Harbingers of Skulls Strengths But Mostly Weaknesses

The trick there is to give them alternatives.
Rather than recreating a Gio Ally, you make an alternative. I think I'll spend some time drafting up ideas and tossing them out there.

Note: Necomancy has Masquer, Puppetteer and Shambling Hordes. (3)
Giovanni has Ambrosius, Bridgette Gebauer, Charriger, Felix "Fix" Hessian, Giuseppe, Leonardo, Scapelli, Spiritual Protector, Tye Cooper and Zombie. (11)

The easy way is to create aus + nec card (or for + nec if you want to let the Nagaraja out).

The harder way would be to find a thematic in which the giovanni are bad but Harbinger of skull would be good. The hard part come from the fact that the main difference between thoses is that HoS have wallish element and are less numerous, and you quickly make them another tzimisce or !ventrue clan.

I believe deck milling is too slow for now, and quickly became annoying for other player when it is too fast. So, I would tread near either card that burn your vampire (since HoS are way better at recovering from thoses). For example, an action doable from torpor that burn your vampire to create a retainer, give you pool, or cancel an action outright.

Ohlmann wrote:

The easy way is to create aus + nec card (or for + nec if you want to let the Nagaraja out).

Blessed Resilience
Master.
Choose a vampire in your ash heap with superior Fortitude [FOR] and superior Necromancy [NEC] who was burned from play. Move that vampire to your ready region.

Ian Lee had a deck I faced in casual play and the finals of a tournament using this and Force of Will/Daring the Dawn. I think it was a mix of Harbingers and Samedi. It also featured Trochomancy.

ICL wrote:

Bleed

It's true that I haven't been able to win tournaments with midcap Laibon bleed to provide evidence of how viable this deck is, but it has been an enjoyable deck to play.

While the cards with the HoS clan symbol on them from HttB are rather absurd, Blessed Resilience is mostly a HoS card. Again, no tournament success support to show it, but I've had plenty of success with Force of Will and HoS. This card suits group 2/3 really well, which kind of seemed to be the point of existence.

First of all, I love the Laibon bleed deck. Too slow for all the reasons we've gone over in this thread, but fun to play.

A group 2-3 Force of Will deck looks like another fun way to play. Allies are a huge blind spot for a deck like that - what's the solution? Besides that, do you think that deck is viable, or does it need to be elevated?

Dorrinal wrote:

A group 2-3 Force of Will deck looks like another fun way to play. Allies are a huge blind spot for a deck like that - what's the solution? Besides that, do you think that deck is viable, or does it need to be elevated?

Bad answers?

Safe Passage
Sacre Cour, Erebus Mask, etc. (if trying to burn for BR)
Momentary Delay

Questionable answers?

Crocodile's Tongue
Misdirection (timing is iffy with a comboish deck)

Likely answers (if complicated by blood requirements)?

Call of the Hungry Dead
Spectral Divination

I think tons of decks are viable.

Blessed Resilience and Possession before it lead to playing differently from normal as you get ambivalent as to whether your vampires burn or not. Playing this sort of deck correctly is not something I feel like an expert on, so it's probably better for people to just go for it themselves ... and laugh maniacally when their vampires go to the ash heap.