Succubus Club Tournament

It figures that for an intentionally unsanctioned tournament we would get the unsanctionable number of players. :-)

Eleven Methuselahs showed up for the Succubus Club tournament at Dream Wizards in Rockville Maryland this past Saturday (June 22nd 2002). After polling we decided to play with a six-player and a five-player table rather than 4/4/3 (or getting someone to drop out to create a 10-player event).

This did mean that the six-player table would be pressed for time (and in fact it never managed to finish within the two hours, but did produce a game win twice out of three rounds) but we figured it would be more like a "real" game than the 3-player alternative.

The Succubus Club format we used involved having each participant bring a standard constructed deck and then, each round, each player would draw another player's deck at random. If you drew your own deck, you could put it back and try again (this was optional); likewise if you drew a deck that you had played in a previous round.

The participants (and the decks they brought, and scores) were:

Name: Deck Name: GWs + Deck's GWs : VPs + Deck's VPs
Johnny Tullner: Dominate Army: 1 + 2 : 6.5 + 5.0
Peter Oh: Aggravated Tap Dance: 1 + 0 : 4.5 + 2.0
Forrest Nielsen: The Baron, of course: 1 + 0 : 3.0 + 1.5
Dan Coleman: PS, PC: 1 + 0 : 3.0 + 1.0
Joseph Feeney: True Malkavian Burn + Bleed: 0 + 1 : 0.5 + 5.5
Colin Riggs: I See You - You Don't See Me: 0 + 1 : 1.5 + 4.0
Trey Morita: Setites + Sargon Mega-Enticement: 0 + 0 : 5.0 + 3.0
Emily Lloyd: Big Flamers: 0 + 0 : 0.0 + 3.0
Jason Babbitt: Stupid Toreador Deck w/o a Name: 0 + 0 : 2.0 + 0.5
Dan Keller: Bloody Ravnos: 0 + 0 : 0.0 + 2.0
Joshua Duffin: Never Smile at a Crocodile: 0 + 0 : 1.5 + 0.0

The scoring system we used was:
1. GWs plus Deck GWs (game wins by you as a player plus your deck's game wins in the hands of others) 2. GWs (as a player) 3. VPs plus Deck VPs (like 1) 4. VPs (as a player) 5. TPs (as a player, though we didn't have to go this far)

It turns out that there's a flaw in this system at (1), which is that if someone else at your table is playing your deck, you get an almost-equally-good result by letting your deck win as you would be winning yourself. Not quite due to the tiebreaker at (2) but it's probably a bad incentive to have. :-) I think this would be alleviated by making (1) and (3) score something like half-value for your deck's GWs and VPs.

So, the finalists were:

Johnny Tullner
Peter Oh
Forrest Nielsen
Joseph Feeney
Dan Coleman

I think I may have incorrectly placed Forrest fourth instead of Joseph going into the finals by not realizing that Forrest was ahead at scoring factor (2) since he had won a game as a player. Sorry Forrest!

Seating order was:
Peter Oh
Joseph Feeney
Johnny Tullner
Forrest Nielsen
Dan Coleman

and Johnny ended up sweeping the table (5 VPs) with his mono-Dominate bleed deck. Imagine that. :-) I didn't get his deck list but perhaps he can post it if he's so inclined.

I really liked this format; it was fun to get to play other people's decks and to get to switch decks every round. The downside, of course, is that you don't know the deck you're playing all that well.(I asked participants to provide decklists and, preferably, comments on how the deck works, but that's not really enough to compensate for never having played it before - my tournament-winning Setites with Dominate deck, for example, got a three-round total of 0 VPs in the hands of other players. ;-)

Thanks to everyone for coming out and making it a good time, and to Dream Wizards for hosting. See you next month!

Anyone else want to chime in with recollections, stories, comments?

by Johnny Tullner

The idea is to use Bonding to use up your prey's intercept, and Govern to get out lots of vampires fast (and perhaps gain blood), and for the occasional big bleed. Change of Target when anything is blocked, since you will still be sucking up their intercept.

There is no combat defence whatsoever; I figure the deck will work quickly the majority of the time, and you could probably lose 1 vampire a turn and still sweep. I would like it to have more Deflections, but I didn't work out space for that before the tournament. I'd like 4 more, so I will probably be removing a couple of Hunting Grounds.

I made this deck originally just because I thought it would be fun to make a pure Dominate deck, but it ended up not using very many cards. I chose it for the tournament because I mis-assumed the scoring; I was thinking the ideal deck would be tricky to figure out for a new user, while still being good enough to play yourself in the finals (ie, you want to minimize the chance of others winning with your deck). Luckily, I was apparently wrong about both... it must have been easier than I thought to play, and they got 2 game wins with it. ;)

Dominate Army
-------------
2 Gloria 4 Gio nec DOM
1 Stefano 6 Gio pre pot nec DOM
1 Ingrid 4 !Ven for DOM
1 Marlene 6 !Ven AUS DOM for dem tha
1 Vanessa 6 !Ven DOM FOR aus pre
1 Reverend 6 Bish !Tre THA DOM obf
1 Kurt 5 !Tre DOM aus tha
1 Damaskenos 6 Mal aus pot cel DOM
2 Didi 5 Mal aus cel obf DOM
1 Ranjan 5 Ven for DOM PRE
--
12
2 Asylum Hunting Ground
2 Corporate Hunting Ground
8 Information Highway
6 Misdirection
2 Morgue Hunting Ground
(20)
20 Govern the Unaligned
(20)
20 Bonding
16 Change of Target
(36)
6 Deflection
4 Delaying Tactics
4 WWEF
(14)
--
90

by Trey Morita

I was robbed. I should have thrown my first round tie to my own deck to get a crucial game win. I had 2nd most combined VPs and tied for 4th most combined deck VPs. OK, I liked the format, it was a fun change of pace, but I think I'd rather play draft, except for the fact that it takes so long.

by Peter Oh

A more detailed account of the final:

Everyone at the table knew that Johnny's deck was cleaned up pretty well in the prelim rounds. He was mowing through Forrest very quickly. I think Forrest only managed to get one vampire out before he was ousted, and the whole Baron trick didn't ever materialize.

Joe, my prey, had an early KRCG out, and I tried to convince him to lend the intercept to Forrest a few times so that he could block Johnny's bondings and stay alive. He didn't seem to like that idea and Forrest was ousted soon after. Johnny slowed down a bit after he ousted Forrest and he spent a few Governs to transfer more minions out. All of his minions were between 4-6 cap with DOM. I'm pretty sure Johnny wanted to get more minions out because he knew that after he got through Dan, he would have to deal my intercept and he wouldn't be able to get through with just 3 minions. I think he ended up getting 5 total before he really started going for his prey again.

Dan managed to get a Pulse onto Jost Werner, but his early bleeds for 3 didn't get by me since I was drawing Forced and Cats Guidance pretty cleanly in the opening turns. He majestied out of the combat, so I couldn't torporize him with Claws (I probably shouldn't have anyway to keep Johnny away for a little while longer).

I managed to get a good number of bleeds past Joe, threatening him (and using) some of my Aggro damage. I sat back and plucked away. I had Atonement and a Homunculus on Mirembe and Raven, so I was good for a long time.

Joe was scared to bleed too heavily into Johnny, since Johnny was packing so many deflections. The few times that he packed a Confusion onto his bleeds, Johnny deflected them to Dan, and Dan ended up taking most of them.

Soon Dan was gone and Johnny started preying after me. I frustrated a lot of his bleed attempts with my attonements. But eventually I ran out of Earth Melds and his hits for one sent my two main blockers into torpor. He then bled me out, and then Joe was gone shortly after.

So....

Johnny 5 VPS, Everyone else 0 VPS

I really enjoyed the format as well. I wouldn't mind doing it again.

by Colin Riggs

Hey you did me wrong:
GW DGW VPs DVPs
Colin Riggs: 0 + 1 : 0.0 + 4.0

Assuming that is the right labeling system then you forgot my vps.

I had 1.5 vps... one half for staying in the round with the Cailien Deck, and the other for ousting Jason in the third round.

I was robbed... but I still would have had less vps then Joseph so it probably wouldn't have made a difference.