Kingston Penitentiary Usage Data?

Five tournament winning decks with Kingston Penitentiary (one copy each):

• [url=http://www.secretlibrary.info/index.php?deck=view&id=5684[/url]NAC Qualifier Colorado 2011: Weenie Animalism Wall[/url] -- Burt Sheldon -- Mar 5, 2011
• Texas Qualifier 2010: Giovanni Real Estate -- Michael Leonard -- Jun 26, 2010
• Plagues Of Egypt - Swarm: Saulot the Puppeteer -- Adrianna Pinska -- Jan 5, 2008
• Communal Haven: TempleCon: Deploy the Hannibal -- Oscar Garza -- Jan 27, 2006
• Great Lakes Qualifier: Legacy of Pander -- Jay Kristoff -- Apr 23, 2005

Excellent feedback all, thank you!

I had originally thought the tap effect was not useful, but have now read it properly, which is when I came here to start the thread.

I got to use it once, with a tremere combat deck. unfortunately I got out-combatted and couldn't drain my prey's vampires. I think it only got me 1 pool from my grand-predator, as a "don't get ousted" pity gift.

Unless you're losing 4 pool to play Parity Shift, you probably need to engineer a situation where vampires are low on blood. Young Bloods, Hunger Moon, combat, stuff like that. preferably forcing your prey to tap it to oust them faster. You may not be able to control who uses it, but sometimes it's okay to let your prey get a blood so they can keep their forward pressure. just don't let them oust.

it's 2 pool for the HG effect, so if other players use it twice you've at least broken even. if it's your prey, only once is still not bad (you paid 1 extra and your prey lost 1)

also consider that it's one of the three generic hunting grounds any clan (e.g. bloodlines) can use, next to Club Zombie (4 pool) and Threestar Cab Company (3 pool). if you feel like you need a HG in the first place, it's got to compete with those two.


alternate "protection racket" strategy: slap it on the table. find a suitable player to threaten every turn. if they don't give you a pool, you're gonna rush their best vampire to torpor.

Dervish wrote:

I've always liked this card, I played in in the release but since then, it never makes the cut. Anyone have anything good to say about it?

Yeah, I can't imagine that it sees much actual play. I mean, granted, there is one actually in play in one of the JOL tournament games I'm in currently, played by some sort of pot/ani/Anarch weenie deck, but the deck doesn't seem to be doing so hot, so I can't imagine that the Funky Kingston is going to help much.

At 4 pool for a non clan hunting ground that might gain you a pool once and a while, it is just not a good card. In theory, as it could gain you all sorts of pool (due to people paying you a pool every turn around the table to give their guy a blood), but I can't imagine that someone will pay you that pool particularly often. I'd imagine that gaining 1 pool from Funky Kingston a game would be on the top end of the "does that ever actually happen?" curve. And I suspect that most games, it won't gain you any pool at all, at which point it is just a 4 pool hunting ground.

Having it in Parity Shift decks (as noted) might be worth doing, but Club Zombie is probably a generally better bad master card that costs 4 pool. And a Secret Horde (assuming you can count) is generally better than either for this particular purpose.

Maybe in some sort of hilarious Santaleous (the guy who gets +1 bleed for each HG in play) deck?

Yeah, Funky Kingston is just a mostly bad card.

Haze wrote:

I got to use it once, with a tremere combat deck. unfortunately I got out-combatted and couldn't drain my prey's vampires. I think it only got me 1 pool from my grand-predator, as a "don't get ousted" pity gift.

Sheesh. At that rate, just play Extremis Boon!

it gets played a fair amount locally - but that's only as a sort of running joke. Our playgroup is about an hour away from the real Kingston Pen...