March 2023: Midnight in Badia

You get a shiver in the dark
It´s raining in the park, but meantime
South of the river you stop and you hold everything

Hello, visitor.

Welcome to the Thessalian scrolls, a place to share information, and some meaningless and scattered sentences about the never-ending war of the Kindred. If you have reached this place by chance, please find out what this is all about here. If you came willingly, take a sit and allow me to share some information that can be useful or, at least, entertaining.

The number of tournaments I am recording keeps on growing. This month, I am leaving out of the report for both tournaments held in Sevilla on the 25th-26th. The Spanish nationals, being a tournament with 146 players, I consider has its own particular meta, so I preferred to analyze it separatedly, and I left some data and a personal tell here. I also do not count the Grand Warzone held on Sunday, as it featured some prizes that motivated a high number of combat decks, creating a particular meta option too.

Even then, I could record 22 tournaments in March, and I had counted 18 in January and 20 in February. It is a good progression, and I would like to thank all the princes and tournament runners that are including the event data and the winning deck. I can say it is a very valuable information to the community, and I´d like to encourage all the organizers to do it more and more in the future.

I also thank all the people who are working with that information, creating tools where we can check all the data for the decks and participants: El Setita Loco, the VEKN, VTES decks, and BCN Crisis. I would also like to mention the VDB Card search and deck building tool, which is used by so many players to create the decks we later read on all the sources, and also offers a TWD database, game simulator, and many other options. 

GENERAL DATA.

As I mentioned, I was able to book 22 tournament winning decks. On those events, 350 methuselahs fought the eternal struggle. This is a slightly lower number than the previous months, and the average of participants drops to almost 16, but this is only because as said above, I am not counting the 146+37 players of the spanish nationals weekend. I do this for the sake of consistency on my TWD analysis, but I feel I should somehow reflect the fact that this month has broken all records regarding player attendance. So, here I will do the regular summary with only those 22:

General summary/Resumen general: 

Tournaments/Torneos: 22.
Players total/Total de jugadores: 350.

Events hosting 20 or more players/Eventos con más de 20 jugadores: 7.

Average players per tournament/Media de jugadores por torneo: 16.
Higher count/Torneo con más jugadores: 26 (Badia del Valles, ES).
Lower count/Torneo con menos jugadores: 7.

Adding the Sevilla event, we will wonder that this month, a total of 533 players were sitting around tables and enjoying the games, in events that were recorded and had the twd informed. This makes of march the most populated month in my records, and is wonderful news  for our growing community. Counting those, the average total of players per event would be 22. Also the highest so far this year.

CIVITATES

For this month, the places that will be remembered are:

Brazil: 3 events again, in Fortaleza (23), Ceara (16) and Sao Paulo (7).

Finland: 2 showdowns in Mikkeli (13) and Jonsuu (12).

Hungary: 2 tournaments in Budapest and Vac (both with 14 players). 

1st record in Chile (Santiago) with 14 Bravos.

17 players in Lichnov (Czech Republic).

A coupe in Paris (France) with 23 methuselahs.

Germany is noch mal represented with a tournament in Freiburg (8 participants)

Italy: 25 players in a tournament in Genoa.

13 methuselahs in Mexico (DF).

Norway entering the list with 8 players in Oppdal.

And the USA showing also for the first time with an event in Vidor with 15 participants.

Last but not least, Spain, with 7 tournaments, held in Elche (21 players), Gijón (23), Los Olivos (Gran Canaria) with 9 players, Oviedo (20), Palma de Mallorca (7) and Vitoria (16). Added to this all, the most populated tournament this month, named "no duermas (don´t sleep)" and hosting 26 methuselahs, in Badia del Vallés.

Badia is rummored to be the hunting ground for some very powerful methuselahs

 

The range of countries keeps growing in a similar progression as the number of tournaments registered. And this are quite good news to a game that bonds us in a particular way. There is no limit to what the next months can bring.

THE WINNERS.

And so the list of tournament winners keeps growing. Most of them are in the list for the first time, but there is a couple of them repeating the feat of winning. This list is not a ranking, as I am writing here only the winners. For a more precise and balanced rating of players, I think the VEKN ranking should be considered, as it counts the achievements of players on most the events they participate in, and spans a much wider period of time. 

Those were the winners this month, and I am releasing the list with the greater of respects, to praise their deed. I would like to highlight this month that, unless I am wrong (and in that case I would thank a correction), for the first time we have a female winner in my records. María Álvarez won the "Revuelta en la prisión" ("Prison riot") Tournament in Gijón (ES) on the 26th. The tournament was oriented to new players (though some elders were participating too), and that makes it even better news, as it seems to indicate that the game will be growing in diversity in the near future. 

DECKS.

The most succesful clan this month has been Gangrel, with 4 victories over 60 players, and showing 4 different archetypes. These outlanders are probably one of the most versatile factions in the game, with many different options able to reach the top. Ministry decks got to win 3 times (all with active strategies), same as Malkavians (with more variety in this case). Two Toreador decks got to show up in the list, with different archetypes but both around our favorite old Prince of Seattle. With two victories we also find Baali decks, featuring two successful archetypes built around the infernalists: An Arishat barons deck, and one Girls deck.

With one victory this month, we find decks with a majority of Brujah, Tremere, Tzimisce, Giovanni, Harbringer of Skulls, Ravnos, Banu Haqim and one based on Caitiff. I will list as usual the clans, ordered by number of players participating in the tournaments they won:

March has shown a high preminence of aggresion over reaction, in what comes to Playstyle. In the previous month, we could see a tendency towards active decks, and this  month they are clearly preeminent, having won 11 tournaments (50%), and defeated 170 players (49%).

Mixed strategies achieved 6 triumphs (27%) and defeated 101 players (29%). Reactive decks this month are represented by 4 twd (18%) and 63 players defeated (18%). The less used playstyle was control (bruisers), which only achieved a single victory (5%) over 16 players (5%). The following graphic attends to participants, and allows a good view:

Regarding classification, allow me to share the numbers first:

Classification summary/Resumen de clasificación de mazos:

Bleed decks/Mazos de sangrado: 6 (78 players).
Bruise&bleed decks/Mazos de sangrado y combate: 1 (23).
Political decks/Mazos políticos: 3 (56).
Bleed&vote/Politica y sangrado: 1 (13).

Total active decks/Total de mazos con estrategia activa: 11 (170).

Block decks/Mazos de bloqueo: 2 (37).
Block and bruise/Mazos de bloqueo y combate: 2 (26).
Total reactive decks/Total de mazos con estrategia reactiva: 4 (63).

Control bruise decks/Mazos de control (combate): 1 (16).

Toolbox: 6 (101).

In a few weeks, I will anayze the evolution for the first three months, but in advance, we can see that, while the field began being quite balanced between active and reactive decks in January, it has evolved in the subsequent months: while the performance of the active strategies has remained constant in all three months (consistently reaching 42-49% of the players defeated), the reactive decks, which had defeated 43% of the players in January, saw a reduction in their performance in February (11%)  that has been confirmed in March (18%). They did so in favor of mixed strategies (classical toolbox) which have evolved from a small 8% in Jan to a 28% in the next two months.

With time, we will see if the numbers in January were incidental, or if the percentages go back to the reactive side. As I said, I plan to write an analysys of the Q1 evolution, and I think the data will provide us all with quite a lot of interesting features. Keep watching!

Archetypes.

Now, let´s delve a little deeper on a more precise definition of the decks. As you know, here I am trying to learn the terms and categories regularly used by the community, but usually I have to add some creative denominations due to the fact that some decks are so hard to classify. I am open to comments or suggestions from all readers.

This chapter is where I pretend to introduce more upgrades in the short term. I will keep focusing more on the number of players attending the events, as I think this will add precision to the analisys on the long term. I am also working to unify some of the terms, so that we can see which are the decks that prevail or grow on a particular period of time.

Lets see the list for March:

The three allies toolbox decks share some features that allow them to be packed together. They focus on having a high amount of minions, that allow both some blocking capability (by numbers and by the use of The Unmasking), and also can swarm bleed in a regular way. Two of the decks used Outcast mages (focusing on their bleed ability) and the other one featured ECTU Operatives (more control-oriented, but with three bleeding allies, and also packing Camera phones).

I think it will be interesting to see the accumulated data for all three months this year. I will be working on it as soon as I can.

FEATURES.

Discipline dominance has changed with respect to Feb. This month, Presence has been the most used one (not surprising if we look at the clans above). As the span of disciplines is higher than in the previous months, I will share the list to allow an easier comprehension.

If we look at the previous months, we can see that there are multiple variations, so probably no discipline will show a clear predominance. I will only advance that there are 9 disciplines that have not yet been seen in a twd: abombwe, chimerstry, melpominee, obeah, spiritus, temporis, thanatosis, valeren and vicissitude. This does not mean to be a challenge thrown to the community... or maybe it is!

In the redirection aspect of the game, the numbers are similar to last month´s: 16 decks (out of 22) were able to redirect. That is a 73% of the twds, against the 6 decks (27%) that did not bounce the bleeds. And if we attend to participants, the total is 81% vs 19%. The average number of redirection cards was 5,1 among the players that included them, and a total of 3,7 if we include those 6 bold ones.

Redirection summary/Resumen del uso de redirecciones:

Decks able to redirect bleeds/Mazos capaces de redirigir sangradas: 16 (73%). 

Total players defeated by those decks: 284 (81%).

Decks with no redirection capability/Mazos sin capacidad de redirigir: 6 (27%).

Total players defeated by those decks: 66 (19%).

Deck size: 9 decks reached 90 cards (41%) . There were 5 decks between 80 and 90 (23%), and 8 decks with less than 80 (36%). Definitely, decks are getting thinner (among the twds of regular events).

As a new feature, I will tell you than the average number of cards in March was 79.

Deck size summary/Resumen de tamaño de los mazos:

90 cards in the deck/Mazos con 90 cartas: 9 (41%).
80-90 cards in the deck/Mazos conteniendo entre 80 y 90 cartas: 5 (23%).
Less than 80 cards in the deck/Mazos con menos de 80 cartas: 8 (36%).

Regarding average crypt capacity, we find similar numbers as in Feb: 15 decks had an average less than 7. The other 7 twds were above that number. Of course, in this and other features, as the number of events recorded is not the same, the % is what gives a clear idea of the situation. 

I promised a more detailed analisys of this feature, and therefore I have looked at the maximum capacity on the crypts. 4 decks had a 11 cap vampire in their roster, 3 decks had a 10 cap as their highest, 3 more on 9 cap vamps, and 4 twds were hoping for a 8 cap. We find 5 decks with a max cap of 7 in the crypt. and 3 decks holded smaller vampires (one for 5, one for 4 and the last for 3 as the biggest).

The average capacity in crypts this month was 8,18. So yes, your Stanislava will probably be able to cast some Banishments in each tournament.

Average crypt capacity summary/Resumen de media de capacidad en la cripta:

Less than seven/Menos de siete: 15 decks (68%).
More than seven/Más de siete: 7 decks (32%).

That is all for this month. I hope you obtained some piece of useful information among all this boggling. If you have any kind of suggestion or comment, please let me know. 

I am eager to begin my works on the accumulated data, I think it is going to be quite revealing. I will try to imagine new ways to analyze it all and give the community more interesting features every month. When I began this project, I thought of it as a a constantly growing tool, offering more accuracy and utility as it evolved. Being so, I am open to suggestions or comments of any kind. I really hope the next entry will be a step forward.

Until then, I thank you for reading, and wish you all a nice wake with the evening´s freshness.

Pritoos.