Reasonably Priced Decks: Lasombra

The following deck based on the Lasombra clan is the third deck in the Reasonably Priced Decks series, which I have outlined in a previous blog post.

The deck is in its essence a stealth bleed deck based on the Dominate and Obtenebration clan disciplines supported by a number by allies, i.e. a couple of Nocturns.

Deck Name: Reasonably Priced Deck: Lasombra
Author: extrala
Description: The third in the Reasonably Priced Deck series, designed for beginners.

Crypt (Capacity min=3 max=7 avg=4.83; 12 cards)
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1x Andrew Emory 5 aus dom pot OBT Lasombra:4
1x Banjoko 5 obt pot DOM Lasombra:3
1x Black Wallace 6 obt tha DOM POT Lasombra:4
1x Dr. Julius Sutphen ADV 5 dom obt POT Lasombra:3
2x Ermenegildo, The Rake 5 pot DOM OBT Lasombra:4
1x Hester Reed 3 obt pot Lasombra:3
1x Leila Monroe 4 dom obt pre Lasombra:4
1x Lord Vauxhall 7 DOM OBT POT THA Lasombra:4
1x Lucy Markowitz 3 dom obt Lasombra:4
1x Onaedo 6 aus pot DOM OBT Lasombra:4
1x Paulo de Castille 4 ani dom pot Lasombra:4

Library (60 cards)
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Master (11 cards)
2x Blood Doll
1x Elysian Fields
1x Obtenebration
1x Path of Night, The
2x Perfectionist
1x Sudden Reversal
2x Vessel
1x Wider View

Action (6 cards)
2x Govern the Unaligned
4x Scouting Mission

Equipment (2 cards)
2x Leather Jacket

Ally (9 cards)
9x Nocturn

Action Modifier (14 cards)
2x Bonding
2x Conditioning
4x Empowering the Puppet King
4x Shadow Play
2x Tenebrous Form

Reaction (10 cards)
2x On the Qui Vive
4x Redirection
2x Touch of Pain
2x Wake with Evening's Freshness

Combat (6 cards)
1x Burning Wrath
2x Slam
1x Stunt Cycle
2x Undead Strength

Combo (2 cards)
2x Murmur of the False Will

Created with Secret Library v0.9.3. (Jan 1, 2012 01:52:19)

Offense: "All Bleeds Great and Small" could be the motto of the deck. The small bleeds are delivered to your prey by the Nocturns (who can bleed for one each), which are probably enhanced by an Empowering the Puppet King. These bleeds are often left unblocked, since your prey thinks he's receiving a bleed for one now, but may expect a much higher bleed by one of the Lasombra (using Dominate). So after recruiting a Nocturn, it's crucial to bleed first with the Nocturn, and later with the Lasombra vampire (if at all). In the beginning the Lasombra should play a bit low key, i.e. by bleeding not to hard and playing the Govern the Unaligned and Scouting Mission at superior only. Otherwise your prey is inclined to go backwards fast and/or he's going to spent less pool then you want to. At best you're gonna spot a point in time where your hand has a bleed action/modifier or three and something like two stealth cards in addition. This is then time for attacking full forward (also known as lunging).

Defense: The Nocturns & Lasombra provide a good defense against rush or bruise & bleed decks, but vote is a problem because of the lack of votes and intercept. The basic idea against rush combat is to sacrifice a Nocturn, which will die anyhow during your next untap phase, by untapping (using On the Qui Vive) and blocking the rush. Almost certainly the Nocturn will die during the resulting combat, but then again the intended target, one of your Lasombra does not. The deck has a number of bleed bounce cards (Redirection, Murmur of the False Will) based on Dominate, but you have to keep an eye on the restriction the card may have. You have to have superior Dominate in most cases, so if you leave a vampire untapped it should be one with superior Dominate.

Crypt: The crypt selection was based on having a large number of vampires with either superior Dominate and/or Obtenebration. The Lasombra of group 3/4 have some fantastic mid-size vampires like Lord Vauxhall or Ermenegildo, The Rake fulfilling all of the criteria. But the other vampires like Banjoko or Dr. Julius Sutphen are not too shabby either.
It's important to bring out a vampire who can play Govern the Unaligned or Scouting Missions at superior first. That is, you need a vampire with superior Dominate who has a larger capacity than most/all of the other vampires in your uncontrolled region. With this setup you can easily have three or four vampires out in turn 5 or 6 without spending too much pool.

Typical Turn:

1. Recruit Nocturn and untap.
2. Play Scouting Mission (at superior).
3. Bleed with the Nocturn, possibly enhancing the bleed with Empowering the Puppet King.
4. Bleed with a second Lasombra, this time adding stealth (when necessary) and a Conditioning, if the block is unsuccessful.
5. Leave the third vampire untapped for blocking/bouncing a bleed.
6. Either use pool to put influence on an uncontrolled vampire to move that vampire to the ready region, or move the blood from the uncontrolled vampire back to your pool.

Strengths: The strength of deck is certainly the ousting power (by bleeding) as well as number of minions controlled. But showing the strength to early can led to prey that walls up early on and/or keeps too much pool to be removed easily. So hiding this strength early on is quite important.

Weaknesses: The biggest drawback is the lack of intercept. So if you're prey is performing actions with +1 stealth or more, you're basically helpless. A well-timed Touch of Pain can be helpful, but in general you're screwed when you're predator is using stealth on most his actions (e.g when playing a vote deck). In this cases, don't hide your light under a bushel and go full forward immediately. Another problem can be that you don't have enough blood on your vampires, since a lot of the actions or action modifiers cost blood. One way to offset this is the inclusion of Perfectionist and the Path of Night.

Asking Price: About 3 Euro for the library cards and about 1 Euro for the crypt cards, so in total 4 to 4.50 Euro.

Possible Extensions: The most needed additions are a bit more actions and action modifiers for bleeding successfully, adding 2x Govern the Unaligned, Conditioning and Shadow Play each. Also adding 3x Sudden Reversals also should help preventing your prey playing his first crucial Villein (for example). Replacing the Wake with Evening's Freshness (which the Nocturns cannot use) by On the Qui Vive as well as adding 2x Delaying Tactics should provide a better defense.

This improved/expanded version of the deck has bit more emphasis on defense and bit more punch for the Lasombra. So in total I am adding the following 17 cards (and removing 2) to the original deck:

• 2x Sudden Reversal
• 1x FBI Special Affairs Division
  
• 2x Govern the Unaligned
• 2x Conditioning
• 2x Shadow Play
• 2x Delaying Tactics
• 4x On the Qui Vive -- replacing also two Wake with Evening's Freshness
• 2x Target Vitals -- alternatively 2x Nocturn

The crypt is almost perfect as it is, so no changes here.

Next time I will present the next installment of the series, it'll be a deck based on the Tremere antitribu clan. I have to slow down the frequency of the publication a bit, as you can already see by the delay of this article, since I need more time for testing and especially tuning the decks.