Information on the Finals

Greets!

So Arthur brought up an idea in another topic that I think deserves consideration from another perspective, which is information on decks in the Finals.

Information is key in most games, and this is true to VtES big time. It is not an overstatement to say, if you choose your seating wrong in a Finals, it can easily cost you the game. In smaller tournaments, where everyone knows each other, maybe built decks together, obviously this is not a problem. But in events where people show up from different towns, playgroups or even nations, this could cause serious frustration, not to mention the bigger tournaments, like ECs or GPs.

Deck scouting is a real thing, where you or one of your friends lend intel on the decks you are facing in the Finals, which grants huge advantage over players who are seating blindly (or seeing an Anarch Convert, or even a misleading vamp or imbued).

Regarding this, and the fact that surprises in decks are great tools to throw other players off, I'm not saying Finalists should share their whole decklists beforehand (that would deny a lot of interesting stuff from happening, and would totally nullify pllayers' efforts to trade consistency for high risk/high reward card useage). But perhaps a revealed crypt can be helpful? Still could ruin some fun (hmm I wonder what are 4-4 Nergal/Nergal ADV and 4 The Horde up for), but have a chance to smooth out the edges on intel going into a game, leading to a more skillful Finals? What do you think? Do you consider this a problem to be solved at all?

I think my main thought of frustration is people who are essentially playing the same crypt with the same vampires. I don't think there is any way around it.when the tournament is going. If I was running an event and knew 3 players were playing a Baron Samedi, whether it was soul gem or some other strat, I would most certainly let people know privately there are duplicate decks with the Baron. Players may stick with their decks, but arrange their crypt so they have a back up plan. On the flip side, when you do that you tip your hat to that players what they are going up against and could switch to a deck which does well against them.

Perhaps the solution is in deck construction or face the consequences.

A very difficult and almost age old question... :/

Maybe when each table ends, a judge can check the ash heap and take quick notes about the decks, and prepare a brief description about the finalist based on it.

The past few tournaments in Finland, we agreed that before finals seating each of the finalists told the archetype they are playing to other finalists. I have personally enjoyed that a lot, doesn't give too much information about the deck, but everyone has some idea of the decks others are playing.

I'm not saying its the perfect solution, but now that I have played 2 finals like that, it does make things a bit clearer and leaves a good and fair impression and feeling of the finals seating to players. Or at least to me.

A much easier solution, one which preserves the secrecy of everyone's decks, is to simply seat the final table randomly. This also has the benefit of making the final table more representative of how VTES is normally played (ie, in line with the preliminary rounds).