Champions of Cagn Unbound!

johannes wrote:

Juggernaut1981 wrote: NSFtM of course makes casual games a train-wreck. The ability to potentially block any of the 'default' actions and a number of carded setup actions is easily enough to completely destabilise a corner of the table.

I don´t understand where the big difference between casual and competitive games is? Does casual mean people play with Eyes of the Dead and Appolonius, just because it is "fun"? If your deck can´t muster +1 stealth or some hit back for being blocked or a Pentex or something against NSFtM it is either a deck that can´t oust anyone anyway (so you shouldn´t play it) or a deck that relies on weenies doing lots of things at 0/1 stealth, in this case you should be aware that this is a high-risk / high-yield strategy that is bound to fail miserably on a double digit percentage of the situations.

To maybe more obviously elaborate...

My "Sleaze Deck" Box contains:
- Weenie G1/2 Brujah Princes with Debates + T:V + Archon + Anathema (Did reasonably well in a large number of games, got smashed down in Melb 2012 by a large number of Gun-Wall decks)
- Lasombra Powerbleed with Animalism (3GW including Final at a small tournament held in Sydney in about 2005)
- !Salubri Bruise-Bleed w/ Bleed Reduction/Negation (1GW+XVPs at the LCQ Melb 2013)
- Annabelle Triabelle's So Pretty It Hurts (Powerbleeding Aching Beauty Deck) which has bled out players for 14 pool in a single pounce turn. Tends to be a Turn 8+ VP winner rather than a Turn 4 killer.
- G2/3 Nosferatu Princes Hate You All (Archon + Anathema Rush + Other Votes and moderately strong bloat) which has gotten me to a qualifier final.
and so on. (Another slow but strong finisher...)

My "Monday Night Fun Games" Box contains:
- !Brujah CEL-Guns Flurry of Action Spoils of War (which with some tweaking will easily make it to my Sleaze Deck Box)
- Sargon Multi-Enticement (which decks itself faster than the CEL Guns deck...
- Nefertiti's Multi-acting Snakes Minion Theft deck
- Szechenyi Wall w/ Protean (Corpse Balloons, Flesh of Marble, Kraken's Kiss plus all the Grinders)
- Mixed Gangrel Form of Mist/Earth Meld bleed deck (not quite up to full speed...)
- Rachel Brandywine Wall (not quite up to full speed because I need a few more of the 'grinder' cards and maybe some Baltimore Purges...)

Amenophobis wrote: I guess that's the biggest disconnect in the whole VTES scene. There are competitive players and non-competitive players out there. The former are very likely to attend tournaments and use tier 1 or 1.5 decks all the time. The latter seldom go to tournaments and tend to find playing tier 1 and 1.5 decks obnoxious, because in their view they are not fun to play against.

Since you've defined them as non-overlapping, what's the issue?

OTOH If your claim is that they can overlap in "casual game day" play, then I'd submit that the tournament players are jerks for playing tier1 decks against players that they know aren't playing competitive decks.

Note that I've never, anywhere, IRL or online, encountered a single player who refused to play a "fun" deck when other people were playing known "fun" decks. So, based on my experience -- most of it being with Americans, I'll grant you -- I'm inclined to think this is a non-issue.

KevinM wrote: Note that I've never, anywhere, IRL or online, encountered a single player who refused to play a "fun" deck when other people were playing known "fun" decks. So, based on my experience -- most of it being with Americans, I'll grant you -- I'm inclined to think this is a non-issue.

There can, however, be a difference in what people think of as fun.

For this one guy over here, fun might be a ridiculously elaborate combo he wants to pull off, and the deck is really quite bad. For someone else, fun might be significantly worse than top-tier tournament play, but still relatively aggressive - the deck still tries to win and still has tools for winning and still has a player who will try to oust you.

And based on Juggernaut's post, the notion of sleaze seems to be highly subjective too

Boris The Blade wrote: And based on Juggernaut's post, the notion of sleaze seems to be highly subjective too

Those are my sleaze decks. Others in my playgroup (and regular attenders to my tournaments) have:

- OBF PRE Anarchs (Bled a player out by Turn 4 at a tournament)
- Weenie DEM
- Ayo Igoli Star Deck
- Sha-Ennu Unblockable Out-of-Turn-Bleed
- Ven Lawfirm (New and Old)
- AAA
- !Tor Vote

Just because those are my sleazier decks doesn't mean they aren't the sleaziest decks...