VTES Tournament
Border Skirmish: Washington DC
18 October 2003

By Joshua Duffin
VEKN Prince of Washington DC


We had a cozy little tournament of eight players at the Game Parlor out in Chantilly, Virginia a week ago Saturday (Oct 18, 2003). I'm not sure why more of the Virginia players didn't show up; maybe it was an inconvenient weekend for some reason. The weather was nice though, so it can't have been that. :-) We were joined by Carol O'Bryan, visiting from Colorado, who was gracious enough to win the tournament in classic ringer-from-out-of-town style. ;-)

Here are the final standings after three rounds and the final. While we started a bit late due to me being delayed in search of bagels and stymied by traffic, with two four-player tables the preliminary games all went fast enough (1:08, 1:54, 1:25) to make up for it. The final game, however, went to time with the five- player table and a lot of fairly cautious play on the part of people who didn't want to be ousted. Sigh. With another hour I think I could have won (my Deranges were finally paying off). Not that that counts for much as I'm sure everyone else who was still in the game at time-out also thinks *they* could have won. ;-)

Also on the standings - my apologies to Shane McRoberts for his having incorrectly been told that he was certain not to be in the finals after the preliminary rounds (his game ended earlier than the table I was on and I wasn't able to properly calculate the expected results before he decided to go home without waiting for the table to finish). In fact there was a 2 in 3 chance (3 people tied for 2 spots) that he would have made it to the finals with 1 VP and 94 TPs. Again, I apologize for the mistake and hope he won't hold it against us. It was truly unintentional.

Rank--Name--Domain-------------PGWs--PVPs--FVPs--TPs
1--Carol O'Bryan--Golden, CO------2---6--1.5--148
2--Matt Morgan--PG County, MD---1---5--0.5--126
3--Joshua Duffin--Bethesda, MD-----0---1--0.5---94
4--Trey Morita--Silver Spring--------0---1--0.5---94
5--Colin Riggs--Washington, DC----3--10---0---180
6--Shane McRoberts--VA Beach--------0---1----94
7--Peter Oh--Baltimore, MD------------0---0----64
7--Steve Holmer--Washington, DC-----0---0----64


The finals seating was:

Trey Morita, Tremere/Assamite w/Thadius Zho, Ghouls of Plaza Moreria
Carol O'Bryan, Kiasyd toolboxy bleed/stealth/intercept/fight
Colin Riggs, Nu the Pillar and friends Enchant down and fight and bleed
Matt Morgan, g2+3 Tor vote at the Grand Ball, bleed, and Flash/Majesty
Josh Duffin, g2+3 Malk/!Malk Derange, Call, Freak, and bleed at stealth

Carol got the only oust in two hours, wearing Colin's Nu down over time and eventually knocking him into torpor. Matt and I had some interest in keeping Colin in the game, but weren't able to actually manage it, as Nu with no blood is a sad sight and Colin didn't have enough pool left to keep Nu going via Blood Doll. For my part, I kept feeling the need to Derange backwards to Matt's Madame Guil (go 11-cap FOR-having Vasantasena!) to keep him from being able to pass the votes to oust me, which meant I wasn't able to oust Trey either (although I did put enough pressure on him to keep him from wanting to go forward too much against Carol - of course, he was also disinclined to do much against Carol since she consistently showed enough Wake/intercept to vaporize his allies if they tried any funny stuff or torporize his vampires). Colin's Nu made a valiant showing early on with the beatings and did quite a bit of pool gain/vampire influencing, but wasn't quite able to make it stick enough to counteract Matt's occasional vote-calling/passing/ Voter Captivating.

Here's Carol's deck list. It's quite similar to the one she played in the first tournament she won, at Origins back in June, but tweaked a bit.

Crypt (12 cards)
3 Kassiym Malikhair (6)
3 Marconius (9)
3 Julia Prima (7)
2 Bartholomew (8)
1 Beatrice L'Angou (5)

Library (90 cards)

stealth & intercept:
9 Aura Absorption
5 Shroud of Absence
4 Stone Travel

bleed:
2 Bonding
7 Foreshadowing Destruction
6 Govern the Unaligned

defend:
12 Wake with Evening's Freshness

blood management:
3 Blood Doll
1 Giant's Blood
5 Taste of Vitae
1 The Rack

combat:
9 Arms of the Abyss
7 Earth Swords
6 Entombment
4 Darkling Trickery
1 Pulled Fangs
1 Ivory Bow
1 Tension in the Ranks

utility/general:
1 Fragment of the Book of Nod
2 Graverobbing
2 Dominate
1 Obtenebration


Overall, a very enjoyable tournament, I thought. Thanks to everyone for coming to play. Hope to see you all (and more!) at the upcoming Black Hand prerelease tournaments!

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