How big a library?

If someone wants to run such a bore of a deck and win a tournament, kudos to them. Victory for them while everyone else groans and doesn't have a good time.

You don't play lots of tournaments, do you? For some reason people that never play tournaments always run around screaming everyone plays Malk '94 or Kindred Spirits there. That's a serious misconception and I suggest you get it out of your head.

And yes, it can be fairly easy to clog up someones hand who is leaning on one aspect of deck creation. You may not be able to shutdown ALL linear deck styles, but if you pay attention to what's happening to the table and are built to adapt, you can work wonders.

It doesn't matter what deck you play, you ALWAYS have to pay attention to what's happening at the table. You NEED to if you want to win. It doesn't take some sort of special deckbuilding skills (or lack thereof) to watch your opponents and make an educated guess as to what they have or not have. In fact, I'd argue that by playing good decks (what you call juvenile) you'd get better at interpreting what they do and translate it into what they have on hand.

Also, anyone playing S&B or Vote+Push or Wake+Intecept or any other sort of multiple card-depending strategy have to take into account cardflow and handjams. THE most common defense against S&B is to simply not block and jam them on stealth, so good players (with good decks) have a way to deal with it. This can be either by adding discarding mechanisms (other than the alway-contested Dreams) or by metagaming around it. This is, for example, why Ben's Kiasyd and Erol's Tryphosa decks have been doing good at tournaments the past two years.

What you call lineair, is what most people call "good". The skill in V:TES is in playing the table and getting the Gamewin. Playing a "juvenile" Malk '94 deck (or an Enkidu deck with 20+ Phsyche! for that matter) is just as interesting as playing a Tzimisce toolbox with 80 different cards because the decision making is *exactly* the same because you're playing the SAME TABLE. It's just that with the Tzimisce deck you never know what you can do in a turn because you might draw a War Ghoul or a Breath of the Dragon when you play that Blood Doll. You can call that "interesting" or "challening" or whatever, but it just means that you just can't rely on your deck doing what you need it to do. "Hmm, if I play this Wake, I am likely to draw the required intercept or maybe some bounce so it's worth playing it" turns into "Hmmm, if I play this Wake I have no idea what I'll draw and if I get another "cool actioncard" that I have no use for I've just wasted the Wake and have even more stuff I can't really use right now in my hand"

I mean, I'm all cool with you playing toolboxy decks and everything, but don't accuse others from playing lineair, juvenile decks when they are simply playing *better* decks.

It pays to punish certain play styles even if it delays your own goals for the game.

If it doesn't make you win more consistent, then no, it doesn't pay to foil decks just because they are "that" deck. It can certainly be worth including some silver bullets to deal with certain decks that are common in the meta (Fear of Meketh comes to mind as a very good addition to a deck these days), but generally speaking punishing someone's game just because of the deck he plays will not make you win more.

The terminology is a bit blurry.

You can build a focused 90-card deck.
you can build a linear 90-card deck.
You can build a 60-card toolbox.

What you call lineair, is what most people call "good".

I'm a big fan of toolbox decks but many years of failing with them has taught me the error of my ways. In most cases you are correct but never underestimate a good toolbox deck.

Its biggest weakness is also its biggest strength: Unpredictability.

As you say yourself looking at the table is extremely important and linear decks tend to be extremely predictable and you can use that to your advantage. For example, if you suspect a deck only has one type of reaction (most like some kind of deflect, you can attempt a risky +1 stealth action where as against a toolbox deck the risk vs reward ratio may not be big enough to warrant that action).

Also, while very often better than a 90-card deck, a 60-card deck can be a disavantadge with some strategy. Combat can be very card-intensive, some more than other, and usually once you run out of card you are in deep trouble.

That's cornercase, in any way. But the advantage of 60-card against 90-card is not as huge as in other CCG, since VtES does not have card limit.