If you say it enough times, it becomes true

Yeah, it hasn't been very long since this post:
http://blog.tornsignpost.com/2011/02/continued.html

And I'm saying it again, but more strongly now.
I've already posted to the PGWJ list, but I figure it's just as safe to post to the blog.
What I'm trying to avoid is causing panic and alarm by posting to our local vtes mailing list.

You want to buy a whole 25000-30000-ish card VTES collection that spans the whole history of the game? Willing to pay shipping (or preferably pick it up)?

Make me an offer or direct any questions about it to me (by private email, please).

...continued

Yeah..
The more I think about it, and the more "HEY WAIT, I could build such-and-such other deck!" followed up by "but I don't want to actually play it, or nobody would want to play against it", I think I am really done with VTES, other than holding on to a few of my favorite remaining decks and maybe playing on the jungle that is JOL.

So, I am a little bit motivated to "Get Rid Of All My Cards", which is mostly going to be in the form of donations to the local group; I don't feel the need to put a price on every single common/regular-rarity-Vampire/crappy-rare, and I have no illusions of making Lots Of Money off of these cards.

If you're reading this, and you want to cover shipping charges (which can definitely include coming to my house in person), you can feel free to ask me if I've got stuff (as some of you already have, and I'm getting through those lists). Please email me privately, if you can.
As motivated as I am to get my cards into good homes, making a list of everything I've got is not as easy as checking if I've got what you want. Whatever's left over after dumping giant boxes in Chris's House and catering to specific requests, and determining what I actually need to maintain in a small collection, is going to go out on ebay or whatever. Maybe by the end of the year I will reach Collection Equilibrium.

Once again, I'm not totally giving up on playing the game yet.
And I may even draft and keep those cards occasionally, moving forward.
But the sheer number of cards I own and will never use is just too massive to overlook.

VtES apathy....

I told myself I'd see how I feel about VtES after TempleCon, and it's after TempleCon now.

I can't say I give up on the game; I still appreciate it, and I still want to play.

But...

I just can't bring myself to care about building new decks. Even with all the wacky ideas I've come up with over the last 10 years, I'm just.. spent.

And with the thousands of cards sitting in my closet doing nothing, half of me wants to donate them. Half of me wants to sell them. Half of me wants to keep them "just in case".
I dunno... I don't even know how I would shed my excess cards even if I wanted to. I've been ebaying bits here and there for the last couple of years, and will probably continue to do so, but what am I going to do with all of these Bang Nakh and Marcus Vitels?

I've just gotten so much more interested in "self-contained games that are interesting with a VTES mindset".
And especially since I'm locked out from our regular VTES night for the next several months, Motivation is extremely low.

I've gone through phases of VTES disinterest before, but I think this one is the Big One.

TempleCon 2011 aftermath, Post #1: VTES

Ah, VtES. The reason I know about TempleCon, the reason I know most of the people I saw over the weekend, and part of the reason for my little corner of fame in the gamerverse.

First tournament: Friday night

Not much to write home about here.
I got to TempleCon just in time to turn round 2 of the Friday VTES tournament into 20 players. I played my Malabranca Breed-Boon-PallaGrande deck, and got crushed by a Ventrue Law Firm deck (played by Amber). Nothing notable happened. I don't even remember the rest of the table.

Qualifier: Saturday
After a little bit of Glen More and time-wasting Drafting in the morning, we were ready to play the main event. There were 27 players.

I ended up playing a Kiasyd Stealth Bleed But A Little Toolboxy deck, along with at 3 other people playing more-or-less the same exact crypt.

Round 1

Round 1 was a 4-player table.
Me-> Dave C (Gangrel fight) -> Amber (Setites) -> Peter K (!Tremere toolbox?)

Peter got out Valerius (the version who shuts down obfuscate, great defense for being the prey of setites), Antonio d'Erlette, and a few Nephandi.

I happened to be drawing most of my Deflections early on, and Peter was "irresponsibly" firing bleeds of 2-3 down the pipe to "test the waters". In addition to my own Stealth Bleedy Sleaze, Dave really didn't have a chance.
He was ousted before he could say "Raven Spy".
I ended up playing Pentex Subversion on Amber's poor little 2-cap to wipe her out, and then Peter just couldn't handle my obt/myt stealth and all of the bleed action cards I hadn't had to waste yet.
Table sweep for me!

Round 2

Round 2 was also 4 players, which actually worked out in my favor.

Me -> Mark (Tor/!Tor aus/cel gun deck, I think) -> John W (Enkidu) -> Adam (!Tor palla grande something?)

Why don't I know what my prey and predator were playing?
Well, when we sat down, Adam warned us that John was playing Enkidu (they're both from the New York Crew).
Turn 1, my prey disregarded this warning, and played Dragonbound.
As soon as my prey brought out Sheila Mezarin, John dropped a Pentex on her. As soon as Adam brought out any minion at all, Enkidu smushed them.
But Enkidu didn't have any backup friends. Just a bunch of 1 caps.

I decided to sit pretty where I was, and let my prey attempt to rebuild himself.
He was unable to burn the Pentex, and I pretty much could have ousted him any time I wanted, but I preferred the meat-shield.
I sat back and let the Dragonbound pluck at the table (including Enkidu's controller himself) and held back my bleeds, just playing a few cards to cycle, pretty much until I drew into my own Pentex Subversion.
At that point, I contested it cross-table, Adam was ousted, and I still gave my prey a bit of a chance to go forward with un-Pentexed Sheila for a little while. When the time was right (Enkidu low on blood didn't hurt), I ousted my prey, survived Enkidu's last turn as an acting minion, dunked his last 1-cap, and then fired the bleed cannons. Easy 3VPs.

I don't often get 1 Game Win in big tournaments, never mind 2, so I was pretty excited.

Round 3

But then came Round 3.
In Round 3, a 5-player table, it was something like this:
Me -> some prey I don't remember -> Dave Z (same deck as me) -> someone else I don't remember -> Ben P (same deck as me)

I kinda sat that one out. I tried, but I zeroed, and don't remember the details.

Final Round

In the Finals, there were "only" 2 Kiasyd decks; me and Greg W (yes, someone I hadn't played with yet).
But between us was Randy....

An aside about Randy

Randy is a player from Sweden, who recently moved to Florida, and came to TempleCon just because I was talking about it on IRC a few days ago. It's nice to be able to pick up and do stuff like that.

Ahem, back to the finals...

Me -> Randy (deck description below) -> Greg (Kiasyd) -> Sonam (Giovanni Bruise Bleed with Sewer Lids) -> Prescott (Cornelius and Quira and ..?)

Randy was playing a variation on a deck that is apparently "going around" these days: Cybele, Aksinya, lots of other huge vampires with +bleed, and a library with about 75% master cards.

I just couldn't do anything about that.
I could bleed big and get bounced (either by Aksinya's special or Lost in Translation) or Archon Investigated.. or he could just not care because he was bloating so much... or I could bleed small and he still didn't care. Not to mention I was already trying to defend myself against OBF and +bleed upstream...
Suffice it to say, Randy swept the table. And won the tournament, fair and square.
It was totally worth his trip.

All-in-all I enjoyed the event, and am proud of my performance (even if it was sleazy, boring, and just plain lucky).

...and then we played Chaos and Galactica (see future posts).

Sunday: the Free Draft

Matt has a ton of extra starter decks and boosters.
So we got free cards, and drafted. Choice of a large selection of packs.
I played the Ishtarri, added a few things, but maybe made the deck too small.

In Round 1, I ousted my prey (KoT Toreador starter) with the things that Ishtarri usually do (big bleed at 2 stealth as the first action of every turn, etc). But it took pretty much my whole deck to do so.
I was down to an empty deck, but just managed to squeeze in my second oust (!Tremere) before getting combatted and death-of-a-thousand-cutted by the !Gangrel deck.

At this point, people needed to catch flights and stuff, but we cobbled together a set of second rounds... In the second round, I got identified as a table threat, still managing to run out of deck but I don't think I actually got an oust.. we were all getting punchy and not really caring what we were doing now anyway.
And we just didn't do a final round.
Still, the act of drafting and playing even a single round is still something fun...

So that's pretty much it for the notable VTES of the weekend.
Please leave comments here if you want any more details, of course.

Eulogy

Posted to rec.games.trading-cards.jyhad this morning:

I have not posted a formal, general, thanks to this thread yet, other than

in specific reply to LSJ.

I just want to say a few things:

First, yes, thank you to Oscar for trying to keep his favorite game (no, not

Racer Knights) alive in the corporate eyes. And for all of his dedication

to the game from long before he was getting a paycheck from WWCCP.

Thank you to LSJ, for taking on the task of not only *design* for this game,

but in-place redesign, in order to manage balance issues while keeping nearly

every card ever printed tournamet-legal. And for tolerating Stupid Questions

(which show no sign of stopping).

Thank you to those who keep the VEKN running on a volunteer basis.

Thank you to Prescott Jenner, for pulling me in to the Boston VTES Group back

in 2001 in response to some of my early Stupid Questions on the newsgroup.

And to many people named Ben, Matt, Kevin, Chris, or John (ok, there are more

names than that, but this covers a lot of people) who have been at Boston

VTES with me for the last 10 years.

Thank you to the international community of VTES players who have always

been welcoming, generally friendly, and often entertaining.

But all those thankyous being said, "Ceasing Production" does not mean the

game is over.

The only thing that is stopping here is the physical and legal printing of

new cards.

There are thousands of cards; thousands of potential decks (both Josh-esque

and Tier 1), which haven't even been thought of yet.

Other than, perhaps, Poor Group 6, a hiatus from getting new cards printed

would actually be beneficial to people's creative juices. And, seeing

current circumstances as they are, maybe there will be Final Official Errata

turning all the G6 vampires into G5, I dunno. Why not?

The VEKN is pretty much entirely player-run.

The game design has always been influenced by the players, and "fan

expansions" are totally not out of the question.

The game is still fun.

And, if all else fails, it is about the community.

VTES players love to play games. VTES players are *good* at games in

ways that non-VTES players are not, drawing on the skills unique to this

game. Play your BSG and your Chaos in the Old World and your Dominion with

other VTES players, and you'll have just as rewarding of an experience.

I say don't raise up your torches and pitchforks against CCP and WotC and

RSD over all of this. Continue to play the game, continue to play games

with your VTES mates, and see if you even notice the Cessation Of Production

in the next several months.

Thanks for reading.

Josh "Jozxyqk" Feuerstein

Former Prince of Boston

Asker of Silly Questions

MSPainter of Silly Art

Player of Games

RIP VTES

If you're reading this, you probably know the news. V:TES is Ceasing Production (again).

I've been playing the game since early 2001, and will continue to play it until there aren't 3 other people to play with anymore.

As much as this wasn't unexpected, it's still significant.

I will spare you most of the history lesson; most of my personal history with VTES was already written down in my eulogy for Your Move Games anyway

I've met so many cool people through VTES, I'm happy that this news doesn't break those connections.

And the thing about VTES players is, they're very good at the types of games I like to play. Being sneaky, calculating and secretive, has become a part of so many newer games.. Glad that I can still pull from that pool of folks.

The game won't evaporate; it has lived without corporate sponsorship before, and it will do it again; so I don't think I'm going to blather on much more.

I'm just glad that my artwork managed to get onto a card before the game died.

But I do know someone who's sad:

VTES auctions

Also, for those who play VTES, I'm starting to put up some auctions of cards.
No specific game-quittery reason, but I am trying to convert some VTES into boardgame budget, in both time and money.

The first experiment in this batch is 2 Jyhad-backed Parity Shifts.
My ebay userid is "jozxyqk", I won't put a direct link here because it's not that kind of blog.

Once that auction ends, I'm going to use its funds towards the listing fees for a whole bunch of other cards.

Meanwhile, just the "excess commons that aren't even worth auctioning" piles are getting unbearably large (maybe like 15,000 just in overflow so far, including from the last cleanup round, and I'm only up to sorting the H's, so I expect at least another 2000 or so "junk" cards) and are either going to want to be donated/cheaply-sold pretty soon or they'll end up being trashed the next time we move or something :/

Anybody interested in a bulk purchase of a huge ton of assorted cards? Shipping costs will be a bitch, so locals are preferred.

Treat your Maman Right!

Even though this isn't strictly going to be a "VTES blog", I figure I should start with a VTES post about something I came up with.
It's a Module for any Group 4 Compatible deck, featuring a powerful defensive Imbued, Maman Boumba.

The module is something like this (this is the 10 card version that I include in 90-card decks):

3 Maman Boumba

3 Angel of Berlin
1 Rose Foundation

2 React with Conviction
2 Second Sight
2 Strike with Conviction

Maman serves as both combat defense (that you can sell around the table) and vote defense (5 un-cancelable votes against a referendum) EDIT: and minor bleed defense (reduce by 1), even here.
The Angels of Berlin allow you to use her end-combat ability multiple times per turn, which incidentally also works while she's sitting in the incapacitated region.
You can take the occasional "bleed for 2 at 1 stealth" action with her, but that's really not her primary function.
If you want, you can drop a Secure Haven on her to protect her from Pillowface actions, but that's purely optional; in a deck that needs her, you're likely to be using Secure Havens anyway, and you'll want to put them on your big vampires.