Another personal account of the tournament. Exceedingly verbose. I was playing weenie Celerity guns rush, a deck tweaked slightly from the version Colin Riggs won a DC-area tournament with. (He got 3 game wins in the prelims in that event, so it seemed like a good deck to start from. :-) Lots of Psyche, Concealed .44 Magnums, bunch of Bum's Rush, some Computer Hackings, you know the drill. First round for me was: Jerry (sorry, forgot his last name): Tremere bleed/stuff Todd Banister: Assamite fight (Contracts, Provisions) Justin Achilli: Ventrue vote/bleed Josh Duffin: CEL guns rush Joe Churchill: Lasombra w/Fortitude bleed/etc I think I offered Justin to not rush him if he didn't vote-damage me again (after he called a Conservative Agitation that did 4 to me and 1 to Todd, I think), which he agreed to. Of course, I was hoping that Todd would go ahead and destroy his vampires anyway, which he did. :-) This left me pretty much free to bleed Joe and I think I rushed his Kassiym Malikhair too to keep him from doing anything too effective. Joe ended up in sad-land; he got out Ambrosio Luis Moncada but (obviously) couldn't block, didn't feel able to bleed heavily due to Deflections that Jerry presumably had, and didn't draw enough Deflections of his own to keep from losing pool steadily. I rescued Justin's Nakova once or twice so that he wouldn't die too easily to Todd's rush/bleed onslaught (he'd Famed Justin's Jan Pieterzoon and torporized him, so we were all losing 1 a turn for that too), which worked out well for me. Jerry sat around most of the game due to not wanting to get rushed and killed by Todd as well, but when Todd's pool was low enough, he felt the need to rush backwards anyway just to make sure he didn't accidentally get bled out. So Jerry figured he might as well try to bleed since he was going to be rushed anyway... he nearly got a bleed of 9 (?) through (newly Legendary Bryan van Duesen + Govern + a Conditioning in hand, I think), but it turned out that Todd had drawn a fresh Wake when Jerry made him discard the one in his hand with Hannigan's (I think?) Revelations at inferior. Doh! Blocked and beat up again... I think I ousted Joe just before Todd ousted Justin. Somewhat key play earlier there - I rushed Todd's Nik to keep him from (a) being able to diablerize and (b) having a third vampire to bleed/do stuff with. I think this actually did slow Todd down enough to be pretty significant in the long run. Anyway, Jerry was also in pretty bad shape due to having been rushed a lot, so I think he didn't last too long after that; when it came down to me and Todd, I already had out enough .44s that he had trouble staying out of torpor when we got in fights (since his vamps were low on blood too), and it only cost him more to keep rescuing. Josh 4, Todd 1, Justin/Jerry/Joe 0. Second round: Mike Ooi: Dementation/Animalism bleed/Coma/untap/stuff David Cherryholmes: Princely stuff + Burning Wrath/Amaranth/get burned in bloodhunt ;-) Conor Key: Ahrimanes block/fight/stuff Oscar Garza: Marcus Vitel/other bleed/vote? Joshua Duffin: You know what. This game went very badly for me in the first few turns, but not quite as badly as it went for David... you may have read about the "I'll just go ahead and play this Amaranth on my prey's only vampire and surely someone will save me" fiasco in his report. :-) I was thinking, of course, that I didn't want David getting ridiculously strong and being invincible by the time I got to him. Little did I know that I would never get to him. Couldn't draw a .44 to go with my Concealed Weapons for at least 20 cards this round... which led to my getting Comaed by Mike and Entombed by Oscar in the first few turns of the game. One of my torporized vampires got diablerized and the other (Sarah Brando) was Graverobbed... and started bleeding me for 2 due to Marcus Vitel vs my "what do you mean I'm in the Camarilla?!" Antoinette Duchamp. Doh! I totally should have contested Sarah. :-) Later on, I got some guns but was so low on pool that I couldn't really do anything but try to stay alive by rushing backwards and cajoling Conor into keeping pressure on Oscar. I nearly ousted Mike with Fame + some bleeds later in the game, but couldn't quite pull it off as he blocked just enough actions to make me fail. Oscar then ousted me, then Mike, then Conor. Mike had ousted David before that. I was sad. Oscar 4, Mike 1, Josh/David/Conor 0. Third round: Joshua Duffin: Same as it ever was. Andy, err, sorry, forgot your last name too: Nu the Pillar multi-rush - Protean support (Flesh of Marble) Christian Herro: Tremere bleed/some bruise (Mumble of the False Will ;-) Matt Guinn: Ventrue like it's 1994 old-school vote/bleed David, um, sorry, I forgot your last name as well: Arika vote/bleed/bloat deck, presumably. My predator got out Arika which was scary, but he agreed readily to not hurting me in exchange for not preemptively vaporizing her, tried to get some Govern down/Enchant down action going, but got blocked some by Matt with Second Traditions, couldn't get anything going votewise, and I think he had several of the same vamps in his uncontrolled as Matt did. Problematic. Plus he was taking some vote/ bleed damage from Matt, who got out two of the three classic Law Firm early I think (Bridges and Crowley?). Andy Famed Xian's Carna but didn't use it before I played one on Andy's Badger to contest. Andy reduced Xian's pool some; I'm not really sure what Xian was doing since the far side of the table was really far away this game. I know Xian was getting beat up some and rescuing. I had to fight Andy a few times too - I actually rushed Badger once, torporized her, then she got Giant's Blood and got herself out. Doh! Had to get her again later. This meant Andy wasn't all that effective at going forward but he was still pretty hard to kill. Anyway... David succumbed to the voting/bleeding onslaught and I started needing to rush backwards some (though I think I made the "threat deal" at least one or two turns to avoid having to do that) but was still reducing Andy's pool some. I was contesting Fame with him this whole time to keep us both losing pool too. But then after Matt did a couple other nasty things (I forget what, another Domain Challenge maybe?) that Xian needed to block, he got a Kindred Restructure off to switch me and Andy (so Andy became his prey and I became Andy's prey, Xian being my prey). Doh!! If only I'd had some Direct Interventions in my deck... I had been about to oust Andy and then probably Xian; instead, I was skipped, Andy got another turn immediately, and although I was still able to oust Xian to stay alive, Matt ousted Andy the next turn. After that, I rushed Matt's vamps mercilessly but it was still pretty tough to put them down and keep them down, since he had Elysium and some of my vamps were Camarilla and I didn't actually have an *infinite* supply of Psyche. :-) I got all but Ranjan Rishi into torpor while I was at 4 pool and committed an act of astounding stupidity which I kicked myself for as soon as I ended my turn. I had five vamps in play and four of them were tapped from rushing to keep his other vamps (Timothy Crowley was back after being diablerized, I think) from killing me. I was thinking that if he had another Domain Challenge, I'd be dead with either 4 or 5 tapped, so I might as well go ahead and bleed. Somehow in the heat of that though, I forgot that he might not have any stealth to use on a bleed for 4 and that I could have blocked such a thing to win the game. Instead I tapped Parmenides to bleed for 1, and Ranjan bled me for 4 with Conditioning to oust me. Double doh!! Matt 4, Josh 1, Xian/Andy/David 0. So I qualified for the Continentals in about 8th place, but if I had been smart, I might've gotten to play in the finals. Ah well, stupid is my middle name. :-) Thanks again, Jeff, for running the event, it was lots of fun. And thanks to everyone else for helping make it so much fun. Here's my decklist, in case anyone's curious. I played it the "all-rush" way as opposed to Ben Peal's "auspicious" version. How surprising, huh? hehehe. crypt (12 vamps): 1 Antoinette Duchamp cel 1 1 Nik cel 1 1 Carter cel 2 1 Angel cel 2 1 Kanya Akhtar cel 2 2 Sarah Brando CEL 3 2 Parmenides CEL 4 +1 strength 1 Victor Tolliver CEL 4 2 Jimmy Dunn CEL 4 library (90 cards): 3 Blood Doll 3 Celerity 2 Dreams of the Sphinx 3 Fame 2 Haven Uncovered 1 The Barrens -- 14 14 Bum's Rush (probably could have had some Ambush) 8 Computer Hacking -- 22 9 .44 Magnum -- 9 9 Concealed Weapon 2 Blur 8 Pursuit 7 Side Strike 13 Psyche! 5 Taste of Vitae 1 Fast Hands -- 45 Josh i... ALSO... like to live dangerously...