(Nearly) Mono-Serpentis With and Without Defense aka DOM

Hello – this is my first time posting a decklist here, but I'm interested in people's opinion on two variations of the same deck concept that I've been working on. Essentially, I'm interested in Serpentis, and how far I can push it's power level through exploiting the Eternal Mask at basic (+1 bleed @ +1 stealth). I've playtested this deck without the Waters of Duat (didn't do so well), and with (did amazing, but I think it was more circumstance than my deck), and I haven't tried the version with dominate grafted onto it at all. My concern for the deck is primarily related to defense – hence the version with dominate. Thanks in advance for any and all comments.

1. How do you intend to oust? Weenies bleeding with Eternal Mask backed up with a bit of extra stealth.

2. How do you intend to keep from being ousted? Well, that's the problem isn't it? I was originally thinking that the deck is fast enough (lots of bleed for 2-4 at stealth) that it could just survive on the pool from the oust.

3. What do you want your ready region to look like (ie, how many guys are you planning on getting out)? 1-2 mid cap vampires who can bring out Waters of Duat, and then a host of little vampires and the Waters (with Serpentis). The first version wants vampires with OBF for the stealth bonus, while the second wants vampires with both OBF and dom/DOM for the deflections.

4. What do you want your average turn to look like? Waters of Duat sound the stealth charge (it's a quiet charge), mid caps make more Waters after their blockers are exhausted (and once they aren't needed to provide stealth anymore). In the second version, perhaps a minion with dom/DOM stays untapped for defense.

Deck A: Snake Babies

Crypt (Capacity min=2 max=7 avg=4.5; 12 cards)
=================================================
1x Ahmose Chambers 3 obf ser Follower of Set:5
2x Amenophobis 7 dom pre OBF SER Follower of Set:4
2x Belle Equitone 2 ser Follower of Set:4
1x Marla Kenyon 4 ser PRE Follower of Set:4
1x Ogwon 7 for OBF PRE SER Follower of Set:5
3x Renenet 5 ser OBF PRE Follower of Set:4
1x Reverend Djoser Jones 3 pre ser Follower of Set:4
1x Sahira Siraj 4 obf ser tha Follower of Set:4

Library (72 cards)
=====================
Master (24 cards)
1x Archon Investigation
1x Coven, The
2x Dreams of the Sphinx
4x Life in the City
1x Opium Den
3x Path of Typhon, The
1x Pentex(TM) Subversion
8x Serpentis
1x Specialization
1x Sudden Reversal
1x Temple Hunting Ground

Event (1 cards)
1x Narrow Minds

Action (26 cards)
2x Dream World
16x Eternal Mask, The
8x Waters of Duat

Action Modifier (15 cards)
8x Cloak the Gathering
4x Truth of a Thousand Lies
3x Veil the Legions

Combo (6 cards)
6x Form of the Serpent

Created with Secret Library v0.9.3. (Sep 10, 2012 08:11:05)




Deck B: Now with Deflections!

Crypt (Capacity min=2 max=7 avg=4.83; 12 cards)
==================================================
1x Ahmose Chambers 3 obf ser Follower of Set:5
3x Amenophobis 7 dom pre OBF SER Follower of Set:4
2x Belle Equitone 2 ser Follower of Set:4
2x Black Lotus 5 aus obf ser DOM Follower of Set:4
1x Halim Bey 6 obf tha DOM SER Follower of Set:4
2x Renenet 5 ser OBF PRE Follower of Set:4
1x Sahira Siraj 4 obf ser tha Follower of Set:4

Library (80 cards)
=====================
Master (25 cards)
1x Coven, The
2x Dreams of the Sphinx
1x Information Highway
4x Life in the City
1x Opium Den
3x Path of Typhon, The
1x Pentex(TM) Subversion
8x Serpentis
1x Specialization
1x Sudden Reversal
2x Temple Hunting Ground

Action (24 cards)
16x Eternal Mask, The
8x Waters of Duat

Action Modifier (15 cards)
7x Cloak the Gathering
4x Truth of a Thousand Lies
4x Veil the Legions

Reaction (10 cards)
6x Deflection
4x On the Qui Vive

Combo (6 cards)
6x Form of the Serpent

Created with Secret Library v0.9.3. (Sep 10, 2012 08:12:15)

EDIT: Sorry if anybody already looked at this - I only now discovered bbcode on secret library. Looks a lot better now!

The first thing that comes to mind is adding major boon. pool defense masters are hard to depend on but solid when drawn. if you went with bigger vamps having a bloat moduel with eternal and villein would help but that would seriously change your take off early game and in a mono deck or splashing dominate your only advantage with big vamps once they are in play and villeined is nkthorhebs untapped and maybe some more vamps with dominate.

going with dominate is typically good. dominate is afterall dominate. Only half the crypt having it seems rough. do you need any combat defense in your meta? I'm thinking the Dom version with some pool defense masters and less of the random ones. maybe a few sanguine instruction and lass serpentis masters.

looks like it'll be fun once you get it more defensible though. good luck

I think we talked about a deck like this after the last tournament weekend at Andy's house. I nearly won the 12 player tournament in LA a week ago with the version I made. It is a very strong deck, blasting past even 4 intercept sometimes. I wasn't using Waters of Duat, so I was able to bring out usually 3 vampires and have a comfortable pool buffer. 3x delaying tactics, 4x deflection, 5 or so wakes and an Archon Investigation fended off the main attacks. With Amenophobis's special you can ditch the extra cards you don't need about once per action.

With your dom version I would cut down on masters. How many Waters do you think you'll put into play? My guess is no more than 3 or 4, but likely 2. In that case, cut out 5 Serpentis skill cards and 3 waters (you can discard the extras later). You will cycle so fast that the game will be over before you get more Waters, either for you or for your opponents. The hunting ground is iffy, but as long as you are able to discard it late game it could be good. Specialization can go, and it would be good to see Giant's Blood in here. Use a few Lost in Crowds and Faceless Nights to clear the way for your bleeds. Marked Path is also a decent card here. Also, +1 Amenophobis.

With those Waters of Duat, I don't see them being extremely good without con boon. The actions to put them into play delay your bleeds. Scourge of the Enochians can burn them. A sprinkling can help oust other players, a bunch helps with ousting you . For bleed mods, I'd include some Revelation of Desire and a couple Revelation of Ecstacy to tap bouncers/blockers or get +3 bleed later.

If you want to keep it mono-SER you'd go with Rev. Ecstasy & Rev. Desire for tap and bleed. The extra bleed boost will also be sweet for lunge. That and it's easier to stress someone's wakes than it is to stress someone's intercept with so much permanent intercept available.

With all those SER masters I'm surprised you don't run at least some OBF. That'd help bring your crypt capacity down. I personally think you can go down to 2 Path of Typhon and 1 Hunting Ground. Oh, and you should have at least 1-2 Elder Impersonation to kill No Secrets from the Magaji, that'll kill your game flat.

For defense there's always bleed reduce. I've seen Banner of Neutrality + Ecstasy hold off heavy bleeding (the limitation isn't that bad; Cam & Sabbat are the majority of vampires). It works quite well, especially if you have minion advantage with smaller minions, which you do here. It's saving pool while saving an extra blocker, which definitely has its advantages. How prevalent is chucking a 5 bleed down the pipe in your metagame?

Anyway, you can leave 1-2 weenies up and they'll keep reducing like champs. That and they'll still be ready when you have to drop a Delaying Tactics to stay alive from Anarchist Uprising/Autarkis Persecution (psst! why isn't that here?). Besides, as a stealth bleeder, you'll need a few chump blockers up anyway for table hate.

Dummy Corp. or Protected Resources to round out defense will be good (Protected goes off at the end, after bleed reduction, so don't use it on big bleeds thinking it'll be reduced to zero). Or Major Boons. I'd probably put in Dreams, Barrens, or pool recursion first, though.

Brandon - yes indeed, our conversation sparked these deck lists .

Anyways, I've tried two different versions, the first contained a significant number of Rev Ecstasy and Rev Desire (like 8 of each - maybe too many Rev of Ecstasy). I found that this version was slower than I was hoping. It would get out 2-3 vampires, one of which would often tap a defender, and the others would bleed. Problem is, I'd only have 1-2 more minions to bleed. The +3 non-bouncable bleed from Rev of Desire sure was nice, but otherwise, it just didn't have as much punch as I thought it would need given it's general lack of defense (maybe with the deflections, the need for speed would be mitigated).

Conversely, when I first tried the Waters of Duat, I found that they greatly enhanced my payload. Even with just ser, they can play all the important cards - Eternal Mask stealth bleed, Truth of a Thousand Lies for bleed boost (although it's cost has made me wonder if Rev of Desire would be better), and Form of the Serpent for stealth. I also didn't feel like they slowed me down much - instead of tapping a minion, I'd make a Water, who would immediately hunt and then would be ready to bleed next turn. And with a Path in play, they don't get trapped into a bleed-hunt loop. The deck I tested didn't have any Dream Worlds, but I imagine that they would make for particularly deadly lunges.

The Revelations option does seem like it would be better able to react to different types of decks (and specifically intercept-heavy decks), but to me the Waters concept seems like it is faster and with a higher payload against low to medium intercept decks. And finally, I feel like the Waters idea is less concerned with being bounced. First, having many small bleeds seems to lessen the impact of bounce, and allows you to save Truth of a Thousand Lies for the last bleed (assuming that one of the four previous bleeds would be bounced). Yes, stealth bleed is dirty, but it's (allmost) always for 2. Is my analysis off?


As for specific suggestions:

Combat defense - Yes, this is a very good idea, maybe a few Staredowns or Majesties should go in to protect Amenophobis and the other more key vampires. The Waters are obviously expendable.

The stealth package could also stand diversification - I was seeking to maximize the stealth I could outsource. But Elder Impersonation strikes me as pretty darn important. Maybe 2-3 of them. Assuming that the deck continues to be focused on Waters of Duat, I'm hesitant to limit too many cards solely to those with obf or worse OBF.

Defense/bloat options - Giant's blood makes a lot of sense, and Major Boon might be good, I've just had a very variable experience with that card. Perhaps I should try it out. As for Dummy Corp - is it really worth a master phase to put it into play? What are people's opinion on this card?

Serpentis Masters - Wow, I should have thought about this. I just figured that I should have an equal number of Waters and disciplines, but you are right, I likely won't get more than 4-5, so there are a few card slots being opened right there! I'm not really sure about the Sanguine instruction - remember that I won't be playing the discipline cards, but searching for them for free when I play a Waters. I hope never to use a master phase action to play a discipline card.

Bleed Reduction - It's a possibility, to be sure, but it seems to be a very card and action (staying untapped to have it be effective) heavy option. But I wasn't thinking about Banner of Neutrality... so maybe I should consider this as a strategy. It wouldn't require me to devote so much of the crypt to dominate....

I think it would be fun if you would abuse of Amenophobis ability to improve deck flow to maximum and also include a recursive module ( tablets and mokole+pawn shop) to get a smoothered deck once you are stablished.
Khobar Towers to retrieve invested pool, once you have 5 or 6 minions is worth a try.

As example:

Deck Name : The Serpent is Rising in the Styx
Author : Dr.Mafrune
Description :



Crypt [12 vampires] Capacity min: 2 max: 7 average: 5.33333

---

5x Amenophobis 7 OBF SER dom pre primogen Follower :4
1x Halim Bey 6 DOM SER obf tha Follower :4
1x Black Lotus 5 DOM aus obf ser Follower :4
1x Renenet 5 OBF PRE ser Follower :4
1x Marla Kenyon 4 PRE ser Follower :4
1x Sahira Siraj 4 obf ser tha Follower :4
1x Ahmose Chambers 3 obf ser Follower :5
1x Belle Equitone 2 ser Follower :4


Library [71 cards]

---

Action [20]
1x Enticement
12x Eternal Mask, The
1x Mesu Bedshet
1x Set's Curse
5x Waters of Duat

Action Modifier [13]
4x Cloak the Gathering
6x Truth of a Thousand Lies
3x Veil the Legions

Action Modifier/Combat [7]
7x Form of the Serpent

Combat [3]
1x Cobra Fangs
2x Tongue of the Serpent

Equipment [1]
1x Mokole Blood

Master [22]
6x Ashur Tablets
1x Coven, The
1x Filchware's Pawn Shop
1x Khobar Towers, Al-Khubar
1x Opium Den
5x Path of Typhon, The
1x Pentex(TM) Subversion
5x Serpentis
1x Wider View

Reaction [5]
3x Deflection
2x On the Qui Vive


Crafted with : Anarch Revolt Deck Builder. [Tue Sep 11 16:52:35 2012]