[VEG] Italian Grand Prix, BOlogna - 9th 10th December

I ended 6th and 7th :'(

I was a very nice tournament with a large friendly attendance. As usual, there was a lot of "kill your prey" stubbornness that make simple or natural deals impossible to pass. For instance, my little prey (6 pool, playing a Neferu / Cybele deck) declines a Banishment on his predator's Marcus Vittel while at 8 pool. The predator plays also Amaravati and quite a lot of Dominate. Instead He'd rather have his predator call a Parity Shift on the Setite's prey Martin and leave the 5 to his predator. That would leave Martin at 4 pool but Martin has 2 vampires that can deflect (it's a Create Gargoyle deck that didn't do anything in the game).
So on the next turn, my prey who "can't play at all without Marcus Vittel" (according to him) plays a Zillah's, call a Parity Shift to get the 5 pool, and brings out Orlandus to gain the vote lock. On the following turn, he kills the Setite and Martin.

In my opinion, the clever thing to do is to accept the Banishment (because we've been voting together and we need to continue to do so against Marcus/Amaravati and also my predator who is also playing vote) so he's safe(r) and has more free hands to oust his prey.
If he fears that I can kill Marcus with that, he can negotiate some no-aggression until he ousts the Gargoyle deck, I'd happily accept that. I can even help him doing that because his prey is sadly of no use on the table.
Instead of that, he deals with his predator who can be really aggressive against one of his allies, and dies two turns after that because of this pool deal.

(As a reminder, the goal of the game is not ousting your prey at all cost. It's to maximize your VPs, a goal that can take many different routes.)

Aside of that, I had two terrible rounds on the second day with twice a non-existing grand-predator. The first time, it was a Appolonius deck that never brang out Appolonius and spent the entire game drawing vampires.
The second time it was Martin's deck that brang out Gargoyles, did one rush and stopped there.
When this is the case, it's really hard to do anything in a game because your predator has no pressure at all and you have to defend yourself all game long.

thelonius wrote:

As long as the complains are about game situations and not organizational issues, I'm happy.

I found the organization very good, thanks Simone!