Imbued Wall

Crypt:
1 Earl "Shaka74" Deams 		- Visionary 	- jud mar vis
2 Francois "Warden" Loehr 	- Judge 	- def jud
3 Jack "Hannibal137" Harmon 	- Defender 	- def jud
2 Jennie "Cassie247" Orne 	- Visionary 	- inn jud vis
1 Jennifer "Flame61" Vidisania 	- Avenger 	- ven vis
2 Paul "Sixofswords29" Moreton 	- Visionary 	- def vis
1 Xian "Dzidzati55" Quan 	- Defender 	- def inn

Master (19):
4 Angel of Berlin
1 The Barrens
2 The Church of Vindicated Faith
1 Elder Library
2 Fortscritt Library
1 Millicent Smith-Puritan Vampire Hunter
2 The Parthenon
2 Vast Wealth
2 Vigil: The Thin Line
2 Vulnerability

Action (4)
4 Bum's Rush

Powers (9)
2 Discern
3 Rejuvenate
4 Vigilance

Reactions (9)
9 Determine

Combat (8)
4 High Ground
4 Target Vitals

Allies (2)
2 Moise Kasavubu

Equipment (9)
1 The Crusader Sword
2 Flak Jacket
3 Flamethrower
1 Ivory Bow
2 Leather Jacket

Events (2)
1 Dragonbound
1 The Unmasking

Conviction (28)
10 React with Conviction
9 Second Sight
9 Strike with Conviction

90 Cards

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Tourney recap from last saturday


Round 1:

The reaction I was afraid of on my second turn as soon as 
I transferred up Travis "Traveler72" Miller: a resounding 
"oh crap.. Imbued!" from my entire table which echoed around 
the room and painted a giant bullseye on me for the rest 
of the tournament. My table position in the first game 
couldn't have been better though. I was being bled by a 
Tremere mage ally deck, had a prey that spent the first 
3 turns bringing up Ambrosio Luis Moncada to set up a 
Baltimore Purge/Graverob combination, Brujah combat 
crosstable-left, and Guruhi crosstable-right. I ended up 
walling early and limiting the number of mages breeding 
behind me, while throwing occasional small bleeds at my 
prey. The Tremere ended up playing 2 events that I had 
pulled out of my deck to not generate table hate, and this 
ended up working beautifully for me: Veil of Darkness and 
Blood Weakens. This negated several bounce attempts by the 
Lasombra, and focussed much of the table hate at the Tremere 
rather then me. The Brujah and Guruhi took turns beating 
up each other's vampires, until finally the purge came up, 
giving my prey control of the Brujah's biggest and scariest 
vampire. I was a bit concerned about my long range agg 
combat holding up against the brujah after watching them 
put eze into torpor with 2 rushes, but being in the hands 
of someone that couldn't use his combat disciplines I took 
advantage and started bleeding forward with a vengeance, 
comfortable that I had bloated enough and had enough untap 
to survive the mage army long enough to get my 6 pool. 
I managed to finally oust the Lasombra with Jennifer 
Vidisania's bleeds for 3 at -1 stealth that Ambrosio couldn't 
touch , and the Brujah were left with 4 pool and the Guruhi 
with 3. I ousted both of them next turn, and braced myself 
for a war of attrition. Between second sight intercept and 
Wendell Delburton rushes, I finally managed to kill enough 
of the allies to get my bleeds through and took my 5 VPs 
and a table sweep.


Round 2:

News of the Imbued deck had spread rather quickly and even 
without the event cards, I found myself without any kind 
of crosstable assistance for the rest of the day. Round 2 
found me with a predator that was ousted by turn 3 and I 
never even got to see what he was going for, a ventrue 
bleed machine as my prey, more lasombra crosstable left, 
and a pander vote deck crosstable right. The pander, as 
mentioned above, con agg'd and KRC'd my predator down in 
a matter of 3 turns, causing me to immediately wall up 
since blocking the votes was my only chance of surviving. 
My lack of forward pressure allowed the Ventrue to bleed 
out the Lasombra as well as do a fair amount of damage 
to the pander due to deflections. After a long number 
of rounds of the pander getting bleed for 10 and bloating 
it all back thanks to con boon's that i chose to allow 
rather then be unable to block the damaging votes, 
I eventually trimmed down the number of pander to more 
manageable number, and chose to deny him his bloat and 
let the Ventrue take another VP since there was no way 
I would have been able to put out enough forward pressure 
to oust him without getting overwhelmed. After getting 
his second VP, I was able to start going forward since 
he only had 2-3 ventrue up that I could easily manage 
with 1-2 Imbued and go forward with the rest. I ended 
up chewing through the 12 extra pool and ousted the 
Ventrue, racking up another 2 VPs.


Round 3:

I entered this round with the highest total of VPs thanks 
to my table sweep, and felt pretty confident that all I 
needed to really do was play defensively and aim for 
2 VPs to make the final table. Once again, I ended up 
with a lucky table spot sitting behind a weenie dominate 
deck who was bleeding a very nasty Kiasyd deck from our 
local play group (same deck/player that won Moot Point, 
The Clans Converge). With a well-placed brainwash and a 
ton of early dominate bleeds, the weenies managed to 
catch the Kiasyd without any bounce and bled them out 
within the first few turns, and ran over the rest of the 
table as well in short order. After a very drawn out 
balancing act making sure I was only allowing enough 
bleeds through to soak up with bloat, I managed to slowly 
but surely chew through the extra 18 pool and keep myself 
intact long enough to finally bleed him out, earning a 
final 2 VPs and securing a spot at the finals table.


Finals:

Unlike every other game I had played, the finals table was 
quite possibly the fastest 5-person game of v:tes I have 
ever played in. The competition was the weenie dominate 
deck I saw in round 3, the pander vote deck I saw in 
round 2, an Ishtari bleed machine from our local play 
group that I was familiar with, and an unknown. Coming 
to the finals with the most VPs, I opted to bleed the 
weenie dominate deck, knowing full and well that both 
it and the ishtari would overwhelm me much quicker then 
I can wall up plus it put the pander to my right allowing 
me to block the votes. So the table was set with me 
bleeding the dominate weenies, who were bleeding the 
ishtari, who were bleeding the unknown which ended up 
being an anarch bleed deck, who were bleeding the political 
pander, who was bleeding me. The anarchs won(?) the die 
roll for first transfer, and we were off.

The pander brought up 2 vamps first turn, and my opening 
crypt was all 4's and 5's so I was defenseless for a round. 
This ended up costing me 8 pool in the form of 2 con agg's 
and staring down a total of 4 pander before I even had a 
minion up. Needless to say, this negated any chance of me 
being able to put decent pressure on my prey. Given that, 
he went all out on the Ishtari and also put them in a 
defensive stance, which allowed the Anarchs time to convert 
his minions and prepare himself. After a few rounds I found 
myself with 2 pool, an anarch revolt and an antideluvian 
awakening in play from the pander, and facing certain death 
with my predator still sitting on 7 pool. The anarchs finally 
stepped it up and bled for 7 with 2 vampires at stealth 
knocking my predator out and saving me from a rather 
embarrassing death-by-master-cards. I took my next turn to 
bloat back up to 4 and prepared to break the next wave of 
bleeds and kill some anarchs with my manuevering/crusader 
sword'd/ivory bow'd/2 standing intercept imbued. The weenie 
dominate deck took advantage of this and bled the ishtari 
out in one shot, but used all his vamps up and he wasn't 
able to hit the anarchs at all that turn. The anarchs fired 
off a bleed for 2 at a stealth at me, but threw 2 more 
stealth and an extra bleed on it causing me to waste a second 
sight and vigil: the thin line in a failed block attempt. 
The next one came in at no stealth, added one stealth, 
i burned my last second sight, only to see another stealth 
added and another VP for the anarchs and me ousted. After 
a very brief show down, the anarchs ended up winning the 
table due to a pool gain of 12 verses the weenie's gain 
of 6, and thus ended our Qualifier.


Overall, I'm very content with my standing for my first vtes 
tournament ever. I am, however, retiring the deck I played 
for this and am going back to the drawing board for something 
new and improved. As well as the imbued ended up doing, 
I think I'm sufficiently convinced that no matter how 
'friendly' I make the deck it just generates more table 
hate then it can really deal with in order to be more then 
a wall that will usually earn 2 VPs. Depending on the when 
and where, I'll hopefully have something new and interesting 
for nationals =)

I did make a couple of minor tweaks to it for tourney, but 
nothing more then a couple of crypt changes and trimming 
some angels of berlin to add a few on the qui vives.