check TWD Finnish Nationals 2018

11 Nov 2018 09:18 - 08 Sep 2022 07:40 #91792 by Otso
Finnish National Championship 2018
Espoo, Finland
November 10th, 2018
32 players
3R + F

Otso Saariluoma's tournament winning deck with 1,5 VPs in the finals.

www.vekn.net/event-calendar/event/9054

Deck Name: Girls will find... Liquidity
Author: Otso Saariluoma
Description:
With Martin's and Bram's success with the Black Jack deck, I wanted to build my own (post-Anthelios) Girls deck to try out the archetype. The way I see it, with Anthelios gone, you'll probably want more than the traditional 9 Ashurs to ensure that you won't be milling your last set. But with too many Ashurs you'll never get to the point where you can really alter your deck composition in a meaningful way with your recursion. So my answer was to go up in Liquidations. The pool gain is also helpful especially considering the nerfing of Villein.
I ended up trying out several silver bullet kind of cards that I knew would be only marginally useful, but with the idea being to mill them to the ash heap and only bring them back if needed, I thought the opportunity cost was pretty low. None of them were really critical and if I play the deck again I'll probably try to cut the deck size down to 80-ish.

Crypt (12 cards; Capacity min=8 max=11 avg=9.67)
================================================
3x Aksinya Daclau 9 cel tha ANI FOR PRE PRO !Gangrel:4
3x Cybele 10 ANI DAI OBF PRE SER THA Baali:4
1x Lucian, the Perfect 11 ANI AUS DOM OBF POT PRE Guruhi:4
1x Lutz von Hohenzollern 11 pot AUS DEM OBF PRE Malkavian:4
2x Nana Buruku 8 ANI POT PRE Guruhi:4
1x Nergal 10 AUS DAI FOR OBF PRE THA Baali:5
1x Rafael de Corazon 11 AUS CEL DOM OBF PRE Toreador:4

Library (90 cards)
==================
Master (61)
1x Archon Investigation
18x Ashur Tablets
1x Coven, The
1x Direct Intervention
2x Dreams of the Sphinx
1x Giant's Blood
1x Golconda: Inner Peace
2x Information Highway
1x Jake Washington (Hunter)
12x Liquidation
1x Metro Underground
1x Monastery of Shadows
3x Parthenon, The
2x Pentex(TM) Subversion
7x Villein
1x Wider View
6x Zillah's Valley

Event (2)
1x Narrow Minds
1x Scourge of the Enochians

Action (4)
2x Entrancement
1x Intimidation
1x Unleash Hell's Fury

Action Modifier (14)
2x Aire of Elation
2x Cloak the Gathering
2x Elder Impersonation
1x Enkil Cog
2x Faceless Night
1x Into Thin Air
2x Lost in Crowds
1x Perfect Clarity
1x Veil the Legions

Reaction (4)
2x Delaying Tactics
1x Guard Dogs
1x Lost in Translation

Combat (4)
4x Majesty

Combo (1)
1x Hide the Mind

Created with Secret Library v0.9.4e. (Nov 11, 2018 08:58:45)


With the printing of the new cards the Finnish Vtes community has certainly become more active. The attendance was highest since 2013 with 32 players. To my knowledge, we had three players with the unnamed decks, two with Budapest circle Blood sisters and two Malgorzata decks. Apart from that, the meta was the traditional mix of archetype decks and personal brews.

In the prelims I managed to squeeze out 3 GWs. With bloat and decent defense I was able to build my own game and take over in the endgame. There were some tight spots, heated table talk and memorable moments, but here I'll focus more on the finals.

All the players in the finals had at least 2 GWs. After choosing our spots the seating was (with vampires brought out in respective order):

Matti (3rd seed) with DOM THA nec anarch/black hand tap and bleed with tricks
(Ian Forestal, Kurt Strauss)

--> Marko S. (4th seed) with the unnamed
(the unnamed, Xeper, Annazir)

--> Otso (1st seed) with Girls
(Aksinya, Cybele, Lutz, Lucian, Nana)

--> Juho (5th seed) with Followers of Set / Bima Presence stealth bleed
(Sisocharis, Renenet)

--> Jyri (2nd seed) with !Ventrue grinder
(Owain Evans, Blackhorse Tanner, Neighbour John)

I had a rough estimate what the other players were playing so I chose to sit between a predator and pray that I believed I could handle. The seating did pay off as all other players (maybe apart from Jyri) did seem to have some problems early on. Juho's ally recruiting shenanigans were put on hold for a few turns by Jyri's early Waiting Game. Marko's unnamed was staring down my Aksinya. Matti's first action to Govern down with Ian was blocked by unnamed and Ian was sent to torpor. He was rescued by his FoS ally, even though Marko threatened to steal Juho's potential allies with Xeper should he help out Matti. Jyri however did sniff out an opportunity and with Misdirection on Matti's Kurt Strauss he did land dom bleeds for 11-ish leaving Matti severely crippled.

In the next phase of the game the dominate players mainly tried to defend and govern down and the presence players stole each other's Bimas: Marko's Xeper stole one Bima from Juho and my Cybele stole another one, after which Juho stole back the Bima from Marko and Xeper stole the Bima from me.

As the game developed and I brought out Lutz with Enkil Cog to help out Aksinya and Cybele, Juho's demise seemed inevitable even though he only spent 9 pool during the whole game. Me and Marko were sitting with solid 15-20 pool, Jyri with around 10-12 pool, I believe, and Matti with 5-ish. Juho was ousted around the 80 minute mark after which I could have slowed down, but kept on trying to put pressure on Jyri. My Lutz was bounced all the way to Marko and got Archoned, which gave Marko vote lock with Annazir and Xeper, though we never got to see his political actions.

In the endgame, some Pentexes were thrown around, first on Lucian, then on Neighbour John. Lucian's bleed for six was deflected down to Marko, leaving him within lunging range for the DOM players. Jyri did a valiant effort to do a Daring the Dawn bleed with Blackhorse to get the last few pools from Matti, but he managed to defend himself. As Marko's unnamed was bleeding at the end of Jyri's turn, Matti urged me to take the bleed, as he knew he would be ousted if the bleed would have been bounced all the way to him and he felt he could oust Marko during his next turn. In the end, I took the bleed for 3. So Ian Forestal bled with Govern, Mirror Walk, Command of the Beast and Foreshadowing Destruction for the exact 7 that Marko had. As Foreshadowing Destruction was DI'd by Jyri, Kurt Strauss had still one Govern + Mirror walk in him to oust the Baalis. The game timeouted during my next turn, with me winning on the higher seed.

Huge thanks to the organizers, and it's really great to see the enthusiasm in the Finnish community after a long slow spell!
Last edit: 08 Sep 2022 07:40 by Ankha.

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11 Nov 2018 16:29 #91793 by Bloodartist
Awesome report! congrats for the win and thanks for taking the time to write this. Also thanks to tournament organisers and everyone who played. :)

A heretic is a man who sees with his own eyes.
—Gotthold Ephraim Lessing



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12 Nov 2018 08:44 #91795 by Lönkka
Replied by Lönkka on topic TWD Finnish Nationals 2018
Great report indeed!
Thanks for taking the time and write such a clear and informative report.

It is so great I'm going to share it in the Finnish Nationals thread at Vampire: Elder Kindred Network FB group as there are always people who don't read/miss stuff here in the forum (and vice versa). I hope you don't mind?


Otso wrote:
"To my knowledge, we had three players with the unnamed decks"

During my second game my Predator (Hannu) and Grandpredator (Noora) were contesting Unnamed; no wonder that Matti ran over both of them rather quickly with me managing only to take my Prey (Aapo) before being crushed in the heads up with Matti.

In my first game my Grandprey (Marko) was also playing an Unnamed deck, which got into finals so I can attest that at least three were present.

Finnish :POT: Politics!

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12 Nov 2018 18:11 #91814 by goronaga
Replied by goronaga on topic TWD Finnish Nationals 2018
Big thanks to Otso for writing up the final. I can add some points.

I didn’t have any information about the other decks in the finals besides Juho’s FoS feat. Bimas deck. In the third round, I had the privilege to be his prey and in that round, I kind of liked the seating order. So, I thought that lots of stealth and lots of bleed behind me might give me a chance to get one vp quickly. So, I decided not to cast any dies at the seating selections and not to take second guess what others are playing so I took my marker (a water bottle) and hit it to next to stealth bleeder.

At the last turn, Matti was in 8 pool and Otso bled him out with my help. So that’s why the final was the heads-up mode with me and Otso like nine seconds in the end. ;)
The following user(s) said Thank You: Otso

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13 Nov 2018 16:40 #91830 by Otso
Replied by Otso on topic TWD Finnish Nationals 2018
Thanks Jyri, for the addendum. Tbh I was getting pretty tired by the end and the next day I wasn't even sure if Matti got ousted or if he just would have been ousted during your next turn. So the VPs at the end were
Otso 1,5
Jyri 1,5
Matti 1
Marko 0
Juho 0

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28 Nov 2018 20:40 #92114 by Lönkka
Replied by Lönkka on topic TWD Finnish Nationals 2018
Archon aproved.

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