Adopt a newbie

Bleeding efficiently:
For lawfirm, bleed with govern, untap with freak drive, and call krc. For dominate stealthbleed, govern, command of the beast some, then conditioning. Throws peoples math off. Never underestimate overconfidence based upon what people think you can do.

As far as fast hands, one a deck max, terrible strategy to rely on.

Deflection and govern are your friends anytime you run dominate.

ReverendRevolver wrote:

As far as fast hands, one a deck max, terrible strategy to rely on.

Indded so.
But I would dare guess he brought it up because in his playgroup someone (always) plays with a gun deck in which case multiple Fast Hands is indeed justified and golden.

I've been playing a lot of years, but there are still a few things I remember about mistakes early on:

1. Not enough Blood Dolls. The game has changed and Blood Doll isn't as much the go to play for moving blood counters from your vampires to your pool, so this can be Villein, Minion Tap, kinda-sorta Vessel, or even something more esoteric, but it's an aphorism of the game that Jeff Thompson liked to include in posts that "no vampire is worth more than 3 pool".

2. Not enough wakes. Back in the day, that meant Wake with Evening's Freshness. Nowadays, mostly going to be On the Qui Vive. Some folks seem allergic to wakes for reasons I'm not clear on since I view them as zero cost Freak Drives that can be played on more turns than Freak Drive, but whatever. It's much more fun to not get bled out when tapped than it is to get bled out when tapped with a Deflection or whatever in hand.

3. Card cycling is subtle and sublime. The subtle part makes people forget. Sure, Dreams of the Sphinx is everywhere, but The Barrens almost always seems to be underrated. Fragment of the Book of Nod should also see more play than it does. Handjam is something that all sorts of decks run into, from stealth bleed decks choking on stealth or lack of stealth to combat decks choking on red cards or rush/intercept. Numerous decks choke on masters.

Now, as for a non-newb mistake that most players, IME, make, that would be a variation on what others have said about reading the table. Far too many people "play their decks". Decks don't matter. Decisions matter. Just because you have combat cards doesn't mean you need to beat down, just because you have bleed cards doesn't mean you need to get bounced to your grandprey and oust them, just because you have Scalpel Tongue in hand doesn't mean you need to tap someone's only untapped dude while that someone is about to get ousted (which happened to me not that long ago). Yes, this is rehashing examples others have given, but the overarching point is to play the situation and do what helps you win - it's not that winning is everything, it's that not playing to one's best ability to win causes all sorts of undesirable results. "I need to cycle my _ cards" is the sort of line you hear out loud when maybe it's time to just start a new game.

ICL wrote:

Far too many people "play their decks". Decks don't matter. Decisions matter. Just because you have combat cards doesn't mean you need to beat down, just because you have bleed cards doesn't mean you need to get bounced to your grandprey and oust them, just because you have Scalpel Tongue in hand doesn't mean you need to tap someone's only untapped dude while that someone is about to get ousted...

Great advice. I'll just add to this a specific common situation: Just because you have "bounce" (e.g. Deflection) doesn't mean you have to bounce that bleed for 1 to your prey. Save those until they really count. Try to block, let the bleeder play stealth (if that's what their deck does), decline to block, let them play boost (e.g. Conditioning), and THEN bounce.

Okay, your example brings up a common newbie mistake I forgot to mention.

Don't do stupid shit.

Well, that should be more specific to what Jeff's example made me think of. Learn what the cards commonly played in the game do, and learn what the common strategies in the game are. Then, factor that into decisionmaking. Specifically, when a combat deck bleeds you for one early in the game, ignore it. The number of times I've seen people try to block combat decks is stunning. There are many analogous situations, but this one is the most painful.

Collect. For. The. Edge.

Not a newby mistake, one I have made and other, far better players than me have also made.
The first deck i never forgot with was my old Anatole wall, where id be bleeding for one after my predators actions via madness network, and collect for edge, then burn it to victorias special. Good times....