SA Nationals 2013

ICON 2013

Results

Finalists

Winner: Clement

Report

This last weekend Neil and I went up to ICON for SA Nationals. It was an 8 player tournament. Both Neil and I made the final and so are qualified for the European Championships (and more practically, have a t-shirt to prove it :).

Clement took the final so I'm going to give the honour of reporting on the tournament to him. Jan (who ran things and judged the final) added a small addendum that I've added after that.

Personally I had a lot of fun despite struggling to get going in the final (stupid aggropoke :). Congratulations to Clement on taking the tournament!

So, without further ado ...

Clement's report

My thanks to the folks who made it to ICON this past weekend, for the VTES tournament.

Some highlights from my foggy memory banks:

- The multi-deck suggestion from Simon (due to only having 8 players), which gave everyone a chance to try out up to 3 decks. This meant the prelims were very diverse and most interesting. I saw Jan's Malk vote and Lazverinus bash decks, Neil's Aching Beauty multi-acting, Simon's Black Hand Dominate and Trujah Bleeder and Coenie's Flung Junk and Cailean Earthshocker, in addition to my own !Gangrel masters toolbox, Ventrue 5-skill pounder and Brujah rush/vote. Further decks were played on tables I didn't participate on, or didn't spectate.

- Having 4-player tables meant the prelims zipped past in well under 2hrs each, and we decided to play the final on Saturday as well.

- The final table consisted of Louis (Lazvernius Protean) -> Coenie (Cailean Earthshock) -> Clement (!Gangrel masters) -> Simon (True Brujah) -> Neil (Aching Beauty multi-acting)

Neil had a good start and bled Louis, either ending combat or changing target with impunity. My deck was based around rush actions, some bloat and intercept and Aksinya flicking bleeds to my prey. I got out 2 supporting Gangrel as early defense, then Aksinya. I had to make the horrible choice to play an early Pentex Subversion cross-table, as my prey (Simon) hadn't been able to apply much forward pressure yet and Neil was working through Louis's pool. Coenie was bleeding for 1 a turn, so I saw value in slowing Neil's momentum. Neil's deck was ham-strung for a few turns as he had 1 ready vampire beside the Pentexed vampire.

Once Simon had his star vampire out and landed some bleeds though, it was clear that Neil could be in even more trouble. I was putting some pressure on Simon via a Deep Song rush and Tier of Souls actions, managing to torporise 2 vampires. So I didn't block the action to remove the Pentex, then played a Pentex on Sennadurek, to slow Simon down more. Neil ousted Louis though, leaving him to face Coenie's combat, which was also not geared for the SCE's, but Coenie wisely had a decent amount of pool in reserve.

Neil recovered and ousted Coenie, bringing out Eugene, but I had out Talbot, Enkidu and Nostoket, as well as enough static bloat. So I could start working over Simon and take the table.

Jan's additional notes

From my perspective it looked like this:

Coenie didn't draw any rushes, and Louis's deck couldn't make him block it (an oversight on my part as I hadn't included enough +bleed). This left both Coenie and Clement without any pressure. Since Coenie couldn't capitalize on this, Clement was basically able to easily set up the table.

Of course, it helped that Simon assisted in generating a lot of table hate for Neil's deck ;) which meant that no-one noticed the favourable position Clement was getting into. Which is really par for the course, since he's such a sneaky bastard!

Well played by Clement all round, and thanks to the CT players for coming through!