Danish ECQ 2012 – Tournament Report

After drinking my semi-illness away at Mikkeller Bar together with Alex, Isak, Peter, Randy, Hugh, Nikolaj and Mikkel I was relieved to wake with a slight hang-over instead of the fever-heavy head I had the last couple of mornings. Our great host Christian was frying eggs and bacon and after a hot shower I felt that this would be a fantastic day for V:tES.
The deck i chose for this tournament was one that hadn’t seen many games before. The central theme being the card Cavalier, I had no experience using it since I never drew a single copy of the card in the two games I tested the deck with but I still felt it would be fun and maybe even effective to try it out in this environment.

Deck Name : Lasombra Cavaliers
Author : Stefan Karlsson

Crypt [12 vampires] Capacity min: 8 max: 10 average: 9.25

2	Ambrosio Luis Moncada	10	DOM OBT POT PRE aus for	cardinal	Lasombra	2
2	Antonio Delgado	9	DOM OBT POT tha	archbishop	Lasombra	2
2	Francisco Domingo	9	DOM OBT POT PRE pro	archbishop	Lasombra	2
2	Gratiano	8	DOM OBT obf pot	priscus	Lasombra	2
1	Angelica, The Canonicus	10	DOM OBT POT cel obf	cardinal	Lasombra	2
1	Ayelea, The Manipulator	10	AUS DOM OBT THA pre	cardinal	!Tremere	2
1	Marcus Vitel	10	DOM FOR OBF OBT PRE	prince	Ventrue	3
1	Marconius	9	DOM MYT OBT pot	archbishop	Kiasyd	2

Library [66 cards]

Action [9]
  7x Govern the Unaligned
  2x Mind Rape

Action Modifier [20]
  3x Conditioning
  3x Private Audience
  4x Shadow Play
  4x Shroud of Absence
  2x Shroud of Night
  4x Voter Captivation

Master [21]
  5x Cavalier
  1x Coven, The
  2x Dreams of the Sphinx
  1x Elysian Fields
  1x Giant's Blood
  1x Information Highway
  1x Monastery of Shadows
  1x Pentex(TM) Subversion
  4x Villein
  4x Zillah's Valley

Political Action [11]
  1x Anarchist Uprising
  1x Ancient Influence
  1x Ancilla Empowerment
  3x Banishment
  3x Kine Resources Contested
  1x Political Stranglehold
  1x Reins of Power

Reaction [5]
  5x Deflection

I feel the strength of this deck is the crypt. 8 different vampires with good titles and superior DOM and OBT in the same grouping makes for a potentially good set-up. The idea is to play Govern the Unaligned or Mind Rape, untap with Cavalier and then play a political action. With Ambrosio’s or Antonio’s special you should even be able to have an untapped deflector at the end of the turn. All well in theory.

Round 1

1	2	3	4
David Luhaæær	Isak Esbjörnsson Bjärmark	Stefan Karlsson	Alex Ek
DEN	SWE	SWE	SWE
Hektor and Lorrie Rush	Kiasyd S/B with Masters	Lasombra Cavaliers	!Toreador Breed/Bleed

I know what Isak is playing and how very fast his deck is. Fortunately David’s deck rushes forwards and I am happy to vote for Lorrie to live both times she plays Amaranth. Alex builds up but doesn’t really get anywhere because of David having a couple of Potence weenies up each round. The Cavalier curse seems to continue and I don’t draw one this game either making my deck slow.
Eventually David needs to focus fully on defending against Alex and Isak’s recovery is going well. I manage to get Alex quite low on pool and I have two Deflections on my hand to defend my own pool, not much bigger than Alex’. Alex makes a tough call and plays Mind Numb on my untapped vampire virtually back-ousting me to buy enough time to be able to oust David before Isak secures the win in the duel.
The game looked good in the beginning but when David and I lost momentum it went downhill. Sorry for the lack of details in this report but it was a really uninspiring game for me. One fun thing I remember though from after I was out was when Alex had a Pentex on Isak’s Dame Hollerton and Isak attempted to contest it. David washes. Isak uses his master phase action with Anthelios instead to get the Pentex back on his hand and taps Parthenon to play it again. Alex plays Sudden Reversal.

Isak GW 3VP
Alex 1VP

Round 2

1	2	3	4
Stefan Karlsson	Hugh Angseesing	Jesper Woldiche	Ali Almadhi
SWE	ENG	DEN	GER
Lasombra Cavaliers	3xA + True Brujah	Stickmen	Lasombra Bruise/Bleed

This time I get my Cavalier but no crypt acceleration. Ali gets mid cap Lasombras into play and I am assuming he plays stealth/bleed. When I get Ambrosio to my ready region my first acton is to play Mind Rape on Dr. Julius Sutphen Advanced since I have no Deflections on my hand. Both Hugh and Jesper gets a slow start with a good build-up. The next round I bleed with Julius, using his blood as stealth but I get deflected. I now have Gratiano in play and he bleeds for four and Hugh plays Archon Investigation. Most of the time that card is not that bad news since it usually means your prey is playing a bad deck but not this time.
Naturally I have to struggle for survival here as Ali bleeds me some and I don’t have any bloat worth mentioning. Bleeds are sent all over the place and some of them ends up at me. I am at 11 pool with only Ambrosio untapped and Ali has three vampires with Dominate. I have two deflections on my hand so I hope for the best. Ali’s first action is to rush Ambrosio. Himself being low on pool makes this a big risk since if he taps out he will most likely die himself next turn. I try and convince him into that if he has not got what it takes to bleed me out this turn he needs to rush backwards to try and survive another round himself. Unfortunately he doesn’t agree and Ambrosio is in torpor. I convince Hugh to rescue him since he can’t get the game win if Jesper gets two Victory Points.
Jesper has a bad round and even if at lots of pool he doesn’t risk anything and stays untapped with a couple of vampires to defend against Hugh’s next round. Ali also plays defensively and I get another round. I don’t remember how but I managed to get blood on Ambrosio somehow and with help from Dreams of the Sphinx I have all three big cap-friendly vote cards in my hand. Hugh has voting power so I simply ask him which of the three he would prefer. He goes for the Political Stranglehold and I have 6 new shiny pool.
Jesper manages to oust Ali and in the next round me. I didn’t watch the duel but Hugh managed to oust for a table split.

Hugh 2VP
Jesper 2VP

Round 3

1	2	3	4	5
Rudolf Garski	Nikolaj Vang	Christian Nislev	Stefan Karlsson	Mikkel J
GER	DEN	DEN	SWE	DEN
Anson Guns with Infernal Pursuit	Shambling Hordes	Tremere/!Tremere big cap vote and bleed	Lasombra Cavaliers	Renegade Garous

No crypt acceleration again but I have several stealth cards on my starting hand. Mikkel discards a Renegade Garou first turn and I decide to keep my stealth cards to be able to do something. Christian also gets a slow start and influences Mistress Fanchon out in three turns. Nikolaj starts to build but stays pretty passive assuming that Rudolf is goíng to bleed him very hard. Later in the game Nikolaj tells us he thought Rudolf was playing the same deck he won the Danish Championships with the day before and that’s why he stayed untapped with so many minions all the time.
Mikkel realises he will have a hard time beating Rudolf’s bloat engine so he does his best to beat him in combat. One of his Garous equips with a Desert Eagle and he manages to get Anson to torpor and with my votes he is allowed to eat him. I do my actions to damage Mikkel’s pool and when Fransisco tries to bleed for 7 he reduces it with a master card to 3 and Fransisco burns.
Christian has left my pool alone mostly bloating and getting more vampires out and Mikkel is low on pool and realises he is in a lost spot. I am afraid he will go all out on my full Ambrosio with his two Garous and try and delay my oust one round (I am about to bring out Ayelea) but he instead goes all out against Rudolf and I manages to oust him the next round with a bleed. Ambrosio has Cavalier so I also manage to banish Christian’s newly influenced Malgorzata with help from Private Audience. This way I hope to be able to use Ayelea’s special on an untapped Malgorzata next round to get most benefit from it.
Rudolf rushes Ambrosio to torpor but I still have some hope to accomplish something when Mistress Fanchon instead banishes Ayelea. I talk Christian into rescuing Ambrosio from torpor in return for not using Ayelea’s special on any of his vampires for the entire game. Rudolf rushes Ayelea to torpor and plays Graverobbing so it is not hard for me to keep that deal. The next round Nikolaj Graverobbs her and has her as a threat towards Christian.
I know my game is over but I try to be stubborn and stay as long as possible. I get Rudolf to help me instead when Christian starts to seriously remove my pool. This has been a very slow game and I know timeout is near so I use all my resources to just survive. When two hours have gone I am at 1 pool with no ready minions but I have Pentex Subversion on Mistress Fanchon who is Christian’s only ready vampire.

Stefan 1.5VP
Rudolf 0.5VP
Nikolaj 0.5VP
Christian 0.5VP

Again I had a terrible tournament. My deck is not strong enogh. Sure, when I get a good turn I get a lot done but over all the deck is just to slow. I had a fun time though and especially the third game was very challenging with many turnarounds.
When I got home the first thing I did was to disassemble most of my decks and build some new, hopefully better, ones for the upcoming spring tournaments. So I guess in the end this weekend was a good learning experience and I look forward to compete again.
Big thanks to Christian, Nikolaj and Jesper for a great gaming weekend!