Monodiscipline Deckbuilding Challenge #3: Obtenebration

This latest entry in the NWWYP series is a bit more adventurous than previous efforts. Obtenebration is a support discipline rather than a meat-and-potatoes affair, providing stealth and a pretty wide range of effects which are reasonably good but which aren't particularly useful for any one function. Light intercept, combat defense, one of the few combat payload cards in the game, some mostly crappy offensive combat and a few weird outlier effects are all available to vampires who sport the tentacley shadows, but most of that stuff never sees the light of day (marvel at that thematically deployed cliche!).

That's because Obtenebration is one of the better stealth disciplines in the game, and it usually comes packaged with Dominate, and in Ye Olden Dayes, was most often spotted on a hefty selection of titled vampires who often sported Presence for additional vote-related antics. Obtenebration's heavy blood cost keeps it from being a Tier One stealth discipline - accept nothing less than Obfuscate if you want to go for the top-shelf stuff, because no other discipline in the game can compete with it - but it's certainly a solid contender for second-best. Being so good at stealth, and being so closely tied to bleeding and voting, means that there haven't been many occasions for people to bother dusting off their copies of Darksight or Summon the Abyss.

Today, that changes! We're going to put an end to the tyrannical stranglehold stealth has had on the history of Obtenebration, you and I. Together, like we used to. Like a family. So step into the shadows with me, etc.

Deck Name : Shadows Fall
Author : John Eno
Description : Obtenebration intercept/combat. Test version to mine for workable ideas.

Crypt [12 vampires] Capacity min: 1 max: 8 average: 4.83333
------------------------------------------------------------
1x Conrad Adoula 8 DOM OBT POT ani cel Lasombra:4
1x Henri Lavenant 7 DOM OBT pot qui Lasombra:3
1x Onaedo 6 DOM OBT aus pot Lasombra:4
1x Otieno 6 OBT POT ani dom Lasombra:4
2x Andrew Emory 5 OBT aus dom pot bishop Lasombra:4
2x Ermenegildo, The R 5 DOM OBT pot Lasombra:4
1x Leila Monroe 4 dom obt pre Lasombra:4
1x Hester Reed 3 obt pot Lasombra:3
1x Lucy Markowitz 3 dom obt Lasombra:4
1x Margarite 1 obt Pander:4

I thought about including a copy or two of Dame Hollerton in here, as she's as cheap as superior Obtenebration gets. But thinking it over a bit more, I decided that it was better to make sure that my non-nerd vampires were Lasombra, so that they could reap the benefits of Drink the Blood of Ahriman (see below). Dodge/additional strike/hands for two is a lot more menacing than "well, I could dodge or strike hands for two," after all. Theoretically, keeping the focus mostly on one clan despite there being one and a half clans available with Obtenebration as a primary discipline also means that I can utilize more clan-specific cards in the library, but it turned out that there really weren't many that I wanted to use.

Library [80 cards]
------------------------------------------------------------
Master [16]
1x Barrens, The
4x Blood Doll
1x Channel 10
1x Elysian Fields
1x Giant's Blood
3x Jake Washington (Hunter)
1x KRCG News Radio
1x London Evening Star, Tabloid Newspaper
1x Rumor Mill, Tabloid Newspaper, The
1x WMRH Talk Radio
1x Wall Street Night, Financial Newspaper

Obtenebration really isn't meant to be a frontline intercept discipline, so I the methuselah am going to have to do some helping out on that score. I had wanted to run some Therbold Realty in here to offset the cost of the locations, but even including Club Zombie (which got dropped for its massive expense), there would have only been eight other cards for the Realty agent to encheapen, and the likelihood of drawing it late in the game and it not having any effect loomed large in my mind. Noting that the only source of bloat in the deck is by pulling blood from my vampires, and also that rather a lot of the minion cards cost blood, I decided to drop the Realties and instead put in a bunch of Jake Washingtons. He's solid bloodgain in any deck, of course, but I hope that the Drinking the Bloods will synergize well with his sometimes difficult timing window.

Action [11]
3x Abbot
1x Aranthebes, The Immortal
2x Black Metamorphosis
5x Drink the Blood of Ahriman

Having standing intercept that you don't need to tap to use is critical to decks that want to block but don't have good access to transient intercept, just like this deck. Unfortunately, there aren't a lot of options for that if your vampires don't have Animalism, but Abbot should help to fill that gap a little bit.

The Drinks are both combat offense and better than Paths of Night, hopefully. I'd been collecting Drinks for a while without any real idea of what use they'd have, and it seems to me that using them in a reactive deck is probably the way to go, as that should hopefully allow me to get some use out of them before I even need to pay for them (ie, by blocking people and fighting them on their turns). I also think that they'll be hot with the Nocturns, since that combo allows me to get a free Nocturn and untap to do something else.

I'm not sure about the Black Metamorphoses, not because they lack a strong effect, but because I'm doubtful that I'll be able to successfully complete the action to get them. They're a zero-stealth action, for some reason, and I don't expect that my combat will be scary enough to deter blockers early in the game, which is when I'd like to get the Black Mets. On the other hand, these provide some much-needed combat offense for the guys with inferior Obtenebration, who can't make use of the dodge/additional/hands for two combat package that's the focus of the deck. These cards might be better as Shades, which are much less likely to get blocked since they're at stealth to acquire and because they're not so threatening as to automatically make people want to block, and which are also half as expensive.

Action Modifier [2]
2x Leverage

My sole ousting tech. Also playable by Nocturns.

Ally [9]
9x Nocturn

As mentioned above, these guys should be really good with the Drink the Blood of Ahrimans. They're also handy for getting in cheap bleeds of one while I've still got vampires with Dominate untapped, at least until people twig to the fact that I'm not using Dominate in this deck. But that's really unlikely to happen in a blind environment, given peoples' expectations of what Lasombra decks do.

Combat [20]
10x Arms of the Abyss
4x Darkness Within
2x Entombment
2x Target Vitals
2x Weighted Walking Stick

Arms of the Abyss/hands for two sounds like a pretty good combat package, so that's what I'm focusing on here. Entombment and Darkness Within are good cards that I don't think are normally worth their cost, but they should shine when played by a vampire who's Drunk. The Target Vitals are for the Nocturns, and the Sticks should work well with the rest of the combat options.

Equipment [3]
2x .44 Magnum
1x Sport Bike

I dream of having a vampire with a Black Metamorphosis and .44, though it's unlikely to happen. I may need more intercept equipment here, like more copies of Sport Bike and possibly some Phased Motion Detectors.

Reaction [18]
5x Darksight
5x Eyes of the Night
4x Forced Awakening
4x On the Qui Vive

I know that this is awfully wimpy for a deck whose supposed main function is to block stuff, but you go to war with the army you've got. Darksight is another card that I'd normally pass over due to its cost, so this is partly an experiment to see if Drink makes it worthwhile. I may want more wake tech, particularly On the Qui Vive if I find that Nocturns are surviving past the end of my minion phase and could also wake and block something. Most of the intercept locations are usable by allies as well as vampires, so getting double duty out of free Nocturns would be great.

Retainer [1]
1x Mr. Winthrop

Well, duh.

I can already see the blueprint for a Kiasyd deck along these lines beginning to unfold in my head, one which is better thanks to more reliable intercept and combat, as well as some Dominate for bloat, bleed and bounce. But for now I'll try out this little weirdo and see what works.

It lacks any real ousting power, so I'll have to try to be Johnny-on-the-spot with regard to blocking the bloat actions of my prey. Stealth-vote will likely murder me. Real combat decks will probably have all kinds of trumps that I'll have no recourse against, except to attempt puppy dog eyes. Stealth/bleed decks will probably sneak by me, though I may be able to run them out of stealth if I get lucky, except that they'll likely turn me into their bitch if they're my initial predator. Other than that, I'm not sure what could go wrong with this masterpiece.

Monodiscipline Deckbuilding Challenge #3: Dominate

The third entry in the NWWYP series. (I guess it could be considered sort of the second entry, since Karl pointed out that the Potence deck disqualified itself via use of the prince/justicar "discipline.")

Deck Name : Guns Don't Kill People, Dominate Does
Author : John Eno
Description : Weenie Dominate with guns for combat defense and some "stealth."

Crypt [12 vampires] Capacity min: 1 max: 5 average: 3.41667
------------------------------------------------------------
2x Banjoko 5 DOM obt pot Lasombra:3
1x Isabel Giovanni 5 DOM NEC pot Giovanni:2
1x Kurt Strauss 5 DOM aus tha !Tremere:2
1x Gloria Giovanni 4 DOM nec Giovanni:2
1x Ingrid Russo 4 DOM for !Ventrue:2
1x Ember Wright 3 aus dom !Tremere:3
1x Saiz 3 aus dom !Tremere:3
1x Christine Boscacci 2 dom vic Pander:2
1x Mustafa Rahman 2 dom Tremere:2
1x Samson 2 dom !Ventrue:2
1x Royce 1 dom Pander:2

Standard Dominate/Govern chain here. The six guys who have inferior Dominate can all Govern down to the others who also have [dom] once they receive a skillcard. I put in two copies of Banjoko to keep as many Sabbat vampires in the crypt as possible, since I want to use Abbot and Hungry Coyote, and it's unlikely to make a difference that one guy is doubled up. As a side benefit, Banjoko prevents Fall of the Sabbat from ever being played! That's quality crypt-building right there.

Library [80 cards]
------------------------------------------------------------
Master [14]
2x Anarch Troublemaker
3x Dominate
1x Humanitas
1x Hungry Coyote, The
2x Jake Washington (Hunter)
3x Life in the City
1x Misdirection
1x Police Department

A good amount of bloodgain, some combat defense, and a light selection of minion-tapping tech. Originally I considered using a bunch of the intercept locations and Therbold Realty, but as I figure I'm going to be putting those cards into the ridiculous mono-Obtenebration deck I've got on the back burner, I don't want to build too many decks at the same time which are similar to each other.

As is the case in every deck which doesn't have at least one, this question needs to be answered: Why is there no Pentex Subversion here? In this case, I felt like using cheaper alternatives, and I hope to have enough combat defense to not worry too much about getting blocked. The advantages of Misdirection over Pentex are that it's cheaper, has about the same effect if you don't run into something like an Earth Meld wall as your prey, and forces someone using lots of bleed bounce or reduction to play a wake for each of those cards that they play. Since I've only got bleed as offense here and might be able to take down the unwary with my combat, I'm more worried about that last part than I am about needing to shut down one superstar.

It's a gamble to choose not to use any blood-to-pool reclamation tech, and something along those lines might very well be better than putting Dominate skillcards onto dorks in order to turn those dorks into poolgain machines via Govern - those Governs can be pretty easily blocked, after all. Since this is a prototype deck, though, I'll stick with the unconventional choice for the time being.

Action [11]
1x Dominate Kine
1x Far Mastery
8x Govern the Unaligned
1x Graverobbing

Bleed, bloat, and some miscellaneous stuff. I'll be able to play Dominate Kine every game, of course, even if at inferior, but Far Mastery and Graverobbing are the kind of cards that I like to throw into something untuned and not really tournament-worthy like this deck. I fully expect to discard them, but if circumstances come up that they turn out to be useful, they tend to turn out to be really useful.

Apparently the Abbots I mentioned above got dropped somewhere along the way, so now the only Sabbat-only card in the deck is the Hungry Coyote. I may end up putting them back in, so I'll keep an eye out for situations in which it would have been useful to have them. The Coyote is another card that I'm really not sure of, and might very well be something better. If it turns out to be the case that it's not worth the investment it requires, I'll also change out the second copy of Banjoko for Catherine du Bois.

Action Modifier [21]
5x Bonding
2x Change of Target
2x Conditioning
3x Foreshadowing Destruction
4x Seduction
1x Sleeping Mind, The
4x Suppressing Fire

If this were your daddy's weenie Dominate deck, there'd be at least twice as many bleed modifiers and probably far fewer Bonding (which is good stealth for a discipline that doesn't provide stealth, but not a good bleed mod for a discipline that's got loads of them). But I like to have the Power of Truth on my side when I say, "But it's not that kind of deck!"

The Sleeping Mind is total pants, of course, but I'm curious to see if it ever comes in handy should I find myself in a corner of the case. It would also be a funny finisher against a deck that relied entirely on Second Tradition, though I seem to be the only person who makes such decks, locally.

Is Suppressing Fire any good? Probably not, but it might mess with someone's math enough to allow me to squeak an action through now and again. Originally I thought I was going to use a giant pile of these, but their effect seems so wimpy that I just couldn't bring myself to. Should I go for what seems to be a totally nutpunchy exercise anyway? I'll put the question to the audience, and if there's a overwhelming response I'll retool the deck before playing it.

Combat [18]
4x Fake Out
6x Target Vitals
8x Zip Gun

The original plan here was to run seven or eight each of Concealed Weapon and Saturday Night Specials. The deck should play in such a way that I'll need to hang onto a lot of cards for what might be a long time - I don't have enough serious bleed mods to throw them around willy-nilly, for example - and so I didn't want to put another two-card-exclusive combo* into the deck and foul up the slow cardflow that I'm already expecting to be working around. This decision is what led to putting more bloodgain into the deck than I normally would, since the Zip Guns essentially have a cost every time that they're used. It may end up being less work to simply pay the pool upfront for the guns and save master card slots for something else, like maybe hand-management tech to make sure that I get the Concealeds and guns together.

Reaction [16]
6x Deflection
2x Delaying Tactics
3x On the Qui Vive
2x Redirection
3x Wake with Evening's Freshness

Nothing particularly special here. The low number of actions, combined with the need to not make myself very busy until it's time for a lunge, means that I can lowball the number of wakes a bit. Redirections aren't very popular, for a reason that should be clear, but I like to throw a few into decks which are looking to conserve blood.

*What I mean by this is a two-card combo in which the cards aren't playable, either usefully or at all, without each other. Concealed Weapon/Saturday Night Special is a good example of this, as the former isn't playable at all without the latter, and if you take the action to acquire the latter, it wastes the action (compared to if you'd used a Concealed to get it) and has a tendency to mess up cardflow later in the game, when you're drawing Concealeds for which you don't have any accompanying gun.

Monodiscipline Deckbuilding Challenge #2: Potence

While watching Thirst and contemplating how it isn't very vampirey for a vampire movie, for some reason it suddenly occurred to me that I had been needlessly conflating "mono-Potence" with "weenie Potence," and that it wasn't necessary or desirable to do so. To this end, I started casting about for ideas that could use Potence as their primary engine but not rely upon weenie vampires, and I remembered reading something about Nikolaj Wendt building a deck that was all about princes who have Potence. I also recalled seeing Dave Pennington play a deck that seemed to be built around the same core concept, so I opened up ARDB and got to work.

This is the second entry in the NWWYP project, which will probably take me the rest of the year to complete, at the rate that I actually play V:TES these days.

Deck Name : The Only Study of a Prince
Author : John Eno
Description : "War should be the only study of a prince. He should consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes as ability to execute, military plans."
-Niccolo Machiavelli

Crypt [12 vampires] Capacity min: 2 max: 8 average: 5.5
------------------------------------------------------------

2x Selma the Repugnan 8 OBF POT ani for prince Nosferatu:1
2x Nikolaus Vermeulen 7 POT ani for obf prince Nosferatu:2
1x Donal O'Connor 8 CEL DOM POT prince Brujah:2
1x Murat 7 OBF POT ser prince Nosferatu:2
1x Calebros, The Mart 5 ANI obf pot prince Nosferatu:2
1x Volker, The Puppet 5 CEL pot prince Brujah:2
1x Hector Sosa 4 POT pre Brujah:1
1x Duck 3 obf pot Nosferatu:1
1x KoKo 2 pot Nosferatu:1
1x Lupo 2 pot Brujah:1

Group 4/5 was very tempting, featuring the awesome combo of Tara and Karen Suadela, but it doesn't have much in the way of other midcap princes with Potence, particularly at superior.

Since I've only got fairly good defense in the form of hurting people (don't want to do it as it wastes my resources), the threat of hurting people (doesn't usually work in my playgroup), and Second Tradition (good), I also need to include some bloat. Parity Shifts are good but risky, plus I only own three copies that have grown-up backs, so I'm going to use a bunch of Fourth Traditions to get vampires on the cheap. To that end, I've created a staggered chain of vampires so that, hopefully, I'll be able to continually bring out fresh vampires as the game continues.

I went with an all-Camarilla crypt even though a lot of the cheapest vampires with superior Potence are Sabbat, because I want to be able to play Judgment: Camarilla Segregation without hurting myself. This will be a deck that won't have a great deal of aggressive offense and will want to knock people off the table as quickly as possible, making J:CS is a good choice.

Nosferatu not only have good midcap princes with POT (and a good special, in Nikolaus's case), they've got access to some pretty good clan cards, so I focused much of the crypt around them.

Library [80 cards]
------------------------------------------------------------
Master [14]
5x Blood Doll
1x Creepshow Casino
2x Fame
1x Giant's Blood
2x Haven Uncovered
1x Labyrinth, The
1x Papillon
1x Warsaw Station

This should be largely self-explanatory. Some people might question the addition of the stealth locations in a fighty deck, but I've found that smart players know enough to block really evil actions (like Parity Shift or a rush targeting an Anathema'd vampire) even if it means that they'll lose their blocker. Having the option to add stealth to those actions is a good investment, as long as you don't have to leave the stealth card sitting in your hand until you need it.

There may be too many Blood Dolls and not enough bloodgain in here. A second Warsaw Station might also be nice, since the card is so boss, but this is a good starting point.

Action [12]
8x Fourth Tradition: The Accounting
1x Judgment: Camarilla Segregation
1x Rampage
1x SchreckNET
1x Third Tradition: Progeny

Mostly nuts and bolts stuff. Probably could use another two Segregations if I want to get serious about ousting people. Rampage often isn't great, but the ability to punch, say, the entire city of Chicago into rubble with a single action is too funny to pass up.

Combat [34]
10x Immortal Grapple
4x Taste of Vitae
4x Thrown Gate
2x Thrown Sewer Lid
9x Torn Signpost
5x Undead Strength

Again, nothing particularly thrilling here. I apparently traded away more Signposts than I'd realized or else there'd be a tenth one here instead of one of the Undead Strengths. Though I've not no way to play them without a little help from my friends, I like having a few Sewer Lids in any Potence deck just to have an answer for people who get all smarmy about out-maneuvering me. The Gates are less good for that, but can deliver a fair amount of damage while possibly keeping my minions safe from harm.

Political Action [12]
2x Anathema
2x Archon
5x Kine Resources Contested
3x Parity Shift

I don't have enough available actions or any vote push to justify playing any more votes. Realistically, this is probably already too much, since I've got no other means than getting out more princes to try to push votes, though many of these are sellable enough that I might be able to talk my way to passing them.

Reaction [8]
8x Second Tradition: Domain

Probably just enough defense, though the largish number of actions makes me wonder if a few more wouldn't help.

Monodiscipline Deckbuilding Challenge #1: Celerity

Here's the deck whose genesis kicked off the NWWYP project.

Deck Name : Juggernaut's Folly
Author : John Eno
Description : Gunless weenie Celerity.

Crypt [12 vampires] Capacity min: 2 max: 5 average: 3.58333
------------------------------------------------------------
2x Dodd 5 CEL dom pre !Brujah:2
1x Rigby, Crusade Van 5 CEL PRE aus pot !Brujah:2
1x Jimmy Dunn 4 CEL POT for Pander:2
1x Parmenides 4 CEL qui Assamite:2
1x Scarlet Carson O'T 4 CEL pro !Gangrel:3
1x Victor Tolliver 4 CEL pot !Brujah:2
2x Sarah Brando 3 CEL !Brujah:2
1x Carter 2 cel !Toreador:2
1x Jesus Alcala 2 cel !Gangrel:3
1x Kanya Akhtar 2 cel Assamite:2

With these kinds of weenie decks, the question always arises as to whether it's better to smallify the crypt as much as possible and use Master: Discipline cards, or increase the average capacity a bit and use mostly vampires who have the discipline in question at superior and fill out the crypt with a few support nerds. The answer to that question will usually depend on how good the discipline in question is at basic. It's totally possible to coast along on basic Dominate or Obfuscate until you start drawing into skillcards, for instance. Celerity at basic, on the other hand, is possibly the worst discipline in the game, and I figure this deck is going to struggle mightily to accomplish anything in any case, so I don't want to gimp my chances extra by needing to wait to draw master cards to make my minions effective (or as effective as mono-Celerity can be, at any rate).

The crypt is staggered so that I can make the most use out of Powerbase: Zurich. I'm not sure if this will actually work out in play or not, and I might need to add some Wider View later on in order to make sure that my larger vampires can gain me some free pool during my turn, but this looks like a reasonably solid starting point from which to gather some actual play data.

The cheapest vampire with basic Celerity, Antoinette DuChamp, was cut out of the crypt after I finished building the library for two reasons. The first is that there are enough Celerity actions and strikes in the deck that I worried that her disability would cripple her more quickly than the one pool she'd save me over using one of the two-caps was worth, and the second was that her basic Celerity means that she can't use Sideslip as damage prevention, and would quite likely end up having to hunt every other turn even if her special didn't trigger.

Library [90 cards]
------------------------------------------------------------

This is a significantly bigger library than I normally run, even for combat decks. I'm not entirely sure why it ended up being so big, though I strongly suspect that the reason is me overcompensating for what I perceive as Celerity's inability to deliver the goods in combat, so my combat card selection probably got overzealous. I'll try it like this, but I expect that I'll probably end up cutting the library size down by about ten cards.

Master [10]
1x Barrens, The
1x Dreams of the Sphinx
1x Elder Library
2x Fame
2x Frontal Assault
3x Powerbase: Zurich

A fair bit of hand-tuning tech here, required stuff for any deck packing as large a combat module as this one. Some light offense in the form of Fame and bloat from Frontal Assault and Zurich are probably all that the deck has room for, given that it intends to play quite few cards during the course of the game.

Action [20]
8x Bum's Rush
12x Flurry of Action

Here's the meat of the deck. The plan is for my minions to bleed with Flurry, hopefully without being blocked, and then untap and do something else - hunt if they're low on blood, get a +bleed permanent, bloat via Zurich, rush someone, or possibly call a vote if the political situation looks favorable. Staying untapped to block might also be an option if the deck sits down with a non-sneaky predator. Flurry's basic option also provides more hand-tuning potential if it's needed.

Combat [52]
4x Infernal Pursuit
8x Psyche!
4x Pulled Fangs
8x Pursuit
8x Sideslip
8x Target Vitals
4x Taste of Vitae
8x Weighted Walking Stick

Whole, whole lot of cards here. As I mentioned above, this is probably overkill on my part, but I do feel like Celerity has so little to offer in terms of combat payload that these are all going to be needed. Pulled Fangs is good tech to work with both Fame and Dragonbound, and with the extra damage I can inflict, dodges and damage prevention, it shouldn't be too difficult to play them.

Equipment [2]
2x Laptop Computer

Event [2]
2x Dragonbound

Political Action [2]
2x Perpetual Care

Retainer [2]
1x J. S. Simmons, Esq.
1x Tasha Morgan

The rest of the deck is ousting tech, which feels too light to me. The Perpetual Care seem especially fringey to me, but Darby Keeney has assured me that they can do plenty of damage in a rush deck, even if that deck lacks titles of its own. I'll give them their day in court and see what verdict comes back.

Never Whistle While You're Pissing

Or in other words, focus on one thing at a time. (I can't think of an equivalent phrase that works for women as well as men, but NWWYP has countercultural cachet, so I'll stick with it.)

I've been due to make a new batch of V:TES decks for a while now, but haven't had any incentive to do so since I've not been playing V:TES. Some recent changes in my work schedule have made it so that I'll at least be playing occasionally, so it's time to actually figure out what to build. Unfortuntely, all of the ideas that I stormed up last go-round have been sitting unbuilt in my head for so long that I'm already bored with them. Aksinya Daclau's cover band takes on the Deep Song tap-and-bleed? Weenie !Salubri swarm with 30 copies of Hide the Heart? Weenie Obfuscate vote? !Ventrue bruise/bleed? Shattering Crescendo trophies? (Okay, I did build and play that one once, but it was a weird game and the deck needed so much work that it was basically still a first draft.) All bored with them already, without ever having played them, due to having spent too much time thinking about them during slow periods at work.

But then a couple of weeks ago, Juggernaut made a statement on the newsgroup that gunless weenie Celerity is a tournament-viable deck, and I pointed out to him that I'd never heard or seen such and that what he was saying sounded dumb to me. Not wanting to be a total jerk and call him out on something without checking it out for myself, I drafted a decklist of exactly what he was talking about, though I haven't played since then. But the process of drafting that deck got me thinking.

I haven't played a lot of monodiscipline decks. While I can understand the allure of having a deck that knows what it wants to do and does it very well at the expense of allowing itself broader options, I'm not often interested in playing such a deck for any longer than it takes me to learn how it works. And since those decks are generally pretty simple in terms of what they do, that's often just one or two plays. But there are a lot of disciplines out there, and a lot of them don't get much in the way of spotlight time all by their lonesomes. So what I'm going to do is put on my best Uncle George impression and act like a sleazy producer who's giving these young hopefuls their shot at fame. I don't expect much out of them, but then that's the fun of surprises, right?

I'm just going to skip right over the fancy bloodlines disciplines, as their crypt options aren't usually good enough to allow the weeniefication that's necessary for just about any monodiscipline deck to have a hope of functionality. As for the rest, I'll go through the list of disciplines and consider which are viable candidates for this particular experiment.

Yes
Abombwe: This is kind of a fancy bloodlines discipline, so it might seem like I'm already violating the rules that I just set out for myself three seconds ago, but since it's got a discipline card that can be used to give it out (one which is a trifle, no less), I'll give it a go. It's toolboxy enough that I'm not immediately sure what route I'll take with the deck. Due to the restriction on who can learn it, the crypt will probably end up largely laibon, which gives me access to more funky tricks.

Celerity: See the introduction above. I might even make two of these, the crappy rush one and another try at weenie !Brujah breed/boom, which by random chance doesn't use any disciplines other than Celerity.

Dominate: I've tried weenie DBR (which also happens to be mono-Dominate) before, but found that it really wasn't to my liking. Too much need to aggressively attack people cross-table in the early game, which doesn't suit my playstyle or my wish for the people I'm playing with to have fun. Aim&Chain has been looking enticing to me for a minute now, though, as has trying out something silly with Zip Guns and Suppressing Fire, so that seems like it could all come together here.

Protean: For such a toolboxy discipline, it still seems like making a working deck using just Protean will be nigh-impossible. Hark! A challenge! The 1/2 crypt for this is very solid for the weenie angle, so that's a good starting place.

No
Animalism: I've already done this one, several different times actually, which is enough to disqualify it. For what it's worth, I also found it less interesting to play than !Nosferatu, Ahrimanes, or Gangrel/!Gangrel, any of which can do all the same stuff that weenie Animalism can but also adds spice and options on top of that basic build.

Auspex: Never played it, but it's generally so one-dimensional that I already know how it would play. It's certainly a discipline I like and play a lot of, but I've got no desire to see what happens when it goes solo, especially since weenie Auspex is already an established tournament-viable deck archetype.

Fortitude: See Auspex.

Obfuscate: I like stealth, but I can't think of anything not boring to do with it if it's not coupled with some other discipline. I could make a deck with Heidelburgable bleed permanents and use lots of Night Moves and Powerbase: Zurich! Just writing that sentence had me reaching for a blanket and pillow, though, let alone building the deck or playing it.

Potence: See Auspex, minus the part about me playing it a lot.

Presence: Already played it quite a bit, and also see Auspex.

Maybe
Chimerstry: Hmm. Seems like it might be fun, but every time I've made a Ravnos deck I couldn't bear to play it more than once. I'm not sure what that's about, given that individual Ravnos and Chimerstry cards certainly have the capacity to get me excited to play them, and Ravnos have so many good clan cards that it seems like I ought to keep a deck built just to use them. I'd been wanting to make an Edged Illusion deck for a long time, but that desire evaporated once Shattering Crescendo was printed, and mono-Chimerstry doesn't offer much other than stealth, light bleed, and "haha your guys can't untap" tech. I've long thought that David Cherryholmes' Red Herring deck looked interesting, so maybe I'll give that a shot. Even if I don't, I should probably buckle down and try to do something with that giant pile of Chimerstry cards I've had laying around for so long.

Dementation: Pretty unlikely. I've got zero desire to play the "Jackie taps to attempt Kindred Spirits, add Confusion, repeat" weenie Dementation bleed deck that would be the most obvious choice. And while there are a lot of amusingly janky Dementation actions that mess with other peoples' minions, they're all removable by an action which Dementation weenies are going to be neither willing nor able to block. I've considered using a bunch of Passions to make a Dementation tap-and-bleed deck, but that turns out to just be weenie Presence without access to S:CE, so no thanks.

Necromancy: This discipline has a few good cards, a few more middling ones, and then quite a bit of garbage. What's more, the good and okay stuff doesn't really mesh very well - how do I work Divine Sign, Puppeteer and Call of the Hungry Dead into the same deck? The only mono-Necromancy deck I've seen was one in Ben Peal's series of amazingly annoying "get one million permanents so that no one sitting near me can play and then bleed for one a lot" decks, but I've been meaning to do something with Baleful Doll and Jar the Soul for a long time, and I need to build something to give Sennadurek a home while I'm still working out what's the best deck for her to be in.

Obtenebration: See Obfuscate. The thing to do would be Shadow Twins, but I've played that deck already and it was just as dull as Cryptic Mission, surprise surprise. There are enough combat options and crappy intercept cards for Obtenebration that an intercept/combat thing might be unexpected and funny, but it sounds bad enough that this is close to the bottom of the list of potentials.

Quietus: I've tried this before, with a really bad Baal's Bloody Talons deck that I made just to have an excuse to make terrible jokes about Sticks and Baal's, but maybe I'll try something that's a little less juevenile. Some kind of bleed/vote thing using the good Assamite clan cards but eschewing their one good discipline and instead using Quietus might be the way to go here.

Serpentis: Serpentis has one very good card, a small number of decent ones, and then a whole swath of complete crap. Part of the point of this exercise is certainly to dust off some crappy cards that wouldn't normally see play, but so many of the low-end Serpentis cards are so cost-intensive and situational and yet still have no appreciable effect on the game that they've gone beyond bad to become intimidatingly bad. These cards are the kids hanging out in the back of shop class and sticking safety pins in their forearms just because they're bored, the kind of cards that'll say, "you knew I was a snake when you picked me up" as you lose while playing them. I'm not even talking about the truly unplayable cards from the drug-addled WotC days of Ancient Hearts, either, but some of the more recent stuff. I don't think I've got the werewithal to walk this path.

Thaumaturgy: I've done the Cryptic Mission thing and it made me yawn. That was a while ago, though, and Thaumaturgy has gotten a lot of interesting tricks in the interim. It's got even more cards than it deserves to since so many of the Visceratika outferiors are Thaumaturgy. Combined with enough copies of Spirit Summoning Chamber to get what I want when I think it'll have the most humor impact, I think this might be leading the pack of the maybes.

Vicissitude: Seems like it would make for a good monodiscipline deck, since it offers a fair number of different effcts. Unfortunately, Vicissitude is one of those disciplines which barely has any effect on the game at the basic level, the crypt for weenie Vicissitude isn't very good, and I'm already signed up to build what will probably turn out to be two "aggpoke with light bleed elements" decks (Abombwe and Protean), so I'm really not sure that a third is going to be any better or more interesting than those. The other obvious route to take would be a War Ghoul deck, but it's already an established tournament deck, etc.

I'll be going through the process of making these decks in future posts, or if I'm feeling lazy I'll at least post the decklists and some explanation of how I arrived at the decisions to build them the way I did. Stay tuned.