Introduction: By now the EC and the AC are finished. Much heated debate started after the EC and very little of it concerned actual play. A pity. The result was a clear win for "back to basic". Bleed and don't get caught at it. Another succesful strategy seems to have been built around allies - in this case War Ghouls. The event was highly educational, especially for us swedes as the typical decks that got gamewins usually would have been killed more or less immediately at our own local events. One of the overseas guests also showed some shock at the lack of intercept in Europe. I wasn't so surprised though as we've fed each other with how bad it is to wall up, and eventually it had to result in a large amount of players skipping intercept in favour of forward motion. Another new aspect was the intense tabletalk during the games. I have never experienced that it was possible for the strongest player to deal into a gamewin - we usually gang up on the threat to the table. A different way of playing Toreador: With two tournaments won in short time by similar decks, the peculiar deck known as the Master Card Deck is worth looking at. First a look at the decks reported. Below the finnish report by Petri Wessman on the newsgroup with decklist: --------------------------------------------------------------------- Ok, here's the decklist for the winning deck from Storyline Helsinki. Extremely evil, and *very* hard to stop if played properly. If I recall, this deck also came second in last weekend's Storyline Tampere. We talked about ways of stopping this one on the way back to Helsinki, and came to no real conclusions. Heavy rush might do it. Very nasty. Played by Riku Niittymäki, I assume it's also designed by him but I could be wrong. crypt(12): 4 Anson 8 Prince (+1 master) 4 Anneke 10 Justicar 3 Huitzilopochtli 10 (+1 master) 1 Alexandra 11 master(65): 15 Anarch Revolt 12 Minion Tap 8 Golconda 4 Parthenon 4 Life Boon 3 Giant's Blood 3 Sudden Reversal 3 Direct Intervention 3 Protected Resources 2 Antediluvian Avakening 2 Dreams of the Sphinx 2 Info Highway 2 Temptation of Greater Power 1 Elysium 1 Art Museum reaction(25): 12 Obedience 6 2nd Tradition: Domain 3 Deflection 3 Redirection 1 My Enemy's Enemy ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Below the swedish deck as reported: -------------------------------------------------------------------------- The winning deck: Author: Sten During Name: Master Madness Description: Getting as many master-phase-actions as possible. Empty your vamps and don't be shy to use Rosslers speacial and Information Highway together. Tap Anson, Golconda Anson (using his special to do so) and bring a new Anson in play. The Baali can help with additional master-phase actions. Try avoiding trickling out your revolts as you'll need two or three in one go to finish the game. Golconda is also an offensive card. You're the only one who need large vampires - the rest of the table can use the pool, especially your predator. You win with the revolts and you need the massive bloat to make your Life Boons count. Even though it will eat on your nerves, to chose when to play without any vampires at all is definitely what changes a loss to a win. On average I'll sit close to a third of any given game without any controlled minions. Votes are a problem, as is any weenie-predator. 68 Mastercards is a bit low, and I think one each of Obedience, Wake and Deflection could go. I'd also remove Legendary Vampire. Replace with three Archon Investigation and one Tension in the Ranks. Maybe also replace one Information Highway and one The Barrens with two Dreams of the Sphinx. Crypt Cards Total: 12 Min: 32 Max: 40 Avg: 8.83 Name Amount Anson 6 Arika 1 Huitzilopochtli 2 Ingrid Rossler 3 Library Cards Total: 90 Name Amount Master Total: 68 Anarch Revolt 10 Antediluvian Awakening 1 Art Museum 1 Brothers Grimm 1 Club Zombie 1 Ecoterrorists 1 Elysium: The Arboretum 1 Elysium: The Palace of Versailles 1 Giant's Blood 1 Golconda: Inner Peace 13 Information Highway 6 KRCG News Radio 1 Legendary Vampire 1 Life Boon 4 London Evening Star, Tabloid Newspaper 1 Minion Tap 9 Protected Resources 1 Sudden Reversal 4 The Barrens 3 The Parthenon 6 The Rumor Mill, Tabloid Newspaper 1 Reaction Total: 22 Deflection 8 Obedience 8 Wake with Evening's Freshness 6 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- We can see why this type of deck would interest any player trying out something special based on the Toreadors. Both decks rely heavy on Anson and are backed up by Huitzilopochtli. Added several The Parthenon and we have a possible four masterphaseactions available each turn. Both decks have a similar librarylayout as well, at least when it comes to the ratio of cardtypes. Besides, Toreador are one of the clans accused of producing blocking walls with very little forward motion, and this is a method to do just that and still put an extreme pressure on the entire table. From the finnish decklist I assume that the player relied more on blocking unwanted actions all over the table and just spewed out the Revolts in order to keep tableresources to a minimum. It definitely has the permanent votes available to defend the Revolts when they are in play as well as the capacity to block players trrying to get rid of the revolts no matter where they sit. My own deck cannot win if I dump a Revolt on the table everytime I have one available, and so I have to use Golconda as a substitute for bleed. My deck lacks the votingpower displayed in the first deck which is another reason I prefer stacking up on Revolts and playing them in bursts of two or three at a time. Does the Master Card Deck work? Well, the results point in that direction. I managed to grab second place in the danish EC-qualifier with the deck one day after I won our local tournament with it. It should be noted that I didn't get one single Game Win with a modified version of it during the EC even though it didn't fail to get me VP:s at all tables I sat at. Problems with the decks are for example combat-allies. Shambling Hordes, Renegade Garou and War Ghouls will destroy them utterly. Another major problem is when you're seated with several bleed-decks as the balance on the table gets so skewed that you don't get a proper chance to restore it with Golconda and Life Boon. If your prey is a weenie-bleeder you're in for a bad day indeed. Another problem is when a player denies your oustingschedule when Life Booned and promptly ousts him/herself to show you how disgusting your piece of sleaze is. Is the decktype fun to play? Yes, definitely, for a while. Players who haven't seen it will display amused shock while you succesfully or unsuccesfully go for the table. When they're faced with it for the fourth time you'll be asked to either pick up another deck or pick on another table. The reason is simply that the deck is so differently played than most decks that in order to counter it you'll probably build something that cannot handle the other decks, unless you just happen to love playing ally-decks of course. Why is it so different? Well, apart from deviating "slightly" from the proposed 20% mastercards in a library you also disturb the table by normally effectively skipping the minionphase. VTES is a game that's supposed to be played by your minions, and refusing to take any actions you also deny your neighbour players to react. At the EC my Tzimisce prey at one table must have been thoroughly disgusted as he discarded reactioncards while the Revolts ate through his pool. This denial of card-resources is the actual backbone of these decks, especially as you also end your own blocks with an Obedience, denying any combat-deck to cycle cards. Decks relying on Majesty or Earth Meld as a substitute for Freak Drive are also hamstrung. Sten During