Special Report: The Sevilla Connection

With your feet on the air and your head on the ground
try your trick and spin it, yeah
Your head will collapse, and there is nothing in it
And you´ll ask yourself: where is my mind?


Hello, visitor.

Welcome to a very special issue of the Thessalian scrolls. This is a place to share information 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. But what am I saying? At this time, you probably know where you are: enter freely, on your own will, and leave some of the hapiness you bring.  Also, allow me to share some information that can be useful or, at least, entertaining.

I began this post saying it was very special, and indeed it is. This time I will delve into a new way of reporting, one that I will deliver only from time to time. I´ll do this just to raise to the occasion on adding some comment about what has been the brightest and most important event this year, up to date: The Spanish Nationals held in Sevilla on Saturday, March 25th, 2023.

As usual, I will focus on the statistics. But allow me to make some personal comments, before going in the raw data. I was not sure I would be able to go, but finally the webs of destiny cleared for me, and could have the privilege. So I packed a few clothes, a toothbrush, and my Nosferatu deck (feeling I had to play Alonso Petrodon for this particular occasion), and began my journey. I had made the reservation, got a free day from office, and drove five hours on friday, but never regretted the efforts that took me there. From the arrival lunch to my goodbye breakfast 41 hours later (we all lost 1 hour in the proccess), I had a great time at every single minute. There are many who are responsible for this, and I will go back on them later on, but I must begin by mentioning the Princedom of Sevilla and the Primogens. They acted as the perfect hosts, and their part in such a great experience went far beyond the mere organziation.



So, you say Petrodon dated you here tonight. Well, if I were you...


THE EVENT.

As said before, I will go back to my tale at the end of this report. Now, let´s talk a little about the tournament itself. A National Championship is a very good chance to enjoy the VTES experience, in a different way as the regular events in our cities. It usually gathers players from different communities of a country (and maybe from other nationalities), who are attracted by the chance to contest with more and different players that they are used to, by a regularly richer span of prizes, and to enjoy the chance to travel to a different environment. The open category in such events allows the interaction with all kind of players, makes a challenge of a different kind, and also allows a different feeling from that in the European Championships, where players have to win a place in the tournament. The diversity of options in VTES championships is definitely an asset.

In Spain, the post-pandemic history of big VTES events has been quite remarkable:

In Nov´2021 , The NC in Alicante gathered 112 players (I was one of them!) and, after a hard and international final table, David Fraile and his Sabbat Ventrue deck raised with the victory and the title of champion. The next year, in Zaragoza, we were 139 players and could see Ricardo  Marta, from Lisbon (PT) seize the title with his brilliant Girls deck. Spain also had the privilege to host a GP tournament in Benidorm in Autum 2022, where Javi Naranjo got the highest prize with a Stealth bleed Malkavian´22.

It was not easy to match the importance and the excellence of those events. but definitely the NAC 2023 in Sevilla stood in for it. The prizes where tempting, the place was appealing, and the community was eager to join again together. All was in place for a wonderful gathering, and after some last minute drops, we reached the awesome number of 146 players!

People from all around Spain raised to the occasion, but also from other countries. The spanish community had, of course, the highest representation with 128 players. But we had the honor to host 18 methuselahs from many other countries: 8 friends came from Portugal, being our nations so close in so many aspects. 4 Italian warriors joined us too (in the game and in other matters). Also, it was greatly awesome to find 3 Chilean guys who defied time and space to attend the event. And we have also distinguished visitors from France, Germany and the UK. To this, we must add two Spanish players who live in other countries, and came back home for such a good chance.

Portugal: 8 players.

Italy: 4

Chile: 3

France: 1 (+1 spaniard)

Germany: 1 (also +1)

UK: 1.

Such a diverse spread of nationalities in an event like this is a pride for the organizers and the community, and I think we all would like that to grow further. 

But good news do not end here. In a game that has been traditionally populated almost only by male players, this event had the privilege of hosting five female methuselahs, from Lisbon (2), Mallorca, Sevilla and Zaragoza. I really hope this number will grow in future tournaments, as it would help our communities to grow into richer and wider ones. I know there are efforts in motion to offer the VTES experience to more women, and I find it is a good idea. March report will definitely bring a very nice piece of information related to this. Watch out for it!

We also could meet in Sevilla three of the youngest players in Spain, aged 12, 14 and 16. They are bringing a new wind to the game, and mixed perfectly with all we old-school grumpy ancients. I really hope the three had a great time, and I want to praise their decision to come. I will not name them for good reasons, but I if they read this, I would like them to recognize themselves: they are A, E and P. Hurrah to you!

Added to the pleasure of joining these mentioned players, I want to remark that the event allowed us to meet once more a few members of BCP: Hugh joined, and it was quite nice to shake hands, and a privilege to cross again in a table. Also Ginés attended, so I could seize the chance to have some words with him, and gather two great pieces of his art, signed by him.  I think I can say that their presence and their connection to the community is highly appreciated by all of us.

I have mentioned the prizes, and I would like to go back to them. The chance to meet players we can´t see very often, to live such a rich experience, and to pit our skills against each other would be enough to enjoy this kind of event. But also, I want to say it is a great thing that, added to all this, nobody went empty-handed. I finished 56, briefly out of the prized positions, and did not have the luck to win any raffle. But even then, I came home with quite a  hoard of precious possesions. Not bad at all.


THE PARTICIPANTS.


Thanks to the wonderful BCN crisis tournament manager, a tool developed and maintained by talented and dedicated players, we can have some global information on the decks played in the event. Registering for the tournament ccame with a few questions about your deck. They are not mandatory, but most players decided to answer and thanks to such a little effort, we can see some interesting data such as deck type, main clan or main discipline.

The managers of BCN crisis are as generous as they are brilliant. From here, I would like to encourage the communities to contact me (or any other better source) if they would like to use such a strong tool for their gatherings, and I will pass word to the owners.  Also, I wanna say thanks to all players who are introducing precise and good data when they register. It is not revealing any important hint (nobody gets to see the data before the event), and it gives us an interesting view of the meta of a particular event.


Deck type.

Classification options in BCN crisis are quite precise. And 125 (85%) players defined their decks according to their own perception. We only ignore the type in 21 decks. This is the result: 39 decks (31%) defined themselves as bleeders. 26 (21%) were toolbox. There were 16 blockers (13%), and a whole 14 political decks (11%). 13 (10%) named themselves as combat decks (bruisers), and there were 10 decks based on allies (8%), 4 turbo decks (3%), and 3 breed decks (2%) were completing the row. Lets see a graphical representation:



No surprise to find a majority of Bleeders in such a big turnament. Bleed is the shorter route to the VPs, and other strategies may need a higher level of stamina to use (which is a point). But anyway, still quite a wide range of strategies at hand.


The clans.

This is the list of main clans in the decks played. 86% of the players defined themselves. The top of the list is a little crazy (sorry for the bad joke, I will go bring a stake). 




Disciplines.

Being harder to define (counting the cards is not always precise), the main discipline of each deck was defined by 81% of the players. Still a good amount to have a clear idea of what could be seen in the tables:


I find this feature particularly interesting. 23% of the decks defined their main discipline to be dominate. At least a few other decks must have included as a secondary tool. This seems to be a tendency in big tournaments, for the reason mentioned already.


THE FINALISTS.

I would like to take a detailed view of the finalists and their decks, Of course, in such a big tournament and with open format, there were a lot of excellent players with great decks, who did not made it to the final table, and could or should have. But, although maybe for that and other reasons we should not consider that particular game as a precise representation of the meta, I think there are quite a few interesting details on those five decks.

To begin with, allow me to list them. These are the five masters:

Arnau Diez Sans was there with a Malkavian bleed deck he called "robbery!". A deck with 12 different vampires, and 90 cards in killing bleeder proportions. 

David Fraile Zamorano brought a Guruhi-Tzimisce anarchist alliance with multi-master capability and a plan to use war ghouls to make, well, war!.

Alejandro Rodríguez García wanted to overwhelm his rivals with a Harbringer of Skulls anarchist deck centered around Khursid and his army of Emerald legionnaries.

Tomás López Jiménez also featured legionnaries, guarding an extravagant art exhibition held by the sabbat Toreador.

finally, David Tomasetti Barceló brought a political deck based on Scout and Arishat together, in a brilliant evolution of one of the most recent and original archetypes which is loading a lot of success in the last few years.

The lists are published in Bcn crisis, and a link is included in the VEKN March Newsletter. Also, some of the wisest players are commenting the decks and the game. I just want to praise the skill and wits of all five participants, and send my special congratulations to the winner, Arnau. And also, point out some features of the decks because well, that´s what I am doing this.

First of all, let´s note the number of cards in each deck: Four of the five finalists had 90 cards. This called my attention specially in two archetypes that are often being reduced to the tightest (Malkavian´22 and Arishat vote). 

I can imagine this is a clever bet taken by the players: in a tournament with 146 people and having three rounds to win your place in the finals, winning the table is probably not enough to reach there. You need to maximize your points, assume some risk and kill as many players as you can. And you need to have enough fuel in the deck to seize the opportunity to prey on the hole table. Increasing the number of killer cards while maintaing similar proprotions seems to be a clever move. I did not do so, and found myself losing punch in my final rush of my third table. 

David Fraile was the only player featuring 60 cards, with a wise criteria too: his assets were somehow permanent (12 allies including 7 war ghouls), and he could rely on them being more than a one-shot card. His deck could be thinner and instead managed to win a lot of VPs and be at the final.


Redirecting bleeds seems to be quite important in a tournament this big, but two decks (both David Fraile´s and David Tomasetti´s) did not pack them. And they had thought of alternative ways to defend against bleed. Fraile packed a combination of bloat, fixed intercept and the threat of the war ghouls to defend himself. And Tomasetti brought 8 copies of protected resources! Those tools helped them survive enought through the qualifying rounds. Nicely done.

On the others, Alejandro packed 12 redirect cards. but all of them could be used to intercept. And both Arnau and Tomás held 8 cards. Not a low number, but also not exaggerated. That was enough to hold their rivals in the rounds.


About crypt capacity, the averages are quite low among these 5 decks, as there are a lot of support vampires in those lists. Seeing the numbers, four of the five players wanted hard to bring a particular vampire to the table, and all of them were 8 capacity or less: Egotha or Erebus (or maybe Agaitas) in the case of Tomás, Khursid, Nana Buruku or Scout Youngwood. Though his range was way wider, Arnau also packed 8 capacity vampires as his maximum. No big caps in the finals.

This goes along well with what seems to be a tendency on the last months in what comes to crypt composition.


FINAL COMMENTS.

Those are some of the features I placed my eyes on. I left the city on sunday exhausted but happy, with a lot of nice experiences: The meeting-greet with Aida and Javier, the initial lunch with people from Aragon and Catalonia, a lot of handshakes with excellent folks, my private visit to the places of my childhood, the gathering with the italian team (including attending to a brilliant theatrical play), dinner and the multiple rides in my car with those excellent four cavalieri, a short  breakfast with a nice Madrid old-known mate, more meetings, a first game with four nice but hard players, greets with the Portugal team, meeting the Asturias crew, a second game bouncing unsuccessfully against Hugh (twice in a row), who played nice and strong as always, some words with Thomas from Germany, and with the chilean friends, and with other players from Catalonia, and a quick lunch with some Madrid people, and a thrilling and close third game with some of the nicest players I know, and meeting the younglings, and some beers with Bd3 crew, and a enriching conversation with Ginés (and those two pieces of art), and meeting with Prince of Canarias, also with Belial the Youtuber, enjoying 1000 other conversations, a dinner with the organizers, a good late night chat with some Madrid people, and a final breakfast with part of the Valencia expedition. I am leaving things out, I wish I could list everything... 

That was it. I went back home a better player (I hope), and definitely a happier man. This is a blog dedicated to statistics, but there is no data explaining how good this event was for me. I really hope to be able to attend the next one! And I hope karma gives back to all of you who made it possible, at least a piece of good things that you deserve.

I hope this community can meet again soon. Until then, I thank you for reading, and wish you all a nice wake with the evening´s freshness.

Pritoos.

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