Praxis Seize: A rough day for the Dead

Yesterday, I drove to Norwich to participate in the Praxis Seizure tournament, where we were welcomed by none other than Simon, the Nosferatu Prince of Norwich himself. And when I say Nosferatu, I mean it. Simon had gone the extra mile and arrived in full costume, complete with impressive claws and fangs. Nothing says welcome to Norwich quite like being greeted by someone who looks ready to drag you into the sewers. Full marks for atmosphere!

The tournament took place at Athena Games, a venue that pleasantly surprised me with its size. There was plenty of room for our little gathering of Methuselahs, and it was lovely to see familiar faces alongside some new ones. With 17 players attending, we had a proper tournament on our hands.

I was particularly excited about this one. After a quick discussion with the local gang, I had decided to bring my Hecata deck, featuring its newest star, Parijat. The deck had shown promise in friendly games, and I was eager to see how it would perform in a competitive environment. The zombies were ready, the rituals prepared, and my confidence was reasonably high.

As it turned out, confidence is a resource that can disappear even faster than pool.

Game One: Welcome to the Slaughterhouse

Seating: Jaime (Tzimisce) > Me (Hecata) > Hugh (Hecata) > Simon (Nosferatu)

The first game was terrifying from the moment I sat down. I was surrounded by considerably more experienced players, and the seating made me feel as though I had just poured petrol over my head while everyone around me was casually playing with matches.

Things didn't improve when I looked at my starting crypt. Not only was Parijat missing, but the selection was generally awful. To make matters worse, Hugh, playing Hecata himself, started influencing out the very vampires I had hoped to bring into play.  With my preferred vampires unavailable, I had little choice but to bring out Abdu. Unfortunately, Jaime's Tzimisce were already getting bloodthirsty, and by around Turn Three they had sent poor Abdu to torpor. With my only vampire temporarily removed from active duty, the road to my pool was wide open.

By the time I managed to influence out a second vampire, I was already down to 10 pool. Hugh had been developing his board and putting pressure on Simon, leaving Jaime free to concentrate on me. The situation deteriorated with remarkable efficiency, and by Turn Six I was ousted. Simon followed in Turn Seven, leaving the Tzimisce and Hecata to settle their differences. Hugh eventually won the table with his zombies and Shrouds, demonstrating what a Hecata deck can accomplish when its vampires actually turn up for work.

One game down. Zero victory points. Several valuable lessons learned, most of them involving sharp objects and Tzimisce.

Game Two: The Dead strike back

Seating: Luke (!Malkavian) > Mark (Mithras and big boys) > Helena (Helena) > Kyle (Salubri swords) > Me (Hecata)

The second game was easily my favourite of the tournament. This time Parijat appeared in my starting crypt, accompanied by a promising opening hand. After the previous disaster, it felt like the universe had finally decided to stop treating my deck as a practical joke. Of course, my predator, Kyle, had other plans. His Salubri started equipping weapons and seemed rather enthusiastic about testing them on my vampires. Fortunately, the table was much more balanced than the first. Everyone had an opportunity to develop their boards without immediately being reduced to a cautionary tale. Luke played some fascinating Malkavian antitribu cards I had never seen before, Mark brought out Mithras and his impressive friends to call referendums and increase the bleeding pressure, while Helena made life difficult for her neighbours by blocking important actions. Kyle, meanwhile, appeared determined to win the local arms race, equipping swords and aggravated-damage daggers as though preparing for a particularly hostile medieval festival.

Pool totals slowly dropped, and eventually most of us were hovering around four to six pool. Every action mattered, every block was potentially decisive, and the table had reached that wonderful stage of VTES where everyone looks simultaneously dangerous and one unfortunate bleed away from extinction. Then I spotted an opportunity!

Luke was sitting on seven pool, and his main vampire (whose name unfortunately escapes me, but who could burn two blood to unlock) was causing problems. I sent my zombie after him, creating just enough disruption to open a path for my bleeders. The undead workforce had finally found a productive use for their talents. First came a superior Shroud of Decay. Then Parijat stepped forward, increased her stealth and delivered a bleed with Conditioning to finish the job. My first victory point of the tournament, and a particularly satisfying one! After the disaster of Game One, watching the Hecata execute a coordinated attack felt wonderful. With Luke gone, I turned my attention towards Mark, but unfortunately time was running out. The game ended with four of us still standing, each receiving half a victory point.

Final result: 1.5 VP. Much better! Parijat had finally demonstrated why she deserved her place in the crypt, and I was feeling rather pleased with the deck again.

Game Three: Everything was going so well...

Seating: Mark (Serpentis) > Me (Hecata) > Nathan (Tzimisce) > Matt (Osebo)

For the final preliminary game, I found myself surrounded by decks whose capabilities were largely a mystery to me. I knew enough about Tzimisce to be nervous, but Serpentis and Osebo were less familiar territory. It felt rather like entering a dark alley and discovering that everyone else knew exactly what was waiting at the other end.

My prey was Nathan's Tzimisce, and after Game One I had developed a healthy respect for the clan. I decided that the best approach was to attack aggressively before they could establish themselves. Meanwhile, Mark and Matt were busy with their own struggles, giving me some breathing room to develop. And develop I did! Family Gatherings accelerated my crypt, I managed to bring out three vampires, and my draws were unusually cooperative. For a while, everything seemed to be working exactly as intended. Servitors delivered bleeds, Shrouds followed at the right moments, and Freak Drives allowed me to squeeze additional actions out of my vampires. The Hecata machinery was finally running smoothly.

Unfortunately, Nathan's Tzimisce proved remarkably difficult to crack. Even my best turns failed to break through completely, although I felt increasingly confident about my position. I had vampires, allies, momentum and a reasonable amount of pool. Surely this was going somewhere good.

Then the table reminded me that this was VTES.

First, Nathan stole my Rotting Behemoth. Watching one of your own zombies change employers is deeply upsetting, particularly when you have invested so much effort in maintaining a loyal undead workforce. Then Abdu succumbed to the temptations of Serpentis. Between the stolen Behemoth and my suddenly unreliable vampire, my carefully assembled board was beginning to resemble a company undergoing a hostile takeover. And the worst was still to come.

On the following turn, Parijat was sent to torpor after an unfortunate combat encounter with the Tzimisce. My attempt to rescue her went spectacularly wrong, resulting in another vampire entering torpor and eventually being diablerised. Within a remarkably short period, my impressive board had transformed into a collection of missing, stolen, incapacitated and permanently deceased assets.

The Hecata Human Resources Department was going to have a very difficult Monday.

With my offensive capabilities effectively dismantled, I switched from conquest to survival. Fortunately, an opening eventually allowed me to rescue one of my vampires, but by then I was no longer thinking about ousting anyone. My ambitions had been reduced to the considerably more modest goal of remaining in the game until the timer expired. And that, at least, I managed.

Time was called with all four Methuselahs still alive, earning each of us half a victory point.

Lessons from the Crypt

So, no final for me this time. My three games produced 2 victory points, some promising moments for the Hecata and several extremely painful lessons about what happens when Tzimisce decide to interfere with your plans. Despite the setbacks, I had a fantastic time. The tournament was well organised, the venue was excellent, and it was a pleasure to spend the day playing with both familiar faces and new opponents. Huge thanks to Simon and everyone involved in organising Praxis Seizure!

I also owe special thanks to Jaime and Nathan, who taught me quite a lot about Tzimisce. Admittedly, their teaching methods involved repeatedly dismantling my board, stealing my creatures and sending my vampires to torpor, but the lessons were effective. And this creates a rather uncomfortable personal dilemma.

For a long time, I have maintained a firm and entirely principled position that I will never build a Tzimisce deck. The clan simply wasn't for me. Too much fleshcrafting, too many unpleasant creatures, and altogether too much enthusiasm for doing horrible things to other people's vampires. But after seeing what Jaime and Nathan could accomplish, I have to admit that my determination is beginning to waver. I still don't like the Tzimisce. I'm just starting to suspect I might enjoy playing them. A disturbing development indeed.

The real treasure was the vampires we traded along the way

There was, however, one final highlight that made the entire trip worthwhile regardless of my tournament performance. Everyone received promotional cards, including Aaradhya, a vampire I have been desperate to acquire more copies of ever since she was first revealed. I've had plans for a Path of Power deck for quite some time, but my ambitions were being held back by the inconvenient reality of not owning enough copies of its intended star. However, a little friendly trading later, I was heading home with three copies of Aaradhya! Three! Suddenly, the defeats, stolen zombies and unfortunate diableries seemed considerably less important. The Path of Power deck I have been dreaming about is finally within reach, and I already have several ideas about how to build it.

The Hecata may not have seized the Praxis of Norwich, but the day was far from a failure. I came home with new cards, new ideas, new friends and a much better understanding of several dangerous decks. And perhaps, just perhaps, a slightly less hostile attitude towards the Tzimisce.

The game never ends, only pauses. I'll see you at the next move.

Custodian Hargrave

So close, yet so undead

Last week, I sat down with Cristina, David, Aaron and Manuel for another evening of our favourite vampire card game. We met at our usual place in Cambridge, a venue that seems to host a bit of everything: sometimes live music, sometimes Magic players, and sometimes five Methuselahs quietly taking over a table with cards, counters and a weirdly shaped item called the Edge. This game was particularly interesting for me because I finally brought the deck I had originally planned to take to the UK Nationals, before a virus successfully performed the most effective tournament denial action I have encountered so far. The Hecata were finally leaving their crypt, and this time they had a new star: Parijat.

Aaron brought his familiar Salubri, David arrived with Lasombra heavy bleed, Cristina had her Brujah bruise deck, and Manuel surprised us with an Assamite/Tremere wall. The randomised seating was Me (Hecata) > Cristina (Brujah) > Aaron (Salubri) > Manuel (Assamite/Tremere wall) > David (Lasombra).

Going first felt less than ideal, but the dead do not complain about seating arrangements. I started small and influenced out the dwarf looking vampire (Alek König), while beginning work on Parijat. By Turn Three, neither my predator nor my prey had a minion on the table, which presented a beautiful little window of opportunity. Alek went to work immediately. A Spectral Servitor hit the table and successfully bled Cristina, followed by an inferior Shroud of Decay from Alek. Three pool gone, the Edge acquired, and nobody in a position to stop me. Necromancy was off to a very fine start.

Of course, peaceful neighbourhoods in VTES rarely remain peaceful for long. Cristina brought out Theo Bell, while David influenced Maria. Suddenly both directions around me looked considerably less welcoming. I knew exactly how dangerous Brujah combat could be, and Maria's ability to rush made me initially suspicious of the Lasombra too. As it turned out, David's vampires were interested in a much simpler business model: bleed for a lot.

The slow build-up still worked in my favour, and I managed to keep the Edge for two consecutive turns, recovering a little extra pool while everyone else developed their boards. I was feeling fairly comfortable. Then I decided to fight Theo Bell. This was educational.

I sent a Rotting Behemoth after him, hoping to weaken Cristina's board and open a path for my bleeders. On paper, a zombie hitting for three damage sounds quite intimidating. Theo Bell apparently disagreed. Between Torn Signpost, additional strikes and the general experience of being Theo Bell, my Behemoth was quickly returned to a much more traditional state of death. Lesson learned: perhaps don't fight Theo Bell.

From there, the game remained surprisingly balanced. Aaron's Salubri were receiving what I will politely call significant physical persuasion from Cristina's Brujah, but they stayed in the game. Manuel's wall steadily developed, David kept preparing unpleasant bleeds, and my Hecata continued looking for openings among all the chaos.

We had originally planned to play for two hours, but when the timer expired everyone was still very much alive, so we added another thirty minutes. We are still getting faster with combat sequencing and card interactions, and occasionally we stop to check timing or make sure an effect works the way we think it does. Every game makes that process smoother.

David, meanwhile, had clearly decided that my pool total needed correcting. His Lasombra kept coming, including one particularly memorable bleed for four. I had Archon Investigation in my hand and I really (and I mean REALLY!) wanted to play it. However, there was a better option. I could bounce the bleed to Cristina. So, with great personal sacrifice and admirable restraint, I did the responsible thing and redirected the problem to my prey. Nobody gives you victory points for emotional maturity.

As the extended timer approached its end, Cristina was down to three pool. I had Shroud of Decay in hand and enough stealth to make the action difficult to stop. The possibility of my first oust was sitting right there. Then time was called.

Afterwards, we looked at what might have happened next. Manuel potentially had a way to block my finishing action cross-table, while several other players were also dangerously close to securing their own ousts. One more turn could have changed everything. Perhaps the Hecata would have claimed their first victim. Perhaps Manuel's wall would have intervened. Perhaps David's Lasombra would have removed my remaining pool first. We will never know.

And strangely, that made the ending rather fitting. Brujah had beaten zombies back into the grave, Salubri had endured an impressive amount of punishment, Lasombra had thrown huge bleeds across the table, Manuel had quietly built a wall in the middle of everything, and the Hecata had crept within touching distance of an oust before time itself became the final form of table control. No winner. Just five unfinished schemes waiting for another night.

The game never ends, only pauses. I'll see you at the next move.

Custodian Hargrave

One year after respawning

Somehow, it has been a year.

Last September, I started Respawn at Midnight as a place to write about the games and hobbies occupying far too much space in my head and, increasingly, my shelves. I didn't really know what the blog would become. I simply wanted somewhere to record games, talk about decks and crews, explore the lore behind them and occasionally investigate questions that no reasonable person had actually asked. Twelve months later, I think that last category may have become more important than originally intended.

A year of Eternal Struggle

VTES has undoubtedly become the heart of the blog. When I started writing, I was still relatively new to the game. Since then there have been new decks, tournaments, experiments, victories, spectacular failures and an alarming increase in the number of vampires living in my house.

The clans have taken me in different directions. The Ventrue appealed to the part of me that believes every supernatural conspiracy could be improved with proper governance and a sufficiently organised board meeting. The Tremere encouraged experiments, research and an entirely reasonable amount of staring at deck lists. Then came the Hecata, and apparently somewhere along the way I decided that the obvious solution to most Methuselah-related problems was necromancy.

There have been tournaments too. I was in Cambridge, made a final in Bedford, travelled to Edinburgh for the Scottish National Championship, experimented with decks ahead of the UK Nationals and spent a significant amount of time deciding what to bring. The Hecata eventually won that particular internal struggle, only for illness to keep both me and my carefully prepared corpses at home when Nationals finally arrived.

Perhaps the most enjoyable part, though, has been introducing other people to the game. Friends have joined our tables, decks have been built and rebuilt, and I've discovered the peculiar satisfaction of designing a Salubri deck for someone else only to have them use it to oust me. Task failed successfully.

Through the Breach

VTES hasn't been the only game appearing here.

My journey into Malifaux has continued as well, although opportunities to actually play remain frustratingly rare. I've taken crews through the Breach, learned the rules one mistake at a time and slowly expanded the collection.

There have been battles involving Kastore and Seamus, teaching games with Dashel Barker and the Guard, and Titania's attempt to conquer a small western town. That particular invasion ended when the local authorities introduced the Autumn Queen to rifles and an Executioner. She'll be back!

Malifaux has also given me an excuse to paint more, not just crews, but scenery. Some of that has even turned into a family project, with my daughter helping me prepare terrain before games. There is something particularly satisfying about putting a newly painted piece onto the table and immediately having imaginary people fight around it.

Experiments, rabbit holes and other questionable research

Some posts have been harder to categorise. We've looked at new cards and upcoming releases. I've written about the changing World of Darkness and what Vampire: The Masquerade Sixth Edition might mean for both the RPG and VTES. I've experimented with deck building, compared tournament results and occasionally wandered into statistics.

At one point my daughter helped me sort vampire cards alphabetically, which naturally resulted in me writing software to investigate why there seemed to be so many vampires whose names begin with A. As any respectable Tremere will tell you, research does not need to be useful to be important.

Looking back, the blog has ended up becoming a mixture of game reports, deck building, lore, opinion pieces, painting, statistics and whatever other hobby-related question happens to send me down a rabbit hole that week.

There is, however, one conspicuous absence.

In my very first post, I said that Respawn at Midnight would also be a place where I'd write about my computer gaming adventures. One year later, the number of computer game articles published stands proudly at...zero.

It's not because I stopped playing computer games. Quite the opposite. There have been plenty of digital adventures over the past year; somehow, whenever it came time to write, vampires, card games and tiny painted people kept pushing their way to the front of the queue.

Perhaps that should change. I'd happily write about the games I'm playing, old favourites I keep returning to, interesting discoveries and whatever digital world happens to consume my evenings. I just don't know whether that's something people coming here for VTES and Malifaux would actually want to read.

Which brings me rather conveniently to you.

What do you want to read?

As Respawn at Midnight enters its second year, I'm curious about what you actually enjoy reading here.

I know which articles I enjoy writing, but blogs are strange creatures. Sometimes the article you spend days researching quietly disappears into the internet, while something you wrote because you were wondering why there aren't enough vampires called Wilhelmina gets considerably more attention than expected.

So I'd love to hear from you.

Over the past year, the blog has covered (or, in one notable case, promised to cover) topics such as:

• VTES game and tournament reports – stories from actual tables, including the questionable decisions made around them.

• VTES deck building and experiments – building decks, changing strategies and discovering whether the theory survives contact with another Methuselah.

• Clans, cards and playstyles – exploring different clans, interesting cards and what makes particular strategies appealing.

• New VTES cards and releases – first impressions, ratings and thoughts about where new cards might fit.

• VTES statistics and strange investigations – tournament numbers, card data and questions nobody realised needed answering.

• Vampire: The Masquerade and World of Darkness – lore, RPG changes and what developments such as V6 could mean for VTES.

• Malifaux game reports – adventures through the Breach as I learn different crews and introduce new players.

• Malifaux crews and tactics – what I'm learning about Masters, crews and how they actually work once the cards start flipping.

• Painting, miniatures and terrain – hobby projects that eventually make their way onto the gaming table.

• Teaching games and introducing friends to the hobby – what happens when unsuspecting people encounter VTES or Malifaux for the first time.

• Computer games – my adventures on the PC, currently represented by an impressive collection of zero articles.

• General hobby stories and experiments – everything else that somehow turns into an article.

So consider this my first, extremely informal, reader survey.

What would you like to see more of in year two? More battle reports? Deck-building experiments? Deeper dives into clans and cards? More Malifaux? World of Darkness lore? Painting and hobby projects? More completely unnecessary statistics?

And importantly: would you be interested in reading about the computer games I'm playing as well?

Leave a comment, send me a message on Discord, hire a magician to project your preferences onto the night sky, whatever method you choose, just let me know what you'd like to read more of. I can't promise the results will be analysed with anything resembling proper scientific methodology, but rest assured that the Tremere Research Department will record every response, regardless of whether it arrives by comment, Discord or blood ritual.

A year ago, I started this blog without really knowing where it would go. Since then I've met players, travelled to tournaments, introduced friends to games I love, painted tiny monsters, summoned an unreasonable number of zombies and written about all of it.

Thank you to everyone who has stopped by to read, comment, share a post or simply follow along. It's been considerably more fun knowing there are people on the other side of the screen.

Year two begins here.

The game never ends, only pauses. I'll see you at the next move.

Custodian Hargrave