Results of the poll "A Kingdom for a deck"

Since I was undecided about what deck to play at the next tournament, so I put a poll on the blog and let the readers of blog decide what deck I play. The outcome of the poll was this:

• "Harbinger Anarch Milling Wall" -- 13 (21%)
• "Ravnos Search & Destroy" -- 12 (20%)
• "!Toreador Anarch Bleed" -- 17 (28%)
• "!Tremere Nephandus" -- 2 (3%)
• This all crap! Play something else. -- 13 (21%)
• Dunno. I don't care. -- 3 (5%)

To my surprise the strongest deck (the "Nephandus Mage" deck) got the fewest vote, and after some playtesting I must agree (mostly) with the sizable minority that voted "This is all crap! Play something else" (I disagree about their opinion on the "Nephandus Mage" deck. I must concede that I was very unhappy about the reader's choice, the "Toreador antitribu Anarch Bleed" deck. But I was determined to stick to results of poll, even though the deck in the presented form was too slow and couldn't build any decent pressure on its prey. So I cheated a little bit (and also I wanted to surprise the other players of the tournament a little bit if they read the blog), when I changed the deck quite bit. The core was still the Anarch -- "Undue Influence" -- "Power of One" engine, but I threw out almost all of the "Celerity" discipline cards and added "Dodges" and "Combat Ends" based on "Presence". But the most significant and most needed change was the decision to remove all the mid-cap "Toreador antitribu" (and the clan based cards) and put into weenies w/ "Presence" into the deck instead.

Astoundingly in the end the deck did quite well in the tournament environment, and made a very good 2 GW and 7 VP in the preliminary rounds of the tournament in Tilburg (see tournament results above), but was stopped cold when the top-seeded "Malkavian antitribu" bleed & block deck choose to be my prey. Not even the slightest chance in the finals ... The deck was fun playing, but I doubt it's even Tier 2, since any decent Tier 1 deck will shred it to pieces.

So this was the actual decklist of the deck I played:

Deck Name: Undue Power
Created By: extrala
Description: My take on Anarch Presence Undue Influence bleed.

Crypt: (17 cards, Min: 4, Max: 16, Avg: 2,35)
---------------------------------------------
5 Anarch Convert 1 Caitiff
1 Dirk pre 1 Caitiff
1 Aimee Laroux for pre 2 Daughters of Cacophony
1 Emerson Wilkershire III pre 2 Toreador
1 Justine Chen pre 2 Toreador Antitribu
1 Panya cel pre 3 Ishtarri
1 Mazz cel pre 3 Brujah
1 Jonathan Gursel aus pre 3 Toreador Antitribu
1 Reverend Adams aus PRE 3 Caitiff
3 Maldavis for pre AUS 4 Caitiff
1 Loonar cel PRE 4 Toreador Antitribu

Library: (79 cards)
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Master (18 cards)
1 Anarch Free Press, The
1 Anarch Railroad
4 Blood Doll
1 Club Illusion
1 Direct Intervention
2 Effective Management
1 Pentex Subversion
1 Rumor Mill, Tabloid Newspaper, The
2 Twilight Camp
1 Wall Street Night, Financial Newspaper
3 Wash

Action (14 cards)
2 Entrancement
12 Undue Influence

Action Modifier (9 cards)
2 Leverage
1 Monkey Wrench
6 Power of One

Reaction (15 cards)
2 Delaying Tactics
1 Fillip
2 My Enemy`s Enemy
5 On the Qui Vive
5 Telepathic Misdirection

Combat (17 cards)
5 Concealed Weapon
2 Diversion
2 Dragon`s Breath Rounds
2 Majesty
2 Staredown
2 Target Vitals
2 Unholy Penance

Retainer (1 cards)
1 Mr. Winthrop

Equipment (5 cards)
2 .44 Magnum
1 Bowl of Convergence
1 Deer Rifle
1 Saturday-Night Special