A follow up article on votes and titles

Hi folks!

First of all thank you all for the super useful feedback you gave me. I didn’t count on this activity and it feels really great. Since you guys brought up so many good points and I also found some interesting stuff to talk about, it was clear that I had to write this follow up article. In this article I will write about loosing titles and the Black Hand. Originally I wanted to write about cards that provide votes without being or adding a title, like Legendary Vampire or Kduva’s Mask, but I decided against that. I will leave that to the future together with all sort of action modifiers and other stuff that has to do with political actions.

Losing titles

Well if vampires can gain titles, there should be a way they can loose them. The obvious way is to yield contest, but there are some more. The first I want to talk about is the card Blood Siege. I love this card for its flavor. Instead of quoting what the card does let me just say it will make a Prince loose his/her title and will make a chosen Sabbat vampire an Archbishop. 

The anarchs have the card Patsy, which requires a Baron and will strip a non-Anarch vampire of his/her title and make his/her controller loose 2 pool. Cards like these seem extremely fun to play, but you will rarely see these in competitive play as they are too situational to justify the slot.

Excommunication will strip an Archbishop of his/her title, similar to this Command of the Harpies will do the same to a Prince. Wrath of the Inner Circle will make a Justicar loose his/her title as well as reducing his/her capacaity by 1. Inquisition will strip one or more bishops of their title and deal 2 unpreventable damage to them. No Confidence is a funny card, being an action modifier you can play after a successful action requiring an anarch. Two copies of these will make a vampire loose benefit of his/her title. 

Framing an Ancient Grudge could actually be interesting in some hipster Ventrue antitribu vote/bleed deck. It is a mastercard that strips a primogen, Prince, or for 3 pool a Justicar of his/her title. I hardly remember to have played on any tournament without at least one deck /table utilizing Second Tradition and/or Parity Shift. Gustav Mallenhous can remove a bishop’s or archbishop’s title as a D action (interesting that it reads „archbishop’s” instead of „Archbishop’s”).

Black Hand tech

The Black Hand has its own cool cards that need to get mentioned. Remember when I said „Anarchs are the only ones getting their titles through an action and that sets them apart.” Praetorian Backer is an exception to that. Requiring a Seraph is a very strong limitation, but the ability to make a vampire a Cardinal through an action is pretty strong. So strong that the card was made unique. Another action card requiring a Seraph is Emergency Powers. The card is put on the acting Seraph and provides +1 vote for each Gehenna card in play. The third one that needs to get mentioned is Black Hand Emissary. It also requires a Seraph. The card will be put on a ready Black Hand vampire and will provide him/her +1 vote for each ready Black Hand Vampire you control. Census Taker is a really powerful master card than can either give +1 bleed, +2 votes or +1 intercept when locked, making it a must have addition in any Black Hand themed deck.

Let us assume that you have a Seraph, 2 other Black Hand vampires, one non-Black Hand Sabbat vampire with capacity above 6, a Census Taker, as well as 3 Gehenna cards in play. These three cards will add up to 3 (a cardinal) + 3 (for 3x times Black Hand) + 2 (Census Taker) + 3 (for the 3 Gehenna cards) = 11 votes. As there are many weenie Black Hand vampires and plenty of 7 cap Seraph’s (or even a 5 cap) this is not hard to achieve. While this concept is certainly not „Tier 1” it is definitely worth giving it some thought and play. Should you ever find yourself in the situation where you don't know what to play that night, do me the favor and build a Black Hand vote deck. Feedback on results would be appreciated.

Gratiano

This vampire deserves to be mentioned as he is very unique in vtes. Gratiano gets one additional ballot. As it works currently is that if Gratiano becomes a cardinal for example, through Cardinal Benediction he will still have one ballot. Should there be no priscus on the table, he basically has a guaranteed 6 votes as he can still call the prisci sub refrerendum. I personally strongly dislike this ruling. I would prefer and lobby for a change of the rules requiring a priscus to call the prisci sub referendum at all. This would mean that a cardinal Gratiano would still have one ballot if a priscus on the table (or prisci) call their sub referendum, but would not be able to do that himself leaving him with his 3 votes from cardinal. That’s just my 2 cents though. I hope I am not wrong on this...

Political Struggle

This card gets an honorable mention. I chatted with Orpheus and he mentioned this card. I remember that I spent quite some time trying to build a deck around this, but always gave up when I realized I can't fit all I want into 90 cards. Maybe one day I'll get something done with this. It requires you to successfully place this card on a ready vampire as a +1 stealth D action, then you need to attack it with another action and if you manage to burn or send the vampire to torpor you finally get x votes, where x is equal to that vampires votes. Unreliable, but so tempting. 

Thank you for reading and as always comments and feedback is much appreciated. I don't have anything carved in stone yet for my next article, but I would like to explore the world of the anarchs a bit, so don't be surprised to read something about them in the future. Although the next post might be of something entirely else.

by: Mephistopheles

Game Night Wednesday

Hi folks!

This is really just a quick and dirty style post I wrote in a few minutes. I just arrived back home from playing v:tes. Seems like Wednesday has become the regular game night again like in the good old days. We had 9 players tonight so we could play two tables. Appreciate the small milestones of a game waking up with the evenings freshness.

I played a '94 style deck with Lucian, but unlike the majority of players played it, I don't use Madness Network nor do I have a malkavian only crypt. My concept is based on playing 4x Lucian and 2 copies of the following princes: Gilbert Duane, Greger Anderssen, Murat and Nikolaus Vermeulen. My deck is a bit less bleed focused and has a bit more vote cards. The main idea is that once Lucian is out each Govern superior means a new Prince in play. I don't want to tell more about it for now, let's just say it worked fine, but requires a bit fine tuning here and there. 

We will have a tournament on next week's Saturday so hype, hype, hype. I hope this one game night / week will be carved in stone and we will have three tables full of players soon. Here are some pictures of tonight:

Stay tuned for more as I will post the follow up article regarding titles this week!

Have a great time!

by: Mephistopheles

(Almost) All there is to know about titles

Hi folks!

I am working on something that I hopefully will be able to ever finish. While doing so, I had to go through the titles that vampires can have in vtes and I noticed many things I basically always knew, but never really saw the whole picture. With hopefully many new players being embraced and methuselahs waking from torpor who might want to refresh their knowledge before entering the eternal struggle again, I thought this would make a really good article!

What are titles?

I would say titles represent the role a vampire takes within its sect. It represents social status and influence. Here we have the first important note: titles are affiliated with sects. Each sect (Anarch, Camarilla, Independent (I know, I know…), Anarchs, Laibon and Sabbat) has its own set of titles. How these titles actually work, what restrictions there are, etc, can be very different and we are going to look at these in detail soon. The main use of titles is to cast votes during the referendum of a political action, but some cards require a specific title to be played, or sometimes titles serve as a condition to trigger stuff like +bleed or what not on cards. Let’s go through these by sects in alphabetic order.

Capitalization

Note that unique titles are written starting with a capital letter and non unique titles start with small letter. This way you can know if a title is unique just by the spelling. For example: primogen, bishop, magaji, cardinal or priscus are not unique, Prince of Brussels, Archbishop of Montreal, Liaison, Guruhi Kholo, Ventrue Justicar or Malkavian Inner Circle are unique. Fun fact: there is only one exception to this rule: regent. Regent is a unique Sabbat title, but is still written „regent”. I honestly believe this is a mistake and it should be spelled „Regent”.

Anarch

Anarchs are special in a way as they only have one kind of title: Baron. Baron is a city title. This means, that while the title of Baron is not unique (you can have several Barons) a Baron can still contest its title. Any given city can only have one title associated to it. So for example Baron of Seattle and Prince of Seattle would contest for the city’s title. The cost for an anarch to contest a city title with a Prince or Archbishop is increased by 1. Anarch vampires either get the title of Baron by merging with their advanced version, like Danielle Diron or Jeremy MacNeil for example or they can acquire the title through Fee Stake actions, like FeeStake: Boston for example. Alternatively any vampire with a city title can become anarch Baron of the same city using Anarch Secession. Typically vampires can acquire titles through a political referendum, like the Crusade, Praxis, Cardinal Benediction or Justicar cards. Anarchs are the only ones getting their titles through an action and that sets them apart.

While it might be easier to get a title this way it comes with the drawback that Baron titles acquired through Fee Stake actions can be removed.  Also note the capacity requirement: only Anarchs above 4 can play a Fee Stake. This (sadly) prevents Daughters of Cacophony or Valkyrie Anarch vote decks.

Since a recent change, Anarchs are now a sect. All existing Independant cards have been errated to be also played by Anarchs, but that might not be the case on future cards.

Camarilla

The Camarilla titles are as follows (votes in brackets): primogen (1), Prince (2), Justicar (3), Imperator (3) and Inner Circle (4). The title primogen can be aquired through the card Of Noble Blood. The other three titles are not unique by themselves, but they are unique in combination with a city or clan. You can have several Justicars or Inner Circles, but only one Gangrel Justicar or Toreador Inner Circle. The title Prince can be acquired through Praxis Seizure cards, some of these can increase the vampires’s  capacity by 1 if the vampire belongs to a specific clan. The title Justicar can also be aquired through a political action and is clan specific, like Brujah Justicar for example, in such a referendum all vampires belonging to the named clan get +1 vote. This title is therefore quite easy to get in weenie/breed decks, but it comes with the disadvantage of being unique to each clan, unlike Sabbat’s cardinal title, that is also worth 3 votes, but is not unique. Inner Circle can not be aquired. Imperator is a unique title obtainable by the Imperator card or by merging Karsh. The title itself comes only with 3 votes, but both options providing this title will add an additional 3 votes in a blood hunt referendum and will also allow this vampire to play Blood Hunt cards from your hand or ash heap as a Prince.

Independent

The independent titles come with either one or two votes, are not unique and as far as I know can not be obtained through any library card. The one special exception being the unique title Liaison which can only be obtained through the card Rise of the Nephtali and is worth four votes.

Laibon

Laibons have two different titles, the non unique magaji (2) and Kholo (2), a unique title for each clan. Kholo is very strong in my opinion as it can be acquired through a card that you can play either as an action modifier or a reaction card (like Guruhi Kholo). It does not take you an extra action to get this title. The title magaji is quite frequent on vampires, but can also be acquired through the card Overseer. It is pretty much designed for Guruhi decks only and I don’t recall to have ever seen one played.

Sabbat

The Sabbat titles are as follows (votes in brackets): bishop (1), Archbishop (2), cardinal (3), priscus (~3), regent (4). The title bishop can not be aquired except through special card text like Tobias Smith`s. Archbishop titles are very similar to Prince titles. They are acquired through Crusade cards, which sometimes come with the ability to unlock the acting vampire in the discard phase if it is of a given clan (Crusade: London for example). The title cardinal is really strong as it is the only non unique title worth more than 2 votes and Cardinal benediction, the political action card that can make a vampire Cardinal, is one of the easiest to pass. The capacity requirement of 7 or more is not too high and Camarilla vampires cannot vote during this referendum, so if you build around it you can easily have several cardinals in play. The priscus title is a very special one. All prisci hold a sub referendum, in which each priscus has a default 1 ballot (basically a vote usable in this sub referendum). After the prisci decided if they support or oppose the original referendum they together have 3 votes. A vampire can become priscus through Investiture. Cardinals gain one additional vote and Camarilla vampires can not vote during this referendum and there is no capacity requirement. In terms of how the titles work I personally consider Sabbat to be by far the strongest sect. Regent is a unique title that can be acquired through the master card Regent, comes with quite some drawbacks, but the advantage of getting 4 votes through a master card is worth considering it. Currently the only vampires that are regent are Sha-Ennu and merged Melinda Galbraith.

Thank you for reading, I hope you found this article useful. As always comments and feedback is much appreciated and will motivate me to write more articles. Also I want to thank Orpheus for his help and amazing support!

by: Mephistopheles

Vampires with built in actions: my new obsession!

Hi folks!

Since I announced my return to v:tes and the revival of my blog quite some time passed. While not much happened on this blog at least part of that announcement became true. I did play several times. Not only with friends just for fun, but I also attended another tournament (sorry, I was too lazy to write a report). So far all the decks I played where some kind of reworks, or even exactly the same, than what I played in the good old days.

Some of you already know that my biggest (and eternal) struggle (yes, this terrible pun was intended, I rate 5/7) is deck building. First of all I hate net decking. In the few occasions I do so, I mostly heavily regret it afterwards. My goal is not to create something the world has never seen before, nor to be some stylish hipster or what not. I often ended up with decks you could find a lot of on online sources. I rather feel like I have more fun when I actually build my own from scratch, because I end up with something I actually want to play. Also for me building a deck involves playing it alone over and over again. Shuffle, draw, simulate scenarios. Test the "flow" of the deck. Adjust. Remove 1-2 her, add 1-2 there. Rinse and repeat. Over and over again. Doing this gives me a feel for the deck. I find this very important.

Now let's finally jump to what I wanted this post to actually be about. Since I currently have no interest in playing wall decks, well guess what, I want to build active decks. Dang. What do all active decks have in common? Yep. They make actions. Never saw that coming, huh? Maybe it is because I am a poor deck builder or just RNJesus is not on my side, but when building and playing active decks I used to find myself quite often in the situation where I couldn't really take meaningful actions, because my hand got stuck with action modifiers or combat cards or what not.

That's how I came to appreciate having a crypt with a star vampire or even better with vampires, that have built in actions. So that even with a bad draw you still have at least one meaningful action to do, to maybe force a block attempt so you can cycle some action modifiers or combat cards (if that built in action is a rush), helping your deck to get the flow going, or just for the result of the action itself, helping you out while you discard and hope for something useful to pop up. 

In the last couple of days I have been thinking about many deck concepts, even made some in a deck building tool and managed to build one physically. I caught myself with a totally new approach on how I build my decks. I now start with the crypt. The first thing is, that I look for vampires that really complement each other and at least one of them should have a built in action. Here are some I really value a lot and you will most likely see me playing them:

Dmitra Ilyanova

I get it. Nothing new. Still she has to be on this list, because of the endless variety you can build around her. From Alastor control to Stealth vote to multi action vote/bleed to bloat/breed Brujahs with boon, to "only" being a strong support besides a star like Lutz von Hohenzollern, she can do it all. You can cycle tons of action modifiers on her, like any vote increases, freak drives, forced marches and voters and she provides a great engine for your deck, while also being able to bribe some players.

Mary Anne Blaire

Being a Ventrue you really want to build around the classic Majesty + Freak Drive engine and just overwhelm your enemies with the sheer amount of actions you take. Having a built in bloat mechanic is maybe the best you could ask for. Bloat means more vampires means more actions, but getting this action blocked means you just forced an intercept and/or wake card that could have blocked your Govern or Parity or Mind Numb or... you get it. 

Nangila Were

On of my favorites. Hand size and built in rush make this vampire super reliable. Cycle your combat to draw your next action like a Founder or Deep Song. How many times did I have the problem with a rush deck, that I had all the cards to kill that pesky Giovanni, or Malkavian behind me, but I didn't have the rush. Obviously this is true for all vampire with d-rush built into them, but Nangila stands out for me, as she can be played together with Nana for 9 hand size, 2 master phase actions and a rush. Pretty strong for 2 vampires. I admit this isn't new from me either, as I played this deck this year already, but it fits the theme so well.

Kamiri wa Itherero advanced

This one is maybe my number one wish to build a deck around. Being able to one-shot Nephandi from the board is always nice, but basically what you are looking at is a wall deck that is able to remove 4 blood from the table / round with the help of Enkil's Cog. I haven't found the balance to fit all I want into a deck within 90 cards (maybe less), but what I am aiming for is to deteriorate the table with stuff like Narrow Minds, Young Blood, Ossian, Kamiri's ability as fast as possible and throw a Smiling Jack. 

Ghede

This vampire came out a long time after I stopped playing, so I didn't have the chance to do so, yet. Ages ago I had a deck where I played way too many Vast Wealth cards to have one in my opening hand to put on Nakthorheb so I can fetch my Eye of Hazimel... well just play Ghede and I can finally put my Typhonic Beasts to work. Also note to myself: never ever play a rush deck again with no built in rush. I love reliability.  

Without further explanation (and without the need for completion):

Annazir, Beckett, Benjamin Rose, Drozodny, Gabrielle di Righetti, Malgorzata, Mistress Fanchon, Nostoket, Undele, Victoria Ash

That's it for today. I need to spend more time studying crypt cards and thinking of concepts I want to play. I hope you enjoyed this article. I will try my best to waste less time on online games and invest more time into v:tes so I can up with some quality articles for this blog. If you used to enjoy this blog when it was updated regularly or you are a new follower and wish to read new content regularly then please kindly leave a comment or just check one of those boxes below (funny, interesting, cool). Feedback like this is a huge driving force for me and will help me a lot to keep writing regularly which I really need as writing such articles is pretty time consuming (this one took 2 hours + the time and energy to even come up with an idea). 

yours truly: Mephistopheles 

Tournament Report: Fee Stake: Budapest

Hi folks!

As promised here is my tournament report. First of all let me say that I was very surprised about us ending up with 21 players! That is really good. As all my cards are still somewhere in the attic I went with the one deck I still had ready to play: Eze, The Demon Prince. It is a deck that is fun to play, doesn't generate much table hate the way I built it (no flashy Helicopter, Rutors Hand and what not multi actions, no aggressiveness early on) and play it and overall has never let me down. For a long time it was its last appearance though as I want to play so many different decks now.

First table:

It was the only five player table. My prey played a weenie War Ghoul deck and had basically the most perfect start you can ever wish with such a deck. My cross table buddy played a weenie Setite deck based around Waters of Duat and Dream World. Sort a stealth-bleed deck basically. Next in line was an Enkidu deck with Raptors. My predator started with Hardestadt an followed up with a 9 cap Giovanni if I recall correctly. Well my deck does heavily rely on Banishment so I was not happy about Hardestadt. In hindsight this table was winnable though. I made several mistakes this game. for example I forgot to play my Villein the turn after I brought Eze to the field. I had to play this game very defensively as I didn't want the War Ghoul deck to attack me. My second BIG mistake was that with my Magic of The Smith I went to fetch Kduva's Mask instead of Heart of Cheating. I couldn't cycle my cards as fast as I wanted to and because I only drew 1 Majesty altogether I didn't dare to pressure forward. Third mistake was that I discarded my Ancilla in the first turn. Should not have done that! Thinking back I am almost sure that if I played better I could have made at least 2 vp's here or maybe even a Game Win if I help ousting Enkidu cross table. I had one shot when I tried to oust my Prey with a Reins of Power, but he had delaying tactics and see: if I hadn't discarded that Ancilla I could have gotten through with it with Nana Buruku using Monastery of Shadows + Perfect Paragon. This way I managed to stay alive until the table timed out. 0,5 VP

Second Table:

This was the kind of table you play vtes for! This was a four player table. I got to start with two transfers and got luck enough to draw a Dreams of the Sphinx in my opening hand. My prey played an Assamite mid cap combat deck with some auspex support and a decent amount of "wake" cards. My cross table buddy played the Gangrel antitribu Dual From deck that ended up winning the tournament. It was based on Aksinya and Una with Cardinal Benedictcumberbatch. My predator was the Setite bleed deck from table one. In all honesty I thought I will get nothing here. My combat defense against Psyche! is worthless and I can't stop 10 minions bleeding with stealth. But Fortuna decided to help my out with this one. The Assamite deck didn't want to right away kill my 11 cap with a stealth bleed behind me so I return that I don't pressure him he let me be and focused on his prey. Well guess my first Master card on my turn? Exactly! With Secure Haven on Eze I temporarily felt safe. I am not sure if I remember correctly, but I think I got Kduva's Mask in my hand and managed to equip it. Meanwhile my crossy started really well, with enough combat cards to defend him self and he got his dual form + cardinal benediction combo off. He was up to a good start. However nobody could stop my Setite predator from bloating and getting minion after minion.Thirty minutes in to the game it felt like all four of us have a good chance of winning this table as well as being on the edge to getting ousted. At a given point I had to call Political Stranglehold to stay alive, but this game the anti Gangrel 9 additional pool. This brought him close of getting out of control so I banished his vampire burning the Dual From to reset the balance. But on the other hand he brought back Una (or Aksinya, can't remember) with full blood, so he could protect him better. As we continued playing everybody kept degenerating in resourced, you know less blood on vampire, less pool until you met a point where you had to commit. The Gangrel-anti almost ousted the Setite. At this point with Nana in torpor (meanwhile the Assamite did attack me and Nana had a contract on her) and only Eze up I decided to steal the Setite's Jake Washington with Entrancement. This sealed his fate as really every chance to block, every piece of pool counted. It was obvious that the Gangrel-anti will get his VP. I managed to convince my prey to rescue Nana so I have a chance to defend. Remember this was a 4 player table, if the Gangrel anti gets me as well my predator has no chance for the game win anymore. So he rescued Nana and I used Jake to restore 4 blood on her. I figured my best chance was to let the VP's split and go for the one vs. one against the Assamite as he was really low on blood on his vampires. We agreed I let him in peace until he oust his prey so he only focuses forward and doesn't attack me. This happened within 2 turns. I was well prepared for the 1 vs 1. I had Enkil Cog ready, Banishment on his main vampire and I had a Sudden in my hand against his Pentex he tried to play on me. He managed to torporize Nana though and I got really short on pool. It was now or never and I had to go for a bleed of 5 with Eze in my turn. He didn't have an Archon Investigation, so I ousted him and finished this table with a Game Win with 2VP's.

Third Table:

My prey was a Nephandus deck, cross table I had a big cap voter with Queen Anne and one of the new vampires, a Setite Prince , some advanced version of an older one. My predator was a Saulot deck with Neighbour John as support, who started with an early Ivory Bow. The Nephandus Deck had a very impressive start. Not only did he spa Nephandi he also had 2-3 Hexapeds and several vampires. Since neither his prey nor me could block his actions, oh and he started with a first turn Montreal as well. Being the threat he was my crossy offered a deal to oust him and my predator together and go for the 1v1. I was very happy with this so I gladly agreed. He called an Ancilla, but the Nephandus player had a Delaying Tactics. Next turn he didn't want to play it again as he rightfully realized that he had no real chance in a one vs. one against me anymore. I can totally understand that. My problem was that this version of Eze is opted against mid cap decks with all my Banishments. I only have one Ancilla in my deck and it never showed up despite having a Heart of Cheating out. The next 10-20 minutes was the usual passive degrading phase you see so often. Nobody wanted to commit too hard, but everybody was getting weaker, except for the Nephandi who became even more of a threat. The pressure was on my crossy. He decided to commit, but couldn't oust his prey due to another delaying tactics. I rescued him from Torpor to give him a chance and he actually did manage to survive the Nephandi's turn. And now comes the part I am still feeling bad about: he had little left in the tank and it was sure he would not have another turn. He tried to oust his prey again and we reached a point were he had 1 pool, 1 ready vampire with only 1 blood left. He considered going for the Ancilla again which would have killed his prey, himself and the Nephandus deck, meaning he gets one VP the Nephandi one and I get the Game Win with 2 VP's. He already showed the card and tapped his vampire when the Nephandi sayed he should not give me the Game Win. He had no stealth in his hand anymore and Saulot was standing. He took back the card and went for a bleed with Govern hoping in a top-deck stealth to get his vp, which he didn't drew so he got nothing. My predator was so brought down though, that the Nephandi got a free 2 Vp's and faced me with +12 pool and a huge army bringing even more Nephandi out. Obviously I didn't stand a chance at all and the Nephandi took his sweep. It wouldn't have bothered me if the "King Maker" makes a call against me. What bothers me is making a call against me by also choosing the worse result for him self. He had to choose between him getting a VP and the table ending 1-0-2-1 or getting nothing and giving the Nephandi 1GW 4VP. 

Summary:

The meta didn't fit my deck at all. Too many 11 caps, too many allies (Strange Day, Flaming Candle don't work, having many minions with 1 intercept from Unmasking hurt me a lot, no real Banishment targets as I can't banish 11 caps or whats the point is banishing 2-3 caps?) too many Psyche/Immortal Grapple decks. Pretty much sort of the worst meta for my deck. Despite this I managed to get 1GW 2.5 VP's all together after more than 3 years without playing a single game. So overall I am satisfied. I could have played much better on the first table. 2Vp's from there wold have been enough for the final. I could have gotten my ticket from the third table, but well it wasn't meant to be. Overall I had fun and I am looking forward to the next tournament. 

Final Results:

PlayerName / GW / VPs / TPs


1 DávidWittmann 2 7,5 156
2 MártonGuttyán 2 7 148
3 MátéVaka 1 5 114
4 ZsoltHernádi 1 4,5 138
5 ZsoltCziráki 1 3,5 126
6 MátéVida 1 3,5 124
7 BalázsKalóczkai 1 3 100
8 NorbertBróda 1 3 84
9 MartinMajor 1 2,5 124
10 AttilaFerencz 1 2 106
11 SándorNagy 0 3 130
12 JózsefGál 0 3 114
13 ZsoltSzekeres 0 1,5 112
14 AttilaTormási 0 1,5 102
15 KristófTóth 0 1,5 102
16 ÁdámPéter 0 1,5 94
17 RóbertLászló 0 1,5 90
18 LászlóWalter 0 1 100
19 GáborMartók 0 1 78
20 MarcellVarjasi 0 0,5 72
21 ZoltánTóth 0 54

Final


ZsoltHernádi 0
ZsoltCziráki 0,5
MártonGuttyán 0,5
DávidWittmann 0,5
MátéVaka 1,5


Congrats to Máté Vaka for winning with his stylish Gangrel-anti Dual cucumberbatch deck! GG well played! I didn't stay for the final as I was starving for food and I was already too tired. I hope next time I can make notes and report of a final as well.

f.y.i.: there is now a tournament winning deck archive HUN TWDA on this site. It will feature only winning decks from Hungarian tournaments. 

Back to gaming and stuff regarding this blog.

Hi folks!

It's been a really long time since I last played v:tes. I mean years. This weekend though I attended a tournament in Budapest and it felt good to sit at the table again. As I had nothing else prepared I took my only deck I had available from years ago, but you will read about this later. I'll post a tournament report soon.

But how comes I am back to v:tes? Well I'll give you guys a real short summary. Back then I used to be a bit burned out with v:tes and so I jumped on the LCG train with Netrunner. It didn't last too long and when FFG first announced that they are rotating out the core set and and the firts couple of data packs I was done with that. The packs came too frequently you buy all those cards and they really say you can't use them anymore? Well I can still make a Jyhad only deck and just have a shot at winning a v.tes tournament. Feel the difference. 

Later on I got stuck with online gaming. It was more convenient. You don't have to leave the house, can just casually do some games even when tired. Some games are really addictive. Also people I loved playing v:tes with also left the game. The game felt dead. However despite my girlfriend trying to push me into selling my cards I always resisted. I lost a lot of money by not selling my 3 Enkil Cogs, all the Mind Rapes and so on, but I knew that someday I will want to play again. I really knew that. Oh and I hovered my mouse so many times over the delete this blog button. I never managed to press it. 

I missed being among people. I got tired of sitting alone in front of my pc while my social life vanished over time. I missed the community. I think it was around last years October-November when I decided that I will indeed play again. As I was attending a bootcamp studying C#, SQL and all the front-end goodies I had to postpone my return to after I finish. 

Well that's as much of text as I am willing to write around midnight. I will write a tournament report maybe as soon as tomorrow. My other goals are to remove all non-vtes related posts from this blog to have it nice and clean and a v:tes only blog again. I also want to give it a fresh design. 

Oh and we were 21 palyers at this tournament. Game doesn't seem dead after all...

Two decks I have in mind...

Hi folks!

Sooner or later I will play v:tes again anyway. I have two deck ideas in my mind...

1. Sack dat Jake

This deck idea is based on the Akunanse Kamiri wa Itherero (advanced). The idea is to exploit the following mechanic: play Jake Washington, destroy Jake with Ithereros ability to do 2 damage as an action -> play: Taking the Skin: Minion -> bleed twice. Use Enkil Cog as a perma bleed bonus + the option to bleed once more out of turn. This deck allows to be built toolboxy for great variety and fun.

2. Absimilard's Army Snakes

Play Absimiliard's Army. Whenever someone uses it make sure to play a Set's Curse on it. Use it yourself, but leave your own ghoul's as a target for Set's Curse at last.

by: mephistopheles

v:tes football

Hi folks!

Flekk any myself organized a football session for v:tes players only. So approximately 6-7 guys will spend a nice Sunday afternoon kicking that ball. Please kindly note that by football I actually mean foot + ball and not hand + egg. We will try to make this a regular event and get more players involved. 

by: mephistopheles

Back to the game

Hi folks!

I'll play a tournament today. To celebrate this event I made an alternate art design:

Check back for a detailed tournament report tomorrow.

It has been a great weekend!

Hi folks!

This has been a great weekend. We played a total of 9 games. There was 1 big time out with everybody scoring 0,5 VP's. It was the last game we played Saturday night when everybody was totally tired already. Otherwise all other games ended with one player scoring a Game Win. 

It was my most successful weekend so far with altogether 4 Game Wins in the end. I tested a 60 card version of a Nosferoyalty deck, a 60 cared version of a Kyasid bleed deck, a 60 card version of Broken Brujah and I played a round with Frankies new big cap Nosi deck.

The Nosferoyalty 

The idea is to get out Warsaw Station soon and do both Embrace and Progeny. The deck features 3 copies of Wider View and 2 copies of Kindred Intelligence to optimize my crypt. Two copies of Reinforcement together with the really amazing Warsaw - Labyrith - Sargon Fragment triangle help to control what cards I will draw. Papillon is pure gold. However the deck has the same problem as any other Nosferoyalty deck, namely that if you don't have an early vote lock you will have a really hard time. I made a 1GW 5 VP sweep on the first table when I could start with 2 transfers + Dimple + Nosferatu Justicar. I played another game when my predator had the vote lock. I ended with 0 VP's here. The deck is fun to play and can be really strong. However I will not play it during the EC as I expect too many votes there.

The Kyasid

I decided not to tell anything about this deck as it will be my choice for Day 1. It has some ideas in it I wanted to try which worked very well. I played 3 rounds, made 2 Game Wins and the third one was the only time out I mentioned. I will play this deck on a tournament this weekend.

The Broken Brujah 60 cards version

Well I wanted to try a Zillah's based version, where you get out Dmitra and Carlak ASAP so you have 2 Alastors with Assault Rifles right away. I played 5 Zillahs and 1 Info Highway in 60 cards. Never saw one in the first 10 cards. It was just another argument against acceleration cards. I always hated them and found the totally useless as I never draw them when needed. The 60 card version doesn't have enough Second Traditions. This version is a fail. The original version without crypt acceleration (but actually usefull master cards) and more Second Trads is a million time better.

Frankies Deck

Since it's his deck I don't want to give away any information. It is a great, fun to play and brought me my 4th Game Win.

About Sweden

So since I am already qualified (finished 7th place at the First Chance Qualifier) I can play any deck I want on Friday. I will choose the deck I have the most fun playing with. I have my Day 1 deck ready to go. I still need to think of something to play on Day 2 should I qualify for the top 40. I hope to be able to buy my ticket to Sweden this week.

_______

So this Saturday I will play a tournament. I will write a brief report. Should I win it you will see the decklist on Lasombras page. In case I don't I won't post the decklist until after the EC.

by: Mephistopheles

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!

Finished sorting my cards and hosting test weekend

Hi folks!

Good news! Just found the time and energy to sort and organize my collection. Also I will host a 2 days testing marathon at my place. You know Sweden is calling. Plenty of decks, ideas and strategies to be tested! Plenty of new content for my blog! Check back early next week for reports!

Take care!

I've been playing some v:tes this year :)

Hi folks!

So I played 3 tournaments so far this year. The first 2 I played wit my Eze deck. Both worked out quite ok with 1 game win each tournament and reaching the finals with that. Unfortunately I couldn't win any of those. Today was the third tournament. I got tired of Eze and borrowed a deck from Péter Korsós, a Mistress Fanchon and friends deck. In the first round Enkidu shred me to pieces in like 5 minutes. However, I mnaged to win the 2nd and 3rd round and made it to the finals with 2 GW 6 VP's. I made my VP in the final but lost to Gyula Erdős, who won it. Well it was great day though. 

I liked the deck a lot and will build my own version to test. I need a deck for Sweden anyway. I don't know how much time I will have, but I want to play v:tes on a regular base again. This might bring back this blog to old glory again :)

Cheers!

Just a really brief note on the last tournament

Hi folks!

So I played a tournament last weekend with Eze again. I won't go into details, just a note here:

• I played 6 rounds with Eze in the last 2 tournaments
• I play 5 copies of Eze in a 12 card crypt
• I shuffle the crypt like it should be shuffled
• 3 out 6 games Eze did not show up in the starting uncontrolled region
• 2 out of these 3 times Eze was only the sixt vampire.
• 3 out of 6 games Eze showed up.
• I made 3 Game Wins out of these 3 times...

So when playing  star vampire decks like Eze I will go for 6 copies + 3 Wider Views in the future. It is a billion times better to have 4 Ezes in the starting crypt than 0.

by: Mephistopheles

Deck Building Challenge: Rares Only!!!

Hi folks!

So I've been invited to a couple of friends for a game of v:tes. The thing is, there is a twist. Players are allowed to play with library cards only that have been a rare in any edition before. So no vessels, blood dolls, minion taps, etc. Rare only deck. Wow. It is funny how many things become unavailable. 

So I am pretty sure I will either play a Ayo Igoli deck with Golconda's to have a pool gaining mechanism or I will play 8-11 cap vampires with superior Dementation for Deny (rare stealth card!) and of course Golconda again.

What would be your idea? Any comments and suggestions are highly appreciated!  

by: Mephistopheles

EC Report

Hi folks!

So the EC is over and I had a couple of days to think everything through. I don't want to do a round by round tournament report right now. What I want to say is, that it was great to see and talk to many people. This itself was totally worth joining the event. On the other hand I played 9 rounds of v:tes.

On Friday I decided to play my Broken Brujah deck. I made a Game Win with 2 Vps on the first table which was really a tough game. Second game made me 1 Vp and the third table was a disastrous 0. Last 2 games I played together with an Anarch Revolt + Lutz deck. He basically dropped a Revolt every turn starting with the first one. Since my crypt consisted of titled vampires only this was pretty unpleasant to say the least. Well at least I did qualify, since I wasn't yet.

Saturday I choose to play Martin Weinmayer's Auspex + Presence deck. He won his second EC title with this deck. I thought it would be great choice even though I don't really like playing with such decks. It was a terrible choice. Triple 0 Vps's without even the slightest chance of making a Vp. Well not entirely true. With a deal break I could have made 1 VP. I rather kept it. 

Sunday. After the previous 2 days I felt like playing my favorite deck on the First Chance Qualifier. Namely my Eze deck. It is an 11 cap vampire that can not bounce bleeds, I don't play any crypt acceleration cards in it and it isn't built to block. Well, after the 2nd round I had 2 Game Wins with 7 Victory Points. First Game Win included some help from my side to back oust my first predator. Then I killed my prey and grand prey with a Reins of Power and easily won the heads up against a malkavian antitribu stealth bleed (Banishment for the win). On the second table I had my very best draw ever. My prey played only 8+ vampires, my opening hand had a Magic of the Smith to go for a Signet of King Saul. Untap, bleed for 1, Enkil Cog. Fuck yeah! So before the 3rd table I had good hopes to make it to the final. I drew my crypt and opening hand and they were awesome again (Villein, Enkil Cog were in there). Now came the pain: re-seating!!! New crypt: no Eze. New predator: War Ghoul featuring Maris. I think you will read about this game on the Lord of the Clog blog. Despite the 0 Vp here and missing the final because of this I really enjoyed this game! 

Conclusion: I am really sure now that it doesn't matter what deck you play. It's all about seating, that is the luck factor in the game. Next EC I will play only decks I like to play with. 

by: Mephistopheles  

Excitement level: it's over 9000!

Hi folks!

Can't wait to get up early today and make it to the venue in a rush. Need to last-minute-build-decks today so I have something to play with. I am actually not exited about playing, but because I will meet so many people I want to talk with! I'll keep blogging during the EC!

by: mephistopheles

Registered for the EC. Feeling strange.

Hi folks!

Life and its ways are pretty interesting. After last years EC I was very enthusiastic to gather a team and start organizing EC Budapest. Milán Horváth, Zoltán Németh, Tamás Bank and myself started our work. I had an easy time back than, because I was pretty much stagnating in my job. The economy was so bad that there was only little work to do. For those of you who do not know it already, I work in a family business. We are importing decorations and all kind of things for interior design from China. All went fine, we found a great Hotel, set up the very basics for the website and things were about to get serious. Right at this time my father whom I work with basically retired so I had to run the company on my own. Original plans were that I'll have to attend the Canton fair in China, which would be exactly at the same time than the EC. 

Life got pretty stressful suddenly. Parallel to all this I lots more and more interest in the game itself. Main reason for this is because I miss new ideas. I felt that whatever idea I have is just something I already played before. I think I really missed a new set. I am the kind of guy that has 1 or 2 (tops) ideas for a set that I find interesting enough to play with. There were other reasons as well, but I don't want to go into depth with this.

So I made a pretty hard decision. I resigned as NC for Hungary, quit the EC team and basically totally stopped playing v:tes. I don't regret this step. When people asked about this I always told them that one day I surely will return to the v:tes life, I just needed a really long break from all this. I think I had a burn out syndrome. 

Life always has its surprises and one of these was when we were offered the opportunity to take over one of our earlier customers, a wholesaling company in Budapest. This was actually the chance we were really looking for so we said yes. Well all the work that had to be done there was down to me since my partner (aka my father) retired to Thailand right before we signed the contract. I had three horrible weeks in September with 70-90 hours work a week and I drove like 10000+ kilometers. But as everything it also had its really good sides!

Since I spent so much in Budapest now I grabbed the chance to play a little v:tes here and there. All I had was my Eze deck, the last remaining deck I had fun playing with. At this point I ran into an awesome group of really old v:tes players. Talmi, Spider, Spáda and Csabi invited me to join them. It was and still is really fun to play with these guys. This was an experience I really needed. 

Now that I successfully opened the new shop in Budapest I have some free time again to spend and since I am in Budapest 3 days a week I can finally play v:tes on a regular base again. At this point I took a look at how the EC is going and I realized that these guys made an awesome job. Tibor Mórocz jumped in the team and with his experience and knowledge was a great boost to it. 

With the opening of our new shop the Canton Fair issue got moot so I'll be at home during the EC. Now here comes the part why I feel really strange. I registered to the EC of a game I just jumped out earlier from. Strange feeling. I am not qualified yet, so it's all down to the Last Chance Qualifier. Honestly I am preparing myself for the Silence of Death side event on Saturday and the First Chance on Sunday.

I would love to be the active and creative guy I used to be in v:tes and play the game way more often in 2013, but my main problem is still lingering around. I've been spending the last days thinking of decks to build. Nothing really changed: each idea I have is just the same old stuff again. It might be with 12 different vampires and 90 different library cards, but the way you play a certain deck type is just the same thing again and again.

Well at least I can see you guys soon again. There are many people out there in the v:tes community I am really looking forward to grab a beer with and just talk about whatever comes to our mind. See you guys soon!

by: mephistopheles

Tournament Report: Training Day Budapest

Hi folks!

I really never thought that I will play v:tes so soon again. My girlfriend asked me to give her a ride to Budapest when I was just hanging on facebook this Friday. I said sure why not and just a few seconds later I noticed a tournament announcement in our v:tes facebook group. Since I had nothing else to do I decided a that I join the event, since I will be in Budapest anyway. 

It was great to see all those guys again and the best part: I saw some players that were considered the "old ones" when I first started to play the game. Some disappeared for a few years, but I think now that their kids are old enough, they reappeared. I was informed that many more "old players" joined the v:tes life again. Sounds pretty damn cool. 

So all together 23 players played this event. I took my only still existing deck, namely my "Eze will slow roll you" one. So here is how it went:

1st table: Gyula Erdős (Akunanse) - Vaka Mate (upgraded to a short hair with beard version, played some Gangrel deck again) - Me - Varga Zsolt (AAA)

I had a pretty good start with a great crypt. All the key cards came in time and I could sneak through a bleed for 1 with Eze to get my Enkil Cog. Next crucial action was to equip a Signet of King Saul with believe me guys is pure gold. Meanwhile Zsolt was building up well too with Alexandra and Anson + 2 weenies in game. I did my 2 bleed / turn with Eze stuff and I think my deck caught Zsolt a little bit by surprise. Then the moment came when I could oust both my prey and predator with a Reins of Power, but I needed Gyula's votes as well. Gyula seemed cooperative since he surely preferred to have Eze behind him than Toreador Grand Balls. So he gave me his votes and we went right into heads up. Funny thing here was that both prey and predator choose their 1 caps for Reins of Power so Gyula and I got +5 pool. Funny things happen. Gyula went into the heads up with like 20+ pool and 4-5 vampires. 

Gyula's first move was to play a Pentex on Eze, but there is a reason why I play 3 Suddens and keep one in my hand for such situations. I returend the favor with a Pentex on one of his vampires (I had 2 mpa's because of Nana) and passed a Banishment. This pretty much changed the table. When Gyula was on six pool I tried to oust him with a bleed 6 by Eze, but Gyula played an Archon Investigation on him (for 4 pool because of Secure Haven). Didn't matter much because I had 2 more vampires, bleed modifier, vote card and Monastery of Shadows. The first vampire was enough with a Iron Glare + Monastery of Shadows bleed. 1GW 3 VP

2nd table: Balu (Henry twister wall) - Milan (Kyasid toolbox) - Günther (Dom - For -Aus) - Silver (Omaya wall) - Me

This is the kind of table I loathe so much. Sitting between 2 wall decks you waste your resources like hell and whenever you could oust you get an Eagle's Sight - Direct Intervention - Delaying Tactics armada into your face. Well, after a shitload of talking, dealing, wasting resources, getting pissed at mentioned cards I finally ousted Balu with Milans help. Milan made his 2 vps and we were heads up. Since I ran out of cards (90 card deck) Milan won. If I had some cards left in the deck I would have easily won the heads up. One of the many reasons I loathe card like DI and Eagle's sight. I need 20+ card to bypass 2 of these... 1 VP

3rd table: Me - Milan (Kyasid) - Pál Csabi (???) - Gego Feri (Akunanse) - Márton Csaba (Giovanni powerbleed) 

Starting with 1 transfer for an 11 cap vampire with a powerbleed as a predator is not good at all. I got ousted without having turn to act with Eze. Funny thing: when I was ousted I had a Villein + Ancient Influence + Voter Cap in my hand. Too bad I never had the chance to act with Eze... 0 VP

Summary 

After a long time not playing making 1 GW 4 VP on a tournament announced for testing EC decks is really great. Especially with an 11 cap that can not bounce bleeds. I finished tied 7th place, but missed the final by only 1 Vp. So close.

Thank for great event. It was good to play again. However this doesn't mean I will play regularly. I might show up at the one or other tournament though, depending on free time and mood.

The Deck

Deck Name:   Eze will slow roll you
Created By:  Martin Mephistopheles Major

Crypt: (12 cards, Min: 32, Max: 44, Avg: 9,58)
----------------------------------------------
  5  Eze                                aus ANI NEC POT PRE THA11 Guruhi
  3  Nana Buruku                        ANI POT PRE    8  Guruhi
  2  Sobayifa                           ANI aus pot PRE pro spi8  Guruhi
  2  Ugadja                             ABO ANI dom for POT PRE10 Guruhi

Library: (90 cards)
-------------------
Master (20 cards)
  1  Ancestor Spirit
  1  Archon Investigation
  2  Dreams of the Sphinx
  1  Giant`s Blood
  1  Monastery of Shadows
  1  Palace Hunting Ground
  1  Pentex Subversion
  1  Perfectionist
  1  Secure Haven
  3  Sudden Reversal
  6  Villein
  1  Wider View

Action (13 cards)
  2  Entrancement
  5  Founders of the Ebony Kingdom
  3  Magic of the Smith
  1  Preternatural Strength
  2  Well-Marked

Action Modifier (24 cards)
  4  Call of the Hungry Dead
  3  Enkil Cog
  4  Iron Glare
  2  Mirror Walk
  6  Perfect Paragon
  1  Strange Day
  3  Voter Captivation
  1  Approximation of Loyalty

Political Action (8 cards)
  1  Ancient Influence
  1  Ancilla Empowerment
  3  Banishment
  1  Neonate Breach
  1  Political Stranglehold
  1  Reins of Power

Reaction (10 cards)
  10 Sense the Savage Way

Combat (8 cards)
  8  Majesty

Equipment (5 cards)
  1  Gran Madre di Dio, Italy
  1  Heart of Nizchetus
  1  Ivory Bow
  1  Kduva`s Mask
  1  Signet of King Saul, The

Event (1 cards)
  1  Narrow Minds

Combo (1 cards)
  1  Guruhi Kholo

You don't say?