a comfortable 13. Then my predator bled me for 11. I figured my best shot was to gain 6 again, so I lunged, but my prey saved himself with a Special Report and I was ousted with a mediocre score of 1 GW 4 VP for the day.

John Bell won the final with his Falhu Shibaba deck. I didn't watch the final, but his impressive tech in the game I played with him was No Secrets from the Magaji and The Rack on Falhu and Traveler's Obey the Tenents just sitting there to make it even harder to do anything to him. Then he'd get a ton of guys out and bleed with presence. Very nice and congrats to John who is certainly having a very good vtes season. I'd like to see a decklist posted. I'm impressed he got that much good Laibon stuff out of three packs.

I chose to play my Imbued DEF/JUD deck for Sunday's tournament, round 2 of the US Championship. In my first round, I ran afoul of another Bell, 8 year old Connor Bell called a Reins of Power and then bled for 6 with Arika in his first round of acting. I then put a Pentex Subversion on Arika and tried to rebuild. Unfortunately, another Ventrue obf deck took 2 VPs in the mean while and then played 9 consecutive stealth cards to get past my 3 permanent intercept to oust me.

Round 2 looked a little better, but my prey had Carna and that slowed me a lot. I was keeping afloat all right and managed to burn Carna with a Society of Leopold, but the table started falling the wrong way and Jared Strait got 2 quick VPs, but not before he burned two of my Imbued cross-table with a The Secret Must be Kept. That's so mean! My prey then dealt for a withdrawl VP and helped Jared kill me.

I did pull off a win in the third round, which was a very favorable table to me given that my predator was playing a Burst of Sunlight/Skin of Night deck. At the four player table, my prey managed to get his before I was able to turn up the pressure and put Millicent Smith on the table. After an hour or so of playing, I offered my predator a withdrawl deal, since I might as well just take the GW with no real shot at the final. She accepted, I put Memories of Mortality on my prey's vampires, beat them up with Wendell Delburton and bled him out. Then I let my predator withdraw and won the table with 2 VPs.

I didn't see Sunday's final, but heard about it on the long drive home with Josh. The table was Bob Joseph (top seed, I think, playing PRE/PRO voters) preying on Jay Kristoff (playing weenie obf hack) preying on John Flournoy (playing !Ventrue bleed) preying on Josh Duffin (playing Imbued) preying on John Bell (playing Kindred Spirits with ~8 Suddens).

Jay layed into John F. and got him out first with many bleeds while John B. took Bob apart with bleeds and Suddened any pool-gaining masters. In the 3 way game, there was much bleeding, but Jay had too much pool for John to easily get through him. Josh had the best defensive options and was able to bleed with Strike with Conviction with several minions each turn. He got John in this fashion and took Jay out shortly after. Congrats to Josh for winning the tournament and congrats to John Bell for winning the US Championship overall based on his 2 day total!

That's about it except to say that driving 9.5 hours starting at 8:30 PM is very painful.

Matt Morgan
.

Relevant Pages

  • Proxy Kissed: Boston (TWD)
    ... The deck I ended up playing was the only one that hadn't ... John Scherer playing Tzimisce intercept combat ... When the game timed out it seemed fairly likely that Ben would ...
    (rec.games.trading-cards.jyhad)
  • Re: Imbued & Powers?
    ... when my predator (playing Tremere) walled up to survive ... any other deck. ... In the first round, I was ousted in less than 30 minutes by a Tremere ...
    (rec.games.trading-cards.jyhad)
  • Re: Quickie Origins Report
    ... I can't remember what decks Ben was playing, but I know Josh was playing an Imbued deck that was mostly about getting lots of powers onto his minions and then probably bleeding and blocking. ... It looked to me like John was a little on the ropes against Ben at the end, but I didn't observe the entire game. ...
    (rec.games.trading-cards.jyhad)
  • Re: TWD & FDs - EC 2009: Day 1
    ... I haven't been playing much lately so i was tired of my old ... decks and Cesar was so kind to lend me the deck he played on Day 1. ... I wasn't really happy about the deck after round 1 where i couldn't ... Can you post the decklist of the Gerald deck? ...
    (rec.games.trading-cards.jyhad)
  • NEW YORK CITY Tournaments - Results
    ... everyone come down and play. ... I sat out for the first round. ... Ramos my Cailean deck to play in my stead. ... 1x Seterpenre AUS NEC OBF PRE SER 10 Follower of Set:5 ...
    (rec.games.trading-cards.jyhad)