Becoming ready for 2011

Hi folks!

Seems like my personal v:tes crisis is over finally. I've built 2 brand new (for me) decks, which are now ready to play and I've got a good feeling for them. At the end of the last year I promised myself to build new decks and move on. I had a hard time doing so, since the ties that bond me to my successful decks (Nana Buruku and Dmitra Alastor) proved very strong. It took me almost 2 month to find and build (not in the deck builder only, but actually sleeve those cards) 2 new decks. Here are the decks I've build (brief description, no deck list):

1. Akunanse Wall

The idea is to set up with permanents fast. The deck contains 75 cards only, but has a fair number of permanent effect cards like: Raven Spy, Shaman, No Secrets from the Magaji, Army of Rats, Well-Marked, Ivory Bow, The Rack, Powerbase: Montreal, Powerbase: Luanda, Mapatana Utando, Smiling Jack, Dragonbound. Also the deck packs a good amount of reaction cards. The price I had to pay for this, was dropping rush cards (Deep Songs) and using a lighter combat package than I originally intended. The combat package became more defensive than I planed, but I had to include prevent and anti-equipment cards.

Compared to the Ahriman Wall deck I used to play the strength of this one is better combat defense with Well-Marked and fortitude, a reasonable chance of having 4 votes on the table and the lock down that No Secrets can provide. The drawback is that I really miss a card like Enchant Kindred in here. Ousting power relies on Army of Rats, Dragonbound, Smiling Jack and the bleed for one with 4-5 minions if everything goes well. This deck should be able to make a solid 1 Game Win 5 Vp's in the preliminaries, which means I should play this one in small tournaments. The deck is untested so far, so there might be changes later on.

2. Sever The Wicked Hand  

I named this deck after the new Crowbar album, which I really like a lot. The idea for the deck came while listening to it. The deck is also inspired by an earlier deck built by Guyla Ferdos. It features Gustaphe Brunelle as a star vampire with 8 other DOM-POT or POT-dom support vampires like Don Michael Antonio Giovanni or Harold Tanner, just to name 2 of them. This deck is also 75 cards. It features pretty standard Potence combat and classics like Govern the Unaligned and Conditioning. The whole idea is that Gustaphe "governs out" the support vampires. Early rush is of course directed at the predator first to have time building up with 4 vampires in play. Ousting power is pretty strong with Fame, Dragonbound, Govern and Conditioning once there is no one left to bounce. 

What makes this deck look a little different than all the other pot-dom decks out there are the other master card choices. Those who followed my blog know that blood management is alpha and omega for me. So this 75 card deck containes 2 Hunting Grounds, a Carver's Meat Packing and Storage, a Giant Blood as well as 7 Taste of Vitae's to support blood gain. Even though I dislike bleed bounce I of course included Deflections.

Well I wasn't going for inventing something never seen before. Both decks are pretty common, but I never played with them, so I made my own versions. I am looking forward to test them and see how they will do at this years tournaments. Since I don't want to spend a year with 2 decks only I am still thinking of other decks to play, here are some ideas:

3. Dominate Brujah

Again, this will not be a copy-paste. My plan is to use Donal O'Connor and Theo Bell as the basic vampires. I want to make use of Theo's special and include Amaranth in the deck. Supporting vampires will be Rake, Volker and Anvil. New Carthage together with Parity Shifts and the always mandatory Fame (I won't Amaranth the one with Fame) should do the ousting. I need to pack sufficient combat cards, since my plan is an Amaranth/turn ratio with Theo. I wonder if Imperator + Blood Hunt will fit in there...

4. Fakir al Sidi takes your Skin

There is one critical point for this deck: 1. get Fueled by Heart's Blood into play asap! The rest is easy: rush, amaranth and play Predator's Transformation + Taking the Skin: Minion. Then bleed of course. Twice. The deck needs sufficient Freak Drives to operate. The Sense the Sin + Enkil Cog combo will provide me with an additional bleed. This is more of a fun deck than a tournament one, but I think this is the most unique of the decks I am recently thinking about....

5. Who let the Tupdogs out?

This deck will differ from other tupdog decks I've seen so far a lot. The idea here is to play Parthenon and Ashur Tablets + Effective Management. The rest of the deck is mainly (but not entirely) pure combat cards. The idea here is to use the Tupdogs to Amaranth everything with a title first (then the rest). That is why I need the Effective Managements. After a while there will be nothing left to burn me in blood hunts (I'll get the edge anyway). Once there is no one left in the ready region the few little Tremere Antitribu will bleed for 1 + I'll play a Smiling Jack that nobody will be able to burn. A Hunting Ground + Robert Carter combo seems to be awesome to finish my current prey off. I first thought that Codex of the Edenic Groundskeepers will be optimal, but I realized the AI threat, so Robert Carter seems better.

That's all for today. Five decks should be sufficient for some time.

by: Mephistopheles