It'd been more than 12 months since we'd tried a sealed deck competition and it was also a good excuse to introduce some new cards into people's collections.
We had 1 of each starter deck from Legacies of Blood (Akunanse, Ishtarri, Osebo & Guruhi) and the Followers of Set starter from Lords of the Night. To go with these starters were 6 boosters each, Ebony Kingdom boosters for the LoB starters and Lords of the Night boosters for the Followers of Set starter.
Once the starter decks and boosters were assigned randomly we had 90mins to construct a deck. We decided to allow 5mins between games to adjust decks. What was to follow was 3 games (2hr time limit) with the winner being the person with the most game wins (GW) and/or victory points (VP).
Who ended up with what:
Chris - Guruhi
Mark - Followers of Set
Adam - Ishtarri
Dave - Akunanse
Ben - Osebo
Game 1: Chris > Mark > Adam > Dave > Ben >
It was a slow start as we all had to figure out our strategies for our newly created decks. I started and since my deck relied on votes I had to influence the only vampire in my uncontrolled region that had a title, Ugadja. A 10 capacity so I took a few cheap bleeds from Ben on turns 2 and 3. Luckily they were only for 1 and 2. Mark was lucky and managed to get a couple smaller Followers of Set out and put Form of Corruption into play. Adam was also a slow starter but was on the back foot from the get-go due to having a stealth bleed predator. Dave had a fairly easy start since Adam was preoccupied with staying alive, and was able to influence out a couple of minions without too much trouble. As Dave's deck was probably the closest thing to a combat deck he was keeping Ben in check. Ben's deck worked as a wall-ish type deck with small amounts of intercept and combat with a splash of bleed.
Eventually Adam was able to put some pressure on Dave with some bleeds for 4, but it was too little too late as Mark had Adam running low on pool. As Mark laid on the second bleed of his turn, Adam was unable to block it and was about to be ousted when suddenly from across the table, Ben plays an Eagle's Sight to block the bleed! However Mark still had one more minion and all it took was 1 more bleed and Adam was ousted. Just what Mark needed to boost his own pool which was starting to run low due to a number of successful Conservative Agitations that hit him for 4 pool each time. The table timed out before anything else could happen.
Game 2: Chris > Mark > Adam > Ben > Dave >
We took a few minutes at the end of the last game to refine our decks and weed out some cards. I had a dream pick up this game. Lots of votes to call, minion taps were coming to hand, even got to play the Giant's Blood that's in the deck. Dave was walling up a bit and not putting much pressure on me. Mark was my prey again and he was quick to get some minions out but didn't seem to have much go forward. After landing a number votes and having my prey on 4 pool ready for the oust, I tap one of my minions and announce I'm calling a Domain Challenge which will leave Mark with 1 pool as 3 of his 4 minions are tapped. Perfect I thought, I'll get him with my next minion's vote for the oust, or so I thought. I look a little further around and notice Adam, my grand-prey only has 2 pool... and 3 tapped minions. So if my Domain Challenge passes, I'll end up giving my prey a VP and 6 pool before doing 3 damage to him. Not the smartest thing to do, but it was the only vote card in my hand at the time, and it turned out to be what I needed to do, as the replacement card I picked up was an Conservative Agitation.
I didn't have any other choice but to vote against my own referendum. With that out of the way, I still had 3 other minions to call some votes, which I did. The Conservative Agitation was enough to oust Mark(4 points to him and 1 to Adam) and leave Adam with 1 pool. After playing some action modifiers to boost the votes I picked up some more vote cards. I then called an Ancilla Empowerment which ousted Adam and did 5 pool damage to my new prey, Ben. With my last action I called another Domain Challenge, and actually voted for it this time. The details of exactly how I ousted Ben are hazy. But either way I managed to do about 14 pool damage in 2 turns to him, 9 of which was while he was my great grand prey. Vote decks can be very nasty.
After ousting Ben I had to try and take out Dave. I got close with Dave only having 2 pool at one stage but he was able to bloat out to 6 or so on his next turn. Time ran out before I was able to land the final killing blows.
Game 3: Dave > Adam > Mark > Ben > Chris >
The game timed out. Dave was very close to being able to oust Adam but time wasn't on his side. We were all tired and/or drunk by this stage and were glad to see the game over.
Things we learnt: Mundane played as an out-of-turn Master to cancel an action card requiring a discipline does not trigger the no repeat action clause because the card was cancelled and the action did not resolve.
Final results were:
Chris 0.5, 3.5, 0.5 = 4.5VP
Mark 1.5, 0, 0.5 = 2VP
Dave 0.5, 0.5, 0.5 = 1.5VP
Ben 0.5, 0, 0.5 = 1VP
Adam 0, 0, 0.5 = 0.5VP
My first VTES tournament win :D
