While I had racked up 10 VP in the preliminary rounds with my heavy
  stealth bleeding, I knew that the last thing I wanted to do was attract
  attention in the final round.  With two rush combat decks on the table,
  flinging Govern bleeds around was likely to result in getting my vampires
  beaten to a pulp.  As such, if I was going to bleed, I had to either 
  bleed for just a little bit, or bleed to oust in one turn.  That meant
  laying low and waiting for the right opportunity.  It also meant picking
  my seat wisely.

  With the most VP going into the finals, I had my choice of where to sit.
  The seating order was Trey (Protean bleed/combat), Jared (Brujah toolbox),
  Robert (weenie Potence smackdown), and Stephen (Toreador vote 'n bleed).
  Normally, two rush decks sitting next to each other are a very bad thing 
  for the rest of the table, as they'll typically team up and split the 
  table.  However, in this case, having them sit next to each other was 
  ideal.  Jared is a conniving, treacherous snake, and Robert is also a
  conniving, treacherous snake - and they both know the other is a
  conniving, treacherous snake.  As such, no alliance between the two of
  them was ever going to work.  Given that, putting myself at the furthest
  point away from both of them seemed the best plan, so I chose to be Trey's
  predator.  And what better than to have the two snakes, playing combat
  decks, sitting next to each other?  Another thought running through my 
  head was that Stephen kicked the crap out of me in the first round, and 
  Robert didn't have intercept to stop his votes, but I figured that if he 
  came out strong, Robert would smack him down.

  So, Stephen came out strong, and Robert got to work smacking him down.
  Trey threw a monkey wrench into my stealth bleed plans by getting Mr.
  Winthrop and a Raven Spy on Mirembe Kabbada, meaning that I'd have to
  put a serious effort into each bleed, and the last thing I wanted to
  do was to display serious effort before the rush decks.  Instead, I 
  did little bleeds for 1 or 2, and Trey responded by not blocking, in
  the hopes of jamming me full of stealth cards.  Jared had put a 
  Judgement: Camarilla Segregation into play, much to the consternation
  of myself and Robert.  In the meantime, Robert had swatted Delilah 
  Easton and Tatiana Romanov into torpor with ease, and was poised to run
  through Stephen with weenie bleeding.  

  I wasn't at all interested in seeing anyone but myself getting a VP,
  and I was even less interested in having to be a rush combat deck's
  prey, so bailing out Stephen was the plan.  I've often found that 
  forcing a rush deck to repeatedly play whack-a-mole with its prey's 
  minions is a great way to slow it down, so I rescued Tatiana from torpor.
  Jared followed up by 5th-tradding Tatiana, and for the moment, Stephen
  was saved.  I also noticed that Robert seemed rather confused by the
  rescuing of Tatiana, and was trying to figure out what the table 
  dynamics were and where to apply his pressure.  I made a mental note of
  that and went back to figuring out how to deal with my hand jam.

  In the midst of the bailout of Stephen, Jared transferred out Volker.
  Combined with Donal O'Connor, he now had vote lock, and started pounding
  away at Robert.  Unsurprisingly, Robert beat the unliving crap out of 
  Volker, sending both he and (I think) Agatha to torpor.  He then 
  burned Agatha to burn the Camarilla Segregation.  With Jared weakened,
  Trey was able to make some progress against him, and was poised to oust
  him in a couple of turns.  Jared asked for help, and Stephen obliged by
  Con-Booning Brujah, giving Jared 3 pool.  Somewhere along the line, I 
  think I got hit by a KRC or something 'cause Jared and Stephen noticed
  I had too much pool after harvesting my Blood Dolls and laying low.

  Stephen also decided that he really didn't like having to stand in front
  of Robert's combat deck anymore, and attempted to call a Dramatic 
  Upheaval.  This frightened me to no end, as this could very well have
  resulted in a combat deck becoming _my_ predator, and I had no control
  over it.  Stephen in fact decided that he wanted to switch places with
  Robert, much to my panic.  Much table discussion ensued, and I think
  Robert at one point made the threat that he'd have to keep attacking
  Stephen anyway, even if Stephen became his predator.  Still, Stephen
  decided that the terms were to be switching with Robert.  Hoping that
  I could either draw a Dramatic Upheaval soon enough, or that they might
  be dissuaded from passing the vote at all, I played a Malkavian Rider
  Clause on the vote.  This resulted in a lengthy extension of the 
  discussion of the vote, and eventually Trey got fed up with it all and
  played Delaying Tactics.  Awwwww.  :)

  Seemingly irritated that Stephen was a voting force to be reckoned
  with, Robert returned Tatiana to torpor.  Stephen got her back out
  of torpor, and Robert sent her right back there again.  With Robert
  again set to bleed out Stephen, I rescued her again.  Stephen decided
  that he really had enough of being Robert's prey, and called the
  delayed Dramatic Upheaval vote.  Panic again set in with me, as I had
  no control over this situation, and I knew how badly things could go
  for me.  However, I was relieved when Stephen chose to switch with
  Trey, presumably to get as far away from Robert as possible.

  This set up a new table dynamic, where Robert wasn't as keen on 
  assaulting his new prey's vampires.  Because he was reduced to a 
  small amount of pool, Robert wasn't able to continue bringing out
  more Potence weenies, and he only had 4 in play.  Trading vampires
  one-for-one with Trey's Wolf Clawing minions was really not what
  Robert had in mind.  As a result, Trey was more open to be able to
  bleed me than Stephen was, and I had an annoying amount of pressure
  on me.  I was approaching striking distance of ousting Stephen, but
  I felt that I needed to do it in one shot.  I continued with the same
  plan of just bleeding for one with one or two minions, hoping to get
  Stephen down to 7 or so, where I felt I could make my attempt to oust
  him.  I also transferred 3 down to Gilbert Duane, and left him there
  for a while, not wanting to appear too strong, and waited for the right
  time to bring him out.  

  Jared wasn't interested in trading vampires one-for-one with Robert, 
  but still needed a way to damage him, and that meant voting.  The 
  problem was that he didn't have vote lock, due to his new predator 
  having Tatiana and potential votes in hand.  So, Jared continued 
  Tatiana's bad day by knocking her into torpor yet again.  This again
  put Jared in striking distance of Robert, and the rest of the table
  was at a loss for how to save him.  On my turn, I bled Stephen for
  a couple to bring him within ousting distance on my next turn, then 
  rescued Tatiana yet again, much to the confusion of the rest of the 
  table.  I then transferred out Gilbert, squashing Jared's voting.

  Everything written above took an hour and 45 minutes to transpire.
  An hour and 45 freakin' minutes.  There was a ton of discussion about
  the state of the table, where to apply pressure, dealmaking, and so
  on.  Everyone seemed nervous about anyone else getting a VP, and were
  determined to maintain the status quo as best they could when someone
  else was close to getting a VP.  When Stephen was getting pounded,
  the table allied against Robert.  When Robert was getting pounded, 
  the table allied against Jared.  When Jared was getting pounded, the
  table allied against Trey.  Lengthy discussions went hand in hand with
  each of these events as they unfolded.

  My pre-game assumptions about the table dynamic were being confirmed, 
  and I kept to my plan of laying low until I could pull off a one-turn 
  oust.  I was helped along this plan by a scorching case of hand jam.  
  While I gradually cleared out my hand and chipped away at my prey, the 
  rest of the table talked endlessly about how to help and hurt each other, 
  and I chimed in when the discussions weren't to my liking.  I suspected
  that Robert had a similar plan in mind, as he took a long time with each
  of his turns.  It can be tough for a fight deck to score multiple VPs,
  so getting just one VP could very well have been enough for him to win
  with things going the way they were.  Also, I noticed when it was 
  announced that 50 minutes were left that Robert's deck was more than
  halfway depleted.  His deck would blow through a good number of cards
  each time he got into combat, so I suspected that part of the reasoning
  behind his slow play was to conserve his deck.  As a result, part of my
  reasoning for rescuing Tatiana was to deplete his deck.  More importantly,
  every time I rescued Tatiana, the table would become confused, more 
  lengthy discussions about the table dynamics would ensue, and the status
  quo would be restored.  All of this worked to my favor, as I was building
  up for that one-turn oust, and the more time burned up by these
  shenanigans, the better.

  All of this careful planning and maneuvering went out the window with
  15 minutes left in the game.  Trey tapped out in front of Robert with
  only 4 pool, and blew his last Wake trying to block one of my Blood
  Dolled minions from hunting.  Robert took the chance and bled out Trey,
  gaining an extremely critical VP.  I was now facing the daunting task
  of coming up with 1 VP in the next 15 minutes, having rescued my prey's
  vampire with superior Auspex.  I had enough bleed in my hand to do it -
  assuming I wasn't Telepathically Countered or Misdirected.  I chipped
  away at Stephen some more, and Robert decided to hold back to defend
  himself from Jared to preserve his 1st-place status.

  And then, with 10 minutes to go, Stephen turned to me and told me to
  bleed him out.  I was confused, as I wasn't sure why he was doing this,
  but given what would have happened to me if I _didn't_ do it (aka 
  instant Potence smackdown), I went ahead and bled him out, getting that
  crucial VP.  As for an explanation for Stephen's decision, I think Paul
  from LA said it best when he said, "Never take away a man's hope."  

  That left 8-10 minutes in the game, and Jared and Robert unsurprisingly
  teamed up to try to take down my remaining 16 pool.  I quickly saw 3 of 
  my vampires go to torpor, and was then hit with a KRC and some bleeds. 
  However, the alliance was still rather tenuous, with Robert keeping a
  vampire untapped in case Jared tried to pull some shenanigans.  
  Fortunately for me, the longest 10 minutes of my life came to an end,
  with 6 of my pool remaining.  Robert and I finished with 1.5 VP each,
  and Jared with 0.5 VP, and I took the championship via the preliminary
  rounds' VP tiebreaker.

  I very much thank and credit Trey, Stephen, Jared, and Robert for 
  possibly the best - and most definitely the weirdest - game of V:TES I 
  have ever played.  While our deck designs certainly played a major role
  in the game, I was amazed by how much the politics and intrigue and
  decision-making truly shaped this game.

  I also thank those I played, and those I didn't, in the preliminary
  rounds for making this one hell of an experience.  Thanks to LSJ and
  Steve Weick and White Wolf for running the event and keeping the faith
  in this game.

  Shout outs to Ethan Burrow (you was robbed), Mike Perlman (never have
  I been in such fear of Enchant Kindred), Matt Hirsch for helping to
  represent Boston, and that guy who qualified with an Assamite deck.


  - Ben Peal, Prince of Boston
    fudjo@mindstorm.com