TWD: Australian / NZ Continental Championship - 07.10.12

Australian / NZ Continental Championship
Melbourne, Australia
October 7, 2012
26 players
3R + F
vekn.net/index.php/event-calendar/event/6763

Deck Name: Cute Little Stone Babies

Author: Stuart Jaques

Description:
Gargoyle breeder deck.

[Based on a 2006 TWD deck, Godzilla, by François de Champlain; & tweaked over the past year].

Uses combo of low-cap non-slave & (!Trem) slave Gargoyles to create a swarm of Hatchlings, with a few !Trems to play Create Gargoyle to accelerate the process, plus play the 2 Deflections. Create Gargoyle works very well in this, as they can come with 2 blood to create a baby next round; though v good at the start & less useful towards the end.

Most minions are Sabbat, so the Hungry Coyote is awesome if it gets into play (but not essential). Tribute saved me in every game. The combo of slave & non-slave minions was great - typically only hv 1-3 slaves, so even if the !Trem went down, with roughly 10 minions out after 6-7 rounds it's less critical. The slave defence of acting !Trems is always handy.

Initial setup is obviously critical, so deals were required to enable both survival & the first few breed actions to succeed. Generally this was automatic after being mauled by heavy bleeding decks.

May need more Rush cards - strong bleeding predators are a major threat & i needed to be heavily supported in 2 games against a Dom predator & a Dem predator. In the 2nd table, I again had a heavy bleeding pred, which i partly disabled due to a slightly lucky draw of Rush when needed. Similarly on the 3rd table, & i still needed some help to break the !Malks - even a single 3 bleed each round is quickly fatal.

Consequently, other bloating tech may be needed. Especially as Tribute unfortunately disables most of my minions for 1 round (for a gain of 7-10 pool, so i'm not complaining).

Creepshow was of no use the whole day, however it was only by chance i had virtually no intercept around me most of the time. In theory, the nasty combat that the Gargs crank out should deter many blockers.

Codex helped win games. May not have been necessary, but a bleed for 4 greatly accelerates acquiring VPs!


On combat - worked very well. All free cards using Visc. It cranks outs plenty of Agg, with sufficient prevention to survive a fair amount of combat, even on zero blood; and sufficient maneuvers & presses to keep going & catch range opponents. Didn't hit any Fortitude opponents. Swarm attrition is meant to overcome most prevention & S:CE, or any other trickiness. Even worked moderately well against an Ahrimanes wall deck (grandprey) in the final.


Crypt (Capacity min=2 max=5 avg=3.67; 12 cards)

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1x Brooke 3 dom tha !Tremere:2

1x Ember Wright 3 aus dom !Tremere:3

3x Erinyi 3 pot vis Gargoyle:2

1x Fidus, The Shrunken Beast 4 for tha vis Gargoyle:2

1x Heinrick Schlempt 2 tha !Tremere:2

2x Obsidian 5 for pot VIS Gargoyle:2

2x Pugfar 5 aus for vis POT Gargoyle:2

1x Saiz 3 aus dom !Tremere:3




Library (90 cards)

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Master (14 cards)

1x Anarch Troublemaker

1x Coven, The

2x Creepshow Casino

1x Fame

3x Haven Uncovered

1x Hungry Coyote, The

1x KRCG News Radio

4x Tribute to the Master




Action (26 cards)

1x Aranthebes, The Immortal

5x Create Gargoyle

5x Dive Bomb

14x Hatchling

1x Raw Recruit




Equipment (1 cards)

1x Codex of the Edenic Groundskeepers




Action Modifier (6 cards)

4x As the Crow

2x Mirror Walk




Reaction (2 cards)

2x Deflection




Combat (41 cards)

7x Crawling Chamber

1x Lead Fist

14x Raking Talons

9x Rockheart

10x Stonestrength




Created with Secret Library v0.9.3. (Oct 8, 2012 08:21:11)

The finalists all qualify to play in 2013.
Any chance of seeing that list?

2013 List of Qualified Players

My bad - it was a Ani/Aus wall deck in the final as my grandprey, not an Ahrimanes.

Also another minor deck note - if the !Trem gets taken out the slaves can still make Hatchlings, which is roughly as important as any other action the minions would take.

Big thanks to Disco Stu for organising a fantastic weekend of VTES, and Steve H & Andrew C for also throwing in some awesome prize support !!

Hi Adonai,

Finalists were as follows;
Stu Jaques
Craig Love
Tony Wedd
Justin Shearer
Ben Szymkow

cheers
Disco Stu

Some comments on the Championship:

This was, to my knowledge, the eleventh Australian / NZ Championship. The reason why that appeared so evident was because the trophy fits ten names across the front of the base and we were about to start side #2.

It was the second time Melbourne has hosted the Championships. We got 26 players this time, which is one of the higher turnouts in Australia - not bad at all from a cancelled game! Players came from almost every corner of the continent, plus former champ and regular final-table-entrant Simon Reed flew across the ditch from New Zealand.

The first thing that became obvious to the assembled masses was the combat. There was a lot of it; one of the preliminary rounds had four rush decks on the same table, which got pretty harsh pretty quickly. The decks that weren't solid rush had a strong fighty angle to them, whether they were intercept-guns or Crows with Bats In Their Mouths. In all, 1/3 to 1/2 of the players were playing with something a little punchier than the typical bleedy-stealthy-votey nonsense that people so often bring to Very Important Games. That created an environment where G1 archetypes couldn't get the foothold they needed to get the necessary VPs; strong players with normally solid decks couldn't last long enough against a fighty sandwich.

After three rounds (eighteen tables), eight players had game wins. Eugene Chan, had brought a Dmitra / Count Germaine super-rushy-multi-acting combat monster and as such had booked an early flight back to Sydney on the assumption he'd be squished by weenie bleeders within the first twenty minutes of a round. As fate would have it, Eugene got two game wins and was front runner into the finals. Bad luck for Eugene, good news for sixth-seed Stu Jaques who stepped into the breach and onto the final table.

Seating was as follows:

Ben Szymkow - weenie Khazar's Diary
Tony Wedd - weenie / mid-cap ANI bats, birds and blocking
Justin Shearer - weenie AUS wall with guns
Craig Love - weenie POT rush
Stu Jaques - weenie Gargoyle breed

Spot a theme? Yep, fair to say that the table filled up very fast with minions. Also, a fair slice of mono-Discipline decks or close to. Anyhow, Ben's game quickly ground to a halt as he hit the intercept in front and the aggro-pokery from the 'goyles behind him. This was not at all helped when Craig failed to draw into sufficient rush to make a dent into the Hatchling horde and started making crazy deals with Stu J. By the time Craig found his rush, he was targeting the vitals of Ben's Giovanni. By the 90-minute mark, Stu J's flying monkeys had swarmed over the Khazar's Diary deck (which only ever got a couple of counters on it). Fifteen minutes later, Tony's Animalism deck fell too - it had all but exhausted itself fighting Justin's sniper rifle deck, which in turn had been bruised by Craig's combat. In two hours, the weeniest of the weenie decks had won. Stu J: sixth place Champion!

cheers
Disco Stu