TWD and Finals report: Member of the Entourage

Ashur wrote:

Great work winning with this type of deck!

Ira wrote:

5) Doesn't appear frightening

Isn´t this kind of the same as "bad deck"

Not in my opinion. I think "bad decks" are either decks that reduce the amount of fun that people have when playing, or decks that have a very low chance of winning. For example, any deck that annihilates other players very quickly fits one definition of "bad deck," because now that VTES isn't published, I think people mostly play for fun. We don't have valuable tournament prizes. People often travel long distances to play games. If we generally have people playing the most brutal decks, kill fast or get killed, I think that's bad for the game as a whole. Yes, sometimes we can have decks like that, but there are plenty of times those decks don't win - get a VP or two and then die. It's not like you need to play a deck like that to win, so why choose it?

The other definition of "bad deck" is a deck that can't reasonably expect to win. Given how much table dynamics impact the situation, I think that bar is pretty low.

Ashur wrote:

Ira wrote:

ignore your predator as much as possible

How do you manage to do this? In Sweden this is most often a) 4 guys with DOM or b) Beast and Theo Bell

We had much more variety of deck types in this tournament, not just bleed or POT rush combat. My predators were:
Rd 1: Shambling Hordes + Cry Wolf (prey was Pariah rush)
Strategy: Avoid pissing off my prey so he would go forward. Save combat ends, Nehsi, wakes for Nehsi, Entrancement, and Set's Curse for predator. Golconda when my minions eventually go down. Got the GW.

Rd 2: Gwendolyn toolbox (prey was a Wall deck)
This would have been a very bad game for me, but my predator got taken out early by his predator. My prey made a mistake so I was able to oust him, but normally this would be a 0.5 VP or 0 VP game.

Rd 3: Big Cap vote deck (Prey was a Ven grinder deck with AUS)
This was a 0.5 VP game for me. Prey didn't leave any openings, game timed out.

So 1 GW and 4.5 VPs was enough to make the finals of a small (15 person) tournament. I was actually first seed going in. Three people had 1 GW 4.5 VPs, but I had the most TPs.

Finals: Bruise Bleed deck (prey was vote deck multiact)
I definitely didn't expect to win. I just bloated as much as possible, avoided combat when I could, went to torpor and rescued otherwise. In this game, I actually made a few mistakes blocking as many actions from my predator as I did. When dealing with a Bruise Bleed deck that doesn't have built in rush on his or her minions, it's better to take the bleeds as long as possible.


I hope this helps!

Ira wrote:

5) Doesn't appear frightening

I think this is total metagame thing but I really don't understand how you can't appear frightening with that deck. You are bringing constantly new minions with OBF and DOM and everybody knows what those minions are capable. You can of course say that I'm not playing with Conditioning or Governs but I don't see how your prey would trust that and why you shouldn't include them. Also predator just bloating and bringing cheap new guys with DOM is the most frightening thing I can imagine my predator doing.

I agree if you say not appearing frightening is same as letting your prey play the game. That is how you win Vtes but everybody should still know you are getting lot of bleeds in your face later even if your predator just builds up many turns and plays "not frightening". I just don't understand good players letting that deck build up and ignore it. But your metagame might be slower and casual.

Surreal wrote:

Ira wrote:

5) Doesn't appear frightening

I think this is total metagame thing but I really don't understand how you can't appear frightening with that deck. You are bringing constantly new minions with OBF and DOM and everybody knows what those minions are capable. You can of course say that I'm not playing with Conditioning or Governs but I don't see how your prey would trust that and why you shouldn't include them. Also predator just bloating and bringing cheap new guys with DOM is the most frightening thing I can imagine my predator doing.

I agree if you say not appearing frightening is same as letting your prey play the game. That is how you win Vtes but everybody should still know you are getting lot of bleeds in your face later even if your predator just builds up many turns and plays "not frightening". I just don't understand good players letting that deck build up and ignore it. But your metagame might be slower and casual.

As I said in my original post, I think I failed on that design point. For all the reasons you mentioned, I think it does build up into a frightening deck. If you look at Jay's original deck, it has about as many bleed boosts and forward actions as my deck, but people don't think about Loss bleeds for 3, and they definitely think about Govern bleeds for three.

Regarding the decision to let this deck build up, part of the issue is that it requires intercept or rushes to stop it. Also, if you have limited resources and you spend them beating down this deck, then your prey gets away from you, your grand predator gets an easy oust, and you still have a predator. I agree that it's often good to look backwards, but I think plenty of good players would make reasonable decisions focus on his or her prey, let this deck build up, hoping that my predator would keep me in check, and enjoying the lack of pressure while it lasted.

Ira wrote:

Not in my opinion. I think "bad decks" are either decks that reduce the amount of fun that people have when playing, or decks that have a very low chance of winning. For example, any deck that annihilates other players very quickly fits one definition of "bad deck," because now that VTES isn't published, I think people mostly play for fun. We don't have valuable tournament prizes. People often travel long distances to play games. If we generally have people playing the most brutal decks, kill fast or get killed, I think that's bad for the game as a whole. Yes, sometimes we can have decks like that, but there are plenty of times those decks don't win - get a VP or two and then die. It's not like you need to play a deck like that to win, so why choose it?

The other definition of "bad deck" is a deck that can't reasonably expect to win. Given how much table dynamics impact the situation, I think that bar is pretty low.

It is how you play the deck. Just going full speed forward in first turns is almost always bad play but not necessary a "bad deck". You win by letting other players play. People play rarely "the most brutal decks" here because those decks can be very bad. But people play "good decks" in here and you can get ousted very quickly. For me playing with "good decks" is the most entertaining and game feels very well balanced. There is huge amount of good tournament meta decks anyway. When somebody brings the Frederick the Weak multi rush deck to table the game suddenly gets very unbalanced and not fun or entertaining. So I feel I would decrease fun form everybody when playing with that deck. I enjoy when everybody really tries to win and plays "more serious decks". That is fun also and don't understand how it cannot be. So this is metagame thing.

If I may speak for Ira a little (since I was there)... the key to the 'not frightening' was the innocuous initial actions taken, i.e. gain two pool with Dark Mirror of the Mind, Mesu Bedshet etc. and then knowing when to stop.

Obviously if you are the predator, you should block the gaining pool actions but I don't think Ira was ever in that situation.

Consider the possible situations of blocking as the prey: [this is a good lesson in the hypothetical, not really for the tournament.]
Example: He has 3 minions:
1st action - gain 2 pool
If at low pool - let it go, he's trying to survive and I may need to block future actions
If at high pool - what's two more pool, I need to block his other actions.
2 action - same situation... I'll get him on the next action!
but... no third action. Turn ends.

Now, hindsight is 20/20, but probably one wants to block the first action early on. He won't lunge because its early on in the game, and he might have to do something like rescuing if you catch him.

Personally I think Ira's play was very good, and it gave me an idea for a blog post that I'm working on. Well done.