TWD - Loughman’s Birthday Part 1:The Eldest Command Undeath - Newark, OH

Loughman’s Birthday Part 1:The Eldest Command Undeath
Newark, Ohio
13 December 2025
Standard Constructed
3R + Finals
16 Players*

*16 players listed as playing based on my screenshot of Archon's standings after the final round; the initial player count during round 1 might've actually been 17 before a player dropping -- I will update once I confirm this detail with Alex.

www.vekn.net/event-calendar/event/12752
3GW+8VP + 4VP in finals

Final Table:
Elan: Lasombra Potence rush (older crypt) - 1VP
Mike: V5 Salubri
Will (me): Malgorzata - 4VP
Mark: V5 Lasombra Stealth Bleed
James: Capuchin + sidekicks Wall


Deck Name: Inverted Pyramid
Author: Will Matson

Crypt(12 cards, min=31, max=31, avg=10.33)

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5x Malgorzata 9 AUS DOM THA VIC pre priscus Tremere antitribu:4
4x Lord Tremere 11 AUS DOM THA ANI VIC obe Tremere:5
3x Mistress Fanchon 11 CEL AUS DOM OBF THA VIC inner circle Tremere:4

Library (78 cards)
Master (18; 1 trifle)
6x Villein
3x Dreams of the Sphinx
3x Information Highway
1x Academic Hunting Ground
1x Creepshow Casino
1x Direct Intervention
1x Giant's Blood
1x Monastery of Shadows
1x University Hunting Ground

Action (2)
2x Magic of the Smith

Equipment (4)
2x Heart of Nizchetus
1x Bowl of Convergence
1x Sniper Rifle

Action Modifier (17)
6x Changeling
6x Mirror Walk
3x Seduction
2x Conditioning

Political Action (9)
4x Banishment
2x Ancilla Empowerment
1x Anarchist Uprising
1x Kine Resources Contested
1x Reins of Power

Reaction (25)
8x Obedience
6x Eyes of Argus
5x Deflection
2x On the Qui Vive
1x Eagle's Sight
1x My Enemy's Enemy
1x Redirection
1x Telepathic Misdirection

Action Modifier/Combat (3)
3x Plasmic Form

A lot of the credit for the original list goes to Tero. I made a few minor tweaks and they paid off during the event.

And then obviously lots of thanks to all of the Pittsburgh crew which have helped with practicing the game and theory crafting. Wishing luck to the guys who stayed overnight to play the Sunday event!

Regarding card choices:

Eagle's Sight allowed me to slow down a lunge during the preliminary rounds as a surprise, and seems better than Life Boon for that purpose for this style of deck.

Sniper Rifle didn't come up majorly in this particular event, but it serves the purpose of allowing you to deal with multiple potence rushes or certain ally swarms and allows you to be more selective about preserving your Obediences.

Having at least one copy of KRC helps with getting ousts on your prey (as you can bleed + KRC), but it also greatly helps with dealing with problematic predators or cross tables that will be impossible to get through in the long game -- running more could be a viable choice. In the preliminary rounds, I had to make some difficult decisions about cross table and/or back-ousting (which obviously made some players upset), but I think the performance of the deck this day can hopefully justify to them why those decisions were made.

The other tweaks were just with numbers; if you wanted to iterate on this deck you could play around with adding or removing some number of the various cards to deal with your particular metagame expectations (e.g. more copies of Seduction in a Wallish meta), or include various silver bullets (e.g. Pentex Subversion; also the European meta seems to almost always include a copy of Scourge of the Enochians, but it's generally useless in this region). In most games, you WILL go through every single card, so unless you want to expand the deck closer to 90, you will use every piece of the buffallo -- plan accordingly, and be very selective about what you're discarding on the end step, especially if you don't run any recursion.

Regarding my choice of seating in the finals: my main priority was to not be seated directly next to Elan's Lasombra rush deck, as either prey or predator. Yes, I have plenty of Obedience, but this deck needs quite a bit of time to set up and start fixing its hand. The Pittsburgh playgroup (which Elan is part of) knows that if you deal with Malgo early before she can help influence out the bigger sidekicks, the deck effectively collapses. And for essentially the same reason of needing setup time, I did not want to be the initial prey of Mark's Lasombra Stealth Bleed deck -- if I can get to the end game, I don't generally find issue with dealing with such a deck, but again, there's only so many wakes + bounces. The reason I was able to get Mark early was due to him having a very poor opening draw, with him not seeing any crypt acceleration until quite late in the game. I then tried to help Elan as much as possible to keep my prey + predator busy by contesting equipment and sending votes that would help him survive, which enabled him to get the oust from Mike. Over time I was able to cycle into a hand with enough stealth that was capable of dealing with James, and then won the heads up with Elan. Everyone played very well throughout the day, but especially in the finals.