My 1st Deck (Having Never Played VTES)

The !gangrel in that group aren't very efficient, I think that's what he means. If you like !gangrel, how about CEL PRO rather than POT PRO? Ian Lee won a tournament with this CEL PRO deck:

www.secretlibrary.info/index.php?deck=view&id=9892

You could even take out some of the mercury's arrow in favor of claws of the dead.

Just to be clear, neither POT PRO or CEL PRO is a great discipline combo in this game, but it can work.

I would recommend NOT to try to build a deck without understanding, how the game works.

But everybody are found of it as it seems.

So some gidelines I find useful.

85 cards top, better 80.

Deck should be able to survive 12 stealth 3 bleeds of 3.

Deck should be able to make 36 pool damage to your prey in reasonable time (game may end in 12 turns or maybe earlier).

Deck should be able to work when nobody is blocking you - not choke on stealth or combat cards.

There are countless other important blocks, but this 3, I think, will greatly help to make something reasonable.

elotar wrote:

I would recommend NOT to try to build a deck without understanding, how the game works.

But everybody are found of it as it seems.

To quote Aristotle: "What we have to learn to do, we learn by doing."

I think making a deck and then playing with it speeds up one's understanding of the game a lot. You may fail to win, but you will understand a lot about what your deck needs to do.

To soften the landing I'd recommend netdecking ie. copying a deck from the TWD, but making your own deck is fine.

I made my decks myself from day one.

My experience is that bad player with a good(build by good players) deck can learn to play, while bad player with a bad deck will just suffer defeats pointlessly.

May I ask what the reason you chose this discipline combination is?
I recall my first few decks outside of stealth bleed and Celerity guns, I went WAY off the beaten path. I mean kindred spirits malks with thaum combat for no apparent reason out there.

But, bruise and bleed is a frustrating archtype to learn on. You seem to be comfortable taking a large amount of input as you learn, so I would recommend any bruise n bleed as a first deck use something other than protean. I mean, there are options, but if you aren't attached to these skills life is easier. With that combo, most vamps (Sergei the eye, Baron d, black annis, Icarus,etc) are better for other decks, notably walls or other rush stuff based in animalism.
I found myself more interested in styles where I stayed in the game long enough to get vps, which in bruise n bleed needs solid pool defense (typically in some combination of bleed reduction, pool gain, straight blocking, bounce, or cards supporting these outlets). So, if it's the bruise n bleed idea you like, I STRONGLY recommend using
Bleed and bounce with Dom, grapple, hit harder, rip off arms with pot, prevent and make bleeds unlockable with fortitude.
Other fun quirks include graverob, potential multiact, stealth from bonding, etc.
Crypt options are bountiful for low monetary cost and pool cost in groups 2-3 and 3-4, and the only thing not super cheap would be daring the dawn/day op, sill under $3usd.

As a combination pot and pro overlap (as mentioned) and protean is at odds with it's self. It's a support discipline, has the best S:CE in the game (Earth meld, form of mist) and has like 300 different cards that give you agg hands for 1+blood cost. It also gives stealth reliably, and manuevers, and even votes, but pairing with not Celerity removes it's multiact, and it's damage preventing cards can't deal with 1 single agg cost effectively.
So, are you really set on potence and protean bruise n bleed?

Blooded Sand's Deck building methodology:
There are a few questions you have to answer. In order of importance

1. How will I oust my prey, and the next prey, and the third prey? Once you have three ousts, you win.
2. how will I farm (gain pool) as no farm means i die or cannot afford resources.
3. How do I survive my predator?

If you cannot succinctly answer those three questions, your deck needs to be redesigned, generally.

Remember, unusual strategies are only bad if they don't follow the 3 above guidelines. I have a deck that's main farm is Diversity of all things. So go look at your deck through those three lenses, then come back and retry it.

Lastly, and I cannot stress this enough, MAKE NOTES AND ITERATE YOUR DECK!
My Shalmath deck is currently in it's 26th iteration, Al-Munthatir is at 32, Hektor and friends is at something stupid like major revision 3, iteration 28. Think it is about the 70th version of that deck. The first versions? Got destroyed due to a lack in my deck. I made notes, added counters, and updated. Rinse, repeat.