This is in no-way an official or even a generally used nickname for this particular event in the history of VTES in Sydney. It's just my view and the reason I'm telling you all is because this one event significantly changed the playstyle in Sydney.
Sydney Qualifier for the National Championships (2006 or 2007...)
(Sorry I've forgotten the year...)
We had around 25 players come out of their Havens to play in the Sydney Qualifier in a small CBD venue, near the Chippendale Boys. The Sydney Metagame had been seeing a fair amount of trick decks and Super-Bleeders. It was actually fairly common to hear bleeds of 4+ declared multiple times in a single turn. One of the rounds could only fairly be described as "The Table of Dominate".
The Table of Dominate
What made this table insane, and led to the demise of Powerbleed as a strategy in Sydney, was every player on this table was using a Dominate-Powerbleed style deck. Every deck had a significant number of Dominate Flick and a number of the decks contained Archon Investigation because of the Powerbleed metagame in Sydney.
A Methuselah declared a bleed for 4. This bleed was flicked around the table to that Methuselah's predator, who played Archon Investigation and burned a mid-to-high cap vampire on its first bleed action. Throughout the 2 hour game, 5 vampires were Archon Investigated and at least twice the Archon Investigation was played by the Predator of the acting vampire.
The Whole Day
In the whole day, at total of 7 vampires were investigated by the Archons and destroyed.
The Results
This has changed the face of VTES in Sydney for years. There are very few Powerbleed decks being used. Most commonly there are a number of mid-cap vampires bleeding for 3, Swarm Bleed with mild combat backup (Cel-Sticks CPU Hack, Deep Singing Weenies, etc) and a prevalence of Votes (particularly appearances by an Ayo Igoli deck around the Sydney Scene). Classic Powerbleed (Kiasyd, Giovanni, Lasombra & Malk94) have slowly vanished from out Metagame. We have seen some surreal trick decks, like a few Nacho-Cheese Bleeders (Nakhtoreb + Shennanigans), 10,000 Spirals (Black Spiral Buddy + Quick Jab & Sebastian Goulet), Mummies of the Inner Circle (Spell of Life + G2 ICs) and some others that are so outside the Metagame that people are unprepared.
After saying that, it is probably time for a mild resurgence in the Powerbleed Deck in Sydney. Partly why I don't play my Lasombra w/ Animalism deck much in social games. Might be time to sit down and try build a Song of Pan monstrosity...
I think this is not uncommon. As you suggest in your final comments, the big bleed decks will have a resurgence in your area. AI will become a wasted slot for many people. Eventually they will be included less and less. Then players will begin to think, "Hmm, my chances are pretty good he/she doesn't have an AI... I'll bleed for five." Enough success with this kind of thinking will lead back to, "Wow, I can build a deck that bleeds for eight every turn with one minion!!!!" Which, of course, will lead to everyone remembering the joy of the greedy methuselah going down in flames to that old friend AI. Soon after, AI will be more frequent again....and the cycle will repeat!
ReplyDeleteOn another note, I know some players who risk getting the AI to the face because they plan for it. That is, they know they could lose a minion so they play mid-caps instead of high caps or some other strategy so they can recover from losing a minion more readily. Just as one might include minion stealing actions in an ally heavy meta or S:CE in a combat heavy meta.
ReplyDeleteAI has generally become an unseen card at our tournaments. Powerbleeders tend to be dealt with by other means, often combat or Teflon Suit Flick. Because most people now don't expect dedicated Powerbleed, therefore they don't have AI and therefore it's probably time to take out some serious Powerbleed. Now, it's research time...
ReplyDelete