Thoughts on: the top view (1st part)

Hi folks!

It's been awhile since my last brainstorming article. Today I want to write about some ideas concerning table dynamics, long term planing and well whatever comes to my mind while writing this.

More than often I see players playing "short-sighted". They pop out their first vampire and start running their deck's script. It often reminds me like a simple program written with if-then-else and do-loop-while. After let's say the first "mandatory" actions like Govern the Unaligned at superior or Magic of the Smith are done they focus on how I call it "1,5 sides". The 1 being their prey the 0,5 being the predator. From time to time when a very strong cross table player seems to become unstoppable they think of "how are we gonna stop him from winning?". Well it's this kind of attitude to the game that I think will limit them and make them less successful players.

Rule 1.: at every single moment during the whole game you should focus on the question "how am I going to win this table?".

Let us assume you play in a tournament in your country with players you know, since most of the tournaments you play will fall into this category. This means that even before the game starts you already have some sort of information. You will most likely know things like A is very fast and aggressive, B likes to talk a lot and loves to make deals, C can be easily frightened and D is very passive in the beginning. Make sure you look at the guys and recall everything you know about them. After the first few turns everybody will have a vampire in play and most likely have discarded and/or played a couple of cards. At this point stop thinking about your game. Take those 30 seconds or that minute to look at everything. From the information you already got you can most likely tell all the decks strategies you see! Like A is obf-dem stealth-bleed, B is a vote deck, C is a wall deck and so on.

Rule 2.: Focus on the game and gather all the information you can get!

It is now that you can start planing your long term strategy! I can't emphasize enough at this point that v:tes is not about gaining a vp! You want the game win, nothing else. The number of possible situations is of course potentially endless. Therefore I am going to give some examples only.

Example number 1.:

You play a wall deck or a toolboxy deck with good blocking potential. Your prey plays a Khazar's Diary deck. Your predator plays a non-aggressive deck which you can handle pretty good. Your grand prey plays a deck you know you won't have serious problems with. You are very much afraid of your grand predator.

So what to do with this setup? You are lucky here since this one is easy. You have a free go on your prey so go for it! What do we know about the Khazar's Diary deck? It's plain and simple: it's strength is in having a crazy lot of minions in play. The bottom line says it's ousting plan is swarm-bleed. The more minions it has the harder it is to stop. So what do we do? Block everything it does. Everything. Remember we have an easy to deal with predator. Don't mind blocking an occasional bleed for 1 or 2 instead use that blocking potential against your prey. You just have the right deck against him.

Let's look at the table's dynamic: you crush into your prey. This keeps the pressure entirely off your grand prey who can become strong. Remember, in this setup it's a deck you will be able to deal with. A strong grand prey will without pressure on him will be able to go forward resulting in a weak grand predator. Remember that is the guy we are afraid off. The drawback is that your predator may have less pressure on him, so he can come forward. Remember it's a deck you can deal with. Take some minor damage that's ok. Hit him a little when needed to make him more careful so he slows down.

Pretty soon there should be a new game situation: you made your oust. Great! No it's important to remember that this game is not about vp's! Let's look at the new situation. Strong prey, but a one you can deal with. Weak grand predator, but with a deck that can hurt you. Strong predator with a deck you can deal with. At this point it's time to switch directions. You want your new prey to make his oust, but don't help him if you see he can make it on his own. He should use up his own resources. Start weakening your predator, but be careful: you don't want to back oust him! By the time you got the pressure off you there are 2 possible situations: a) your new prey made the oust, b) he didn't yet but will soon. In the case of a) you can now start going forward again. You have a situation where you have 2 other players left, but small or no pressure on you and two decks you can handle. You should win here. In the case of b) you might wait a little, use the time to prepare for the endgame, otherwise it's the same situation. You should have the Game Win here for sure.

Rule 3.: Never mind (a) deck(s) who could do you harm getting ousted, even if your prey makes the vp.

Even if those decks are cross table. Remember how I started the article. There might be a situation when that guy thinks "I need to stop him (that be you) from winning".

Rule 4.: Think about table dynamics and plan your game according to it.

You have two goals here: 1) keep pressure off you. 2) prepare an endgame which favors you.

Rule 5.: Game Win => Victory Points

Enough for today. In the next part of this article I will analyse starting situations which are much worse for you than this one. With the right strategy and patience you can win games you never thought that winning them is possible.

Please remember: it's of course not that simple. You might need to table talk a lot, you might need to switch strategies due to unexpected events, you might need to make very though decisions, but never forget that most important think in v:tes is (I truly believe in this) your attitude (remember Rule 1.!!!).

by: Mephistopheles