Day three: the nightmares continue

Jon says since there isn't any no-pants draft going on here, he's going home.

I think he means to his hotel room rather than "home home". That would seem like kind of an overreaction to the lack of no-pants draft.

In the Swainbank drafts today (played with pants as far as I could tell), Jon Sushinsky in fact won the first one, and then I won the second one. They were both played as 2R, no finals, though, so as to get us into the second one faster and keep people from having to wait around, so we didn't actually play final rounds to determine these winners, they were just based on two-round results.

[Jon] Winning Swainbank draft was my prize for playing a Pariah deck during my only constructed game. If only it had been any good, although it did work surprisingly better than expected. Chandler with an Eye of Hazimel is a great co-pilot for that deck. Now if I can only remember that Pariah can't take undirected actions...[/Jon]

So... yeah... first tournament, I ended up trying to draft Pot/Ani/For/stuff with Anarchs (as the first draft was 3 Camarilla plus 3 Anarchs, while the second was 3 Camarilla plus 4 Bloodlines), and got two Immortal Grapples, a Fists of Death, and an Increased Strength... but no Potence strikes except Shattering Blow. Doh. I got ousted in embarrassing ways twice, the first time it was by my prey (Steve Wieck) calling Ancilla Empowerment thinking it was going to let him make a nice 2/2 VP split with his prey (Mike Ooi) after I was reduced to 1 pool and Mike would be able to oust Matt Morgan (my predator) and then me pretty easily - instead, I was ousted by the Ancilla Empowerment instantly (giving Matt the VP) as none of us (including me) had noticed that the Arms Dealer was my fourth minion taking care of my fourth pool here. Oops. Second round, I embarrassingly neglected to notice that my predator (Jon Sushinsky) had untapped his Jara Drory with Raven Spy with Metro Underground at the end of his turn... and so blocking my not-so-well-timed Smash and Grab on his recently-played Anarch Railroad (that ended up killing me on account of my inability to block his 1 stealth bleeds of 2 every turn) was not a difficult decision.

Second tournament I drafted (naturally!) Baali! And Ahrimanes, and Malkavians, and uh some other vampires too, but ended up putting just 3 Baali, 2 Ahrimanes, 2 Malkavians in my 7-vamp crypt... thanks to Matt for convincing me to not play a 9-vampire crypt when I didn't have to. Both my table wins were built on some pretty tricky tricks ... the first one, Matt (as always, sheesh) had me down to one pool with his Gargoyles/Anastaz deck when I attempted to rush my prey Craig's tapped Jara Drory with 3 blood with my 3-strength 2-maneuver Howler (Wildebeest) at 0 stealth with Nose of the Hound, so Craig blocked with his untapped 2-blood Gisela Harden... and Howler Majestied at superior and bled for 1 to oust him. Luck-y. Then I ousted L. Scott Johnson with a couple turns worth of William Biltmore action. Then time ran out, luckily, cause Matt was pretty much about to oust me, having torporized all my vampires...

Second round, I preyed on John Pattie's Ahrimanes (!), who preyed on Oscar Garza's Gargoyles/Tremere/Brujah, who preyed on Ethan Burrow's Krassimir/Howler (!!)/somebody else deck... I got a couple good bleeds in early with Psychomachia/stealth and my one Sense the Sin and Aire of Elation, then bled a little at a time for a while (so infernal!), then ousted John with a timely Eyes of Chaos from Quentin King III (just after Minion Tapping him I think). Then I cycled through my deck (yay Giotto, he is SO my favorite) and trickily ousted Oscar with an unblocked Nose of the Hound by Cynthia Ingold on his 1-blood Arnold Simpson (2 damage -> Oscar's own Tension in the Ranks) and then a blocked Nose of the Hound from Quentin, with Coma to oust him with the second Tension damage (as Oscar was down to 2 at this point, I think I had snuck a bleed of 3 in the turn before). Then Ethan conceded. Heh heh heh. I love Bloodlines draft.

Okay, it's REALLY late now. Time to quit already. Ooh, let me see if I can put a picture on this.... score! For your reference, the guy in the green shirt with his back to the camera is me, clockwise from there around the table, that's Albert Chang in white shirt with glasses, Stewart Wieck in white shirt without glasses against the wall, Steve Wieck in black shirt at table, Ben Peal behind Steve talking to Stewart, and Jon Sushinsky about to oust me in the white shirt with the grin. I am eating a french fry. (Thanks to Scott for the photo!)