i Malgorzata
Highlights
This is a toolbox deck starring Malgorzata, using the rare disciplines combination and big capacity vampires with great abilities.
Malgorzata's unique ability helps influencing a big capacity vampire fast. Then Mistress Fanchon or Sha Ennu hit the table - they can bleed hard, but also have the same disciplines as Malgorzata, so they can do whatever she does. The classical Zillah's Valley & Villein combination is used to speed up this setup even further.
makes for a dreadful combat module, with Chiropteran Marauder and Breath of the Dragon delivering aggravated damage at any range. A couple of Rötschreck helps cover almost any the combat cases when blocking.
The deck includes a solid defense module based on , with Telepathic Misdirection to bounce and a lot of wakes and intercept for general defense.
Both Mistress Fanchon and Sha Ennu have a +2 bleed ability, and the deck provides quite a bit of stealth with Changeling, Mirror Walk and Plasmic Form. A couple of Conditioning are added for the lunge.
Tips & Tricks
Direct Intervention is great against block denial cards like Elder Impersonation. A lot of cards might be worth cancelling, but a properly timed Direct Intervention can real make or break a game.
Magic of the Smith can be used to fetch any of the included equipment, depending on what is most useful for the current table situation. If nothing specific arises, Heart of Nizchetus is a good default.
Variants
The deck leaves a lot of room to variations due to its toolbox nature. One needs to tinker with it and adapt it to the expected meta but it is certainly suitable in many situations.
The Diablerie variation includes a far more severe combat module. Seen first in Bram van Stappen's deck from 2015, it can execute diablerie upon diablerie on the opposing vampires. The Erciyes Fragments is a great inclusion here given the good defense and discipline spread, and Scourge of the Enochians a good counter against some swarm decks. Relying on the Chiropteran Marauder maneuver to include Mark V is a great idea. Nicola Lonardi's deck from 2017 is another example of this build.Actually, Malgorzata's ability might be less relevant to the whole strategy than one could think at first sight. The Sha-Ennu variant ditches her in favor of Unmada. This allow for the use of instead of , for more stealth, as in Tuomas Nyberg's deck from 2015. The inclusion of Nightmare Curse for Sha Ennu is a nice trick that could be used in other versions: coupled with Banishment and the occasional diablerie, this can really shake a table.
Errata
Pentex™ Subversion has been modified by an errata in September 2019. It does not prevent a vampire to act anymore, so it is less powerful but its ability to disable a strong blocker is still an important aspect. It might have its place here.