My decks and my deckbuilding

So I have once again found myself in a deckbuilding mood and I am spitballing ideas like crazy. Granted most of them are unlikely to work but still... I just love this mood where I am working with cards. Problem is to balance tournament - viable options, decks that are really good for our metagame tournaments and decks I have built just for fun. This seems like a problem for me, so this post is to catalogize my thoughts about my decks more than anything else. I do not know if this will be interesting for someone else but me, but I figured it would not hurt to make this post public.

1) Giovanni Powerbleed

Probably my oldest working deck. Built to score some easy wins. First version was with a lot of cold auras and desert eagle/spike throwers. After our meta has gone a lot less combat heavy, I rebuilt this to resemble mor regular power bleed decks. It is strong archetype and I ocasionaly use it in league games, but since I do not like this style of playing, I have not been working on this for some time, so numbers of cards feel really odd and I could do lot slimming here. It does well against bloks, bleeds and bloats, but it is totaly crushed by combat and mass vote.

+ strong easy deck
- imperfections of design

Rating: *** (out of 5)

2) Tremere Politics 0.2

My second oldest deck and also to this moment my only tournament winning deck. Fairly strong if it has some time to build up and pretty cool defensive abilities. But it is really toolboxy, so dedicated combat/bleed/political or block deck will beat me every time. But if given some time, I can build up nicely and do lot of damage. Still this deck is heavily influenced by our meta and I experienced some dificulties when clashing with different metagames.

+ strong and stable deck
- metagame influenced, slow

Rating: **** (out of 5)

3) Pre/Obf stealth bleed

 Deck I have built just for one tournament. Very stupid, monotonous and unfunny deck. Basic idea is to bleed with public trusts at superior and this deck has a lot of them. Bleeding for three and only for three repeatedly with every minion every turn. Strong offense, almost no defense except gain from public trusts. Boring, but gets the job done.

+ fairly offensive and strong deck
- almost no defense, boring

Rating: *** (out of 5)

4) Akunanse wall

I basicaly started to build this deck because I had a lot of laibon stuff with no use for it. First it was looking little toolboxy, like most of my projects, but over the time I have transformed this deck to classic wall deck. Basicaly it works with raven spies, animalism and abombwe reaction cards and some combat. Ousting mechanism is preferably bleeding with laptops. This is one of my most static decks. I try to wear out my prey by constant bleeding and blocking his undirected actions.

+ stable deck, which is capable of conserving resources
- low offensive power, slowish

Rating: *** (out of 5)

5) Mass indomitability rush

Inspired by "Frederick the Weak multirush deck." Now changed to some extent - more effective and less funny. Basically you rush, and play indomitability until the target is down. This deck packs 60 copies of this card. Other cards ar rushes and fame/tension etc. items. Combat ends just kills this deck, minions with built in strength also. It is more suited for four - player tables, since it runs out of cards pretty soon. Ousting is based on fames, dragonbound and in worst case scenario lots of bleeds for one. Really more fun to play deck, than really competitive.

+ fast deck, fun to play
- easily stopped,

 Rating: ** (out of 5)

6) Guruhi vote

I have scored some great games and great failures with this deck. If I get time to build up, there pretty much no chance of stopping me in late game. But fast predator or bad start often means bye bye for me. Block decks and heavy vote decks can stop this deck pretty easy. Additionaly, it has become almost unplayable in our meta since I am often targeted from the start as big menace.

+ deck with great potential and lot of damage output
- very vulnerable from the start

Rating: **** (out of 5)

7) Ariadne combat toolbox

This is big dissapointment for me. I have been trying to build this deck for a long time from multiple angles. Multirush, block, abactor, dog packs etc. And I am failing repeatedly. I am usually able to get rid of few minions, but eventually die.Not really sure where the problem is, but i will keep trying, because Ariadne is just too cool to quit.

+ Ariadne
- it's just not working

Rating: * (out of 5)

8) Qawiyya-el-Ghaduba combat toolbox

Suffers from same problem as Ariadne deck, but since Qawiyyas friends often get AUS, this deck is not so vulnerable to threats. I am missing some cards to complete this project so I cannot fully rate this deck, but ousting power seems to be a problem here, but that is just common for combat decks. Still I have great hopes for this deck and will try to improve this even further.

+ Defense, grapple combat with good damage output
- missing cards, ousting power

Rating: ** (out of 5)

9) Thucimia/Unmada multiact

 Deck I have built for fun games. Multiacting is done via forced marches and it does not work very well. I pack lot of deffensive cards - Wrong and Crosswise and Confusion of the Eye, so it is little hard to oust me, but offense is low and i basically bleed for about 4 pool a turn, which is not much. I would not take this deck to a tournament, but for casual games, when I do not want to piss so many people, it works.

+ fun, useable for casual games
- slow, weak, vulnerable to combat

Rating: ** (out of 5)

10)  Corruption deck

I have seen something like this deck, when I was starting with VTES and always wanted to replicate this deck at least partially. Well it does not work. At least if my prey is not a swarm. In most cases, I am able to score one VP with a bit of luck, most of times, 0VP for me. I have tried several modifications of this deck and currently I am trying bleedish modification. Still seating is everything for this deck and most of the times it will fail. I am still putting some hope to this deck and I am not finished with it, but as it is, its pretty bad.

+ enjoyable deck
- almost 0 defense, weak against lot of decks

Rating: ** (out of 5)

11) Lucian the Perfect powerbleed

 I constructed this abomination after EC in Warsaw. After the ammount of bloating I have seen I wanted some deck that would be capable of countering this. This deck can do that. I cannot say that it is most enjoyable or comlicated deck, but it is reasonably effective and I play it from time to time to calm down and let my anger out. After some tweaking I am sure this will be tournament viable deck.

+ strong, fast deck
- aksinya just kills me, same as lots of bounces

Rating: *** (out of 5)

12) Appius Claudius Corvus with Nocturns

One of my older projects, which I have got bored with, decomposed and now constructed again. I am missing few essentials for this deck, so it is not really good at this point. It is not my favourite deck either, so getting those cards is not a priority at this point. On the other hand it is pretty stable deck and reasonably enjoyable to play, so I will keep it constructed at this moment and I will see, how it will evolve.

+ great potential, stable deck
- not even close to completion, slowish

Rating: ** (out of 5)

13) Gostdam block

I was trying to build something with Gotsdam for a long time and block deck is so far most successfull attempt. Gotsdam himself has pretty cool defensive capabilities and combined with blocking strategy, this deck has pretty solid core. Of course trying to bring up 9-cap is always slow, but he is capable of getting out few governs and few additonal tricks. Ousting mechanism is classic - Smilnig jack, so no surprise there. Governs may help too. It needs some optimizing though, because it is one of my newest decks.

+ stable deck capable of conserving and protecting its resources
- less minions than classic auspex wall

Rating: **** (out of 5) - needs more tweaking and testing, can go up or down in time

14) True Brujah bleed

This deck is one star trujah bleed with weenie support which exploits Domain of Evernight / Pocket Out of Time combo. I have compared my decklist with some other players which built the same deck and mine is really different in some ways. I am not sure if better, but I had some really nice wins with this deck and I hope I can add some finishing touches and make this deck one of my tournament options.

+ offensive deck with reasonably strong defense
- bloodgain on star vampire, cardflow

Rating: **** (out of 5)

15) Scout Youngwood + friends

My latest project which I have most hope for. Greatly inspired by Scout Youngwood + Unmada, which I have seen (and faced) on EC. This deck is my approach to combining Scout with other vampires. From a few games which I have played up to this point I can see that this deck has great potential but I am not entirely there. I expect lot of tweaking here, but I am pretty sure this deck could do great things.

+ really massive defensive capabilities and lot of potential poolgain
- large vampires, slowish start, diversity in disciplines

Rating: **** (out of 5)

16) Scobax wall*

Currently decomposed into small pieces, but it is still all at my disposal. I have played some good games with this deck in our meta, but failed to get anywhere with it at EC. Still I think this deck has great potential and I am not sure I can give up yet. For this moment, i will leave it on a pile and somewhere in future I will maybe come back to it...

Rating: ? (out of 5)

17) Count Germaine Combat Madness v 1.02b*

Currently under construction to prove that a) Count Germaine is awesome, b) I can modify this deck to shine in other metagames too. I am trying more bruise bleedish approach. We will see...

Rating: ? (out of 5)

 I have few more drafts in my mind or on paper but I think this post is long enouf for now. I will also add a Poll to which of my decklist would you like to see here. Some of the decklists were already posted and number 15,16 and 17 are clasified/incomplete at this moment, so this options won't be in my poll. I hope I had not bored you to death.

See you next time....