April 2023: Notorious in Fortaleza

 

When your belly's empty and the hunger's so real
And you're too proud to beg and too dumb to steal
You search the city for your only friend
No one would you see
You ask yourself, who could it be?
A solitary voice to speak out and set me free

Hello, visitor.

Welcome to the Thessalian scrolls. Enter freely. Go safely, and leave something of the happiness you bring.

Your steps have brought you to this place, where this awkward chronicler shares some  pieces of 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. If you came willingly, take a sit and read. Maybe you can extract some interesting conclusions among all these scattered scraps.

Spring season is here, and it is the turn for a monthly scroll featuring April. The eternal struggle goes on, and has evolved to a more intense conflict, with no event over 50 players, but with four occurences hosting more than 40 methuselahs. As you may know, I include in these reports information about the events that are in the VEKN Event Calendar, and for which I can access the tournament winning deck. This month, I could gather the information for events (reported as completed to the VEKN), that comprised 87% of the players participating. Considering that the average on the winter season was 71%, I find it is a huge boost that, if sustained in the future, will make this site more accurate and useful. A lot of people are working to share this information with the community: The VEKN managers, Princes all around, other event organizers and also some players that add more details. I feel quite thankful for their efforts, and encourage them to keep on performing these deeds that, in my opinion, make the community (and the game), expand and be richer.

I also want to thank other editors that are working on tools we all can use to check out events and deck information in an easy and intuitive way: El Setita Loco, VTES decks and VDB, along with the BCN Crisis tool. You all guys are making this game better.

And I will thank also the brilliant crew of the Bleed de 3 ("Bleed for 3") corporation, as they invited me to their twitch and allowed me to talk about this project. Their presentations are a must watch if you understand the language. They have now many channels, in twitch, spotify, Ivoox, youtube... You can find a link to their Instagram here, and take the path you prefer.

Now, it is time to check the information I have gathered. I could not avoid introducing some senseless comments that you can easily ignore (in fact, I recommend you do). Remember:  here you can see the indicators, conclussions are up to yourself.

GENERAL DATA.

Second time in a row, I got to register 22 tournament winning decks. And this time, participation has been quite remarkable: 493 methuselahs have been reported in these events, taking the average to 22 players. This is quite a good number, matched only by March so far, and we have to consider that March held the Spanish Nationals... 

In April we had the National Championships in Italy and Brazil, with good attendance on both. The Italian championship hosted two events with 40+ methuselahs, and the Brazilian week-end reunited 75 participations, also in two days. Amazing.

Let´s see the summary:

General summary/Resumen general: 

Tournaments/Torneos: 22.
Players total/Total de jugadores: 493.

Events hosting 20 or more players/Eventos con más de 20 jugadores: 9.

Average players per tournament/Media de jugadores por torneo: 22.
Higher count/Torneo con más jugadores: 48 (Italian NC, Bolonia).
Lower count/Torneo con menos jugadores: 9.

CIVITATES

Please, admire the places were the eternal struggle was fought this month:

Belgium: 1 event in Mechelen with 19 participants.

Czech Republic: 30 participants in Hradec-Kralove.

Finland, again held 2 tournaments in Espoo (17) and Jyvaskyla (14).

France: 3 events in Socieu-en-Jarrest (10), Lille (13) and Paris (17).

1 International event was held, with 14 methuselahs.

The two struggles in Bolonia (40 and 48 participants) on the week-end of the NC in Italy.

13 players gathered in Mexico (DF) for the first stage of La Liga Chilanga.

Poland: 1 event with 12 participants in Lublin.

Spain shows up with 6 tournaments this month: 41 players in Zaragoza, 29 in Gijon, 27 in Badalona, 26 in Granada, 19 in Alcalá de Henares and 10 in Palma de Mallorca.

And this month, we highlight Brazil, with the NC in Fortaleza hosting 44 players, the side event with 31, and another shuffle in Itaocara with 10.  

With more than 2,5 million humans living there, there´s no question on what those methuselas came for.

There are a couple of features I would like to comment on this topic:

First of all, if you are a usual reader of this blog, you may know that, in the monthly reports, I use to include a photo of the city that hosted the biggest tournament in that particular month. I also include the name of the city in the entry´s title.  In April, the Italian NC held in Bolonia had the highest count of participants, but I had featured Bolonia in the January report, and I also have adopted a rule not to repeat the same city along the year. So I have featured Fortaleza this time, and the brazilian  city and community very well deserve it.

But the offense to the italian folks is even more punishing, due to the fact that the January feature was a mistake, and the most populated event that month was not held in Bolonia, but in Prato. I located it wrongly (yes, my entire January report is based on a despicable lie), and I did not notice until I talked with Miro in Sevilla! I am aware that Italy should have two cities represented in these scrolls, and only my clumsiness has prevented that. I can only beg for forgiveness from the italian community, with the promise to compensate somehow my mistake by a) including the right reference in my upcoming summer seasonal accumulated report, and b) paying a birra to any italian player I meet in any VTES event during 2023. You can claim that anywere you see me, amici. 

Second, I want to highlight the awakening of the french comunity, with three tournaments this month hosting 40 participants in total. Even when the two national championships held this month (Italy and Brazil) have been encouraging and inspiring, I would not like their brilliantness to overshadow the efforts taken in France to organize more events. I hope it is not a one-time happening, and the community continues growing in its activity. Keep on, Princes!

Also, I would like to feature the Czech tournament in Hradec-Kralove, holding 30 participants, not only due to the high count, which proves the vigor of that community, but also due to a quite personal preference (and this is strictly true): The chosen city was the birthplace of my mother. Love to Çeskà!

Finally, I would like to highlight one more event: Delaying Tactics tournament held in Zaragoza, Spain. The story of this tournament is quite inspiring: The primogeniture of the city, led by the admirable Raul Perfecto, had planned a big event, with similar infrastructure to the fantastic 22´National Championship. But, after most of the communication had been made, they had to delay the tournament till September. As honorable and brilliant as they are, they kept on offering an event on the previously planned dates, and 41 methuselahs from anywhere in Spain answered the call. This game is awesome. I only regret I have missed this one, and I need to schedule it all, to attend to their gathering in september. 

THE WINNERS.

So now, let´s watch the winners with reverence. As I see more and more of these lists, I realize how widespread they are. Of course, some names are recurring, but there are more illustirous names in this game than in any other ccg, tcg or lcg I have known. And I began playing games in 1992.  

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. 

This list may feel a little like a side fact (unless you´re in it, in which case it may make you deservely proud), but it will have more sense when I show the accumulated data for the first two seasons (and I will). If I wrote your name wrong, please do not hesitate to contact me. I will definitely feel quite honored to know you read this scroll, and will correct any misunderstanding.

DECKS.

Well, this month we find a minor plot twist on the clans winning tournaments. Banu Haqim had shown in a secondary role in the first quarter, and this month they are able to break their limit. They are the clan of the month with 3 wins and 81 players defeated. They were making some noise in the Winter season (see details here), but in April they confirm they are a challenging enemy (closely followed by Tremere). See them on top, sorting the list by the number of participants:

Also, some new features here. Nosferatu, Nosfe sabbat, Salubri antitribu, Guruhi or True Brujah are joining the list of winning-able clans. It has been a weird month in what comes to this indicator, with so many clans that are new to the chart. But this is good news in what comes to variety: maybe weirdness is the landmark in VTES.

And what about Playstyle? Well, I have to say April has been surprising. There is indeed a change on what seemed to be a consolidated tendency: In the first three months of the year, and as I explained, we can see a constant preponderance of active strategies among the twds. But this month is either an exception or a turning point. For the first time this year, active decks are not the most successful in regular events, and mixed strategies are taking their place for a small margin. Also, control strategies had a higher success than usual, and I feel so happy to see how the chart of the winning decks shows itself almost as balanced as it can be:

Variety is one of the pillars of a healthy competitive scene, so I personally like this challenging scenario. Lets see the clasification I made for those decks:

Note this is of course a somehow subjetive sorting, but I try to follow the principles I have learnt from wiser methuselahs. Both charts are organized attending to player count in the events they won. And say what? are you telling me bruisers were more succesful than pure bleeders in April?

Well... yes.

And to clarify the information, so that you can extract more accurate conclussions, I will point that I am classifying as bruisers those decks that rely heavily on direct actions to iniciate combat. This means that, if you had met some of them in a game, you can count that they are going to consistently be able to visit your vampires, and you better be ready for that.

Classification summary/Resumen de clasificación de mazos:

Bleed decks/Mazos de sangrado: 4 (94 players).
Bruise&bleed decks/Mazos de sangrado y combate: 0.
Political decks/Mazos políticos: 2 (25).
Bleed&vote/Politica y sangrado: 1 (26).

Total active decks/Total de mazos con estrategia activa: 7 (145).

Block decks/Mazos de bloqueo: 2 (30).
Block and bruise/Mazos de bloqueo y combate: 2 (59).
Total reactive decks/Total de mazos con estrategia reactiva: 4 (89).

Control bruise decks/Mazos de control (combate): 5 (113).

Toolbox: 6 (146).

Archetypes.

Playstyle and classification give us an idea of the general strategies that are bein used to win, but then, let´s take a closer look on the kind of decks that were succesful, by sorting them in what I called archetypes in this scrolls:

The preeminence of Modern Banu Haqim in twd counts is not awesome, as they won 3 tournaments out of 22. But if we consider the players attending, we can see that they have a wider advantage on their competitors (more than 50% higher than the second-in-row), and if they perform similarly in the following months, it would mean a remarkable boost in the accumulated ranking.

FEATURES.

Disciplines: This is one of the indicators for which I receive more comments. As months pass, it is clear that some disciplines are being used more constantly than others, but the numbers keep showing a wide range of them, and in April the top place is for obfuscate for the first time. 

This month, I have the pleasure to introduce a new feature, that may be useful for amusement: card types. Please look at the chart:

 

Probably we agree that, for now, this information may be more or less a curiosity, as combat cards can be either a Roundhouse or a Majesty, and the fact that there is a high number of those does not define the meta. But again, it is an aproximation to some facts and, if we add them to other charts in this scroll (such as archetypes or the disciplines used), we can see some sort of coherence. Also, when we watch this feature from a time perspective (I will do it after the spring season comes to an end), we will see the evolution and will compare with other indicators, such as the use of Ashur tablets (that may me linked with the amount of master cards used). 

About redirection, again there are more decks able to bounce than those that refuse to do it. But this month the difference is much tighter than the 81%-19% we could see on March. No doubt the good results of Banu Haqim this month are related to this.

Redirection summary/Resumen del uso de redirecciones:

Decks able to redirect bleeds/Mazos capaces de redirigir sangradas: 14 (64%). 

Total players defeated by those decks: 328 (67%).

Decks with no redirection capability/Mazos sin capacidad de redirigir: 8 (36%).

Total players defeated by those decks: 165 (33%).

And the good performance of the Banu Haqim is also related to a good month for the Ashur tablets+multimaster decks: these have won 6 tournaments and defeated 119 players, a 34% of the total appearances. It is a similar rating as in March. Have the use of ashur reached the cap? We will see it in the following months.

Deck size: This month has been quite different as the previous ones. 14 tournament winning decks were including 90 cards. Only one got between 80 and 90, and only 7 had lesss than 80 cards. 

The average number of cards grew substantially to 85.

The next few months will tell if this is a change in the trend or a singular exception. But we may wonder if there is a relationship between the fact that decks this April are much wider than the previous month, and the kind of decks that were succesful, with much less active decks among them. Maybe there is a propensity to  add more cards in control or reactive decks.

Deck size summary/Resumen de tamaño de los mazos:

90 cards in the deck/Mazos con 90 cartas: 14 (64%).
80-90 cards in the deck/Mazos conteniendo entre 80 y 90 cartas: 1 (4%).
Less than 80 cards in the deck/Mazos con menos de 80 cartas: 7 (32%).

Average crypt capacity grows slightly, but keeps on a similar range as the previous months, being 6,40 in the global account. A lower capacity average would not mean the vampires are all small cap, but I think it would indicate that, regularly, twds use to have the plan to influence more vampires, either by featuring several mid or small caps, or by compensating some big cap with other very small ones (1 to 3 cap vamps).

To have an idea of the kind of monsters that we can see in those decks, I have counted the highest capacity vampire in twds. 13 decks were playing at least one big cap (9 to 11). 8 decks had mid caps as the highest (7-8), and only 1 deck featured 6 cap as his biggest threat. This is slightly different (and higher) than the previous months, and may be related to the kind of decks winning in April, as we saw before a reduction in the number of active decks.

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

Less than seven/Menos de siete: 18 decks winning over 409 players (83%).
More than seven/Más de siete: 4 decks winning over 84 players (17%).

That is all for this month. I hope you obtained some piece of useful information among all this chat.

As you know, I imagine this project as evolving and growing with time, so If you have any kind of suggestion or comment, please let me know. I am very happy to say that some brilliant and generous players have offered themselves to collaborate in the blog, and probably we will have a significative enhancement in some of the scrolls in a near. Stay tuned!

Also, I can´t help but advance that, for my next entry, I will write quite a different kind of report, which will not be related to monthly results, but to a more colorful and entertaining tale. I had the pleasure to write about... wait! Shut up, you fool. Let it be some kind of surprise. Let them discover it as they read in two weeks.

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

Pritoos.