Wednesday's Social game

I arrived somewhat late, due to SANUM stuff, and, with various people leaving early, and such, was only able to play 2 games, one 4 player and one (surprisingly slow) 3 player game. In both, I tried the !Malk deck, which I'm trying to fix (I had a fairly successful 90 card version, which I trimmed to 80 cards, and ended up making it overly finicky and fragile).

In the first game, Dan (Assamite melee weapon bruise and bleed) (starting) was bleeding me, bleeding Olivier (Tzimisce bleed), bleeding Roberta (!Brujah bruise and bleed). The combat setup, a large number of titles on the table, and not drawing stealth until quite late in the game meant I never really got much momentum going. Olivier ousted Roberta, who's deck struggled to make much of an impression on Dan's Assamites, which farmed quite efficiently. Dan's deck used Seraph Seconds and Tattoo Signals to do a ridiculous number of actions a turn, most of which was spent on setup. I was eventually able to oust Olivier when he transferred out an extra minion, and brought himself into lunge range on one of the few turns I found myself with stealth in hand, but, by that stage, I was struggling to keep my minions out of torpor, and was quickly overwhelmed by Dan's deck. Dan and Olivier bouncing minions into torpor, with Olivier's Tension in the Ranks on the table, helped my single lunge as well, but, ultimately, I took too long to oust him.

In the second game, I (starting) was bleeding Robert?'s Akunanse bloat deck, bleeding Dan playing a Saulot deck. I started off much better this game, and was able to combo a coma and diablerie to burn Saulot, which was great. Robert's deck was able to farm very successfully (Parthenon plus Secret horde plus blood dolls meant he was regularly pulling back 3 or 4 pool a turn). I made a couple of tatical errors as well - I should have force him to burn the Major Boon much earlier, and I should not have blocked a particular rescue attempt - I was hoping he would put more pressure on Dan, who was allowed to recover from having Saulot burnt with very little effort, and was ultimately ousted. Dan did eventually oust Robert, although, with the bloat of both decks, it did take a long time. A somewhat annoying game from my perspective, mainly because I should have managed to do better from the position I found myself in.

In both games, I drew too little stealth, and too many untap cards, which highlights a major problem with the card distribution. I also need to tweak the balance between vote and bleed a bit, since the deck ends up struggling with both not quite enough vote push or bleed push to finish off the prey. Probably pushing it to be a bit more stealth bleedy, and keeping the votes as a bloat and occasional aggressive sideline is the way to go. The crypt may also need tweaking - while Aristotle is very nice, he does tend to attract table hate, and the lack of a title is an issue. Perhaps replacing him with an extra Korah and a couple of other titled vamps is the way to go.