Vampires with built in actions: my new obsession!

Hi folks!

Since I announced my return to v:tes and the revival of my blog quite some time passed. While not much happened on this blog at least part of that announcement became true. I did play several times. Not only with friends just for fun, but I also attended another tournament (sorry, I was too lazy to write a report). So far all the decks I played where some kind of reworks, or even exactly the same, than what I played in the good old days.

Some of you already know that my biggest (and eternal) struggle (yes, this terrible pun was intended, I rate 5/7) is deck building. First of all I hate net decking. In the few occasions I do so, I mostly heavily regret it afterwards. My goal is not to create something the world has never seen before, nor to be some stylish hipster or what not. I often ended up with decks you could find a lot of on online sources. I rather feel like I have more fun when I actually build my own from scratch, because I end up with something I actually want to play. Also for me building a deck involves playing it alone over and over again. Shuffle, draw, simulate scenarios. Test the "flow" of the deck. Adjust. Remove 1-2 her, add 1-2 there. Rinse and repeat. Over and over again. Doing this gives me a feel for the deck. I find this very important.

Now let's finally jump to what I wanted this post to actually be about. Since I currently have no interest in playing wall decks, well guess what, I want to build active decks. Dang. What do all active decks have in common? Yep. They make actions. Never saw that coming, huh? Maybe it is because I am a poor deck builder or just RNJesus is not on my side, but when building and playing active decks I used to find myself quite often in the situation where I couldn't really take meaningful actions, because my hand got stuck with action modifiers or combat cards or what not.

That's how I came to appreciate having a crypt with a star vampire or even better with vampires, that have built in actions. So that even with a bad draw you still have at least one meaningful action to do, to maybe force a block attempt so you can cycle some action modifiers or combat cards (if that built in action is a rush), helping your deck to get the flow going, or just for the result of the action itself, helping you out while you discard and hope for something useful to pop up. 

In the last couple of days I have been thinking about many deck concepts, even made some in a deck building tool and managed to build one physically. I caught myself with a totally new approach on how I build my decks. I now start with the crypt. The first thing is, that I look for vampires that really complement each other and at least one of them should have a built in action. Here are some I really value a lot and you will most likely see me playing them:

Dmitra Ilyanova

I get it. Nothing new. Still she has to be on this list, because of the endless variety you can build around her. From Alastor control to Stealth vote to multi action vote/bleed to bloat/breed Brujahs with boon, to "only" being a strong support besides a star like Lutz von Hohenzollern, she can do it all. You can cycle tons of action modifiers on her, like any vote increases, freak drives, forced marches and voters and she provides a great engine for your deck, while also being able to bribe some players.

Mary Anne Blaire

Being a Ventrue you really want to build around the classic Majesty + Freak Drive engine and just overwhelm your enemies with the sheer amount of actions you take. Having a built in bloat mechanic is maybe the best you could ask for. Bloat means more vampires means more actions, but getting this action blocked means you just forced an intercept and/or wake card that could have blocked your Govern or Parity or Mind Numb or... you get it. 

Nangila Were

On of my favorites. Hand size and built in rush make this vampire super reliable. Cycle your combat to draw your next action like a Founder or Deep Song. How many times did I have the problem with a rush deck, that I had all the cards to kill that pesky Giovanni, or Malkavian behind me, but I didn't have the rush. Obviously this is true for all vampire with d-rush built into them, but Nangila stands out for me, as she can be played together with Nana for 9 hand size, 2 master phase actions and a rush. Pretty strong for 2 vampires. I admit this isn't new from me either, as I played this deck this year already, but it fits the theme so well.

Kamiri wa Itherero advanced

This one is maybe my number one wish to build a deck around. Being able to one-shot Nephandi from the board is always nice, but basically what you are looking at is a wall deck that is able to remove 4 blood from the table / round with the help of Enkil's Cog. I haven't found the balance to fit all I want into a deck within 90 cards (maybe less), but what I am aiming for is to deteriorate the table with stuff like Narrow Minds, Young Blood, Ossian, Kamiri's ability as fast as possible and throw a Smiling Jack. 

Ghede

This vampire came out a long time after I stopped playing, so I didn't have the chance to do so, yet. Ages ago I had a deck where I played way too many Vast Wealth cards to have one in my opening hand to put on Nakthorheb so I can fetch my Eye of Hazimel... well just play Ghede and I can finally put my Typhonic Beasts to work. Also note to myself: never ever play a rush deck again with no built in rush. I love reliability.  

Without further explanation (and without the need for completion):

Annazir, Beckett, Benjamin Rose, Drozodny, Gabrielle di Righetti, Malgorzata, Mistress Fanchon, Nostoket, Undele, Victoria Ash

That's it for today. I need to spend more time studying crypt cards and thinking of concepts I want to play. I hope you enjoyed this article. I will try my best to waste less time on online games and invest more time into v:tes so I can up with some quality articles for this blog. If you used to enjoy this blog when it was updated regularly or you are a new follower and wish to read new content regularly then please kindly leave a comment or just check one of those boxes below (funny, interesting, cool). Feedback like this is a huge driving force for me and will help me a lot to keep writing regularly which I really need as writing such articles is pretty time consuming (this one took 2 hours + the time and energy to even come up with an idea). 

yours truly: Mephistopheles