Unusual evening at the Jugged Hare

Played a number of small games on Monday night at the Jugged Hare. Numbers we're very low as a few people were returning from the EC that day, so after discussing what decks would suck the least in a 2 player game we got started.


I played a Victoria night bleeds blood generation deck (whilst not ideal for a 2 player game but it was less nasty than the "Ravnos Cripple" or "Tariq eats everyone" decks I had with me). The deck utilised her special paired with the Madness Network, weeines and Tribute to the Master — I accelerated the deck with Clotho's gift to save on pool. M played an experimental "blow up my own" Giovanni deck which has decent potential and was a good laugh. Although it wasn't the fairest test of either decks, overall I was happy with how my deck performed sitting at 30 pool 6 - 7 turns in with 5 - 6 minions out... thankfully another player arrived and we killed the game.

Not ideal, but three players are definitely better than two. I decided to play my Tariq deck, M stuck to his experimental Giovanni deck and M2 played an Evil Scarce Salubri deck which quickly (but not quick enough) had both M and myself rallying against. We reacted too slowly, M2 stole, drained (Heildleburg) and bleed with our minions pretty much as soon as they were influenced out before comfortably setting up with a number of allies (Ossain, Gregory Winter).

I was unable to build any momentum with Tariq who after a heavy combat was forced to hunt each turn by Gregory. After a number of failed attacks on M2 I really should have targeted one of M's minions to power up Tariq — but by that point M2 pretty much had the table locked down. M2: 3 VPs.

In the final game M2 stuck to his Salubri nastiness, M switched to his Anarch melee bleed deck which tends to perform well and I brought out a Shambling Hordes bleed deck — M was my prey. M2 managed to steal and bleed with a number of minions however it took time for his Heildleburg to come into play. This time both M and I were prepared for M2's deck and did what we could to prevent him from setting up. M and M2 battered it out for a number of rounds whilst I recruited the hoards with Regina and sent them rushing in and pulling out fangs whenever possible. M and M2 knocked a minion each into torpor and the Hordes took out one of M2's minions. At this point both a Antediluvian Awakening and Dragonbound were in place giving me the edge with plenty of pool and no minions in torpor.  Me: 3 VPs.

It would've been good to give all three of these decks a good run with more players involved. As it stands I'm still undecided about what deck to play in the UK nationals this weekend...