Thoughts on: game theory leads to deck building

Hi folks!

I realized that almost always building a new deck starts with a basic idea like "I want to try this vampire (or clan, or library card, etc)" or "I want to build a stealth-vote (or wall, rush combat, etc)". So the basic idea is given by either cards or a deck type. In the second step you build the deck, or at least the basic outline of it. In the last step you might think about meta game choices, surprise cards. Finally you play it and then fine tune it. This is the way I did my deck building.

So here comes the question: why not figuring out first what effect you want to have on the table? You first make thoughts about what you want to see happen in general and only after you figured this out you start looking for cards in the second step only? I give some examples so you see what I mean:

1st example:

You have a theory that an important part of v:tes is blood management. So you start looking for ways how to ruin everybody else's blood support. You want to see this effect on the table: everybody looses the blood on his vampires at a dramatical speed. This will make the table collapse very fast. You of course want to be more or less immune to this effect which will put you in a winning position. After you figured this you look at the cards and find some possibilities:

a) Play imbued, cause they are immune to blood loss causing cards. Pack the anti-blood cards: Society of Leopold, Vampiric Disease, Gehenna Block, Young Bloods, Gregory Winter...

b) Step outside the current mentality! Build something like this: Parthenon for extra Master phases, a crazy lot of Vampric Disease + Society of Leopold. Use group 2 Ahrimanes, because Howler has a built in maneuver and Carrion Crows + Aid from Bats + Swiftness of the Stag is strong and you will be able to maneuver a crazy lot. Add some Terror Frenzy's to play at inferior against other decks with lot of maneuvers. Superior version helps you getting rid of other vampires blood (because of the Disease a superior Majesty will cost 3 blood). Maybe play Engling Fury and Vulture's Buffet for your own blood support. You have very good intercept available! While having the entire table suffering from the Disease and collapsing fast you can make sure that your prey will get hurt the most! Throw in a Smiling Jack to finish the table off in the end game.

c) Make a Spirit Marionette deck based on Eurayle Gelasia Mylonas and The Ankou. Use Spirit Marionette + Heidelberg to steal a vampires and empty them! Instead of bleeding you will have a mandatory hunt action! The Ankou will then punish...

Maybe you don't like The Ankou and want something else? Go for a Eurayle + Tremere! deck so you have two vampires to Spirit Marionette with. Instead of building the classic bleed deck you can go for a wall like version with Sniper Rifle and play some Society's on the vamps you already drained the blood off...

This c) version doesn't effect the entire table. This can be an advantage or a drawback. It still follows our idea to ruin our preys blood management.

2nd example:

In this example you also want to make the table collapse as fast as possible, but this time doing direct pool damage. You can play weird things here: Antediluvian Awakening, Curse of Nitocris and Contagion. Should your prey have the Nitocris he or she burns 3 pool right away. To get hurt less than others get some pool gain! Let us take a look what provides pool gain while enabling us to play the cards above: Kindred Spirits with Petaniqua! Make the deck extra fast! Use Zillah's Valley and all those 8 cap Malkavians or Malkavian antitribus who have +1 bleed. Villein will give you some pool back to be hurt less than others. Don't mind blood management here: obfuscate stealth, Kindred Spirits and Eyes of Chaos are for free. Don't mind defense too much: the table will collapse and therefore be over so fast if things go well.

3rd example:

I posted this idea on the newsgroup already. This is again an idea where you want to put pressure on the entire table and put it in a situation where you will be the strongest player. Even worse: put people in a loose - loose position. This idea of mine came from a conversation with Ralf Lammert. He noticed that the current trend shows a rise of big cap vampires. So you have the change to act first and act undisturbed! You put an Anarch Convert (or use it and put an anarch into play, depending on transfers) into play and get a first turn Constant Revolution (you might need play 8 or so)! It comes into play with a counter already. If most of the table plays big caps, the Constant will have 3-4 counters before they even have the chance to remove it! You basically need to defend for few turns, since once it reaches the 7th counter people either cycle their entire hand or take pool damage. Throw in a Smiling beside this. Eagles Sight will prevent your prey from making a vp.

I hope you enjoyed this article as much as I did. I will try some of these ideas next year in the new v:tes season. Have fun!

by: Mephistopheles

/this article reminds me a little bit of Physics, like the M-theory is developing right from the other direction than what theories we had before/