Bruce goes to harvest

How do you intend to oust?
With a steady bleed of 2-3-4 pools from Bruce de Guy and friends, mainly using a blood-burn package (Crocodile's Tongue, Sabbat Bishop, Tenebrous Form) plus small stealth to bypass casual blocking (Bonding & Tenebrous Form). Until the prey's minion are short on blood, so the action will become unblockable (thanks to Crocodile) and they'll become subject to banishment.

How do you intend to keep from being ousted?
Deflection and some permanent intercept to defend myself directly, plus a small pool regain (from sup Govern, Blood Dolls and Powerbase) to mantain me a bit stable. Last but not least the cardinal title on Bruce (plus Demonstation) can give me some defence against politics.


What do you want your ready region to look like (ie, how many guys are you planning on getting out)?
Bruce de Guy, Mylan and a pair of other vampires.


What do you want your average turn to look like?
Bruce does some support actions + FD/Mylan + Bleed (Crocodile's Tongue -> Bonding/Tenebrous Form), while the others will help me to build my table or bleed if there is a chance.


What's your metagame like? How do your opponents play?
No specific metagame right now. We started playing again after more than a year, so we're testing new options and trying to remember the old ones
But I see there is a small tendency toward big-cap vampires and/or combat oriented decks.


What problems have you observed with the deck in play?
It fails bad against a prey with very big-cap vampires (making crocodile's tongue and banishment useless, de facto countering the deck strategy). It can't survive long against combat-focused decks (though I can severely cripple combat-walls).


Author : Lareon

Crypt [12 vampires] Capacity min: 5 max: 10 average: 7.75
4x Bruce de Guy (10) cardinal Ventrue antitribu (group 4)
2x Owain Evans, The Wanderer (8) Ventrue antitribu (group 3)
2x Jefferson Foster (6) bishop Ventrue antitribu (group 4)
2x Neighbor John (5) Ventrue antitribu (group 4)
1x Jesse Menks (8) archbishop Ventrue antitribu (group 3)
1x Blackhorse Tanner (7) Ventrue antitribu (group 3)


Library [90 cards]

Action [14]
1x Abbot
7x Govern the Unaligned
5x Scouting Mission
1x Soul Scan

Action Modifier [29]
9x Bonding
9x Crocodile's Tongue
4x Freak Drive
2x Telepathic Vote Counting
5x Tenebrous Form

Ally [1]
1x Mylan Horseed (Goblin)

Combat [10]
3x Armor of Vitality
2x Resilience
5x Soak

Equipment [3]
1x Bowl of Convergence
1x Heart of Nizchetus
1x Ivory Bow

Master [9]
2x Blood Doll
1x Corporate Hunting Ground
1x Demonstration
2x Dreams of the Sphinx
1x Powerbase: Montreal
2x Vessel

Political Action [11]
3x Banishment
2x Deploy the Hand
2x Kine Resources Contested
1x Political Stranglehold
3x Sabbat Priest

Reaction [13]
5x Deflection
5x Eyes of Argus
3x On the Qui Vive


Note: this is a little evolved version of the one I'm actually using. I added the Tenebrous Forms as well the Ivory Bow (right now I'm playing with 85 cards). I think they can make the difference

I would drop the Vessels, PB: Montreal for Villeins. You need your pool back much faster than that, plus your defense is spotty. The scouting missions and soul scan could be something else. I would like to see 1x Info Highway, 2x Wider View in the master section to bring out/change the crypt. Framing an Ancient Grudge could be good to get vote lock, too.

For actions, you don't want to have too many, especially if you have a lot of political actions to take. 1x Abbot and 7 or 8 govern is probably good. 1x Bloodbath could help you get more permanent votes.

Action modifiers- need variety here. How about 3x Tenebrous Form, 1x Shroud of Absence, 1x Shadowplay/shroud of night for your stealth package? I see what you're trying to do, but it is risky to put all of your eggs in one basket, especially if you really need to stealth an action through.

For defense, I highly recommend Murmur of the False Will in addition to those deflections. You can afford to drop a few of those Bondings and probably a couple Croc's Tongue.

By the way, what happens if people stop blocking you? I'm counting 24 dead cards, assuming you don't block and get into combat yourself.

Edit: By the way, welcome to the forum Please take what I say as constructive criticism.

Sabbat Priest is hard to justify including. At many tables, you won't be able to pass it at all - it's not at all a vote that you can negotiate through committee, because it doesn't help anyone but you (or at least, that's what you'll hear from that vote deck across the table). And if you can pass it, because nobody else is playing vote or vote defense, you'd be better off with something else that hits harder.

You should have at least five more master cards in the deck, or more if you want to take advantage of one of the only reasons to play Vessel rather than Blood Doll. YOu could pretty easily shed some cards from your action modifier package to make room for them.

@brandonsantacruz
Thank you for both the welcome and the suggestions
I was lurking here since a bit, but I never took a chance to write here. After I start playing again I thought it was time to do it


I added Soul Scan for adapting the tactic during mid-game, but I see your point and I didn't thought about wider view. I prefer to mantain 10+ bleed action, though (maybe converting all of them in govern) because I usually like to use them as pool gain, even in advanced stages of game. And I'm always short of them

I'm still hesitant to add a Framing, because in my usual metagame (or the one I remember was) was easier to find a sabbat politic than a camarilla one. I agree about the variety of the small stealth pack I have, and I'll change it. About the Vessel, Powerbase -> Villein i prefer to keep them, because I would rather have a small flow of pool, easily to control, rather than the risk to find my vampires suddenly empty because it was target of a rush

Hmm.. never found myself with many dead cards on my hand. Even if my prey tries to deflect all I can discard the combat cards on my grand-prey, and in defence I usually block as often as I deflect, trying to use deflection cards for the bigger bleeds. The only dead cards I have are the crocodile's and stealths, and usually they never became much a problem.


@Kushiel
I found Sabbat Priest easily negotiable at my tables, because it harms no one directly, and it can be exchanged with crosstable favors easier than Kine or Banishments. I added them because they work nicely in combo with crocodile's tongues, and they help a lot for strategy.

About the master cards: basically I didn't found something enough interesting for the tactic of the deck, so I opted for a slim master set
I use Vessels for the ability to burn Blood Dolls and for the invulnerability to other Vessels rather than it's trifle ability. But I know, I should try to find something useful to add in the deck :\

Lareon wrote:

I found Sabbat Priest easily negotiable at my tables, because it harms no one directly,

I don't understand why people are allowing votes to pass just because those votes don't harm them, as opposed to actively helping them, but I'll take your word for it.

Lareon wrote:

and it can be exchanged with crosstable favors easier than Kine or Banishments.

I'd be strongly disinclined to allow you to pass Sabbat Priest, given that it costs me literally nothing to do so if I'm playing a vote deck and it probably won't help me much or at all. On the other hand, if you're Banishing a vampire of my predator or prey, or hitting my prey for two pool damage, I'd be much more likely to let the vote pass. Again, I believe you, I just don't understand what's going on with your playgroup.

Lareon wrote:

About the master cards: basically I didn't found something enough interesting for the tactic of the deck, so I opted for a slim master set

There are so many generically good master cards out there that this really shouldn't be a problem. Additionally, I'm a bit concerned by your assertion that master cards which don't directly further your core strategy aren't worth playing. A lot of the power of master cards comes from their capability to patch holes that the minion cards in your library might miss.

Here are exmaples of cards that can fit into just about any deck with room for more masters:

Giant's Blood
Jake Washington
Anarch Troublemaker
Blood Doll
Pentex Subversion
Sudden Reversal
Direct Intervention
The Barrens
Dreams of the Sphinx
Perfectionist

Lareon wrote:

I use Vessels for the ability to burn Blood Dolls and for the invulnerability to other Vessels rather than it's trifle ability.

Okay. I think that Vessel is quite a bad card, and that if you're resorting to using it because other people are doing so, you're failing to take advantage of other players' bad deckbuilding choices. While there are a handful of decks in which it's useful, I don't think this is one of them. Have you experimented with trying one of the other blood-to-pool master cards instead of Vessel in this deck?

About the sabbat priest issue, I would believe it's because it seem not to help directly the player calling it. Average and under average player are more likely to only try to stop direct step to victory (like a banishment) than the gearing up (like a sabbat priest), if only to "let the player play".