Hi,
Since I have been mentioned a few times, here is the reasoning behind my game. If it came to that, from the moment Saulot gets contested there are two choke points at the table. While I wanted to oust my prey, I could not afford a prolonged contest since that would have helped only Steffan. From my decklist you can see that my deck bleeds only for one at pretty much all times and that I relied on politics and crescendos to make things work for me. Now, If I let Steffan get too strong he would have had a complete vote lock on the table. Therefore, I wanted the table to collapse as soon as possible. As for Anton, I could not allow myself to be bled for 3 each turn since at that point I had no reliable pool gain (I influenced for 18 to start with). So, saying that, I did not want to allow Anton to bleed me out almost dry so I get one shot at taking my prey out, and failing that, Anton could have possibly killed both of us. I threatened him that if he did not stop bleeding me every turn I would sit back and let him and Tomasz contest Saulot until they both die. That is when he lunged forward and got his Saulot killed, a move that pretty much ended his game. At that point I had a reckless agitation in my hand and enough stealth to call it and would have taken out my prey for sure if he influenced his Saulot and paid the scarce penalty. After Anton's rush, I had to lay back for another turn and eventually got the oust but at that point I had to damage my cross table buddy in order to get it. Since Anton had only Neighbor John now and my grandpredator being under constant pressure the inevitable followed and I was soon in a one on one situation.
After staying one on one vs Steffan and with him at 20+ pool I knew that I had a very little chance to win with unleash hell's fury on the table, my own empty vampires and without a full complement of allies. I managed to get all of his vamps to torpor but without enough bleed power he just influenced more. Had I survived another turn, I planned to sacrifice Unmada to the agg damage from Unleash, diablerize another minion in torpor so that does net Steffan another 8-11 pool and then I would only need to defend only one more action from Leandro (Since Leandro would have lost about half his blood every time he got blocked due to damage from allies + FBI + target vitals).
In the end, I was quite happy with the result since 1VP was exactly what I needed to start with. Once again, I'd like to emphasize that my deck needs the table to flow correctly and that the potential Saulot contest just put me in a position where my hand was kind of forced. I believe Anton made a mistake here because I was the only other player at the table who wanted to actively help him oust the other Saulot and that he should have just stayed put, he should not have bled me and he should have just let me get a VP and then I would have hit a 30+ pool barrier I could not have hoped to get past.
Best regards,
Djordje
My EC FCQ report.
