TWD (Very late!) National Championship Portugal 2012

Very late Report, but I was completely swamped for the last couple of months.
Although for good reasons.
Besides, me being the winner, made this report go down a bit on the huge stack of things to do.


Portuguese National Championship 2012
Lisboa, Portugal
December 15th, 2012
12 Players
3R + F

Deck Name: Better Gents, Same Sticks, No Parity Shifts. Ever.
Author: Tiago Brum
Description: Govern Superior as much as possible.
Most times, people don't see this deck as the table threat, even after 4 minions.
I think it's because players have irrational fears of stealth, big cap vampires, players with vote lock, pure rush, walls...
I'm happy with list. Almost the same list that I took to the Final of EC 2012.

Crypt (12 cards; Capacity min=3 max=8 avg=5.83)
===============================================
1x Emily Carson 5 for pre DOM Ventrue:5
2x Graham Gottesman 7 obf pre tha DOM FOR Ventrue:5
1x Jephta Hester 5 aus DOM FOR !Ventrue:4
1x João Bilé 5 pre DOM FOR Ventrue:4
1x Keith Moody 3 DOM !Tremere:4
3x Lodin (Olaf Holte) 8 aus pro DOM FOR PRE Ventrue:5
1x Mustafa, The Heir 6 cel dom FOR PRE Ventrue:4
1x Ulrike Rothbart 3 dom for !Ventrue:4
1x Victor Pelletier 5 cel dom for PRE Ventrue:4

/* Crypt is fine.
Mary Anne Blaire is bad in this deck. Takes a long time to influence and would require Freak Drives to use properly. Rather have 2 vampires by the same time I would have Mary.
*/

Library (81 cards)
==================
Master (13)
1x Anarch Troublemaker
1x Blood Doll
1x Channel 10
2x Dreams of the Sphinx
1x KRCG News Radio
1x Misdirection
1x Papillon
2x Pentex(TM) Subversion
1x Powerbase: Montreal
2x Vessel

Event (2)
1x Scourge of the Enochians
1x Uncoiling, The

/* Consciously not using Scourge of the Enochians in the EC was probably one of my worse mistakes in VtES ever.*/

Action (14)
14x Govern the Unaligned

/* 14 is the new 10 */

Equipment (2)
1x Heart of Nizchetus
1x Ivory Bow

Ally (1)
1x Carlton Van Wyk (Hunter)

Retainer (1)
1x Mr. Winthrop

Action Modifier (8)
3x Bonding
3x Conditioning
2x Daring the Dawn

Reaction (20)
7x Deflection
2x Delaying Tactics
3x On the Qui Vive
1x Redirection
7x Second Tradition: Domain

/* The quantity of bounce allows for the combat to be more offensive.
Second Tradition and Lodin are even more awesome together.
Might add an 8th Second Tradition.
*/

Combat (17)
5x Hidden Strength
4x Indomitability
3x Rolling with the Punches
5x Weighted Walking Stick

Combo (3)
3x Murmur of the False Will

/*Great card here. 90% of the time, used for bleed, but even more usefull those 10% of times you need to bounce a Giovanni or Kyasid mega bleeder.*/

Created with Secret Library v0.9.4a. (Feb 22, 2013 13:36:41)




Final Table:

Me (Ventrue Grinder)
Eliseu Ângelo (Kyasid Stealth n Bleed)
Ricardo Marta (Girls Will Find aids)
José "Zedú" Rodrigues (Rachel Brandywine)
André Catarino (G4 IC Counsil of Doom)


Tried to sit in a place were people didn't block my Sup Governs.
Besides a kickass opening hand, in turn 4 or 5 my Predator made a small mistake and a huge mistake. Both in a row.
Lets just say he was left with no vampires and 21 pool.

I had Deflections and Delaying Tactics, but still it was a game changer.
By this time my Prey had 5 minions with dom, mit and obt and Ricardo was in trouble.
I Pentexed Rachel to protect my Pool Cushion of a Predator. Ricardo had to go backwards as much as he could, so Zedu would eventually get his VP.
Ricardo was ousted eventually, but so was my Prey, who had little to no blood in his vamps after ousting Ricardo and had to tap out to try to oust Zedu.
Before dying, my Prey made a Golconda on a recently freed Rachel. Zedu decided lots of pool was better than Rachel + Victoria.
Everybody thought 30 min was little time and maybe Zedu thought that 1 VP would be enough, being top seed.

The thing is - the game went suddently from 5 to 3 player and each turn around the table took much less time.
After ousting Eliseu it was innevitable to oust Zedu.
5 or 6 minions Vs Victoria and Gregor Anderssen.
Zedu kept playing fast, even when time would give him Victory. A gentleman.

It was a pleasure playing with these gentlemen, although my Predator's mistake took some fun out of it.
I also made at least one mistake by tapping everyone when I should've left one minion untapped to stop Victoria from breaking Rachel's Pentex.
I might've gotten one more VP in the Final.

Hope everybody had fun.
3 new people qualified for next EC and hope to go with me, so that's very cool too.

Cheers!
Tiago, NC^2 for Portugal

Brum wrote:

in turn 4 or 5 my Predator made a small mistake and a huge mistake. Both in a row.
Lets just say he was left with no vampires and 21 pool.

So what was the mistake, specifically?

Brum wrote:

I'm happy with list. Almost the same list that I took to the Final of EC 2013.

EC 2012 I think

Ira wrote:

Brum wrote:

in turn 4 or 5 my Predator made a small mistake and a huge mistake. Both in a row.
Lets just say he was left with no vampires and 21 pool.

So what was the mistake, specifically?

He had 2 Inner Circles with 1 and 2 blood each.
Mistake #1: he did bigger Villeins than he needed.
Mistake #2: The one with 1 blood tried to hunt. His rationale was that I had used many 2nd Traditions already and wouldn't try to block this.
My rationale was that, worse case scenario, it would be nice to make him use blood, either by Elder Impersonation, Forgotten Labyrinth or Majesty. Blocked and torporized Rafael.
Mistake #3: Adana diablerizes Rafael. André is a competitive player for 2 to 3 years, who has been out of VtES for about 9 months.
Also, he was probably very tired.
We asked "Are you sure??? You know we're gonna toast Adana, right???"
"Yeah, I'm sure!". Later we said he thought Rafael could still vote...
On his own words - "If the game goes too well, or not well at all, I lose my concentration and do stupid mistakes".
He had another Rafael on the uncontrolled area, but me and his Predador voted for Rafael to toast.

So I ended up with 3 cards I couldn't cycle for a few turns, but it was obviously a good trade off.

Brum wrote:

Zedu kept playing fast, even when time would give him Victory. A gentleman.

Isn't it a pity that this behaviour seems to be a rare virtue in these times?

Well done, Zedu, even if this cost you the final.

Sometimes players are less in control of the speed they play than one might think.
Looking at the footage of last EC's Final I still surprise myself how slow I played, because when I was there I thought I was playing normally fast.
It was totally involuntary.
The extra table talk was because I was nervous, being my first big Final and all. Maybe my slow speed was also because of that.

BTW, extra kudos to Zedú, because he's starting to become more and more experienced and isn't afraid to contact people much more experienced than him for tips on his favorite decks.

Many players see guys like Hugh, the Brothers, or other top players as inaccessible champions who deserve reverence and should be dealt with at a distance.
I've never met anyone in this game like that.