Final team for the weekend

Hi folks!

So after a few drop outs and plenty of phone calls I could save the weekend. Here is the final team:

• Frankie
• Greguss Csaba
• Talmi
• László Robi
• Bogi
• and myself of course

So there will be six players instead of 5. No problem. One player can always get his rest or change his/her deck, etc....

We are starting at 12:00 on Saturday to play almost non-stop until Sunday evening. I'll have my laptop with me to write "them reports".

Cheers!

Pictures from last weekend

Report: Papkeszi Play Test Weekend

Hi folks!

So here us my report. Despite my original plan, it will be rather brief. We played quite a lot of games but also played a couple of rounds of Smallworld Underground and Chaos in the Old world. Overall it was a great weekend and I am looking forward to the next one!

All 8 cap stealth bleed

I've made an all 8 cap DEM/OBF bleed deck with 4 different vampires, all of them having the +1 bleed ability (well Jason has to burn a blood for it). The basic idea is to play many Zillah's Valleys and few Villein/Golconda combos. This is a hyper-aggressive deck where you don't waste any time on actions like The Call. All your vampires will only bleed and hopefully for 5 only, with Kindred Spirits and Eyes of Chaos. I played only two games with it and since we had a combat heavy environment those were not really successful. However I think this deck has potential, though it is clearly less effective then the old school weenie Dementation archetype.

Khazar's Diary with Cry Wolves

A 60 card version. Played it only once since I didn't drew a single copy of Khazar's Diary (8) in the first 5 turns and when I finally drew the first one my Akunanse prey was well prepared. Also the deck is "dry" or boring if you wish.

Shambling Hordes 

I made a mid cap version with Andrea and Isabel Giovanni + Le Dinh Tho. No Parthenon and additional master tech. The idea was to put 18 Shambling Hordes in a 75 card deck and try to continuously hit the 2 hordes/turn ratio. This deck was far the most fun to play. It needs some more tweaking. I always made my vp and almost always played for the Game win in the heads-up, but always lost it. Again: the environment was combat heavy and I either lost to Fortitude/Potence or Fortitude/Animalism. Despite this, I like playing with this deck. It is just funny to play and fun is the goal of v:tes. Isn't it?

Sheldon + support

I don't really like Turbo Parity, but I like Sheldon and Parity. So I made it slower. The idea here is to use Sheldon as your star and use Gilbert Duane, Greger Andersson and Korah as support vampires. An Auspex/Obfuscate stealth vote basically with minor Freak Drive support. Bleed bounce came in handy and the Warsaw Station + Fourth Tradition combo worked well. Telepathic Vote Counting is underrated imo. This is fun deck to play and I will take it to a tourney once.

Smallworld Underground 

I am definitely more successful in Smallworld than in v:tes. I started with Shield + Shadow Mimes and scored less points early on then the other players. However I could avoid combat and set up for a scenario when my declined race will be save. My second pick was Mining Iron Dwarves and I started in an uninteresting part of the board. While everybody else was fighting over artifacts and locations I continued to avoid combat and forged my hammers. I started scoring the same points than the others and expanded with my Dwarves, who now equipped with 7 hammers where quite frightening. I started scoring good points and maximized this in the last three turns with and awesome 19-19-25!!! With 121 points total I won the game.

Chaos in the Old World

This was a very good and balances session. I got Khorne a god I am not really good with, but well I tried. My goal was to establish myself in the Empire and dominate it any maybe the one or another region by military. I wanted to attack only to get my 1 dial/turn or to get rid of a threat (another player becoming too strong). In the first half of the game this strategy did just fine, there were turns when I was second with vps being real close to the first one. Unfortunately a stupid event put new hero tokens on the board and since my threat was too high I literally got eradicated from the board by all those nasty heroes. After this I was forced to change strategy and go for the dial victory. One turn before I could win with the dial Nurgle hit the 50 vp mark and won the game.

by: Mephistopheles

Papkeszi Play Test Weekend (2) Report

Hi folks!

We  had a gaming marathon going on this weekend from Saturday morning till Sunday afternoon to be more specific. Frankie, David, Gambit, Eshu an myself played like 11-12 games or so. It was pretty intensive. There were some rather interesting things:

1. We had 7 (!!!) different decks with 10-11 cap vampires trying to get an Enkil Cog, untap in another players turn and using Monastery of Shadows. 

2. We had a Kyasid Trophy deck which was damn cool. 

3. We had an unusual amount of 2vp-2vp-1vp games.

4. We had a sufficient beer supply. :)

I tried to build some non-combat decks, after spending the last 2 years trying to torporize everything. I had to realize that playing them is not really half as funny as it is playing a Nanani, Alastor or Multi-rush deck. Here is what I tested:

1. Follower of Set Temptation deck

I posted that deck earlier here. I made some changes in it like adding a Robert Carter and some copies of Enticement. The basic idea worked well. I could generate a lot of pool and easily put into play 4-5 vampires. Still the deck didn't work at all. With all these 10 caps around I hardly could use the temptations the way I wanted. Also I got too often stuck between 2 voter decks who just Parity Shift-ed the crap out of me. The deck is sort of fun to play, but lacks enough forward momentum to achieve any victory points. I think I will give up on this.

2. Imbued

Pretty promising. Eshu gave me some very good ideas which I will make use of. This deck has potential. However its nothing new and while it can be fun to play people hate it and therefore I don't want to play with it too often outside of tournaments.

3. Classic Ventrue

A group 1-2 Ventrue tap and bleed with some votes and multi act in it. Though the deck has the potential of winning games it isn't fun to play. 

4. Akunanse Wall

I think it is because of my play style, but Akunanse is just not the real deal for me. When it comes to playing a wall deck with good combat support I still would choose Ahrimanes. They are more versatile than the Akunanse since they have access to Swiftness of the Stag and Enchant Kindred. The 2 cards provide either a bleed for 2 (3 with The Siamese) at 1 stealth or pool from the blood bank on an uncontrolled vampire at 2 stealth. Alternatively you have a maneuver or press. 

It was a fun weekend, however I was disappointed by the games played with the Setite deck. I couldn't make a stupid vp with it...

I made some notes during the games which showed some interesting numbers. I will write a separate post for that soon.

by: Mephistopheles 

Papkeszi Play Test Weekend (1) Report

Hi folks!

So here's the report. Starting on Saturday in the morning we played 12 rounds of v:tes!!! Awesome! On Sunday we played only 2 rounds because we stopped for a BBQ and watched the soccer game.

Here are some pictures taken:

Here are the decks I played, with comments:

Brujah Alastor

-> Fail! After all those successful tournaments and games in the past this weekend finally told me, that I should stop playing this deck for a while. On my first table I didn't find a single Dmitra (I play 5 by now) and on the second table I was ousted really fast. There were too many votes around and I couldn't get my Parity Shifts pass. Games played: 2, Game Wins: 0

Hardestadt Multi Rush

Made a mistake when playing this deck. Should have backousted a player. Even with this mistake I got really close to a good finish, but really close = fail. The deck proved to be good, it was a tactical mistake that I made. Will surely play this deck again. Games played: 1, Game Wins: 0

Anson and weenie Presence

I always loved to play presence bleed decks. This deck focused on using Anson's ability, so I could play a little more master cards, like an additional Pentex and so on. This is NOT a master deck though, so I am totally fine if Anson doesn't show up. Victoria Ash is an awesome vampire in here. The deck worked well on the first table and got me the Game Win. A second time I played this deck it produced the most terrible card draw ever. I drew all of the seven deflections, 3 wake cards and two master cards in a row, without having pressure on me, so I couldn't do anything. And yes, I did shuffle the deck. Well, bad luck. Games played: 2, Game Wins: 1

AAA Grand Ball deck

Since I was looking for a new tournament deck, that I could play on a Day2 of a major event, I gave the good ol' AAA a try. Though it can be good, I have some problems with it. Potentially it is a very strong deck, but I will need to make some tweaks. When I played with it (also earlier to this weekend) I always had a bad crypt draw, so I need to reconsider the crypt. Games played: 1, Game Wins: 0

Tremere Wall Deck

I never liked auspex wall decks, but since it was a play testing weekend I wanted to "see the deck from the inside". Never gonna play it again. It's boring, dull and unimaginative. Enough Said. Game's played: 1, Game Wins: 0

Ariadne Toolbox

Surprise, surprise! This deck worked out wonderfully. I played two games with it and won both of them without really having any difficulties. And I didn't win against random fun decks. In one game Frankie did Shatter the Gate and I had no problem to gain 4 pool/turn and win in the end. The deck seems pretty well balanced by now, although 1-2 camera phones could do it some good. Game's played: 2, Game Wins: 2

I couldn't play all 12 games, since I had to do the cooking, and had to leave the place for a short while. Altogether I made 3 Game Wins out of 9 rounds, which seems OK. The fact that the Gangrel toolbox achieved better results than the other decks, really surprises me. There will be 2 tournaments here soon, so I will give it a try at a tournament.

From the other guys decks, there was one wonderful idea which I will show you in a separate post soon. We all agreed on meeting here again in a month for another gaming marathon, however this time we will not play v:tes, but try out some board games, like BSG, Agricola, Puerto Rico and so on...

That's it from my side, Csaba, Eshu, Frankie and Zoli: feel free to add your comments!!!

by: Mephistopheles

Papkeszi Play Test Weekend (1)

Hi folks!

Once a month I invite 4 friends to my place for some v:tes games (around 12-15). This will be the 3rd weekend and since this seems fairly regular, I have decided to post it on my blog. This time Frankie, Csaba, Eshu and Zoli will join the event. I have built 2 new tournament decks, which really need to be tested, so here is the chance. I've tested my Hardestadt eats the World deck on one of these weekends, so it seems to be a useful thing. Let's hope for good weather so we can take a BBQ break between the rounds. I will post some pictures and a summary of the more interesting games.

by: Mephistopheles