Who Let the Bridge Troll In Here?

Here's the deck which I played at our V:TES storyline tournament.

"I've Got a Key In My Pocket"
Crypt [12 vampires] Capacity min: 5 max: 8 average: 6.75
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3x The Arcadian (DOM MYT OBT, 8)
1x Pherydima (DOM MYT obt, 8)
2x Omme Enberbenight (dom MYT OBT, 7)
1x Roderick Phillips (DOM MYT obt, 7)
3x Isanwayen (DOM MYT OBT, 6)
2x Dame Hollerton (DOM myt OBT, 5)

This crypt is built for MYT/OBT, a discipline combination that was difficult to obtain before Heirs was printed. Specifically, Arms of the Abyss/Earth Swords always looked like a tight combat package to me, but without a crypt to support it, there wasn't much point in trying to make it work.

Heirs was a really great set for the Kiasyd, in a quiet way that nobody seems to have really blown their trumpet about. It might just be that since Kiasyd have always been one of the best bloodlines, the new tech that they got wasn't remarkable. Contrast that with the !Salubri, for instance, whom everyone got excited about as a direct result of them very suddenly going from "special needs" to "hey, wait, are these guys actually good now?"

Library [82 cards]
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This used to be a smaller library, but the largish combat module cycled quickly enough that I ran out of cards regularly enough to increase the library size. I didn't ever get close to running out of cards during the tournament, though, likely because I had a hard time keeping my hand moving during most of those games.

Master [14]
5x Blood Doll
1x Giant's Blood
1x Great Symposium
1x KRCG News Radio
1x Pentex(TM) Subversion
1x Perfectionist
1x Storage Annex
2x Wash
1x Wider View

Not much to comment on here, as this is mostly wrenches and hammers rather than anything fresh and exciting.

The Storage Annex seemed like a good idea, as there are a lot of cards in this deck of which there is only one copy but which may not be useful as soon as they're drawn, but it didn't really work out in play. Would've been better as another Perfectionist.

This was the last of my Wider View experiments, and my conclusion is that having just one Wider View is useless in a deck. Either use a lot of them or don't bother at all.

At one point during the finals, Dave asked me if I had any rush in the deck, and I just laughed. I really don't play many decks that use action cards which say anything about entering combat on them, but some Haven Uncovereds might be a good idea for this deck.

Action [9]
1x Abbot
1x Dominate Kine
4x Govern the Unaligned
1x Graverobbing
1x Gremlins
1x Riddle Phantastique

A bit of a grab bag of options here. Never managed to make a Graverobbing happen, and I don't remember Abbot ever being useful. If I wanted to make this deck better, obviously there should be about twice as many Governs.

Action Modifier [4]
2x Conditioning
1x Foreshadowing Destruction
1x Threats

Again, to improve the deck, some of the toolboxiness should be stripped out and more bleed mods should be added here. I'm a firm believer in the school of thought that it's better to have fewer bleed mods and make sure that they land where you want them to, rather than using a lot of them and just hoping that they stick, but even with that frame of mind there's not enough offense here.

Action Modifier/Combat [6]
6x Fae Contortion

In theory, these are great with the Arms/Swords combo, allowing you to shrug off Immortal Grapples, slink away from your opponent's strike and then stab them with dirt. In practice, they give you a fairly solid plan B for ousting, allowing you to sneak past preys who don't have any intercept and land some bleeds.

Action Modifier/Reaction [3]
3x Murmur of the False Will

No good, these. The number of times that I was bled by a vampire older than all of my guys while staring at one of these cards in hand has convinced me that Murmur is only worth using if your average crypt size is rather large. For those decks, I think Murmur is quite good, as it gives you something useful to do with your bleed bounce during the two-player endgame, but for other decks, it's all too likely that a sadness will ensue.

Ally [2]
1x Draeven Softfoot (Changeling)
1x Mylan Horseed (Goblin)

Draven was great, acting as a floating Flak Jacket for times when I didn't want to commit combat cards (like when blocking bounced bleeds). Mylan is theoretically great, but I didn't ever get him into play during the tournament.

Keep these guys in mind if you decide to do the obvious thing and add some Songs of Pan to this deck. A Song will kill both of these guys dead, as they're very unlikely to land a bleed (particularly when you announce that the bleed is for two).

Combat [22]
9x Arms of the Abyss
2x Darkling Trickery
9x Earth Swords
1x Oubliette
1x Shadow Body

This worked out very well, when it worked at all. It would be quite possible to play with discipline and only fight when it's opportunistically useful to do so, in which case you could cut down on the number of Arms and Swords.

The two S:CE were escape hatches from combat which I never came close to needing. They could easily be cut or replaced with Tastes of Vitae.

Equipment [3]
1x Sport Bike
2x Tinglestripe

Tinglestripe seemed like a good, cheap, efficient combat permaent to back up my combat transients, which is always useful in a toolboxy deck like this one. Since I wasn't having any luck getting into useful combats, though, the Tinglestripes were worse than useless. I still haven't decided if that's because of the specific circumstances of those games or if the card just isn't worth playing in general. I'm leaning toward the latter.

Event [1]
1x Scourge of the Enochians

I knew this wasn't going to matter during our tournament, but as I mentioned in the tournament report, I didn't change this deck at all for the event. In theory, this is a really good card for bruise/bleed decks, since it cuts down on the number of minions you need to chew through in order to get to your prey's pool. Since I'm the only player in my playgroup who plays weenie decks with anything like regularity, I'm not sure if this is borne out in actual play or not.

Reaction [13]
2x Eyes of the Night
1x Faerie Wards
3x On the Qui Vive
4x Redirection
3x Wake with Evening's Freshness

Faerie Wards is really excellent, especially when Omme plays it and it only costs one blood. The younger vampire clause on it really hurt my chances of playing it usefully, though, and I think this card might have to be filed next to Basilisk's Touch under "Mytherceria cards which are only useful if your name happens to be Marconius."

My theory here was to have enough intercept to block casually stealthy actions, between the permanent intercept, the Eyes of the Night, and Aura Absorption at basic, but it seemed like I never had enough intercept to block anything that I actually cared about. To improve the deck, the intercept can safely be ditched.

I think I may have drunk more Storm Kings than I realized while building this, as it's definitely short on wake tech, a weakness which I felt keenly during every game of the tournament. For a deck this size, I normally start at eight wakes and add more if necessary, and this deck definitely needs at least that many.

Reaction/Action Modifier [4]
4x Aura Absorption

As mentioned above, I'd ditch these entirely if I was going to focus on streamlining the deck.

Retainer [1]
1x Mr. Winthrop

Also to be cut, if the deck should eventually be turned into something good.

Not sure if I'm going to keep this deck or not. The combat package is wonderfully toothsome, but it's not trumpy enough to be used as the sharp end of a straight-up rush package, and bruise/bleed is an archetype that I really don't have much love for. I can see how I could make this deck good, but I strongly suspect that it would also make the deck less fun to play. If I do keep this, it will probably be relegated to casual play only. It has too much potential for bad matchups to possess much in the reliability department when facing sleeker, more honed decks.