Hektor-Armin !Brujah+FOR

Crypt (12 cards; Capacity min=3 max=10 avg=8.33)
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4x Armin Brenner 10 ani obf CEL FOR POT PRE !Brujah:4
1x DeSalle 7 CEL POT PRE !Brujah:4
4x Hektor 9 for CEL POT PRE QUI !Brujah:4
1x Miguel Santo Domingo 7 cel for POT PRE !Brujah:3
1x Smash 3 pot pre !Brujah:4
1x Urraca 7 pre ANI CEL POT !Brujah:4

Library (90 cards)
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Master (20)
1x Archon Investigation
2x Capitalist
1x Creepshow Casino
2x Fortitude
1x Gang Territory
1x Giant's Blood
4x Legendary Vampire
6x Minion Tap
1x Wider View
1x Yawp Court

Political Action (14)
1x Ancient Influence
2x Banishment
2x Conservative Agitation
1x Dogs of War
6x Kine Resources Contested
1x Reins of Power
1x Templar

Equipment (4)
4x Learjet

Action Modifier (28)
10x Forced March
10x Iron Glare
2x Private Audience
6x Voter Captivation

Combat (20)
2x Amaranth
2x Side Strike
3x Skin of Rock
2x Skin of Steel
8x Slam
3x Superior Mettle

Combo (4)
2x Resist Earth's Grasp
2x Scalpel Tongue


How do you intend to oust?

Vote and bleed

How do you intend to keep from being ousted?

Bloat

What do you want your ready region to look like (ie, how many guys are you planning on getting out)?

Armin & Hektor (Hektor preferably)

What do you want your average turn to look like?

Vote (KRC or something else) + Forced March + Bleed with Iron Glare. If one of the actions is not available, rush someone with Hektor with previously installed Templar/Dogs of War.

What's your metagame like? How do your opponents play?

Metagame is heavy on combat (which is slowly receding) and bouncing bleeds.

What problems have you observed with the deck in play?

First off what works - offensive package is strong and finetuned. You are more likely than not to get a legendary vamp on one of the big guys. If you lack it in the starting hand, influence Hektor second. His agg hands detter attackers well enough. Legendary + Learjet combo almost guarantees that you can perform to the max, dishing out 2xKRC+2xbleed for total 14 pool damage. Although payload delivery is somewhat bruisy, deck can produce up to 2 stealth for bleeds and 4 stealth for votes, which is not too shabby. It also defends fairly well against a dedicated rush, esp. if they go after Hektor.

Now what does not work or what I would need an advice on:
- defense. Poolgain just sucks since every bleed ends up on me sooner or later and eats any gains. Villein is beyond reach for me ATM to use big cap vamp tricks effectively.
- combat. Although these beasts fight well and combat does not jam the hand it eats away precious blood. There is simply no space for Taste of Vitae and bloodgain via Votercaps is not fast enough+no more Votercaps are needed in this deck.
- turbine. if poolgain could be made more effective, I'd consider adding back a turbine of InfoHighways and Zillah's. But do you really think it is critical? From my playtests without serious poolgain, zillahs additional pool cost is too much to handle against bleed and I would not like to go for 5+ Info's because I have to remove Legenadries as it is. Dreams are out of question here
- Legendary Vampire. I just love how it fits with Hektor in such deck archetype, but maybe you disagree? If so, why?

I have only cheapish cards (around 2k) mostly starter boxes from LoB, KoT and double starters of !Malk and !Bru from 3rd. I have bought up additional cards (such as Black Forest Base to go with this and lent some others), but please keep in mind in suggestions that the more expensive the card, the more likely I can't get it fast (25$ per Villein? pfft. I'll wait for print-on-demand era).

For defense with big cap titled Sabbat, you have Eternal Vigilance+Abbot, especially in a low-stealth meta.

For bloating and speeding up transfers, you have Enchant Kindred.

For your combat, you could start by replacing Slam with a free card such as Thrown Gate: your vampires except Hektor do not really want to use their hands, and 1 agg from Hektor is often enough anyway. You could also replace the prevent by some free ones such as Soak, but that depends on what kind of combat you are facing.

Thanks for the advice, I will try out Eternal Vigilance+Abbot combo.

I am not really sure about Enchant Kindred numbers, how many would you suggest to add? Iron Glare is used to bleed 9 times from 10, so I am somwhat happy with bleeding module. And once I have both faties, other guys are not really needed. I am considering to replacing them with fighty weenies to call votes somewhat safely if I am doing fine.

The more I think about it the more Thrown Gate seems appropriate. However, metagame frequently sees Massasi pitch deck, Lorance Blood Brothers, !Salubri with stackable prevent 2 each strike and toolboxy Tczimice spitting agg. With the current module I can outmaneuver Massasi when it matters, withstand Blood Brothers barage and spitting agg as well. Fortitude cards were chosen so that even at inferior for on Hektor before he gets a skill card I could limit damages to keep forward momentum. So in such combat enviroment I mostly need to deliver that 1 Agg from Hektor to whomever I face, not neccessarily on the first fight. Slam adds that needed strength to get past casual prevent. Maybe I should replace Slams with Torn Signposts and Sport Bikes instead?

Master :
-1 yawp court
-2 capitalist
-6 minion tap

+6 villein
+1 monastery of shadows
+1 fame
+1 pentex

vote :
-2 conservative ( your deck is too slow )
-1 ancient influence ( only usefull against imbueds)
+3 dogs of war ( so you can get rid of bouncers)

I don't lilke learjet in this deck. : -4
+2 eternal vigilance
+2 abbot

Forced march is limited at 1 per turn so you should mix it with freak drives.
I think private audience + voter cap is the best combo of your deck so :

3 freak drive
6 forced march
6 voter cap
5 private audience
5 iron glare
2 perfect paragon
1 enkil cog ( for your star with eternal vigilance !!)

should work fine.

I don't like your combat module at all.

3 decapitate (with hektor or disarm)
2 soak
2 armor of vitality
3 rolling with the punches
2 unfliching persistance
5 immortal grapple
3 disarm


maybe guardian angel or kevlar vest could be good to protect your star. guardian angel works well with eternal vigilance and abbot.

and finally :
-2 scalpel tongue

+1 heroic might
+1 preternatural strenght

First off, thank you for your advice, it seems pretty good, especially in defense and combat department.

I don't lilke learjet in this deck. : -4

From my experience, it guarantees a perfect hand whatever you do in this deck (due to the fact you usually vote (~2 cards) and bleed(1 card)/fight (~3 cards) during your turn) and allows effectively discard the unwanted cards in your hand during a single turn (eg. votemods when I already have votelock and no votercap, DoW against combat prey or no votelock, etc.). Action cost is not so steep, in most cases and it is usually not blocked.

Anyhow, discarding these leaves the deck only with Monastery of Shadows as cycling tech (which is not exactly that). Do you think it is not needed?

Your suggestions are mostly more costly in blood, but only 6 votercaps and 2 Amaranths can actually restore blood in the suggested changes. Do you think that is enough or should something else be added (Tastes/hunting enhancers)?

I have played with and against many decks like this one. Personally, I like to add Pug Jakcson (even tho he´s not sabbat) and-or Caroline Bishops and I found that I had more success without Armin, because he is so big. Really Hektor does almost everything. Many games unfolded without much help from other vamps. A friend of mine built a deck around Hektor that would burn several vampires, sometimes all of them before the game was over. Just look at hektor on secretlibrary and check the decks under his description. You will get lots of ideas. Fortitide masters are not critical, because Forced March and Freak drive are still quite good at minor. Combined with the suggestions from others here, there is not much more I could add.